As we head towards Columbus Day and the annual whines from the Left about what a meanie he was I am inspired to point and laugh at how stupid they are.
Settler-Colonialism is the best purely human thing to ever happen. It is what made us – all of us. Most importantly, the Natives who were Colonized. That is, it is what gave them the ability to pathetically whine about being Colonized. Their ancestors were too busy trying to scratch out a bare, hand-to-mouth existence to be pathetic. Yesterday, the aurora borealis came down pretty far south and there’s this one Native activist account on X who said we’re not supposed to take pictures of it because the gods would get offended or some such drivel. Just tried to picture that:
Pagan god: “Just remember, when the crackers show up, don’t let them take photos of the aurora borealis.”
Savage: “uh, sure…but, what’s a photo?”
PG: “you want a fork of lightning up your bung?”
S: “got it: crackers, photos, no go.”
Its all just so ridiculous – and I mean pretty much the whole Native ethos they try to sell us these days. As if getting here earlier endows a person with some special connection to the land. It doesn’t. It is dirt. It is for anyone who is on it and they’ll do a good or bad job at stewardship based upon their moral character…not because of some legend, probably only half remembered because it was passed down orally, said a certain mountain was sacred to the gods (or, more likely, had the really good hunting ground so make sure you keep the other tribes away from it).
Also ridiculous is the notion that, somehow, Natives are more in touch with Nature. Nothing like that at all. All of humanity once used stone – from paleolithic beginnings to some pretty advanced things in the neolithic. But here’s the thing: as soon as anyone came across usable metal, they dropped stone like a bad habit. Nobody knows when the first person made bronze. It might have been made in several different areas but the main thing to keep in mind that as soon as bronze comes in, stone goes. There is just no comparison in quality and durability between even the very best stone tool and bronze.
The Natives in the Americas were still stone age when the Europeans showed up. Some pretty sophisticated stone age societies, but all still using stone. They had gold and silver but nobody in the America’s ever got around to combining tin and copper to make bronze – so, gold jewelry, stone knives. This also indicates that the Americas were cut off from the rest of the world some time before bronze was made – because wherever it arose outside the Americas (there’s some dispute about this) it spread everywhere…but not to the America which were lands pretty much unreachable from the end of the last Ice Age until ships as good as the Nina were built. This doesn’t mean that the Native of America were dumb – they just never put copper and tin together. Whoever did was some sort of genius or just very lucky (think about it: why would you try to combine metals? Who would think of that? But someone did…but not in the Americas). Without that stroke of luck or genius, the Americas just went on and on in the Neolithic and would have continued to do so unless that bronze stroke of luck happened…but what did happen is Europeans showed up. And not with the bronze the Americas missed out 5,000 years earlier, but the iron they missed out on 3,000 years earlier. But like everyone who first came across bronze – and then later came across iron – the Natives of the Americas dropped stone like bad habit as soon as they did so. In other words, they were just like everyone else. They weren’t living in harmony with Nature – they just lacked the technology to alter it like Europeans, Asians and Africans had.
The main thing to keep in mind here is that Cortez showed up in Tenochtitlan, not Moteuczoma in Madrid. Why? Not for lack of desire for conquest and glory. Both men engaged in that quite a lot; as much as they could, in fact. Not based on inherent intelligence: there’s nothing in the history books which indicates that either men – or their people – were intellectually inferior to the other. So, what happened?
Well, Cortez had a compass on his ships. That originated in China. He also had arquebuses, which used gunpowder which also originated in China. For calculation he used the efficient numbers developed by the Hindus. He wrote with pen and ink. On paper. He had steel swords and lances. He had horses; the use of none of these things originated in Spain. But they were all in Spain, along with a lot of other things. And this Spain wasn’t inhabited by the first human beings to show up. Heck no! Whatever indigenous stock had been there had been overlayed by Celts, Phoenicians, Gauls, Romans, Germans, Berbers and just about everything else outside of East Asians. All of that Spanish history – which included multiple periods of being Settler-Colonized – worked to produce Hernan Cortez meeting Moteuczoma. And then looking around at a nation of proud conquerors and going, “I can take this”. And take it he did – because he was better than the Aztecs. Not inherently braver. Not inherently smarter. But better. The total sum of knowledge Cortez had was the total human inheritance…Moteuczoma just had his own culture to fall back on, and it wasn’t sufficient when the whole world, as it were, pressed against it. What Moteuczoma needed more than anything else when Cortez showed up as all the history, trade, war and development behind Cortez.
