For the last several decades, it’s popular to rag on Columbus Day. Why? Probably a handful of reasons yet I have a counterpoint to all the Politically Correct assholes who go on and whine and whine.
- You wouldn’t be here to piss and moan without the events that transpired unless you have a time machine.
- Columbus and his crew were typical 15th Century Europeans, namely Spaniards who just spent decades fighting the Moors. So they were just a little belligerent. Isabella and Ferdinand used expeditions keep these ex-soldiers busy because the alternative was civil war. A common problem with demobilization. Do you think the Aztecs would land on European shores and not do the same? Humans overall are frequently inhumane to each other.
- The connotation of discovered being a sticking point with these douchebags. The Spanish and other Europeans had a good idea there may be another land mass present. The Vikings had failed colonies in New England before 1000 AD; there’s the legend of St. Brendan of Ireland getting to America before the Vikings; and two American Indians washed up in the Netherlands around 50 AD where they became minor celebrities to the Roman court. By this line of reasoning, numerous Scientists never discovered electricity, penicillin or radiation which are naturally occurring things.
- They need to be ready to condemn the foundation of Israel which has imposed its own apartheid and slow genocide upon the Palestinians; the Turkish conquest of Constantinople; the “pilgrims” had a genocidal approach in New England but Thanksgiving remains on the calendar. Human history has a book filled with these horror stories. Columbus is only one chapter.
- He’s a dead white male, not a dead civil rights leader who cheated on his spouse with a score of other women or a dead pacifist that slept naked next to underage girls to “show off” his willpower.
I’m not a fan of Columbus’ actions. He serves as a reminder of what not to do…be a Capitalist Christian. HG Wells and Stephen Hawking have warned us how aliens could do the same to the Earth given such a technological gap. Yet Columbus began the vanguard of Western Civilization’s conquest (cultural as well as militaristic) to another hemisphere. You know, where many of us live.
But all this PC bullshit and wanting to change the holiday is as pointless as taking away Penn State’s championships. Those victims weren’t suddenly cured and the sexual assaults magically undone. Ergo, stop wasting your energy and maybe focus it instead on how 9/11 transformed into a national “holiday” in America while conveniently forgetting that on that day 27 years earlier, the US toppled the legitimate government of Chile.
A compromise is fine. Share the date with the American Indians (native is a stupid moniker, three generations of my family were born here, technically we’re natives too). Just get over this flawed line of reasoning, I hate being in the same camp as The Economist with social issues.
All I do is this. I remember that October 12 is the day Columbus landed in North America and planted the seed of European colonization. It didn’t go well for the Arawakans since gold was what the Spanish expedition was looking for. I hope that when we humans go to the stars, find another world with less-developed inhabitants, we WON’T pull such a dick move. I don’t go pick a fight with the American Indians to rub their noses in it but I don’t ask for forgiveness, I am not my ancestors. I want to get along, find a compromise we all can live with, see what we can do to repair the damage. Revoking the holiday won’t achieve shit. Black Americans are now referred to by the PC crowd as African Americans and they’re still mistreated by the cops.