As Jonathan Haidt posits in his Moral Foundations Theory, moralities the world over seem to be built from 6 basic building blocks, the essentials of which we are born with: Care, Fairness, Liberty, Loyalty, Authority, and Sanctity.
As I have pointed out repeatedly, Leftism claims to care about Care and Fairness primarily. What is missing is a sense of the sacred, and a sense of loyalty to that sense (rather than to specific people and causes). There is for them, as one obvious example, nothing sacred about the flag or America, or even democracy and freedom. They will use these words sometimes, but they don’t mean them, or even in my view understand them.
What seems to have happened in Standing Rock is that the Federal government and the people behind the pipeline solicited questions and concerns for several years, and never heard word one from the Standing Rock Sioux until the pipeline was more or less at their front door. The pipeline had been rerouted multiple times based on feedback from other tribes, or concerns about undiscovered graveyards and the like.
Additionally, as all the Standing Rock Sioux know, the water intake they currently use to provide water for their reservation will soon be decommissioned and a newer one 7 miles downriver from the pipeline installed. What they also know is that the pipeline is being built in clay 92 feet below the river bad, which is considerably more distance than is required, and than is normally done. So both the risk of a leak, and the risk to their water in the event of a leak, have been meliorated.
What seems to me to have happened is that the tribal chief got the bright idea of shaking down the oil company, by staging protests they knew would draw national attention (no doubt they called the reporters to make sure), then more or less asking for protection money to keep the pipeline rolling. But the pipeline people didn’t give in. What instead happened is hippies started showing up en masse. From second hand reports I read, the chief has wanted them gone for some time. They are a bit embarrassing, and likely making life around there much less peaceful. But he can’t tell them to leave. They came to support him and his tribe. So he is kind of stuck.
Now it was obvious to me that Obama ordered the Army Corps of Engineers to do whatever they did to stop construction–the Commander in Chief is after all in charge of the Army, of which the Corps is a part–and that Trump would start things back up, which he will.
But here is the point I wanted to make: it is not OK to be a proud white person in this country among leftists. It is not OK to hold your religious beliefs as sacred and untouchable. It is not OK to love this country, warts and all, and view patriotic effort as a sacred duty.
It IS OK, however, and even extolled, that one feel guilt for crimes you didn’t commit, which your parents didn’t commit, which no one in the entire history of your family committed, and with which you have no connection other than the fact of your birth in a political entity called the United States. It is also OK to support others–literally anyone else but white people–in their own sacred sense of their own place and people. It is also OK to feel more loyalty to THEM than to your own people.
So what seems to have happened is that mythic nerve was inadvertently struck, and hordes of aimless, lost, confused white kids are showing up to protect people who do not really need protecting, and who really don’t even want to be “protected”, but who don’t know how to end the party.
Some of these kids are so emotionally involved that they will spend years in jail, for real crimes, for nothing. The pipeline will be built. There won’t be any spills, and even if there are, it is a manageable problem.
It is very important to know who you are and what you believe. And it is very important to develop an internalized sense of self worth, such that you can differentiate between people who really need you, those who are using you, and those you are both using and being used by as fellow codependents.