And it must be kept in mind that Cortez was helped by other Natives. These people didn’t like their Aztec tyrants. They were also quite impressed with what the Europeans had and wished very much to take advantage of it. No, they couldn’t see the future – nor the very crucial immediate thing of the European arrival: that Cortez and his men brought with them the collected disease environments of Europe, Africa and Asia – diseases the Natives simply hadn’t encountered before and initially had little resistance to. It is very important to remember that when we talk of the Native death toll following the European arrival, most of the dead died of diseases before they even saw an European. The activists call it deliberate genocide – which is ridiculous because (a) it wasn’t intentional and (b) it didn’t kill them all. It was something that was going to happen some day – and it was going to be tragic when it did. But it was never a crime.
But that also needed to happen. It is part of human development. The world has certain diseases and until modern medicine came along the best way to make sure they didn’t destroy you was, counterintuitively, to be exposed to them. It built up resistance – both in the infected individuals and in the fact that those who survived the new disease environment were biologically stronger and would pass that along to their children. And, once again, it highlights the crucial importance of getting around out there. To not be isolated in your own, little world. To meet with others. In other words, having a Settler-Colonialist show up is, long term, the best thing that’s ever going to happen to you. A better world is going to rise out of it.
Now, this is not to excuse any crimes. Wrong is wrong – and as the Spanish moved into the New World there were crimes committed as the Spanish found that they could just lord it over Natives who had no chance against them. But it wasn’t all Spaniards. And the law did try to protect the Natives. Spanish voices were raised in protest against ill treatment. And this was also something new brought to the Natives – the concept of a human right. That certain things can’t be done to you simply because you are human. This is something the Natives had never had as a concept before – which is why in 1500 they were still engaging in human sacrifice which had been extirpated in almost all of Europe, Asia and Africa ages before. Long term, this was a huge benefit to the Natives…it eventually gave them the freedom to speak a lot of nonsense about Columbus, for instance.
So, what I do is bless the Settler-Colonists. Heck, if my ancestors in Ireland hadn’t been Settler-Colonized I’d be living in a mud hut by an Irish bog rather than typing on a computer in my air conditioned home. Three cheers for the Limeys that came to Ireland – even if they did hang great-great-great-great-Grandpa for stealing a sheep. On Monday, take a moment to remember Christopher Columbus and the incredibly brave men who set out with him to discover the New World. It changed everything, and for the better.
Blogs For Victory 
I hated history in elementary school and high school – memorizing names, dates and events. Then I got to college and history was a mandatory freshman elective. The first day of class the professor said, “if you like memorizing names, dates, and events, you’re not going to like this class.” Got my attention. His thrust was largely on cause and effect. What caused something to happen, and what was the effect on what happened after. That one course changed my whole mindset, and I ended up one hour short of a minor in history. Mark is a lot like that professor.
I also kind of fell into history. I married an amateur war historian and, as I said, listening to him and fellow students of that kind of history made me realize I didn’t care about what went boom but WHY it went boom. That, and the opportunity to spend several weeks a year in England, made history come alive and fascinating. Then I got into politics, which just added layers to the interest already stirred up.
We were in southeastern England on a typically cool day with a hint of fog coming in from the Channel. My husband was recovering from a badly broken ankle and had hit his walking limit, so he sat in the car while I hiked across sheep and cow pastures and climbed stiles till I stood, alone in a pasture surrounded by sheep, by the stone marking the spot where an arrow killed King Harald, and the weight of all that history leading up to and then following 1066 was powerful and brought all those dates and names and events into perspective.
And I am still lightyears behind Mark, in both scope and depth of historical knowledge.
It was an odd journey that got me going – things like finding out that the Speaker of the House of Lords sits on the Woolsack.
Why in heck would someone sit on a sack of wool?
Because King Edward III commanded it – to remind Parliament of the wool trade which was crucial to England’s economy…to make sure that whatever they decided, they kept in mind that without wool, they go broke. A huge part of the Hundred Year’s War was over securing the wool trade.
