purloin
purloin
to take dishonestly; steal; filch; pilfer
The painting above is called American Progress by John Gast. It was commissioned in 1872, and there’s something about it I’ve always found haunting. A monster in white, who brings men carrying whips and guns with her. Tracks laid in her wake carrying locomotives that send plumes of dark smoke into the sky. “Progress” by way of genocide.
In the 1500s, the mass death of indigenous people was so significant that a Little Ice Age was triggered. So much death, that the ecosystem needed to recalibrate itself. The effects lasted hundreds of years, until the 1800s.
See the bison at the bottom-left side of the image? 20 years after this was painted, there would be less than 600 in North America. They were saved through the efforts of many different conservators. The most successful used techniques perfected by the very people the horrific white kaiju at the top of this page seeks to erase.
It takes such remarkable hubris to look at this embodiment of manifest destiny and see anything noble. There is more to existence than aesthetics and production. The dark clouds she casts away hold much needed water. What sort of progress involves chasing away things we need to live?
Don’t let them hide behind the sunshine and euphemisms. Don’t accept their blood-tainted seeds.
ContextFall
Interstellar Wallflower by Samuel Lowd Goldstein
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