MCKINLEY'S GOD

Amado Picardal

    "In truth I had not wanted the islands and

     had no idea what to do when they came to us

     as a gift from God. I had paced the floor of

     the White House nightly, even kneeling to

     beg almighty God for light and guidance. Then

     suddenly one night, a list of options appeared.

     It would be cowardly and dishonorable to restore

     them to Spain and bad business and descritable

     to give them to France or Germany, our commercial

     rivals in the Orient.  Nor could they be abandoned

     to the natives, who were unfit for self‑government

     and would soon have anarchy and misrule. My only

     choice, therefore, was to take the archipelago

     and educate the Filipinos, and uplift and

     christianize them, and by God's grace do the very

     best we could by them, as our fellow men for whom

     Christ died."

              ‑President McKinley in his speech to a

                Methodist Missionary society, 1898

In the middle of the night

 while I was praying

 at the White House

 begging for light and guidance

 on what to do with the Philippines 

 I heard god's voice:

 "McKinley, McKinley

 be not afraid.

 I am your god,

 the god who accompanied

 your people in their journey

 to this land of promise,

 the god who brought the black cargoes

 from africa to your plantations.

 I was with your people

 when they occupied this land

 and exterminated the Sioux, the Apaches,

the Cherookees, Comanches, Iroquois, Shoshone.

 I was with your people when they

 fought the Mexicans in order to annex

 Texas and California

It was I who made you a strong nation.

 It is I who will make you the greatest,

 the richest and the most powerful nation on earth.

 Your dominion will expand beyond the west,

 the south and even the east.

 This is your manifest destiny.

It is my will that you

 liberate the Philippines

 from the oppression of their

 Spanish colonial masters.

 You must assimilate benevolently this archipelago,

 educate, christianize, and civilize the natives.

 If they resist go after these bandits

 and turn the land into a howling wilderness

 until they are pacified.

 Teach them to speak our tongue so that

 they will think and feel like us and

 you can possess their soul.

 Inculcate in them the spirit of consumption,

 profit and  greed.

 If you do this they will 

 eternally be grateful to you and believe

 that without you they are nothing

 and they can do nothing.

The Philippines is my gift to you.

 It will make you a  global power.

 You will build your outpost in this archipelago,

 It is your gateway to the orient

 and this is where you can project

 your empire to Asia and the Pacific.

 And you can have unlimited access to  raw materials,

 cheap labor and a vast captive market.

All power, all glory, all wealth

 will be yours as a nation.

 this is your manifest destiny.

 It is I, mammon,

 who speaks."