But then I notice that the wool was sent to the Low Countries to be turned into cloth. Odd? Why couldn’t the English make wool cloth?
Didn’t have that kind of cash – takes a lot of capital to create the infrastructure for turning raw materials into finished products and England was very much an agricultural country in the Middle Ages.
But, hey, why did England eventually become a manufacturing and trading powerhouse?
Easy: they finally got the cash.
Where?
Ol’ Henry VIII was all dynastic thinking and his fear was that without a male heir there would be civil war after his death – after all, his father Henry VII was made king only at the conclusion of a civil war between rival dynastic claimants. The Pope might have been accommodating but Henry’s wife Catherine of Aragon was closely related to Charles V, Holy Romany Emperor (and very much the most powerful man in Europe) and Charles dominated the Papacy and was disinclined to get Henry off the hook. So, Henry started his program of breaking with Rome.
But that was pretty big thing, right? I mean, the whole of English culture and law was shot through with Catholicism and while some Protestant preachers were around, the mass of the population – which was by far rural – was uninterested in changing. Certainly not over who got to get a divorce. This change was bound to cause unrest and the nobility of England would have to go pretty hard for Henry’s plan for this to have a chance. How do to it?
Simple: let the nobles steal Church property. The Dissolution of the Monasteries was just that – Henry’s agents seized the property and the Nobles got a rake off. A very big rake off. Keep in mind that in most European nations before the Reformation anywhere from a fourth to a third of all property was held by the Church. It had happened over a thousand year process and it started with monks and nuns heading out into howling wilderness after the Fall of the Roman Empire and building up entirely new communities…which by 1500 were large and very valuable. The Church didn’t just own churches…they owned farms and ranches; mills, fisheries, and all manner of things people used all the time…they also had great amounts of cash money both in currency and, of course, in Church objects (crucifixes, chalices, etc). And so it was done – by the time of Henry’s death, the one thing the nobility didn’t want was to have a Catholic monarch (so the opposition to Mary and, eventually, the overthrow of James II in 1688) who might start doing title checks on noble property.
But aside from that: now they had a great deal of money. What had been a class of men who held lands and did service (military or otherwise) for the crown were now men who had…lots of cash lying around. They started to invest that money – in things like enterprises to make wool cloth. But, also, they saw how much money the Spanish and Portuguese were making on the spice trade with India and so, in 1600, plunked some of their (stolen) money down on the Governor and Company of Merchants of London Trading into the East-Indies. The British East India Company; and so the British Empire was born.
And all because Henry VIII wanted to get a divorce because his father had to fight Richard III for the throne…
That was fun. Thank you. It turned out to be not such a big deal after all, as Henry’s Plan B was to challenge the marriage to Catherine on the grounds that she had been married to Henry’s brother before he died and that made her subsequent marriage to Henry invalid. Marriage to Henry required a papal dispensation, as it was against canon law to marry the sibling of a deceased spouse. Henry did get the papal dispensation but this was later challenged when he tried to get the marriage annulled. Because the dispensation was based on the allegation that the first marriage had never been consummated the Church would have had to admit to an error in granting the dispensation. If the Church elders had thought it through and realized that Henry was bullheaded enough to challenge them, and that such a challenge might result in the loss of Church property as well as authority in England, they might have rethought their hesitation. He might have had a better chance at that approach, if he had focused on it more intently, and if he had prevailed on that the whole divorce/split from Rome would not have been necessary, knocking history into a whole new direction. He still would have had his later marital issues but by then he had figured out that the axe was faster than the law.
LOL – when your divorce attorney arrives with a hood and axe, it does make things flow smoother.
