Manifest Destiny
The distance travelled from Washington D.C. to San Francisco is equal to making a return trip across the widest part of Britain 4½ times. Little wonder that the American myth is ‘Westward Ho!’ and the British is ‘Anchors aweigh!’
You could make an episode called ‘Peddle’ in Britain, but not one called ‘Drive’.
These vast distances play tricks upon the American psyche.
Even today there are wide open spaces creating the illusion of freedom and room to swing a cat:
The wide-open spaces depicted in the NASA image are not as wide and open as they would have been back in the 19th Century – if for no reason other than that now they have NASA satellites flying overhead taking beautiful “black marble” images. The average pan-handler on his way to the California gold fields wasn’t being tracked by an eye-in-the-sky.
In Medieval England, to be born in a village was to live, marry, have children, work and die in that same village, where everybody knew you and what you were worth. There was no saddling the horse and riding off into the West in search of adventure. Not until the rise of the navy around the turn of the 18th Century did it become possible to venture forth in search of fame and fortune.
Britain built an empire because it needed to. America was an empire waiting to be ‘tamed’. Manifest destiny for the British meant months at sea, guessing longitude and hoping not to get lost. American manifest destiny meant driving ever westwards.
Treaty Republic, an Australian Originals website, calls Britain the “most criminal of nations”. Our history of “crimes against humanity” is nothing of which to be proud. In truth, it is not just the United States that Germany puts to shame. Britain is no more adept at apologizing for past sins than is the US. Empires have always been built upon the bones of the vanquished.
The singular moment in ‘Drive’ is when Crump, as he and Mulder pass a billboard welcoming them to California, observes that Mulder had “better figure quick. We’re running out of west.” It is a powerful image – these two white men, driving west with all the technology their culture bestows, regardless of law, with a singular purpose in mind. It is a drive that should make all Americans aware of the sheer futility of manifest destiny, that the reaching of the West Coast was a goal with little meaning. Mulder, as he takes off his tie and gazes out at the Pacific is well aware of the cost in human life of his journey.
The road to the West Coast is paved with the bones of the indigenous population. Manifest destiny amounts to nothing more than dying in the West as opposed to the East.
It is a trek that shaped the American psyche. It is a trek that achieved nothing.
Does one have to be on the West Coast to build a computer? Or make a movie?
Britain could never have inaugurated the industrial revolution if not for its seeking of material resources beyond its borders. This is not a justification of Britain’s history, only a statement of fact. Britain is too small to have the resources necessary to build the technology that kick-started the modern world. As an Englishman, I wish that Britain could have behaved better abroad and willingly apologise to all who we exploited. As I have said before, the science, once begun, will continue. If Britain hadn’t done it someone would have. History tells us that it was Britain, a small nation with dreams of greatness, that built the world we live in today. And people around the world paid with their lives.
It was even an Englishman who invented the modern computer. But, by then, Britain had lost its dreams.
As Crump and Mulder drive towards the west they take only their prejudices with them. They have no purpose other than saving the white man’s life. How futile a goal is that!
You could make an episode called ‘Peddle’ in Britain, but not one called ‘Drive’.
These vast distances play tricks upon the American psyche.
Even today there are wide open spaces creating the illusion of freedom and room to swing a cat:
The wide-open spaces depicted in the NASA image are not as wide and open as they would have been back in the 19th Century – if for no reason other than that now they have NASA satellites flying overhead taking beautiful “black marble” images. The average pan-handler on his way to the California gold fields wasn’t being tracked by an eye-in-the-sky.
In Medieval England, to be born in a village was to live, marry, have children, work and die in that same village, where everybody knew you and what you were worth. There was no saddling the horse and riding off into the West in search of adventure. Not until the rise of the navy around the turn of the 18th Century did it become possible to venture forth in search of fame and fortune.
Britain built an empire because it needed to. America was an empire waiting to be ‘tamed’. Manifest destiny for the British meant months at sea, guessing longitude and hoping not to get lost. American manifest destiny meant driving ever westwards.
Treaty Republic, an Australian Originals website, calls Britain the “most criminal of nations”. Our history of “crimes against humanity” is nothing of which to be proud. In truth, it is not just the United States that Germany puts to shame. Britain is no more adept at apologizing for past sins than is the US. Empires have always been built upon the bones of the vanquished.
The singular moment in ‘Drive’ is when Crump, as he and Mulder pass a billboard welcoming them to California, observes that Mulder had “better figure quick. We’re running out of west.” It is a powerful image – these two white men, driving west with all the technology their culture bestows, regardless of law, with a singular purpose in mind. It is a drive that should make all Americans aware of the sheer futility of manifest destiny, that the reaching of the West Coast was a goal with little meaning. Mulder, as he takes off his tie and gazes out at the Pacific is well aware of the cost in human life of his journey.
The road to the West Coast is paved with the bones of the indigenous population. Manifest destiny amounts to nothing more than dying in the West as opposed to the East.
It is a trek that shaped the American psyche. It is a trek that achieved nothing.
Does one have to be on the West Coast to build a computer? Or make a movie?
Britain could never have inaugurated the industrial revolution if not for its seeking of material resources beyond its borders. This is not a justification of Britain’s history, only a statement of fact. Britain is too small to have the resources necessary to build the technology that kick-started the modern world. As an Englishman, I wish that Britain could have behaved better abroad and willingly apologise to all who we exploited. As I have said before, the science, once begun, will continue. If Britain hadn’t done it someone would have. History tells us that it was Britain, a small nation with dreams of greatness, that built the world we live in today. And people around the world paid with their lives.
It was even an Englishman who invented the modern computer. But, by then, Britain had lost its dreams.
As Crump and Mulder drive towards the west they take only their prejudices with them. They have no purpose other than saving the white man’s life. How futile a goal is that!
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