Dealing with the pain from last week’s disastrous election and trying to understand it all, our Mastodon friend Geoffrey Deihl (@gdeihl) takes a look back at our nation’s sordid history…
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America has always been a violent, racist country. Little wonder, being built on slavery and genocide, spawn of the brutal British Empire.
Our war for independence was no romantic story about a fight for freedom and justice. It was a revolt against a king not playing nice with his colonists. Some were fleeing religious persecution, but many were here to get rich. They had no compunction about murdering the indigenous people who saved them from starving in their first winter on these shores.
Native Americans were slaughtered, the survivors driven across the land to reservations, their resources stolen. Texas was annexed in 1845 from the brown people of Mexico under the newly invented guise of “Manifest Destiny” which argued we have moral virtue, and a divine right to that destiny.
Through this time and well before, Africans were packed into the holds of dank, leaking ships for weeks-long voyages across the Atlantic Ocean. The fifty percent that survived disease outbreaks from these barbaric conditions were sold as if animals. Eventually, slavery ripped families apart in the Civil War. The emancipation of blacks led to the Jim Crow laws in the south not overturned until 1965.
To understand what happened on November 5, we must consider history.
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Geoff has written a long, angry, and well-informed essay about our shameful past and present — and near the end, he also offers several good suggestions on how to organize and take action to build a better future. I hope you’ll read the whole thing.
➡️ https://geoffreydeihl.substack.com/p/descent-into-madness
#USA #Politics #History #Economics #Environment #Climate #ClimateChange
______________________________
America has always been a violent, racist country. Little wonder, being built on slavery and genocide, spawn of the brutal British Empire.
Our war for independence was no romantic story about a fight for freedom and justice. It was a revolt against a king not playing nice with his colonists. Some were fleeing religious persecution, but many were here to get rich. They had no compunction about murdering the indigenous people who saved them from starving in their first winter on these shores.
Native Americans were slaughtered, the survivors driven across the land to reservations, their resources stolen. Texas was annexed in 1845 from the brown people of Mexico under the newly invented guise of “Manifest Destiny” which argued we have moral virtue, and a divine right to that destiny.
Through this time and well before, Africans were packed into the holds of dank, leaking ships for weeks-long voyages across the Atlantic Ocean. The fifty percent that survived disease outbreaks from these barbaric conditions were sold as if animals. Eventually, slavery ripped families apart in the Civil War. The emancipation of blacks led to the Jim Crow laws in the south not overturned until 1965.
To understand what happened on November 5, we must consider history.
______________________________
Geoff has written a long, angry, and well-informed essay about our shameful past and present — and near the end, he also offers several good suggestions on how to organize and take action to build a better future. I hope you’ll read the whole thing.
➡️ https://geoffreydeihl.substack.com/p/descent-into-madness
#USA #Politics #History #Economics #Environment #Climate #ClimateChange
