M2Bulls by Marty Two Bulls Sr. for October 14, 2019

The name of the holiday should be changed to Indigenous Peoples Day…or First Nations Day – because WTF white Americans, stop celebrating colonialism and genocide!!

I have a T-shirt that says “American Homeland Security” at the top. At the bottom, it says, “Fighting terrorism since 1492”. There are four Apaches standing in between. I have gotten a number of compliments on it over the years.

I like how Columbus looks like Mr. Bean!

What makes a country great is its people, and what they actually aspire to (which means they’re willing to put their lives, their fortunes, and their honor to the task). I’d have to agree that 1492 saw the start of a major incursion. But I doubt it was all that great before that either. Different, for sure, but better? Maybe not so much.

Pre-1492: A man could hunt and fish all day while women did all the work and there was no income tax…it just doesn’t get any greater than that.

As usual, Marty, I’d be laughing my (ahem) rear off – if it weren’t so true.

So, exactly HOW do you “Discover” a place where PEOPLE ALREADY LIVE????

I doubt it was all fun and games prior to 1492.. There were food shortages.. conflicts over territory.. raids to capture sex slaves.. human sacrifices..

I believe there was more of a give and take from nature, a better balance and respect for nature for the most part. The invasion of Europeans did a lot of taking and taking then more taking. They could have learned from the native peoples if they had integrated them into their own culture instead of pushing them practically out of existence thinking themselves better and above, who knows what our nation would have become?

Marty, you have a point, that I can respect, but your in the minority these days. If the tribes hadn’t tried to use the new comers fire power to win old grudges and wars, but had united against the invasion (No european that set sail into the unknown ever returned) you might have kept this continent for a while longer.

In 1491 the population within what is now known as America was somewhere between 2 million and 18 million people — archeologists & scientists can’t seem to agree. Even the lowest estimates indicate that at least one million civilized people lived in-between the Atlantic coast and the Appalachian mountains before any European settlers arrived.

Columbus didn’t discover a ‘New World’ — he infected an established civilization that had been growing and evolving for 14,000 years.

1491 ‘America’ was hundreds of separate ‘nations’ consisting of farms, fisheries, managed forests, small towns & cities, ‘churches’, and cemeteries. They had doctors, diplomats, soldiers, politicians, teachers, priests, poets, artists, and more.

The thing they didn’t have – immunity from European diseases — rubbed out some 90% of them. European greed, prejudice [and gunpowder] took this genocide to the next level – displacement & diaspora.

It’s impossible to say what ‘America’ would be like today if the 1491 citizens had prospered and perhaps assimilated any newcomers. I think it highly likely the place would be a lot more civilized.

Time to bring out a reference. Read “1491” by Charles Mann. Too many of us are ignorant of the advanced cultures that existed in the Americas before the incursion of the Europeans. For instance, mathematical zero was known in Mayan culture about 400 years before Europeans had a clue about it. Also, the development of agriculture in the Americas was extensive and sophisticated. We still haven’t figured out how they bred corn from its ancestors, but they did and quite effectively. One of the big factors that made a difference in the development of culture in the Americas as opposed to the Euro-Asian-African cultures was the absence of domesticated megafauna in the Americas due to the American megafaunal extinction event some 12000+ years ago. Trade in the Americas was actually fairly extensive but carried on mostly through waterways, since (except for the llama) there were no good beasts of burden for trading use by land. And, as a derivative of the lack of domesticated large animals, the indigenous peoples were not exposed to zoonotic disease and thus had no immunological resistance to those diseases brought in with the European incursion with the result of massive death from these diseases.

Great one, Marty! If you haven’t already read it, 1491 is a VERY interesting book.

“Great” does not necessarily mean “good”. This was not ‘America’ before 1492. Most every single border in the entire world was made by war. Even those ‘natural’ borders were fought over and won or lost. In this land, before 1492, Native tribes fought each other and made territory boundaries. Humans are human.

Were Native Americans mistreated, abused, nearly wiped out in genocide? Yes. That was the way of the world then and before. Many indigenous people were slaughtered, enslaved and worse Was it right? No, and surely not by our standards today.

The United States of America was founded some 300 years later on Great principles, Great Ideals and Great values As a Nation we did not always practice those words written to law, but what we have done was to correct those that we came to recognize as being wrong, and were capable of correction. We do not move fast enough, and we are not finished doing so, and never will be. As long as our Constitution says “…in Order to form a more perfect Union” WE, the People, and that means ALL the People, are charged with the continuing effort of making every single one of us free and equal.

Christopher gets all the fame, good and bad, for opening up the route to the new continents. Even Marty depicts him as a despicable predator. And yes, great depredations were inflicted on the peoples living in the western lands, but these evils, disease, theft, enslavement were done by all those who FOLLOWED Columbus’s voyage. He was searching for a route to India, the Far East, to enhance an already established trade. I think Columbus himself deserves a little slack, as it was the European empire’s insatiable greed that took over!

Whoever Christopher Columbus was he made 4 voyages and ended his life a poor man.

Columbus never made it to what is now the US. The incompetent buffoon didn’t even know what continent he was on. And, people forget he was a genocide… obliterated an entire people.

Have not commented here in longtime. But I roll eyes @ncorgbl saying corporate moguls/oligarchs are “America’s Interests’” and that we are always able to push back if they become too powerful. That can only occur with a public-friendly administration. One of the GOP POTUS’ that the GOP never invokes is Teddy R. ’cause he browbeat a Rockefeller-friendly Congress to break up Standard Oil. With the incredible efficiency of the present-day corporate noise machine I fail to see a way that Amazon/Google/etc face any real action unless we get a full Dem 2/3 in both houses as well as Dem POTUS to deal with the behemoths as well as the Conservative courts.

God created us with free will, and look at some of the paths’ his children have followed. Greed is the basis of all evil. Without laws and regulations to keep evil in check we have corporations/PACs writing legislation and mental patients buying guns. This country was built by a capitalist system of stocks and bonds that promoted employment growth and infrastructure without robbing the economy in the way of the present Wall St structure and its barely (if at all) regulated operation. True, Rockefeller/Carnegie/Mellon and his ilk did manipulate to their advantaged and later were pushed back somewhat. More globally entrenched oligarchs such as Rothschilds were barely affected. But now corporate animals have broken out of their cages and are feeding at will. We need a tough hunter-attitude reincarnation of Teddy R to come back and round them up so we can still have them in a caged or controlled environment for our use and enjoyment.

And you would think that, having originally been a colony, we would be less disposed as a country to be imperialists. But whereas the vast majority of US citizens are probably happy to live a normal life, you have leadership that succumbs to the dark side and uses our manpower and resources to further their idea of manifest destiny.Same as it ever was.

America was great before 2016. Under Trump, the country has regressed. He has revered 243 years of progress and now HE WANTS TO REPEAL CHILD LABOR LAWS. When will his psychosis end?