Dan Boylan Insults Our Intelligence

Normally I don't pay any attention to lefty dilettante Dan Boylan other than when he crawls out from under his rock every two years to opine on the elections. What makes this occasion different, is that Midweek was the only reading material I had within arm reach whilst taking a crap this pm. While leafing through its smudgy pages I stumbled across Boylan's latest column cannily titled "GOP Insults Hawaii’s Host Culture".

Paying no heed to judgment I read on curious to see exactly what sort of insults Mr. Boylan perceived the GOP to be hurling at our 'host culture'. Turns out Mr. Boylan isn't talking about our host culture at all, but rather a sociopolitical construct called the Office of Hawaiian Affairs (OHA), and a terrible piece of looming legislation called the Akaka Bill.


Mr Boylan says:

Lingle seemed to express genuine concern for the plight of Hawaii’s first people: their alienation from the aina that had once been theirs alone, the disproportionate number of homeless and incarcerated among them, and their continued position at the bottom of Hawaii’s economy.


Lingle’s promise of a fairer deal for the Islands’host people - and the presence of the part-Hawaiian Aiona at her side - certainly contributed to her victory in 2000.

Perhaps it did, but when Boylan bemoans the plight of Hawaii's first people, he alludes that it somehow stems from what he artfully describes as 'alienation from the aina', which is of course, ludicrous.

First off, the only relationship the vast majority of Hawaiian's had with the land were as workers of it, they didn't own it, they had no say in how it was to be used, that rested with a small warrior elite to whom they were virtual slaves, thus in true fashion most Hawaiians were in fact never alienated from the 'aina', in that they've never been disallowed from working it. The few petty tyrants who did own land were never forcibly dispossessed of it except by their own kind. None of this matters in the first place as this trauma, this supposed alienation occurred to people who are no longer with us, and Hawaiians have been free to accrue property via their own means ever since, an opportunity their ancestors never had. The romantic and ultimately racist notion harbored by soft-headed haole liberals that the debasement of some few descendants of Hawaii's aboriginal people is somehow rooted in their pining for the 'aina' the land, land they themselves never owned, is nonsensical regardless if their claim to that land is pono, or not. Mr. Boylans politics of victimization is belied by the fact that Native Hawaiians (and other Pacific islanders) are creating new businesses at triple the rate of other ethnic groups

One other small detail, Boylan also refers to the "Islands host people". Right thinking people would take that to mean citizens of this island state, but knowing Mr. Boylan I can presume him to mean ethnic Hawaiians, or Kanaka Maoli as some like to call themselves; descendants of the aboriginal peoples who dwelt here. You can take from that what you will, but that tells me that on some level, and possibly even unconsciously Mr. Boylan assigns separate, and perhaps hierarchical status between aboriginal Hawaiians, and everyone else. Not an unusual frame of mind for a liberal.

Boylan goes onto say:

On several fronts, Lingle’s administration has done well by Hawaiians. Micah Kane at the Hawaiian Homes Commission has worked well with all parties concerned to put more Hawaiians back on the land. He’s demonstrated a willingness to forgo partisanship and work with anyone, of any political denomination to improve the lot of Hawaiians - his people.

Boylans starry-eyed superficiality is amazing, as if employing someone with a Hawaiian surname, is 'doing right by Hawaiians'. The notion that people can best be served by eschewing the widest possible pool of talent in favor of a person of their own race is dumb. Beyond the fact that putting people of any kind on the land should not be a function of government, putting a specific race or ethnicity of persons on the land to the exclusion of all others, and on top of that forcing those others to pay for that connivance is beyond immoral. I wonder if Dan Boylan considers Irish caucasians as 'his people', and if so he sees special virtue in having their needs attended specifically by him or some other O'tool.

Danny boy then says:

Early on in her administration, Lingle threw her support behind the Akaka Bill - the long-stalled federal legislation designed to grant Hawaiians the recognition enjoyed by every other indigenous people in the United States.

Whether or not that is what the Akaka Bill was designed for is debatable, but the recognition enjoyed by every other indigenous people in the United States, is the result of treaties negotiated directly with the aggrieved parties. The Hawaiians who may indeed have a legitimate claim to sovereignty, joined their ancestors long ago.

Mr Boylan says:

Republican idealogues on the National Civil Rights Commission recently appointed Hawaii residents H. William Burgess, Paul Sullivan, James Kuroiwa, Reubellite Johnson and Tom McDonald to the Hawaii Civil Rights Commission. All have either been party to suits against Hawaiian agencies, gone on record in opposition to the Akaka Bill, or both.

And what makes these unnamed Republican National Civil Rights Commissioners "idealogues" (sic)? I'd say because Dan Boylans ideological perspective, does not comport with theirs. Mr. Boylan thinks opposition to legislation he supports, or filing lawsuits against certain sacrosanct agencies is somehow an automatic disqualifier. Sorry to tell you sir but not only is that not so, I'd consider it a possible resume enhancer.

Boylan then writes:

The Office of Hawaiian Affairs sent a list of nine candidates for local commission. None received an appointment.

In other words, the National Civil Rights Commission stacked the deck - well-stacked the deck - against the Akaka Bill.

Nope, no ideologues in OHA, nosiree. Considering the source, could it be possible that not one of the OHA hopefuls were qualified, or desireable?

Boylan then works himself into a fine lather, a crescendo of lefty cliches, and demagogic vituperative inanity:

Oh, the Republican Party of George W. Bush and the dearly departed Karl Rove - old white guys, still trying to fashion national political realignment on the debris of Iraq and battered American minorities, from blacks to gays to Native Americans to Hawaiians.

Ain’t they grand? In their final days they’ll stack courts and commissions with those who’ll fight a rear guard action against the demographically inevitable American future: one in which the United States will be a nation of minorities, including those indigenous peoples - Native American and Hawaiian - who’ve been victims of western germs and land thievery.

Clearly Mr. Boylan who professes to be a historian, is unaware of the origin of syphilis, or the perpetual warfare in which the stone-age tribes of America and Hawaii murdered their neighbors over land and property.

I once via a radio call-in show queried Hayden Burgess, a local activist type (probably one of those OHA recommended HCRC hopefuls) who goes by the assumed name of Poka Laenui as to why it was moral and indeed celebrated for Kamehameha the Great to force a retreating Oahu army in defense of their homeland, over the Pali Cliffs, yet it was immoral for white folks to seize power without killing anyone. The answer of course is that neither was moral, yet Mr. Laenui rationalized the dichotomy with a lame (and forgettable) moral relativist argument. Ever since then I've known these people are totally full of shit.

Anyway, to get back to Dan Boylan, it is the duty of elected executives, Presidents and otherwise to stack courts and commissions with like-minded individuals. Despite the fact Mr. Boylan wants to stack the Hawaii Civil Rights Commissions deck with OHA puppets, he seems to find deck-stacking abhorent when practiced by his bette noires (President Bush and K Rove), whom by virtue of their very whiteness and party affiliation seek to deny anyone other than WASP heterosexuals a piece of the pie: uh huh. I still don't get the part about fashioning national political realignment on the debris of Iraq and battered American minorities, but I intuit that there are some emotive parts of the tortured liberal psyche which we are better off not understanding.

Mr. Boylans schizophrenic vision of a Balkanized America as a way to fight injustice where there is none and achieve unity through disunity, while not being very coherent, is bound to provide lots of victims for his side to exploi... er champion well into the future.