PERSPECTIVES: Are We Really Crazy About Real Estate?

Above, a  1903 editorial cartoon

James C. Johnston Jr.

As
Dorothy once said to her little dog and best friend, “I don’t
think that we are in Kansas anymore.”

A
lot of people have been saying that sort of thing to me lately like I
should know what they mean. I just look at them and smile with a
degree of generalized sympathy, because they look at me as if I could
actually do something about whatever is causing their malaise.

I
really don’t know what people expect to happen. Is the sky going to
fall? Perhaps. I can’t really say. I seem to have avoided watching
or listening to the weather reports. What I really hate about this
time of year is that it is so damned grey, and also cold, and also
damp, and also so damned wintery. Is there no formula for skipping
to spring? Summer seems to make everything better.

I
really wonder what is going on. It seems like three hundred years and
not three weeks since I blew-up my television set. I am just so tired
about the gnashing of teeth and weeping. It is not as if we were not
told what was
going to happen is it. So just do as the bears and the more highly
evolved forms of life do when confronted by a nasty winter-like sort
of reality. Find a nice cave and go to sleep for four years, and then
we may have a new reality to deal with.

We
followed the rules, and made a choice. Some people were happy-a bit
over half actually-and that is how it is. Isn’t that the way it is
supposed to be? Did you get what you want? Well maybe next time, and
I am sure that there will be a next time. After all, that has been
the way since 1789 as far as I know. I have a faint hope that the
process will continue.

By
the way I never will have been in Kansas. I have known people from
Kansas, and most of them are indeed glad to be from Kansas, but I
never heard that any of them wanted to go back. I have heard that it
is quite flat. Personally, I like some variety in my topography. Our
fifth greatest President of the United States, Dwight D. Eisenhower,
was from Kansas. After the Second World War as: Commander-in-Chief of
the Allied Forces in Europe, and Commander of NATO Forces, and
President of one of our greatest universities, and a little eight
year stint as President of the United States, and warning the nation
of the unwarranted influence of the Industrial-Military Complex, this
great man didn’t go back to Kansas either. Now comes the question
addressed to Dorothy, “Just what the hell is so great about Kansas
anyway?”

Don’t
people there ever get upset? Well I suspect they do most-like just
like everywhere else. I don’t really get too upset about acquiring
new real-estate. Do you? After-all we have quite a record of buying
stuff cheap don’t we? Let’s take a look at the record. In 1803,
we bought Louisiana after some guy named Talleyrand said that instead
of buying New Orleans for ten million dollars, like Mr. Jefferson-who
was President at the time- wanted to, we could buy the whole thing
for just fifteen million dollars! Now wasn’t that a good deal?

In
1819, we signed the Adams-Onis Treaty with Spain after Gen. Jackson
sort of invaded Spanish Florida captured forts, and hanged the
odd-Englishmen, and The Prophet of the Seminoles, and performed a few
other atrocities in the best Western Tradition just to set the stage
for a quick sale. We got that fine real-estate for five millions, and
guess what? Not one red-cent ever crossed “The Pond” to Spain!
All that money went to poor slave-holders whose living property ran
off to Florida and to the relative safety of the Seminoles!

We
signed a couple of treaties with the English in 1842 and 1846
straightening out the border between British Canada and the United
States along the 49th
Degree Longitude. The Native Americans were never consulted of
course. But they were just savages-right?

In
1845, we annexed Texas at the request of the Texans. Now the Texans
had originally gone into Mexico as settlers in Texas. New the
Mexicans had given up the “Peculiar-Institution” of the Southern
part of the United States otherwise known as slavery. The Americanos
were told by the Mexican Authorities that slavery was a “No-Go”
in The Mexican Republic. The Texans got mad and revolted in defense
of slavery as the bases of their economic system. There was the
heroic stand at the Alamo and then Huston’s fantastic eighteen
minute battle which saw the defeat of Gen. and El President of Mexico
Santa Anna, not to be confused with Santa Claus. A treaty was signed,
and Texas became a republic. In 1845 Texas joined the Union with the
proviso that at some future time, they could divide themselves into
as many as five states! My, my, wouldn’t that be a party.

A
year later, President Polk sent Gen. Zachery Taylor down to the
disputed border between Mexico and the U. S. of A. to, “Cause an
incident!” and get the Mexicans to shoot at us. Taylor did not
disappoint, and the Mexicans fired at our flag. The war was on. In a
space of two years, we conquered Mexico, took Mexico City, and
captured Santa Anna’s wooden leg! As a result of this little
escapade we got the Mexican Cession, and we even paid the Mexican
about ten Millions just to make ourselves feel better about the
bargain. In 1853, we bought The Gadsden Purchase from Mexico just to
tidy-up the border.

In
1867, we got Russia to sell us a little place called Alaska for
Seven-million-two-hundred-thousand dollars. In 1898, we annexed the
former Kingdom of Hawaii. American Planter under the leadership of
Stanford B. Dole had overthrown the last indigenous ruler, Queen
Liliuokalani, in 1893. Now our empire had an earthly paradise. In
that year we fought, as Teddy Roosevelt would say, “A Splendid
Little War” with Spain. At the end of the 115 day conflict, we had
taken: Puerto Rico, Cuba, Guam, and the Philippines.

As
a hunter Teddy might have said, “A nice Bag! Bully!”