My view is that if Charles V had been accommodating, the annulment would have been granted – but there had been various wars involving England, France, Spain and the Holy Roman Empire and in the last before the marriage crisis, Henry had dropped dime on Charles by making a separate peace with France. So, Chuck was upset with Hank – and by the time Henry’s request for annulment hit Rome for the last time the city was under the control of Charles who’s army had recently taken (and brutally sacked) the city (the army got out of hand because it had been unpaid and it included a large number of Lutheran German troops who were happy to kill and destroy in Rome; Charles apologized to the Pope, but also took advantage of the situation). I’m fairly confident that when that last request for annulment arrived pressure was exerted by Charles to say “no”. Might be, also, that Charles figured that if Henry died without a son then the Kingdom would then fall to Henry’s daughter, Mary; who was half Hapsburg and could easily be married off to someone who owed the House of Hapsburg, thus bringing England under the dominion of the Hapsburgs (who already ruled most of Germany, half of Italy, Spain, the Low Countries – today’s Holland and Belgium – Hungary and, of course, Spain’s rising Empire in the Americas).
You and I could bore an entire room while sipping adult beverages and trading history tidbits. But it’s a nice change from Identity Politics, though a reminder of days when politics was nothing BUT Identity.
What a great response to woke whiners
Las Vegas Review Journal just endorsed Trump. That’s YUGE for Nevada
The Adelson family owns the paper and they are MAGA to the core.
Just a reminder of how impossible it is to predict the future. A rather Liberal slightly autistic immigrant who became a superstar of the Left after developing the coolest and most successful electric car company in the world has become the symbol of all that is wrong with Leftism, and is having fun doing it.
My favorite comment on Space X’s latest achievement: “A skyscraper went into space, returned to earth, and parallel parked”. SpaceX makes the impossible come true every day. In rough terms the company puts about 9 times as much mass into space than every other country combined, and the lead keeps growing.
Of all Musk’s achievements, and they are legion, I think the most important might be the proof that individuals can do more than governments. Boeing is technically a privately owned company, but it is clearly under the thumb of government and politicians with its only recent success being its 100 % DEI score. “Starlink could provide broadband access to millions more people under the Biden administration’s broadband program, but the administration kicked SpaceX out of the program after Musk came out for Ron DeSantis and bought Twitter” and, in a fascinating twist, “Both NASA and the Air and Space Forces are at odds with the rest of the administration because, well, they can’t do their jobs without SpaceX. They need to launch on Falcon 9, NASA can’t launch or retrieve their astronauts without the company, and the military needs Starlink for reliable and fast communications.”
This is obviously why the government, and its predictably subservient lackeys, are all now focused on destroying Elon Musk. Jabbering mouth breathers like Keith Olbermann demand that Musk be deported, and that his naturalized citizenship be revoked—for defending and illustrating the Constitutional right to free speech, a blatant self-own of Leftist hatred of liberty. In California, the ability to launch Space X rockets has been denied, because of Musk’s political positions. (And no, YCMTSU)
The fact that Musk had to rescue NASA’s astronauts after the Boeing Starliner failed in orbit says it all.
The Starliner began development in 2010 and here it fails in 2024.
The Starship began development in 2012 and here is succeeds in 2024. Keeping in mind that Musk’s company only launched its first rocket in 2006.
NASA has been at this a little while longer…and what the Starliner failed to do in 2024 is what NASA did with Gemini 8 in 1966: docking and then undocking with a successful return to Earth (with Neil Armstrong at the controls!).
I do suspect that the people who really want to launch rockets and do space stuff are gravitating to SpaceX and other private ventures because these companies want to make money and so need success…NASA is checking off DEI boxes and lives on the taxpayer’s dime.
God love Ron DeSantis (hat-tip, Jeff Childers)
Florida is really leading the way back to sanity.
If we look at what enrages the Left we can see what they find important to preserve.
So if they fight to keep illegal voters from being removed from registration rolls, this means they advocate (and find benefit in) keeping illegal voters on the registration rolls. It’s not a complicated calculation.
And if they are outraged at not teaching distortion of significant historical events that leads us to realize that they advocate (and find benefit in) distorting significant historical events. (The J6 narrative comes to mind as one of the most recent examples, but there are so many…)
In a similar vein, when a Leftist activist complains that a state exercising authority over education in that state is exhibiting “state overreach” what she is really saying is that states should not have authority over education in those states. Who does? Well, according to the Left, the federal government does, as it should with everything, so the entire country should be subject to its Central Authority and One Size Fits All philosophy.
If we pay attention, they tell us what they believe and what they want to impose on us all.
