Help! I've fallen into history and I can't get up!

[Pacifist Patriot]

I've just finished reading The Earth Shall Weep. A history of North America from the Native American perspective. Incredibly depressing reading, but valuable nonetheless. I highly recommend it.

My illusions have been shattered yet again. I was educated in the public school system and fell sway to the "ain't America great!" propaganda. Manifest destiny, progress rules, etc. I really needed to identify with a Golden Age of American democracy with which to contrast the current criminal and fascist behavior of the Bush administration. But sadly I've found (thanks to Zinn and Loewen) that American government has been an immoral criminal enterprise since well before the U.S. Constitution.

How can we improve something that has treated groups of people abominably from day one?

[Marie26]

1. Pretty much.

But you could argue we're actually getting better over time. The end of slavery, civil rights, women's rights, etc. We can keep becoming a better country, in spite of the Bush Ad. attempts to push us back.

[madmom]

2. sounds like an interesting book,

could you give the author please so I can try to locate a copy? Thanx.

[tkmorris]

5. It's by James Wilson

Here's a link to it on Amazon, though I'm sure it can be found at most major retailers. http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/080213680X/103-7251155-3671004?v=glance&n=283155

[stillcool]

3. It is very difficult for me to come to terms with...

I have had some hum-dinger bouts with reality...and my soul is rattled each time....but my entire belief system is up for debate on this one. After all, a parallel reality has been taking place every minute of my life. This waking up process has proved to be a very long one...more will be revealed...unfortunately....I'm glad I have company:toast:

[SmokingJacket]

4. Two words: Wounded Knee.

:cry:

[liberalitch]

6. King Philip's war sucked too....

yea you ended native american resistence in new england because you killed two thirds of them in their corn fields

[TallahasseeGrannie]

7. Americans are the only humans

throughout history to victimize another culture. It has been the rule rather than the exception.

And it is still going on.

What a wonderful thing it would be if we could do something decent for native Americans.

But we won't.

[Igel]

8. It strikes me as different in detail,

but not gist, from a few other interactions. American exceptionalism is Janus-faced. Both bad.

The Middle East (at least twice), Central Africa, chunks of S. America and Mesoamerica, places in Europe, and a few parts of Asia. The big confound is disease, which necessarily makes the Americas a different story.

[genie_weenie]

9. This Land is Whose Land

This raises an interesting point. Can anyone point out to a modern Nation State which was not crafted by bloodshed, violence, the killing of one group by another, duplicity by groups, using of naked aggression, force, and whatever other means at that groups disposal to claim the land?

This is not a challenge, or a justification, every colonization of land was done by two things: Population Pressure and Warfare (with the Warfare taking on many forms).

America was born of huge immigration of Europeans from the 1600s-1900s, of course Native Americans, arrived here earlier 15,000 - 25,000 years ago, so whose ancestors have rightful claim.

[Pacifist Patriot]

10. We can't undo history.

That's for certain. Look at that little piece of real estate on the Mediterranean Sea and you can see how historical claims to land ownership have resulted in quite the little tiff.

[reprobate]

11. And it's all for money and power. We've invaded-that's boots on the

....ground invaded- central and south american nations fifty two times since the 1890s. Usually to replace their leaders with our handpicked replacements because they angered our corporate leeches.

But that's america for you. Follow the money.

[sandnsea]

12. A continuous battle, check this out

I was making that point to someone last night on a different topic. I ran across something I had never heard. The first strike in the US was in 1619 in Jamestown. By Polish glassmakers. Why? Get this, voting rights. Seems the elitist Englishmen were even going to disenfranchise the Poles, who they had recruited to the New World in the first place.

It's always been a fight between the people and the elite, that's why I object so strenuously to the idea that it's just the current batch of neocons who are the problem. That allows us, as the people, to keep putting our heads in the sand as to what the ruling classes are really doing to us and the rest of the world.