No but I mean, why now? it makes no logical sense. Your in the middle of an election cycle, why would you say sorry, its too easy for that to be construed as weakness or for mud to be fired.

Oh, he gave it for indigenous people's day


The history lesson is a fun one. When irish/italian catholic immigrants moved to america they were opposed by the know-nothings and KKK made of protestants. It hit its worst in new orleans in 1891 where after the police chief was assassinated and blamed the dagos in his dying breath, the media ran rampant with the concept of the sicilian mafia. Hundreds of random italians were rounded up and arrested, until they settled on 11 who got charged with the murder. But the evidence was thin or nonexistent, it included people who were obviously innocent- they charged a local shop owner saying the assassins had met at his place across the street, and also charged a regular costumer at the shop too. It went to trial, and a jury of regular citizens found all 11 men not guilty. But an angry mob was formed led by the governor and mayor, and the jury themselves tried to go confront the mob and explain the men's innocence, but instead the mob stormed the jail (where the men had been returned despite being found innocent) and lynched all 11 in a public display. All the major newspapers and politicians supporting the lynchings and spectacle, right up to the president. And that caught the ire of Italy, and created a major standoff as our two countries were brought to the brink of war, it was thought Italy might send warships across the atlantic in revenge. But our government elected to appease them with some token pro-Italy statements and a recognition of "Columbus Day" as a once-off event, declared by president Harrison on the 400th anniversary of the landing, and paying a few thousand to each victim.

The KKK/know-nothing/etc groups continued to clash with catholic immigrants particularly in New York, and Columbus Day picked up steam as an Italian heritage day so the persecuted groups could both show pride and declare their foundational role in America to legitimize themselves. Really just a rebuke of anti-immigrant attitudes. And that kept going for a few decades until the Knights of Columbus petitioned FDR for a proclamation in 34, but then it got delayed due to the whole 'putting them in internment camps' in 41 and Johnson made it a federal holiday starting in 71.

But then as early as the 1990s the Berkeley commies started opposing Columbus Day again, disdaining Columbus as an occupier / assimilator / genocider / etc. And it spread throughout California in the 90s, replacing Columbus Day with Indigenous People's Day. It didn't reach most states or the federal level until the 2010s and no federal administration recognized it until Joe Biden in 2021. Once it spread out of California, the movement had been picked up by the remnants of the same groups that had persecuted the Italians 150 years ago. The democratic party with its roots in the know-nothings. Joe Biden himself, being so fucking old he was alive with anti-Italian sentiment still existed to an extant and his party still had KKK members.

And that's the run-down on why indigenous peoples day exists and why Joe Biden is giving a speech apologizing for America

Firstly you seem entirely unaware of the mississippian culture, which was large and did rise to the type of culture that we saw in south/central america. but i also recognize some irony in your saying we're applying the cultural lens morally in appologizing, but also then doing the same thing to try and objectively call all lives of millions of native people shitty.

in any case i think its a failing of many people to think saying "im sorry" is only appropriate when an action is caused predominately or entirely by your explicit and premeditated actions. its too narrow of a window. an entire people was genocided, mostly incidentally, and then intentionally, sometimes even with well meaning intentions. but it happened, an apology on the back end of that is hardly woke behavior on the level of gender neutral bathrooms or trans only safe spaces in middle schools. like i said its just in a string of stuff people dont like and feel attacked for in similar situations so they're over reacting. not dissimilar when a lesser event with police happens after a significant one like Floyd and people try and have the same vigor for a guy who was briefly detained that they do for an actual killing.

ignoring who likes trump or biden or harris for a moment, why in the world is this in the news? its not relevant or what am i missing ?

indigenous people's day was Monday October 14th. there's an attempt to replace "columbus day" which was an american holiday which commemorated Christopher Columbus' "discovery" of the Americas. because on further study Columbus was a pretty big piece of shit. and because his crews contact with america killed millions through disease.

