We have met the enemy and he is us

If Kamala Harris loses it won't be the fault of black voters. White America still has time avoid the human tendency for self-inflicted mistakes.

DURING the War of 1812, Master Commandant Oliver Perry defeated the British Navy at the battle of Lake Erie. He famously wrote to Major General William Henry Harrison, “We have met the enemy and they are ours”. American animator and cartoonist Walt Kelly later seized upon the line in his animal comic strip Pogo.

Kelly’s 1971 cartoon for Earth Day weaponised the phrase to highlight mankind’s tendency for self-destruction. In the case of Pogo, it was waste, pollution and environmental degradation.

But the idea that humanity only has itself to blame for its problems is a universal theme. Zhang Leping in 1935 created his cartoon of a starving homeless Chinese boy. His three lonesome hairs were a reference to his poverty, his character’s name; Sānmáo (三毛); can mean both "three hairs" in Chinese or "three mao" (a reference to his poverty)

Zhang Leping’s desperate little Sānmáo lived mostly in misery and stark poverty, despite it being the Shanghai golden era of the 1930s. Leping wanted to draw attention to the real life plight of the children, thrown aside against a backdrop of Japanese invasion, colonization, warlordism, civil war and inflation.

A recurring theme is where each time Sānmáo seems to find happiness, some villain or mishap would occur to ruin the short-lived warmth in his life. In the opening of The Wanderings of Sānmáo (1947), an old fisherman tried to take the child in as his own, finally to spare him from his sufferings. But alas, the old fisherman is killed in the crossfire of rival factions of Chinese soldiers.

Little Sānmáo is left weeping at the injustice at a time when the world was apparently blind and deaf to the sufferings of the Chinese people prior to World War 2.

We have met the enemy and he is us.

Our capacity to ignore, feign indifference and engage in conspiracies of silence is perhaps part of mankind’s self-destructiveness. Perhaps it’s also the narcissism intermingling with a repulsion at admitting wrong. We are, after all, merely highly intelligent apes.

But things truly become clear when we cast eyes over men and politics. It certainly has the strange power to dement otherwise serious people.

The latest message from America demonstrates this. Both Donald Trump and Barak Obama have locked in on the same line: They don’t care about you.

A zero-sum game where the contemporary instinct of the time is no longer the art of guiding a nation, or advancing the species. Rather, it’s a rhetorical battlefield where victory is all and humanity is cast aside, forgotten.

Thursday, October 10, saw former President Obama campaigning in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Thanking the volunteers, he chastised African-American men, observing the lack of energy “seems to be more pronounced with the brothers.”

He helpfully provided an analysis of why he thought this is the case,

You’re coming up with all kinds of reasons and excuses, I’ve got a problem with that. Because part of it makes me think—and I’m speaking to men directly—part of it makes me think that, well, you just aren’t feeling the idea of having a woman as president, and you’re coming up with other alternatives and other reasons for that. You’re thinking about sitting out or supporting somebody who has a history of denigrating you, because you think that’s a sign of strength, because that’s what being a man is? Putting women down? That’s not acceptable.

Naturally the journalistic reaction has been a mixture of odd conservative pearl clutching and burbling liberal murmurings. But these are serious times, with high stakes. The fact is, America seems poised to inflict another viral batch of Trumpism upon us all.

So, regarding what Obama said, let me make two points I think are worth making.

Firstly, Kamala Harris is doing as well as Joe Biden did with African-American voters. So realistically, the issue is why isn’t she doing better? Part of the answer is sexism, but nevertheless she will weigh in the black vote regardless of sex.

Secondly, Barak Obama might have been chastising his “brothers”, but let’s be honest his aren’t the problem. Mine are.

The sex offending, secret stealing convicted felon, Donald Trump, is winning the white vote according to the most recent New York Times / Sienna poll. The Republican candidate for the White House is winning the white vote - both men and women - 52 percent to 44 percent.

So, I am quite happy for Obama to be challenging his own community on the dangers of self-inflicted sufferings. But it would be just super if men like George W. Bush and Mitt Romney would do likewise.

Supposedly however that would be expecting too much. Both men remain silent as Trump continues to sell his snake-oil to non-college educated American men.

If Trump regains power on November 5th, it will be down to white America. And mankind’s circular tendency for self-harm will perpetuate itself once more. American women’s reproductive healthcare will be torn away, same-sex marital rights will follow. Voter suppression will become institutionalised so as to preserve the power of a white America terrified of shifting demographics.

As for the rest of us? Zhang Leping’s Sānmáo wandered a world where mankind did not care enough to solve the problems mankind’s own choices had caused. I guess for those of us non-American we will see no evil, speak no evil and hear no evil.

In the 1930s the world was expected to be blind to the ragged orphans of China; like little starving Sānmáo. So shall be expected of the rest of us today as the plight of American women unfolds. If Trump and the Republican’s seize power, nobody will be expected to notice the surveillance state which will be inflicted on women. No abortion rights, monitoring of female travel to prevent female access to reproductive healthcare.

And it will all be the fault of white America. In the timeless words of Pogo, we have met the enemy and he is us.

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