We had no part in shaping the past, we can only reflect on it.
It happened and all the hand-wringing in the world won’t change it.
Hell, my Puritan ancestors probably took up arms to wipe out Northeast tribes that were on land they wanted. Civilizations spread, cultures clash, there are winners and losers in the flow and that tide never stops moving back and forth.
Nothing we can do about it - and I’m certainly not going to cry and act as if it was the Most Evil Thing Humanity Ever Did…
Bafflingly cruel and cold-hearted statement. And I would be willing to say that the genocide of almost an entire continent of people is probably one of the most evil things humanity ever did.
It’s not so much cruel and cold hearted as it is resigned to accepting something that historically can not be changed. It’s not the only place it happened. That’s my point. Read a bit of world history and the full scope of humanity’s inhumanity to each other becomes crystal clear, and you realize this ins’t the worst thing.
It’s one of many.
Have you read of the Barbary Slave trade? Millions of Europeans were kidnapped across the southern european coasts from France, Spain and Portugal and sold into slavery across North Africa and the Arab world. Thing is, they were not allowed to have families and were killed when they get old. Not released into retirement (unless they converted, but they couldn’t return to their home countries)… killed. There’s a reason there aren’t large minoritites of Europeans in North Africa.
Could you imagine if that had happened to the slaves in America?
Have you investigated the Holodomor that was ignored by Stalin who rebuffed European and American aid to alleviate it?
How about Mao’s Long March or Stalin’s gulags, the Japaese Rape of Nanjing, Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge wholesale slaughter of the Hmong and other indigenous tribes in Cambodia in the 1970’s… Shaka Zulu’s conquest of southern Africa? The Chinese in Tibet?
It’s a world of misery, and as I have maintained, it’s easy to see America’s place in the story… but the reality is it’s just one chapeter in a very long, sordid tale.
What you see as cold-hearted is just resignation to the stupidity of it.
(and for the love of God, do not EVER lightly read Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee… it was the most enraging thing I have ever read, and the most heartbeaking…)
Most evil? No. Top 5? Yeah, probably. There aren’t many historical events more evil than chattel slavery, and its effects are still being felt today, 161 years later.
We had no part in shaping the past, we can only reflect on it.
It happened and all the hand-wringing in the world won’t change it.
Hell, my Puritan ancestors probably took up arms to wipe out Northeast tribes that were on land they wanted. Civilizations spread, cultures clash, there are winners and losers in the flow and that tide never stops moving back and forth.
Nothing we can do about it - and I’m certainly not going to cry and act as if it was the Most Evil Thing Humanity Ever Did…
Bafflingly cruel and cold-hearted statement. And I would be willing to say that the genocide of almost an entire continent of people is probably one of the most evil things humanity ever did.
openly showing us that the kind of mentality that lead to the genocide of 3 continents is alive and well
It’s not so much cruel and cold hearted as it is resigned to accepting something that historically can not be changed. It’s not the only place it happened. That’s my point. Read a bit of world history and the full scope of humanity’s inhumanity to each other becomes crystal clear, and you realize this ins’t the worst thing.
It’s one of many.
Have you read of the Barbary Slave trade? Millions of Europeans were kidnapped across the southern european coasts from France, Spain and Portugal and sold into slavery across North Africa and the Arab world. Thing is, they were not allowed to have families and were killed when they get old. Not released into retirement (unless they converted, but they couldn’t return to their home countries)… killed. There’s a reason there aren’t large minoritites of Europeans in North Africa.
Could you imagine if that had happened to the slaves in America?
Have you investigated the Holodomor that was ignored by Stalin who rebuffed European and American aid to alleviate it?
How about Mao’s Long March or Stalin’s gulags, the Japaese Rape of Nanjing, Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge wholesale slaughter of the Hmong and other indigenous tribes in Cambodia in the 1970’s… Shaka Zulu’s conquest of southern Africa? The Chinese in Tibet?
It’s a world of misery, and as I have maintained, it’s easy to see America’s place in the story… but the reality is it’s just one chapeter in a very long, sordid tale.
What you see as cold-hearted is just resignation to the stupidity of it.
(and for the love of God, do not EVER lightly read Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee… it was the most enraging thing I have ever read, and the most heartbeaking…)
Most evil? No. Top 5? Yeah, probably. There aren’t many historical events more evil than chattel slavery, and its effects are still being felt today, 161 years later.
Here you go… https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbary_slave_trade