Left Wing Nuts Come Out for Thanksgiving

Yes, I get it, Columbus was a killer. The difference between him and a thousand or so other people who landed on the north American continent back in the day was that Columbus made the new world pay. He found the gold and he found the slave trade. Ok, so now what?

This is the time of year where, perhaps emboldened by another four years of an Obama administration that is all for the tearing down long standing “White European” traditions, whatever they are, where everybody and their immigrant uncle rails against Thanksgiving and Christmas. While they’re at it they should unearth the truth about Plymouth Rock, the Liberty Bell and the Tooth Fairy.

I’ll have to say that 1492 was a long time ago yet I can’t get enough of hearing about how ruthless post Renaissance “Euro-Whitey” came over and exploited, deceived and murdered millions of peaceful, communal and environmentally friendly indigenous peoples of both South and North America.

Now I realize that one cannot discover a new land when there are already people living on it. It seems to me that the people living there must have discovered it first but I’m just plain tired of hearing about it over and over again every year. It’s really just annoying and it’s HISTORY.

My ancestors, the CELTS, were murdered, enslaved and walled off by the Romans. The Irish had the crap kicked out of them by the VIKINGS and were starved by the ENGLISH not half as long ago as when Columbus did his dirty work for crying out loud. When do we stop carping about the past and move on with our lives and our civilization?  

One of the statistics of the “New World” was that 90% of the indigenous population did not die from a bullet. Most of the Indians died of disease. Smallpox, a former scourge of human existence everywhere from the beginning of human history and which was finally eradicated from the world only in 1978, killed 1/3 of the population of Boston in 1730 and again in 1740. It generally killed one out of three Europeans it infected.  Do you hazard a guess as to the percentage of Indians it killed? Smallpox killed 98% of infected Indians. Sometimes it killed 100%. Disease killed entire villages, some who never even had a chance to lay their eyes on a white man, their bones littering the ground because there was no one left alive to bury them.

The difference was that the Europeans were living in the filth of their pack animals. They slept with them for warmth and caught their bovine and swine flus and the survivors built up immunities. The Indians of the Americas had no such animals and no such immunities. I don’t know what could have changed this fact.

If it wasn't Columbus who came over and went “Achoo!” then it would have been someone else. 
Perhaps an African, they got around in those days too. But it was inevitable that it was going to happen and I suppose it would be somebody else’s name these people would be cursing. Perhaps it would've been a guy named “Clarence”, “Clarence the Killer!”

And the idea of the “Noble Savage” is a bigger myth than that big “Euro-Whitey” Paul Bunyan and his big blue ox. The tribes were in a state of almost constant warfare with each other and the local indian tribe, the Wampanoag, originally embraced the Pilgrims in the hopes that they would help them in their efforts to repel the aggressive Narragansett of the Rhode Island territory.

The Incas and Aztecs were cannibals who practiced in ritual human sacrifice. There is also archeological evidence that the Native Americans of Arizona and New Mexico also ate human flesh.

In his 1586 memoir, "The True History of the Conquest of Mexico", published in 1632, Bernal Diaz del Castillo, a man who actaully marched with  Cortez during the 1520 Spanish conquest of Mexico, describes scenes of ritual sacrifice that are astounding in their scope and savagery. It is one of the world’s great works and everyone should read it.

This is history warts and all and the history of America, like the hisotries of most countries, is the history of conquest. What land has not been taken from another? And the conquerors will not hold it forever either since someone else will surely come along and lay claim to what is under our feet.

But stop whining about it. It isn’t going to change. If you’re looking for a handout, perhaps you’ll get one but if you aren’t, just let it go already and move on.

Everybody knows what happened and its all water under the bridge. Nobody living in the U.S. now has ever owned a slave or oppressed an Indian. People like having a day of Thanksgiving and don't give a rat's patoot what the real origin of the day is.

This act is growing tiresome. Get a job!