I
really don’t know if he actually said that, but he might have. I do
know what President McKinley said, because it was part of a speech to
Congress. His words went something like this, “Gentlemen, I have
wept and prayed and prayed and wept. What to do, what to do. Shall we
take the Philippines and Cuba? Shall we take Guam and Puerto Rico?
Then it came to me as from Heaven above, take them all.”

Being
almost a hundred and sixty years old my memory might be a little off,
but that’s about how I remember it.

We
still have Puerto Rico as a territory, and a base in Cuba, some
little influence in the Philippines, and quite a hold over Guam, but
this is all another story. Back after the war with Spain, we actually
had a pretty good grip on all of the real-estate. But, we really were
not awfully sure what to do with it. The Philippines were
particularly troublesome. They actually thought that they could rule
themselves. Their leader was a fellow called Aguinaldo. Imagine, he
actually thought that he could govern! By the way, he did have an
earned Ph.D.!

We
picked up some of the Samoan Islands and a few odd bits of
real-estate here and there. Nobody seemed to mind. After all the the
British, the French, the Germans, the Dutch, the Belgians, the
Portuguese, the Spanish, the Russians, the Danes, the Italians, and
others were grabbing up all sorts of choice pieces of property all
over the globe and had been doing so for hundreds of years. The U. S.
had acquired a continent and more too. Life was good for the strong
in a well ordered world.

In
the last part of the 19th
Century and early 20th
Century, getting from the Atlantic to the Pacific too often meant
going around one of the most treacherous parts of the oceans, The
Straits of Magellan. More ships had been lost in those awful waters
between 1519 and the beginning of the Twentieth Century than anyone
could count. Ferdinand de Lessep
attempted a canal across Central America. He had built the Suez Canal
which was 100 miles long, but that was un morceaux de gateaux
compared with the Panama proposition. For one thing, the Atlantic and
Pacific Oceans are of two different heights of depths depending on
your context. Also Columbia didn’t want to play ball with us
diplomatically, so we convinced Panama, which was a state inside of
Columbia, that they wanted their independence from mean old Columbia.

With
the promise of large compensation for the real-estate on which to
build the Canal, Panama declared their independence from Columbia,
sold us the strip of land required, and we sent some pretty
convincing warships to Panama to back up the new government. Then we
built the Canal.

As
everyone has recently learned, of course I don’t mean me because I
do [most humbly] know most things worth knowing, Denmark has
ownership of Greenland. After all Eric-the-Red occupied the place at
the end of the Tenth Century after killing some fellows he found
troublesome in Iceland. Eric was a very bad-tempered fellow. But the
Danes have been there the better part of a thousand years or more.
That would seem to give them squatter’s rights in spades.

In
1916, the First World War was on, and the Germans had quite a few
dangerous ships about. The Admiral Graf Spee had led a powerful
German squadron in the Pacific and the Atlantic preying on British
and Allied shipping. The British Admiralty sent out a force to take
the Germans out of the picture. Spee fought two battles with his
British foes. In his first engagement, the Battle of the Coronel, he
had the advantage of larger guns and heavier cruisers. As a result,
he was victorious sending the British to watery graves in 1914. But
just a bit later, Spee encountered a larger better equipped British
squadron commanded by a slightly older and very experienced British
commander Sir Doveton Sturdee. Sturdee maneuvered Spee and the
Germans to a position with the sun in their faces and battered the
Germans sinking four of their five cruisers. Only one smaller vessel
got away, but it never made it back to The Fatherland!

Two
years later, the United States looked at a Danish possession
consisting of three islands in the Caribbean Sea. These islands had
belonged to the Danes since the Seventeenth Century. They were known
as The Danish West Indies. We had coveted them before, but the Danes
were reluctant to sell, and in the end, after our commissioners
experienced a hurricane while checking out the islands, interest
declined, But in 1864, the Danes had lost almost half their country
in an aggressive war with the Germans. The Prussian King William and
his Chancellor Otto von Bismarck took the provinces of Schleswig and
Holstein from them. The Danes were neutral in 1916, but they knew
that meant very little to the German Empire fighting for its imperial
life. Although the Danes in the Danish West Indies were opposed to
the sale of the islands to the United States, a plebiscite was held
in Denmark and 64 percent of the voters agreed to sell the islands to
the United States before they could be seized by Germany.

The
islanders had even issued poster stamps protesting the sale to no
effect. In 1917, the United States paid over to Denmark
twenty-five-million-dollars in gold coin for the three little
islands. Today these are better known as The American Virgin Islands.

So
this is how the American Empire grew between 1776 and 1917. Now Mr.
Trump has imperial ambitions. Buy Greenland from Denmark? There seems
to be a precedent. Take back the Panama Canal? We used to do that
sort of thing. It reminds me of Hawaii in a way. Annex Canada? Now
that has interesting possibilities. It would have to be al least ten
states anyway. That might give us as many as twenty Liberal senators.
Now that might be attractive to some. And there would have to be a
redistribution of House of Representative Membership. The number is
fixed at 435 members, and every state is guaranteed at least one
member. All of those Liberal Members! How interesting. And Mr. Justin
Trudeau, as a native born citizen of the expanded United States, as
he would certainly be, could run for president.

Now
what about the Gaza Strip? Shall we treat the indigenous people like
we did our own indigenous people more than a century ana half ago?
How will the rest of the world see this land grab in the best
imperial tradition. Alas there is precedent! Isn’t history a great
teacher? Here endeth the lesson. I’m going back to my fox hole for
the rest of the winter. I hope that it doesn’t get nuclear.

James C. Johnston, a retired Franklin educator and author, is a frequent contributor to Franklin Observer.