I was sitting on a bar stool at the Tilted Stick with a gut-full of tequila eavesdropping on a conversation the young couple beside me was having about Cinco de Mayo. The girl asked what the holiday was all about and the guy replied that ‘Cinco de Mayo’ was Spanish for ‘May 5.’
“It’s the anniversary of the day Mexico declared independence from Spain,” he proclaimed.
Being the sort of person who hates to see the spread of misinformation, I leaned in and interrupted his spiel. “Actually that’s not true,” I said. “Mexico’s independence came decades earlier.”
“No it didn’t,” he insisted. “I heard it on the radio today. Cinco De Mayo is the Mexican version of our 4th of July.”
And so it began.
What started as a chinwag about Cinco de Mayo soon turned into an argument about Mexican beers, which became an outburst about border control, and finally skid into a tirade about terrorism.
I just love this sort of barroom encounter. All the components for disaster are there: Two guys jawing over a highly sensitive subject with a gut-full of booze, a sack-full of testosterone, a young pretty on the sidelines, and just one wrong-word away from trading punches across the bar – that’s the adrenalin that tastes like crack.
His take on terrorism was that terrorists are terrible and should be terminated.
“That’s one way to look at it,” I said.
“What’s the other,” he snorted.
“What is our culpability in the rise of terrorism today?” I replied. “Is there any truth to the idea that America is immorally wielding it’s might upon the Middle East and if so, should we be surprised when they lash out against us?”
“I see,” he said with a condescending tone. “You’re one of those Blame-America-First jerks.”
And there it was – The Label. What barroom argument is complete without somebody casting a label? And this one is a classic: It’s as illogical, unreasonable, unfounded, insensitive, and entirely unoriginal as a label can be. Have you heard it? If you watch cable news or listen to radio talk shows they say it all the time:
They call it the “Blame-America-First crowd”; as if there’s an organized group out there somewhere with a headquarters, and a website, and a mission statement, and some punchy acronym like BAFA: the Blame America Firsters of America – Blaming Americans first since 1776.
Yeah right. BAFA is just another of a myriad of phrases that is meant to marginalize anyone who criticizes the oh-so perfect United States. It’s a self-defense mechanism that insulates America from its wicked deeds and shields Americans from ever having to confront them.
“You know what?” I said. “I’d rather be a Blame-America-First jerk than a Blame-America-Last ass. You Blame-America-Last asses are the worst. You never blame America, except when it’s last. Slavery, Vietnam, Iran-Contra, LAPD, Bay of Pigs, Richard Nixon, Omarosa, even Christopher Columbus, it’s no goddam wonder we keep making the same mistakes over and over again – because we won’t admit to making them in the first place?
How can anyone evolve when they don’t accept personal responsibility?
This is why this guy will never learn the meaning of Cinco de Mayo. Because it’s inconceivable to him that he might be wrong about something and is therefore doomed to repeat the same misinformation to hot girls in bars across America.
Incidentally, I did look up Cinco de Mayo when I got home and it definitely ain’t the Mexican Independence Day. May 5, 1862 is the date of Mexico’s victory over the French at the Battle of Puebla. It was your classic underdog vs. the overdog conflict. A rumbustious mix of Mexican soldiers, peasants, Indians, a few hundred heads of stampeding cattle, and a band of farmers armed with hoes and shovels defended the City of Puebla from Napoleon III’s vastly superior French army.
The victory, however, was symbolic. Mexico may have won the battle, but they never had a prayer in the war. The French regrouped and effortlessly pirouetted across the country. And the reason France was able to conquer Mexico so easily, was thanks to the good old unblamable United States of America – and her greed, and opportunism, and expansionist obsessions, and Manifest Destiny, and a little conflict we call the Mexican/American war that occurred some 17 years before the battle of Cinco de Mayo.
President James K. Polk and the landthirsty people of the United States of America were under the impression that God had given them the right to take over Mexico. Many wanted the U.S. to take all of Mexico. But being the givers that Americans are, we only stole half of it – which devastated the Mexican treasury and opened the door for a French occupation.
So who started the Mexican American war? Well, it’s true that Mexico fired the first shot. But they did so because the Americans were amassing a force on Mexico’s side of the border. Naturally, that part of the story was played down by the Americans. And how did they play it down? By labeling you a traitor if you dared suggest that Mexico had a legitimate reason shoot first; or insinuate that we don’t have a divine right to occupy their land; or shouted from the rooftops with a bullhorn, “You’re all mad, mad I tell you, if you really believe God is behind this Manifest Larceny business!”
Get this: Later it was learned that the Polk had planned on attacking Mexico before Mexico ever fired that first shot. How serendipitous for Polk. He just used the attack as justification to declare war and then it was an all out property grab to which America came out on top.
Hmm. Sound familiar? Can you think of any other Presidents who may have used attacks against us to justify a war he already had planned? Isn’t it uncanny how history continues to repeat? But as long as we keep blaming America last, then we’re doomed to repeat our mistakes first.
For the record, I don’t consider myself a Blame-America-First person. Sometimes I blame America second, or third even. Sometimes I don’t blame America at all. If you have to put a label on me, then I guess I’m a Blame-America-When-America-Deserves-to-be-Blamed Blamer. And I’m really fucking tired of being called a traitor every time I question my government out loud. It’s called “Introspection” people and for the life of me I don’t know when it became a bad thing.
EJD
