Cheyenne Kid

[Cartoonist]

What an uplifting story. In just five panels the genocide of the west is laid out, and God is there. Hey kids, let's play Cowboys & Indians.

[Major Nikon]

1. Yep, my people were destroyed by deliberate acts

Including famine through destruction of resources and forced relocations, biological warfare, and when that didn’t work there was always state sanctioned murder, outright genocide, and forced cultural conversion all of which was romanticized through books and later movies. It’s all good though because in return we got “civilized” including the “gift” of the white man’s salvation.

I suppose it should be noted that by pointing these things out I’m in clear violation of another made up commandment I’m also obligated to follow for, well reasons.

[guillaumeb]

3. My people as well.

In the first panel, the army is mentioned. Militarism and capitalism combined are a terrible thing, are they not?

[Major Nikon]

4. Whatever that means

Hard to answer a non-sequitur

[guillaumeb]

6. If you cannot understand the point,

that does not make the point a non sequitur.

Your own response, however, well illustrates a non-sequitur.

[Major Nikon]

8. If it were impossible for gibberish to be a non-sequitur you might have something

...besides one of your predictable canned responses.

[Act_of_Reparation]

5. Fun fact:

Opposition to the Homestead Act of 1862 was particularly strong among eastern industrialists, who feared giving away free land in the nation's interior would result in labor shortages.

[guillaumeb]

7. Thank you for introducing another fact here. eom

[Act_of_Reparation]

9. You're welcome.

Maybe next time don't try to bullshit us about our own history.

[guillaumeb]

10. "Our own history"?

An interesting response. What exactly did you mean?

[Act_of_Reparation]

11. Fairly obvious, don't you think?

I'm referring to people from my own universe, where Manifest Destiny, overcrowding, and saturated labor markets drove westward expansion. As opposed to those apparently living in some alternate, parallel dimension where "militarism" and "capitalism" are the primary cause of every social ill of which one can conceive.

[guillaumeb]

12. Militarism and capitalism are the forces behind the things that you describe.

That should be obvious.

[Act_of_Reparation]

13. Except they're not.

Capitalism is a system of economic organization wherein the means of production is controlled by private entities, rather than the state. This has little to do with the metrics of population v. the number of available jobs. I mean, you might find this surprising, but socialists have jobs, too.

Never mind the issue at hand, a bloated government program messing with labor markets and incentivizing the growth in the country's interior, is about as capitalist as I am a fucking astronaut.

As the military was needed to "secure" the frontier (i.e., clear the natives out of the way for settlers to take their land), militarism is a consequence of westward expansion, not a cause.

[guillaumeb]

14. The military is the enforcement arm of empire.

The capitalists are the ones who control the empire.

[Act_of_Reparation]

16. Bravo.

We're done here.

[trotsky]

15. Hey, you're throwing cold water on his trademark whataboutism.

Stop that!

[struggle4progress]

2. As Archbishop Desmond Tutu has said:

When the white men came to Africa, they had the Bible, and we had the land. And they said, 'let us close our eyes to pray.' So we closed our eyes to pray. And when we opened our eyes, we had the Bible -- and they had the land

[hunter]

17. My wife's ancestors were forced into Mexico by the U.S. Army.

Some Catholic, some Indian, some both. They later returned to the U.S.A. as immigrants.

The U.S.A. wasn't keen to have either Indians or Catholics when they took California, Arizona, and New Mexico.

My own paternal grandfather, fed up with frontier life which was never as romantic as portrayed on television or comic books, ran off to the big city of Cheyenne when he was 16. My grandfather later joined the Army hoping to fly, a few years before the U.S.A. entered World War II. He was an Army Air officer during the war.

My grandpa always treated Indians with respect, he loved his Navajo jewelry, and he was a student of many religions, but he had a fit when I declared my intention to marry my wife. Men in his Wild West White family simply did not marry, in his own words, a "Mexican girl." He boycotted our wedding. To his credit he eventually got over it.

My mom's family is also Wild West. Her last immigrant ancestor was a mail order bride to Salt Lake City who didn't take to sharing a husband so she ran off with a monogamous surveyor who was passing through town. They homesteaded a ranch that's still about as far away from anywhere as you can get in the 48 states.

My mom's family was always going on their respect for the Indians too, but by the time the family homestead was established there weren't many Indians left in the area, they'd all been killed or forced onto the Reservations.