So the latest narrative from The Cackle is that Trump is afraid to go on 60 minutes, won’t reveal his health records, and wont debate again therefore he is “hiding”. Democrats live in a completely different universe than normal Americans. Absolutely NO ONE thinks Trump is hiding but this is the lie they are going with. Even after two assassination attempts, Trump is still out there every single day talking to anyone who will listen so even reality contradicts the narrative but they’re keeping it up. We can not allow these people to govern any longer.
In the meantime a judge in Georgia has ruled that the state must “certify” votes even when the final count is literally uncertifiable due to fraud, etc. There is a legal definition of “certification” that should be applied to vote counts, as it is to any other requirement to guarantee accuracy.
“No election superintendent (or member of a board of elections and registration) may refuse to certify or abstain from certifying election results under any circumstance,” the judge wrote in his opinion.
McBurney added that if a superintendent should determine a need for additional information from the elections board or other election officials, that information should be provided “promptly,” where unprotected by law.
“However, any delay in receiving such information is not a basis for refusing to certify the election results or abstaining from doing so,” he wrote.
If the Left is ever deprived of its go-to strategy of simply redefining words it will crumble and fall apart. It is wholly dependent on making up its own definitions for words and phrases like insurrection, hiding out, certification, etc.
I think they have lied so often, about so much, over the last 4 years that they feel emboldened to just say whatever they feel helps them, regardless of any factual basis … and those are dangerous people.
It helps if you know that your base is totally uncritical of anything you say, and that there is literally nothing negative that can come out about you that will budge their loyalty. Not loyalty to you, but to the party, which amounts to much the same thing.
Fortunately, The Cackle is now speaking only to those in her bubble, who don’t know or care what she says as long as she is a woman of color with a D after her name. Nothing she says is going to attract more voters. I think Trump can still bring in new votes because when people are exposed to his ideas and the reality that is Trump instead of the elaborate cartoon created by the Left it is compelling and has changed a lot of minds. Kamala, not so much.
…from the Democrat’s perspective, does it really matter if it’s Harris, Biden, or any other Democrat in the White House? Their true power lies with the federal infrastructure and various agencies that truly control D.C. Whereas the GOP needs Trump to get elected to pass legislation, the Democrats just need a body with a pulse. (Which is why Biden had to leave.)
And it was Trump’s attacks on that federal infrastructure, those various agencies that truly control DC, that made him such a threat to the power structure that he must be defeated at any cost.
I don’t intend to be mean, but there is just no other excuse for Kamala other than that she is dumb as a rock. And that even could be offensive to rocks. The woman simply doesn’t know or understand the issues, so she uses platitudes and poll tested phrases, which incredibly pass with some voters.
That’s not mean, it’s just an objective observation.
That Narrative went bust today when Trump went to an economic forum to answer hostile questions and the host revealed that Harris had been repeatedly asked to attend, but refused.
Federal judge rejects parent’s request to put ‘straight pride’ flags in pro-LGBT classrooms
Imagine for a moment a teacher in a public classroom putting up a flag that represented a religious viewpoint, like the 10 commandments. If a lawsuit were presented to remove this flag, I’m guessing many if not most judges would require it. Now to be absolutely clear, the LGBT community (along with every other leftist organization) represents a religious point of view, even if not officially recognized as one. Leftist ideologies are in every sense an adherence of a secular religious doctrine marked by fervent partisanship. In order to gain unhindered restraint in whatever they push, leftist claim anyone who opposes their worldview ideas based on religious dogma are guilty of the often sited; “Separation of Church & State”. While their own views are secular, it does not make it any less a religion, which should be recognized by the courts. Recognizing leftist ideologies as a religion would provide a prominent basis to oppose their agendas.
In 2020, the district had passed an “Inclusion for Our LGBTQIA+ Employees, Students and Community Members” resolution affirming the “right of its employees to post in their classrooms, offices, or halls a rainbow flag or other sign of support for LGBTQIA+ students or staff, because these are symbols consistent with the District’s equity-based curriculum.”
This is essentially an unconstitutional imposition of a religious viewpoint by government and should be opposed a such.
https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/federal-judge-rejects-parents-request-to-put-straight-pride-flags-in-pro-lgbt-classrooms/?utm_source=daily-usa-2024-10-15&utm_medium=email