IN the halcyon days of childhood in our wee house in Donegal, we used to watch westerns almost every Sunday afternoon.
We’d all gather around the black and white telly – my mum and dad and the seven wains – and be taken to the wild west for 90 minutes to watch the good guys, usually the US cavalry, win every time against those barbaric Indians.
It was great stuff.
Back then John Wayne was the biggest star in the world, and we just loved it when he was the main actor on whatever movie we were watching.
We used to cheer when he’d kill all the guys with paint on their faces and feathers in their hair, rescue the girl held hostage, and then saunter home as the archetypal all-American hero who’d set the world to rights.
Indeed, I recall clearly the famous line from that time which said that all the boys wanted to be like him and all the girls wanted to be with him.
Of course, it was total bull. The reality of what was going on was about 180 degrees different to the Hollywood version.
In my teenage years, somewhere around 1970, two things happened to have the blindfold drop from my eyes.
The first was when I saw the film Soldier Blue, and around the same time I bought the book Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee.
This was to prove to be an epiphany on steroids.
I defy anyone to watch the final scene in Soldier Blue and not be disturbed by its unbelievably graphic violence as we see soldiers massacring an entire encampment of perfectly peaceful Indians, mostly women and children.
It is horrific.
As wake-up calls to reality go, this was definitely not a John Wayne movie.
Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee did something similar in that its author, Dee Brown, challenged the narrative of the Native Americans as savages.
He drew extensively on historical documents and government records to present hard evidence that it was the white man who was the aggressor, who broke treaties, who began the practice of scalping victims.
So much for the cavalry as the good guys.
And of course let’s not forget our hero, John Wayne. He had a massive role in shaping public opinion back then.
In 1971 he gave an interview where he was asked about the treatment of the Native Americans and how they were portrayed. He had no regrets, no apologies: “I don’t feel we did wrong in taking this great country away from them.“
He also described Native Americans as ‘selfish’ for wanting to hold on to their old hunting grounds and sacred sites.
While I’m at it, his views on black and gay people were equally enlightening. In regard to the former, he said: “I believe in white supremacy until the blacks are educated to a point of responsibility.”
As I watched US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth being interviewed the other night on his decision to allow live streaming of the execution of former US Army major Nidal Malik Hasan, convicted of killing 13 people in the 2009 at Fort Hood in Texas, the thought hit me that he was playing to the kind of gallery John Wayne played to back in the day.
Maybe, I thought, he even sees himself as a kind of modern day John Wayne.
This is a man who openly admits he wants his generals to look like Hollywood stars. He doesn’t want to see any overweight officers in top positions.
He has no issues with the excessive use of military force, and wants the laws of war changed so soldiers who kill innocents cannot be charged.
He’s made clear women shouldn’t be in combat but, presumably, back at home making apple pie. And he has rolled back diversity policies to curb the promotion prospects of women and black officers.
For me, this is 1950s-style politics where simple solutions are put forward as answers to complex problems.
Right now, it seems America under Trump is all about projecting cruelty as strength, and any suggestion of decency or compassion as weakness.
The live streaming of an execution for public entertainment, now thankfully cancelled after a public outcry, is disgusting no matter what way you come at it. It is dehumanising, it’s cruel, it’s an affront to civilised values. It was to be used for political propaganda, the message being this is what criminals can expect from a Trump regime.
In televising the execution, the US would have been joining countries it used to condemn for human rights violations like Iran, Afghanistan, North Korea, Somalia etc. Some company for ‘the land of the free’ to be keeping
Personally, I don’t see the vote-getting opportunities of televising a firing squad riddling bullets into a man already confined to a wheelchair, but maybe that’s just me.
One final point, I recall from my school days, when we studied the fall of the once-mighty Roman empire, that near the top of the list were the issues of political instability, poor leadership, decline in discipline and moral values, deep divisions in society, costly foreign wars, and economic instability, resulting in a sort of chain reaction where all these factors combined.
Surely, it’s hardly an exaggeration to suggest that something similar seems to be happening to America under Donald Trump?
Or is that just wishful thinking on my part?
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