Non Sequitur by Wiley Miller for October 10, 2022

Just go to port in the next country and drink yourself silly then have Danae write a report on what you found

Oh, near enough is good enough. Although the Americans won’t admit it, Columbus never did “discover” America – apparently the Vikings did …

… and always remember that every dead body  on Mount Everest was once a highly motivated  individual!

Quiet quitting conquistadors – say that fast ten times.

So Wiley has already started using KING instead of QUEEN.

“Although the Americans won’t admit it, :”

What rock do you live under? That’s pretty much common knowledge these days.

Once again, how can you claim to have discovered a place that already had people living there.

If only . . .

I wonder how they proved something was “claimed” by some King or Queen or other when the first colonists arrived?

The leaders of the conquistadores were landless Hidalgos (aristocracy) looking to get rich.

With royalty, dictators, and con-artist, close means fact so what if they are off by a few thousand miles, everything beyond there now is theirs and their truth, until they change their mind and the story themselves!

Now, a quick text to the office, then siesta. We’ll edit the video later.

Appropriately run on Columbus Day…

Native American response: And take your diseases with you!

They crossed the Atlantic, sailed the Great Lakes and landed in Minnesota. History baby. LEARN IT KNOW IT….

If only. . .

Talk about hypocritical irony: my calendar says it’s both Columbus Day and Indigenous Peoples’ Day—doesn’t Congress declare these days???? Figures. . .

I say we rename “quiet quitting” to “wage theft prevention”!

Happy Thanksgiving to our friends in the Great White North.

Another explorer, Zheng He, explored the Pacific to India and Africa. in ships very much larger than any ever seen in the Eastern Hemisphere, during the early Ming dynasty. They established trade routes that exist today, But, it is said that later rulers became jealous of the growing power of the merchant class, and so halted the trade and burned the fleet. [Thanks to Wikipedia for the historical context of this comment.]

As I remember from my early history class, Vasco Nunez de Balboa studied the vast waters of the Pacific from western shore of central America. He waded into the ocean, held up his sword and, In the arrogance typical of European explorers both earlier and later, proclaimed that the ocean and all the waters that emptied into it and all the land that touched it was now the property of King Ferdinand V of Spain. Like many, he had no clue of what he was doing. He just did it. And that attitude lasted among explorers and settlers for another 400+ years.

Even then I had to ask, “Did he have the vaguest clue as to what he was doing?”

The Vikings didn’t “discover” America either. There were people living here for millennia before the Europeans arrived. It’s embarrassing that “discovering” America is even a thing.

I just came for the comments…

In 1492, when Columbus stumbled across ‘America’ looking for a westerly route to Asian trading centers, both Spain and the Catholic church realized it also presented an opportunity to expand Spain’s kingdom and Christianity’s reach. In 1493, Pope Alexander VI issued Inter Caetera, a papal bull that gave the church’s blessing to European explorers “discovering” and exploiting lands empty or inhabited by non-Christians.

This gave Spain, etc. carte blanche to claim lands in the New World and also linked exploration and colonization to Christianity and conversion. Nations should make it a priority to ensure that “. . . the Christian religion be exalted and be everywhere increased and spread, that the health of souls be cared for and that barbarous nations be overthrown and brought to the faith itself.”

As explorers pushed into the New World, this evolved into a legal concept known as the “doctrine of discovery” and was used to justify everything from the European takeover of most of the Western Hemisphere to the coercive tactics used by missionaries there. Although Pope Paul III in 1537 forbade the enslavement of Indigenous peoples and the seizure of their property, it was too little and too late.

In 1823, this doctrine made its way into U.S. national law when the Supreme Court found that Native Americans had no land rights because of the doctrine. This legal justification launched official efforts to convert Native people to Christianity and compel assimilation.

200 years later, we are starting to recognize the injustice of all this, especially for a country that holds “We these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights . . .” And, protest by protest, lawsuit by lawsuit, some progress is being made. However, the papal bull that started the whole mess has never been revoked. Only a Catholic Pope can do that.

if only. History would be a lot nicer.

A quiet, quitting conquistador quandary qualifies quickly for questioning!

How do you “Discover” someplace that ALREADY HAS PEOPLE LIVING THERE????

At a certain point, the “discovery” is not for flag-planting but necessary to re-supply or there will be no trip home . Regardless of precedence, it was a daunting voyage and changed Western history, not always for the better.

@Masterkrain

The natives were not considered “people”. The aristocracy hardly considered the lower classes people with rights. Just like the 0.001 % today.

We call it eminent domain.

If Europeans hadn’t come to the America’s, would cannibalism and human sacrifice be common practice?

If the recent archeology found on Oak Island, NS, is correct, the Vikings weren’t even the first white folks to step on North America. It was the Knight Templars.

What kind of conquistador-ing would you be doing if all you conquered was a small pile of rocks that wasn’t charted on the map? You don’t send mass murders out to give you fake rule over rocks. If they were truly “quiet quitting” they’d kill one island full of natives only, then go back home.

“1492 — As children we were taught to memorize this year with pride and joy as the year people began living full and imaginative lives on the continent of North America. Actually, people had been living full and imaginative lives on the continent of North America for hundreds of years* before that. 1492 was simply the year sea pirates began to rob, cheat, and kill them.” ― Kurt Vonnegut

and many others, lonnnnng before them

A little side-note: When Spanish explorer Hernán Cortés landed in Mexico in 1519, he destroyed 10 of his 11 ships. There is some dispute at to whether he had the burned or sunk. Regardless, he cut off his men’s only hope of retreat, leaving them with no option but to head inland. The expedition ultimately destroyed the Aztec Empire.

If only! Might have been better for the Indigenous population.

We are ignorant of how much of the “Americas” north, central, and south were once controlled by Spain; including the southwest US and the "Louisiana Purchase”.

Things would have been so much better if they had.

Such was Columbus’ legacy in his search for gold. And converts.

“The Spanish reaction to the Arawaks was Western civilization’s reaction to the barbarian: the Arawaks answered the Europeans’ description of men, just as Balboa’s tiger answered the description of a tiger, and being men they had to be made to live as men were supposed to live. But the Arawaks’ view of man was something different. They died not merely from cruelty, torture, murder and disease, but also, in the last analysis, because they could not be persuaded to fit the European conception of what they ought to be.”

Smithsonian

There is a lot of Classic Comic Books level “history” going on here in the comments but of course a lot of American history textbooks might just as well have contained the same level of accuracy and lack of facts and details

If Only.