I don't really believe in the whole cultural relativity thing. There has to be some objective metrics, some grounding to how we can evaluate quality of life, progress of a civilization, etc.
Okay yeah Mississippians existed as a protocivilization far less developed than mesoamerican cultures, no written language, no metallurgy, very basic agriculture and construction. But it also collapsed prior to Europeans showing up, some expeditions encountered the last fragments before their total dissolution back to tribes- so its not like its a real factor in the relations and moral questions. And they weren't much more advanced than the other group I talked about, the Pueblo people who had their own degree at the fringe of civilization- construction, pottery, art, quarrying, roads. Their high water points were contemporaneous with the construction of the Notre Dame Cathedral, and still never reached written language. They didn't reach the achievements of cradles of civilizations thousands of years earlier

The fact is that America was being settled by Europeans with the benefit of technology, social structures and knowledge of the natural world. People who lived twice as long, didn't die of malnutrition, had far less frequent warring with one another. When we look at measures around the world today like access to education, personal liberties, food security, personal amenities- I don't see what stops us from applying that to old civilizations (or lack thereof). If one group lives in brick houses heated by a hearth, protected by a military, serviced by a trained physician, communicating by postal service, traveling by road and carriage, represented by a democratic government- I think they are objectively better off than the shitty people living in teepees and scratching in the dirt for berries to boil into pemmican for the winter so they don't starve to death.

Mississippians really only lack a written language by those metrics. they had government, art, copper metallurgy, large scale construction, trade and taxation, pottery, roads, etc.

Im not sure where you're getting these numbers of life expectancy from, pre-columbian canadian and eastern seaboard natives ranges from about 33 to 35 years old.

in the 1700s an english citizen had a life expectancy of 37 years. about half of all european children died before the age of ten. even infant mortality is analogous.

and you dont think 1500s to 1700s peasantry had to craft and consume poverty foods to survive winter? did they go to the fridge and pull out all beef franks?

it just seems like you're basing your objectively subjective opinion on incorrect numbers and overvaluing western norms which dont objectively reflect quality of life increases in the way your claim they do. i'd sure rather live in a house than a teepee and eat beef roast instead of jerky broth, but in this columbian era we're comparing european standards of living were pretty terrible too.

It’s undeniable that native north americans were far behind Europeans technologically. They only started agriculture like 1000 years before Columbus I think, and they had nowhere near the number of useful crops or domesticable animals as Europe.

I believe Jared Diamond’s theory of geographical luck goes a long way to explaining the divide, with allowances for human agency. There is no evidence that racial superiority played any role whatsoever, which I think is what some of the mouth-breathers in this thread are suggesting. It’s a mistake or a lie to pretend native tribes were equally advanced tho, 500 years ago Columbus found societies that were far less advanced than Mesopotamia was 5000 years ago.

they were for sure not as advanced, my argument is they weren't so far behind with their culture (and by proxy so destitute as a people) that we can claim some moral obligation to forcibly bring them into our culture for their own good. the argument "they're freezing in their teepees and eating poverty food all winter, so we must take them off the reservation as children and force them to learn english and give up their indian ways, for their good" just doesnt hold water.

this stands in contrast to immigrants, who i think should be forced to take tests for things like english and knowledge of america, and if they fail be forced to complete courses. but that's because they're leaving a country to join america generally, not living on a reservation where that lack of knowledge is no big deal.

geographical luck is about right imo. when you live in a place like pre columbian america where resources are abundant and the available land is almost endless you dont need to advance to overcome that landscape. u can just be a cyclical nomad and never surpass hunter gatherer for the most part. the curious question to me then is in the amazon where resources are even more abundant and land is also not an issue why did the olmecs, incas, and mayans advance their culture technologically so far? they could have been in the tribal faze forever, but instead build pyramids, developed agriculture, created math and astronomy, and advanced on par with their world wide contemporaries and beyond in some metrics.

Are we just supposed to ignore over 2000 years of intellectual development & the written word? European supremacy was largely built on Hellenic intellectual foundations - it's not a racial superiority, it's an intellectual superiority. That intellectual superiority underpins all technological advancements, legal advancements, political advancements, etc. And don't even get me started on the written word. The written word is, obviously, absolutely necessary to communicate ideas & transmit precise knowledge from generation to generation - oral tradition can transmit culture, but it can't codify & transmit complex ideas. "No evidence" indeed.

P.S. Jared Diamond is a communist subversive (with a fake last name to cloak his identity), intentionally writing lies to undermine Western civilization - his absurd idea of environmental determinism is trivially disproven by simply observing the native North Americans - they had the best geography of all but still managed to do jack shit with it. Victor Davis Hanson gives a proper overview of historical development.

This post was edited by El1te on Oct 30 2024 10:32am