Why Place No Longer Matters In A Virtual World - Except To 'The Comanches Of Martha's Vineyard'

'The Comanches of Martha's Vineyard' was how an editorial writer for the New York Times described the Old Guard there who had built bulwarks against assaults from the mainland. These Islanders, all descended from patrician New England stock, all securely aristocratic in outlook, attitude, and culture, wanted no interference from the outside, and resented and resisted any attempts to open the island to market forces. 

'It is ours.  We built it, we own it, we maintain it, and we will never give it up' 

The issue came to head when certain New York financial interests began buying properties on the island. Families who had lived there for a century were now running out of steam - intermarriages, off-island romances, ambitious moves to California and Florida all meant no heirs to take over the waterfront estates, to invest in the well-being and cultural longevity of the island; and so the last residents sold out, made a fortune, and restocked diminishing trust funds. 

'Jewish money', said one of these Comanches citing a commonly-held belief.  It was one thing to have New York real estate interests to take a shine to the Vineyard.  It was another thing altogether to turn it into a crass, gross distortion of its patrician roots.  

Even the liberal establishment, ordinarily adamant in their belief in diversity and inclusivity, kept silent on the matter.  They too could only imagine the streets of town crowded with mink coat-wearing, bejeweled, garishly made-up Bernsteins and Rabinowitzes  - Collins Avenue north, a grotesque parade of Jewish princesses.  Unthinkable!

Yet there was nothing they could do because their own kind were turning traitors to the cause.  They were being just as moneygrubbing, selling out with no regard to the cultural integrity of the island. Old, grey-shingled, pristinely landscaped homes were being turned into absurd plastic mansions, and golf courses, Cadillacs, and furriers would follow. 

Billings Eddy was the leader of the Comanches - a descendant of one of the oldest families on the Island turned nativist firebrand.  No 'outside money' - he had the good sense to keep his prejudices in check when speaking politically - would despoil the island. 'Imagine', he said, sprawling, garish, crude, tasteless mansions perched on our headlands, golf courses instead of quiet wetlands, tacky, bourgeois stores replacing our legacy establishments.  A nightmare, a horror show, a twisted, unholy future'

However push came to shove when one of these New York investors offered him a king's ransom for his property, tempting beyond belief.  He demurred and promised to think about it; but the damage had already been done. Once infected with the virus, it was impossible to get rid of it. There wasn't a day that went by without a 'Fuck it, I'm in' crossing his mind.  He of all people.  He at once felt ashamed and stupid.  What was he doing?  The Vineyard was just a place after all, and all the historical legacy fol-de-rol was just cover for insular, elitist intentions. 

Yet Billings in all his prejudice and bilious social conservatism was on to something. As The World Turns, the treacly tearjerking soap opera that his mother used to watch came ironically to mind. He was fighting eventuality with inertia.  He was an old fool, tethered to fanciful notions. 

'My name is Ira Goldblatt, Mr. Eddy', the silk-suited sharpie said, 'and I hope you have considered my company's offer' to which Billings, already at sixes and sevens because of the existential crisis, could only stammer and bumble when he wanted to yell, 'Get out you...' but the slur wouldn't come, and for that he was additionally frustrated.  Not only was his emotional livelihood at stake, he had been clotured, shut up, and silenced. 

The Vineyard will remain as it has always been if there is a demand for its particular brand of patrician cachet, but that is just whistlin' Dixie, for those who have an eye on buying on the island only want a view, ocean access, and yes, golf courses. Billings Eddy and his cousins will be soon dead and buried and with them the sepia-toned, grainy images of an America that once was.  The Vineyard might not exactly become Miami Beach, but there will be no stopping its move in that direction. 

'Place', reflected Billings in a quieter moment, that was what mattered.  Somewhere with roots, a permanent place, a consistently familiar place, a cultural home, a secure emotional harbor; but that very idea was being challenged by the 'outside money'.  Before long not only would the Vineyard no longer be the Vineyard but no place would be the same.  There would be no more cultural preserves except for a few designated historic streets. 

Billings was too old to appreciate the real existential crisis of the day - AI and virtual reality.  With the advent of universal cyberspace, brick and mortar let alone private enclaves like the Vineyard will become irrelevant as cultural places, homes to return to.  The will be functional anchors for virtual commerce, perhaps not data centers, but functional units, residences, retail, government - all interchangeable, fungible, without inherent value, only serving the needs of the new virtual world. 

The Comanche Chief White Wolf was the most savage, bloody, brutal killer of whites the Union Army had ever seen. His approach was simple - rape, slaughter, behead, eviscerate any white settlers that squatted on Indian land, and no more would follow. 

Defending his land against foreign intruders, and as bloody a warrior as Genghis Khan, White Wolf knew that a purposeful barbarity would intimidate the enemy.  Just as Genghis Khan posted severed heads on roads leading to conquered villages, gruesome warnings to the next settlements in his sights, so did White Wolf use unconscionable savagery as a tool of war.  He knew that the Christian soldiers would see his tribal, animist, ferocity, understand that they were up against a frightening, unfathomable enemy with no moral restraint and would turn tail. 

 

Jonathan Foreman, writing in The Daily Mail said:

S C Gwynne, author of Empire Of The Summer Moon about the rise and fall of the Comanche, says simply: ‘No tribe in the history of the Spanish, French, Mexican, Texan, and American occupations of this land had ever caused so much havoc and death. None was even a close second.’

He refers to the ‘demonic immorality’ of Comanche attacks on white settlers, the way in which torture, killings and gang-rapes were routine. ‘The logic of Comanche raids was straightforward,’ he explains.

‘All the men were killed, and any men who were captured alive were tortured; the captive women were gang raped. Babies were invariably killed.’

‘One by one, the children and young women were pegged out naked beside the camp fire,’ according to a contemporary account. ‘They were skinned, sliced, and horribly mutilated, and finally burned alive by vengeful women determined to wring the last shriek and convulsion from their agonized bodies. Matilda Lockhart’s six-year-old sister was among these unfortunates who died screaming under the high plains moon.’

Not only were the Comanche specialists in torture, they were also the most ferocious and successful warriors — indeed, they become known as ‘Lords of the Plains’. They were as imperialist and genocidal as the white settlers who eventually vanquished them.

When they first migrated to the great plains of the American South in the late 18th century from the Rocky Mountains, not only did they achieve dominance over the tribes there, they almost exterminated the Apache, among the greatest horse warriors in the world.

 

'That's who I am', said Billings Eddy, admiring an early 20th century photographic portrait of the Indian chief.  'He took no prisoners'; but of course the patriotic territorialism of White Wolf's day was no longer.  There were no boundaries or demarcations, bastions or bulwarks, perimeters or lines of defense.  Everything was permeable and change was the only constant. 

Worst of all few people except for alte kockers like Billings cared a whit for place.  Weather mattered, better mild winters than not. Taxes mattered as did proximity to grandchildren, good Internet connections and health care; but not place in Billings' sense - somewhere with an unbroken, storied history, with a recognizable, durable culture, with solidity and meaning. 

At last notice, Billings was still holding fast and had not yet sold his property. 

He would soon because he was tooth-by-jowl with the new golf course and the condo village that had gone up next door.  It was only a matter of time.