Greed and Avarice

History always repeats itself. In 1891, John G. Bourke, a Captain of the 3rd Cavalry, U.S.A., took 500 pages to tell the American people about his hero, Gen. George Crook and the Indian uprisings out West. John expressed his considered opinion of the U.S. government’s Indian agents with these words: “a stench in the nostrils of decent people.” Furthermore, Bourke uses Crook’s own words to summarize the years of murder, corruption and lies that characterized these Indian wars. “Greed and avarice on the part of the whites - in other words the almighty dollar - is at the bottom of nine-tenths of all our Indian trouble.”

Fast forward to today when greed and avarice ARE a stench in the nostrils of decent people fed up with an overly intrusive government. Virtually all news involves murder, corruption or lies. Exaggeration and sensationalism are fed with almighty dollars. What else can explain a Charley Rangel, funded and elected for 20 terms in to U.S. Senate, corrupt as an old time Indian agent but rich as an old time Indian chief before his exile to the reservation.

Let’s hope this time around in Washington, we manage to put all liberal agents of change out to pasture.