The Title? Metaphor
In case anyone was wondering, the first engagement with metaphor that for the reader of A Different Mirror is, well, a different mirror. History is a mirror that does not reflect the complete image. Within that reflection are people and stories which aren’t seen, but are nevertheless there.
“To become visible is to see ourselves and each other in a different mirror of history.”
Make Your People Go
No U.S. President was more ferociously malevolent in drafting and implementing policies toward the Native American tribes living in America than Andrew Jackson. Both openly and secretly, actively and through processes of omission, Jackson was always working toward his ultimate ambition on the subject: an Indian-free America. In fact, forcibly moving thousands to the other side of the Mississippi River was, in Jackson’s view, not just legally acceptable, but based upon a morally righteous foundation steeped in Biblical metaphor:
“I feel conscious of having done my duty to my red children”
Immigration Logic
Sudden massive influxes of immigration from one specific country or region has a logic that is entirely divorced from any racist xenophobia that seeks to attach nefarious purposes of subversion. The arrival of hundreds of thousands Japanese into America in the latter half of the 19th century stemmed not from any indecipherable agenda, but a simple mathematical equation combined with a metaphorical image: to protect themselves from western imperialism like that suffered by China, Japan raised taxes to build a mighty army. The burden of taxation proved far too great resist, especially when they began hearing about how easy it was to exponentially increase one’s income by going to the rapidly developing United States.
“In America, money grew on trees.”
The WASP Homeland
Generally speaking, the term “manifest destiny” is used to refer specifically to a doctrine of expansionism that said because America was a connected continent (or sub-continent) it had the right all land which stretched out uninterrupted. The author argues that there is something even more sinister than that at work; a racist component fed by religion. Westward expansion was less a land grab for political purposes than territorial warfare designed to preserve racial purity or:
“Franklin’s America of `the lovely white.’”
Herman Melville
Not quite the last word—but only a few paragraphs shy—is handed over to Herman Melville as the location for a definition of the America which should be seen quite clearly in that different mirror:
“You cannot spill a drop of American blood without spilling the blood of the whole world.”
