A friend posted this abhorrent video on her Facebook (h/t Lori) and I was and am still speechless and a little sickened at the "brotherhood of man".
But, as I had just read the opening pages of a study of Puritan "Rhetoric, Prejudice, and Violence" by Ann Kibbey (h/t Susan Howe) I guess this "song" is nothing new for it's rhetoric, prejudice and violence.
It's 1637 and the Massachusetts Bay Company militia will, in two brief "battles" with the "virtually defenseless" Pequots, "cut off the Remembrance of them from the Earth."
The first battle occurred "near what is now Mystic, Connecticut": The Puritans "surrounded...and slaughtered everyone in the settlement, including women and children, by setting it on fire." This is what the leader of that militia, John Underhill, wrote: "The fires...burnt all in the space of half an hour...Many were burnt in the fort, both men, women, and children...Great and doleful was the bloody sight...to see so many souls lie gasping on the ground, so thick in some places, that you could hardly pass along." He goes on to say that those attempting escape were shot or stabbed to death.
Kibbey writes: "...the war...was perceived as an attack on the enemies of Puritan religion. Captain Mason [another leader of the militia, ed.]...attributed the war of extermination to 'the LORD GOD' who 'was pleased to smite our Enemies in the hinder parts' and 'redeem us out of our Enemies Hands.'"
Folks, our inheritance made plain even today via the good and God-fearing folk of the Notorious Gay-Hating Westboro Baptist Church in the great city of Topeka ("a good place to dig potatoes") in the great state of Kansas.
I am rendered speechless again.
ReplyDeleteNote, too, the irony of this church being located in a city with a name stolen from the Native American tribe Kaw--peoples that were the once hated "Other" savage and abomination before the Puritan God--replaced in our prejudicial rhetoric by the black man and now the homosexual...Puritans teaching intolerance since 1559!
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