MILKING IOLANI PALACE (WRONG PLACE,WRONG TIME)

Keep your stars and stripes under wrap or be a Yankee doodle dandy fool. Every year, Iolani palace, symbol of nationalist rebirth, plays host to anti-American grievances by activists with a thing for Hollywood and Cecil B.deMille . The Queen was once held under house arrest here. But it's old Union Jack flapping today, louder than a chorus and verse of "Rule Britannia", testament to the submissiveness of the monarchs to British rule and today's nationalist movement's obsession with nobility. It is subconscious inherited behavior going back to the dawn of Polynesian aristocratic thought. If, as Hawaiians are told from birth and reminded through life, the "white man" brought disease and pestilence, he also helped create the royal icons revered today throughout the Pacific by those who call for its decolonization. In Tahiti, Wallis enabled Pomare to crush Te Fana, his arch rival . Here, it was the English flint that put Kamehameha on the throne. Without instructions from Isaac Davis and John Young the "great" warrior whose first glimpse of a wheel was of one under a canon wouldn't have known which end of the fuse to light. The British gun helped a self-appointed "descended-of-the-gods" marauder subjugate a people under one iron fist and proclaim himself absolute ruler. In Hawaii, history books call that "unifying". Even Julius Caesar writing about his victory over Vercingetorix called it a "Conquest". The one responsible for the deaths of six thousand Oahu warriors in one day as they tried to push him back is worshipped by school children today, many of who, under his rule, would have been infanticized for being of the wrong gender or lineage. Yet, the British flag waves as a symbol of Hawaiian pride; Hawaiian royalty, of benevolence and wisdom. Noblesse oblige. One doesn't question the logic of icons. Nevertheless, whatever inexplicable sense of national fervor the royal abode may stir in the common man, it's a curious choice as symbol of redress for the destitute, displaced and marginalized. Iolani Palace is about privilege and power, ordained by God, unquestioned by man. It still resonates with pump, circumstance and the fatal consequence of sleeping with the enemy. Here, portrayed in full Masonic regalia is "Merry Monarch" King Kalakaua; There, the echo of crystal toasts to wolves in sheep skins, the frivolity of the ruling classes, the curse brought down on a voiceless people. It can be argued whether or not, with or without the back-alley shenanigans orchestrated by the US, the monarchy would have ended. It can be disputed whether during her visit with Victoria, Lili'uokalani failed to grasp the distinction between reigning and ruling. One may speculate that not enough effort went toward establishing a constitutional monarchy and thus prevent the overthrow. We will never know. The guilty and the innocent are long gone. One thing is certain about today though: the poor, destitute and displaced bussed in from Waimanalo and Wainae to worship the ground monarchs once trode are used as poster child by those who know or should know better.
The hapa Hawaiian grandiloquent and tenured elite behind the sovereignty movement is obsessed with caste with good reason. It too, is privileged, self-aggrandizing and aristocratic. Let them eat cake.