And the power to displace, by whatever means necessary or unnecessary, those who were there first.
I think he was being sarcastic, but let’s keep the off-topic tangent going a bit… Everyone alive today has ancestors who’ve taken from others by force and misdeeds. Everyone. If you’re full-blooded Native American, I’ve probably got more relatives in close proximity (dead and alive) than you do who’ve been victims of conquest and oppression. I’m 60 percent Polish and my grandparents came to the USA penniless and stayed penniless during the depression while most of my extended family stuck around Europe for WWII and Communism. Lucky for me my ancestors maneuvered out of the shit-storm.
I’m not one to dwell on the past, especially when none of the bad stuff actually happened to me.
After two generations in the USA me and my family are middle-class thousandaires. You and I are both alive, ready to become multi-thousandaires or even conquerors of our enemies if things manage to go our way.
As far as getting wiped out, Native/First Americans just had the distinct disadvantage of unequipped immune systems. The technological gap and intentions of conquest were obviously a factor too, but First Americans lost out big time when they never gained the long-term benefit of sharing a wide array of germs via trade routes spanning Europe, Africa and Asia for thousands of years.
Most of the native deaths had very little to do with European barbarism. The overwhelming majority just got sick with diseases that Europeans already suffered through. Smallpox had been around Europe for thousands of years and only managed to kill a mere 30 percent of those infected in the 16th century. We died by the millions, but enough of us lived and reproduced and became hardier against the disease. Native Americans were just behind the curve, never exposed and suffered 90 percent mortality rates from the same disease that was still a leading cause of death in Europe long after the first colonists arrived in the Americas.
Even when European colonizers dealt with tribes in good faith, they still managed to spread diseases through trade routes and normal contact. Thanks for the furs, here’s some cool guns. Crap it looks like we gave you smallpox too. Good luck with that. Here’s some diptheria and the common cold too. Sorry most of you are dead now. Didn’t mean for that to happen. It sucks that your shamanistic practices encouraged contact with sick people. You may want to re-think that down the line if your shattered population ever recovers.
Don’t worry. Whoever lives will be much less likely to die from the diseases that killed off almost everyone you know. They’ll have children who are lucky enough to be prone to alcoholism and after a few more generations your people will be eating enough food to die from diabetes, cancer and heart disease, just like your conqueror’s offspring. Hooray for us.
I’m not diminishing the misdeeds of European colonists. Cortez did a lot of mean stuff, but he didn’t shoot 20 million Native Mexicans in the head or work them to death in slave camps. His men just got them sick before anyone understood germ theory. You and I are just lucky enough to be born from a series of ancestors who survived diseases long enough to reproduce, as are most people today.
It also brings into question the ethics of how we handle the few remaining uncontacted tribes. I’m generally in favor of leaving them alone, but it’s only a matter of time before a logger in the Amazon wipes out a tribe by giving them the flu or a missionary from Maine tries to convert the Jarawa people to Jesus and gives them measles or the common cold. We don’t really monitor them that closely, so it’s probably already happened and it was certainly horrific for everyone involved.
Deadly diseases are an unfortunate by-product of trade-linked civilizations making contact with isolated people who’ve never been exposed to them. Would you rather have been born into an uncontacted tribe like them, or from your ancestors who managed to survive whatever crap was thrown their way so you can post on the internet today and shrug off your common cold with a box of kleenex and some orange juice?
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It’s one thing to judge events in their historical context but it’s another to not be bothered by them when looking at them from our perspective. It’s how society evolves and improves.
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How bothered do you think I should be?
How can you tell if I’m not bothered enough about something?
Is it better to be really bothered about bad things or is it better to understand what happened?
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I was joking and have no idea what you’re talking about really.
It’s interesting that you @H_factor, and not @zecarlo , replied to me. It wouldn’t be the first time we’ve had people with multiple accounts in PWI.
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Nah, they’re not the same person.
*For a while I actually thought zecarlo was Zeb.
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what made you think that?
Right after Zeb stopped posting he resumed posting, he frequents the combat forum like Zeb did, and he said something to me which I swear Zeb said to me verbatim, but I couldn’t find the quote.
I think I even mentioned it at one point, but at the end of the day he’s relatively civil (at least with me) so I don’t really care and I generally don’t correspond with him anyway.
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Did you not reply to me? Maybe you didn’t and I just got the same notification because I created the thread. My apologies.
I can assure you we aren’t the same person. Unless some type of alternate universe exists. I’m way hotter than he is, stronger, and better in bed.
Not to mention they are basically polar opposites in their worldview.
Zeb and whatever his alternate account were thought the same.
I do feel like I’ve made it being accused of having two accounts!
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For what it’s worth I thought you were replying to me for this:
“But I haven’t yet told you how awesome slavery and Japanese internment were.
Justifiable because the slaves were captured.”
Gotcha. Understandable. My eyebrows have been raised about zecarlo regarding multiple forum identities a few times, but at the end of the day it doesn’t really matter much. Thanks for clarifying!
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Wait a second. What if you are just saying that because you and he are the same and you’re trying to throw smoke around the fact.
It was only a matter of time before you slipped up. Nice try.
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That’s called 4D chess my friend.
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You’ll know you’ve made it when you’re accused of being a Trump butt boy.
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I didn’t say you were or weren’t bothered but another poster brought up being bothered so I was speaking to that comment.
Gotta love those prostitutes.
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Good for him. He will surely capture dozens of votes.
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