Earth Day 1970 or I Was There and Back

[Old School]

[BonezTheGoon]

[McGruff]

Go on then. Declare a proposition.

[Bones McCracker]

Ha! You posted again!

He just can't help himself.
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[pjp]

[McGruff]

This is my favourite quote from John Wayne:

[pjp]

When he's right, he's right. Dancing is probably more helpful than alcohol in the pursuit of tail.
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I can saw a woman in two, but you won't want to look in the box when I'm through.
For my next trick, I'll need a volunteer.

[McGruff]

I might have made that up.

But not the one about genocide.

[Bones McCracker]

You have watched too many "Cowboy and Indian" movies.

The genocide was carried out by the Spanish, British, French, and Dutch, who brought new diseases and dragged the natives into their wars against each other. The 15% or so who were left had mostly regressed to neolithic tatters of what their cultures had been, and most of them integrated into the settler cultures. It's true that those who didn't were forced onto reservations, but those numbers are tiny compared to what the Native population had been when Europeans first arrived.

Where I live, probably half the population have some Native blood, although by now few have more than 1/8th. Many don't have any idea for sure, but assume it to be true. Nearby, there are two small reservations, and the people who live there do so by choice. Some of them are wealthier than you or I, operating casinos and selling products tax free to outsiders (illegally, but it's largely overlooked by the authorities).

The Native American cultures and peoples are part of what became America. Europeans and Asian, having gained most of their understanding from movies and left-wing propaganda intended to minimize their own culture's misdeeds of rapacious imperialistic oppression, fail to understand that Americans are proud we are part Native. That's why Native American culture is present in our in our place names, our traditions and symbolism, our language, our music, our medicine, our athletics teams, our military units, tactics, and equipment. Half the stuff the Boy Scouts teach is Native American.

The Westward expansion was no more a "genocide" than the arrival of the Angles and Jutes in England, and even less so than the arrival of the French (Normans) or Romans.
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[Old School]

My people became the finest light cavalry this world has ever seen, and while true the Europeans did a good job of destroying whole cultures, those boys in blue did their fair share also.
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The further a society drifts from truth, the more it will hate those who speak it.
George Orwell
It just keeps getting better

[Bones McCracker]

There were some well-remembered incidents, but the numbers involved pale in comparison to the millions wiped off the face of the Earth by the Europeans. There were entire cultures that just vanished into non-existence and have only come to light now due to archeology.
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[Old School]

The Shoshone Bannock War was kept form the American public. No one east of the Rockies knew about it, but anyone crossing the Snake River soon found out. It wasn't until the early 1900s that the rebellion was silenced. By the by, the Shoshone people got along well with the Mormons, who would pay to cross Shoshone territory.
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The further a society drifts from truth, the more it will hate those who speak it.
George Orwell
It just keeps getting better

[McGruff]

[pjp]

[Bones McCracker]

[BonezTheGoon]

Has anyone noticed that he has managed to distract away from the point he absolutely CANNOT face?
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[Bones McCracker]

That's what he always does. He's Cognitive Dissonance Man.
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[BonezTheGoon]

Most people are uncomfortable with things that simply cannot be defined or absolutely known.

The joke is most things can't be, but people just pretend they can so they don't have to look into the big-bad-unknown-void.
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[juniper]

[richk449]

[BonezTheGoon]

[richk449]

[aidanjt]

[Old School]

[Bones McCracker]

++ although I think you minimize the consequences of disease brought by the early European explorers and colonists, and the number of natives who died fighting for the French or British against the other. Whole tribes throughout the Northeast that had lived in relative peace for centuries basically went into the business of being mercenaries. It would be like if the Federation landed here and the Klingons landed in China and dragged us into a war of attrition against each other.

Trivia. A community of Scottish settlers then went pretty far inland (for that day) ended up integrating into the local Creek tribe (Red-Stick), instead of the other way around. One of them, a William Weatherford a.k.a. Red Eagle became one of Andrew Jackson's most noted foes and fought against him at the Battle of Horseshoe Bend (the largest mass-killing of Natives in all of the U.S. battles with Natives, with nearly 600 killed).

With you referring to Jackson as a back-stabber, I take it your ancestors were either Cherokee or White-Stick Creek, who fought with Jackson and were, it is said, promised the right to stay on their land if they did so.

The Red Sticks were essentially fighting for the Spanish, who still held "Florida Plus" at this point, and they were also being egged on and given support by the British (this was happening right in the middle of the War of 1812). Your grandfather's Conquistador helmet could conceivably have come from the Southeast.

So you and mcgruff are natural enemies. Those "Scotch/Irish" who settled in that general region were also the people who later became the Hillbillies and three-toothed rednecks, and that's why our folk music has a Celtic twang to it.
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