The World-Ending Fire: The Essential Wendell Berry

by Wendell Berry

Generation after generation, those who intended to remain and prosper where they were have been dispossessed and driven out, or subverted and exploited where they were, by those who were carrying out some version of the search for El Dorado. Time after time, in place after place, these conquerors have fragmented and demolished traditional communities, the beginnings of domestic cultures. They have always said that what they destroyed was outdated, provincial, and contemptible. And with alarming frequency they have been believed and trusted by their victims, especially when their victims were other white people. If there is any law that has been consistently operative in American history, it is that the members of any established people or group or community sooner or later become ‘redskins’ – that is, they become the designated victims of an utterly ruthless, officially sanctioned and subsidized exploitation.