...the development of our democracy--which was dependent on the economic development of a large middle class and upwardly mobile lower class--was based on expansion into the "limitless" land and resource base to the West, belonging to the Indigenous tribes of North America.
The "pioneers" were not bad people. They were mostly just poor people who were "extraneous" to the wealthy eastern establishment. They were encouraged--and economically, they were forced--to push "west" for land to farm and for other land-based activities such as ranching and timber falling. They were perhaps less oppressed than the millions of British rural folk who were literally forced out of England by the "enclosure" laws and who often involuntarily had to establish lives and livelihoods in the "colonies." Economically, our western pioneers were similar--but our pioneers had the enticements of an established democracy with heady notions of spreading this desirable form of government to...Ohio, Minnesota, the Dakotas and points West and Northwest and eventually Southwest.
Following the pioneers then were the capitalists--the banksters, the railroad kings, the robber barons, the big resource exploiters who eventually robbed us all of democracy (and wealth). The "tragedy," however, was played out while the rich eastern establishment was still making plans for their "empire." It was the poor oppressing the poor--the poor pioneers oppressing the poor (in a difference sense) Indigenous tribes, with, of course, the backing of federal military violence.
Sad, sad. I'm living in an area of the U.S. where this tragic drama is still alive in some peoples' minds. Their immediate ancestors were the "pioneers" against "the wild." They simply cannot grasp how wrong--and how tragic--this was. "Tragedy," in its classic sense, derives from a good person--a heroic person--thinking he/she is righteous but then doing great wrong. These pioneer types are democrats with a small d. They really are. But they can't see how their "pioneering" was actually theft and murder and they can't see how that "pioneering" paved the way for the plutocrats to now rob them.
I see a similar drama playing out in Brazil. Brazil has a long-standing leftist government whose first priority is creating that vast middle class upon which democracy depends--much like, say, the Jacksonian and FDR eras here. This seems to require, among other things, crushing Indigenous land claims in the Amazon (the "wild west" of Brazil). The government is conflicted about this because today social justice and environmental concerns also are important priorities.
I hope that Brazil and other countries with leftist governments in LatAm somehow find better solutions than we did, to this perennial conflict of development vs the environment (and the Indigenous--an entirely non-industrial way of life). I've seen some signs that they are trying to--but this conflict is extremely difficult to solve with fairness and justice for all people and while preserving Earth's ecosystem.
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