Christopher Columbus
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trysail
Catch Me Who Can
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The man was one helluva sailor.
What he did is simply unimaginable. Sailing uncharted waters that are full of reefs is crazy. Wreck the ship and you die. Wreck the ship and you don't get home.
Samuel Eliot Morison's 1942 two-volume biography, Admiral of The Ocean Sea, remains unrivaled as a source of information on Columbus' life. It's well worth reading.
Unless you know the oceans and sailing, you cannot fully appreciate or understand the man's incredible accomplishments.
1sickbastard
Seriously?
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It's kinda silly to either idolize or demonize particular individuals for historical currents which are beyond their control.
Columbus was an outstanding sailor and he deserves credit for his navigational accomplishments.
He was a less than accomplished governor.
To claim he "discovered" the Americas is inaccurate. Clearly, there were earlier explorers and even colonies (AKA the Vikings).
There is even some debate about whether the Chinese Admiral Zheng He may have sailed and mapped part of the eastern seaboard in the early 15th century, though that is mostly speculation with little credible confirming evidence.
To lay the blame of Spanish and Portuguese colonization at Columbus's feet, or the devastation of the indigenous populations from subsequent diseases, or the polices of Ecomienda and the Latifundia system is ridiculous.
Millennia of isolation from the Eurasia/Africa landmass meant that any sort of prolonged contact, before the advent of modern medicine, was going to expose indigenous populations to massive epidemics with extremely high mortality rates.
Centuries of the Spanish Reconquista formed the institutions of the Encomienda and the Latifundia system.
And it also has to be said that not only were the indigenous societies still at stone-age or bronze age levels of material technology, but also at stone-age and bronze age levels of social technology.
There was just no way sustained contact was going to end well for the indigenous populations, no matter which civilization made that contact.
Columbus was an outstanding sailor and he deserves credit for his navigational accomplishments.
He was a less than accomplished governor.
To claim he "discovered" the Americas is inaccurate. Clearly, there were earlier explorers and even colonies (AKA the Vikings).
There is even some debate about whether the Chinese Admiral Zheng He may have sailed and mapped part of the eastern seaboard in the early 15th century, though that is mostly speculation with little credible confirming evidence.
To lay the blame of Spanish and Portuguese colonization at Columbus's feet, or the devastation of the indigenous populations from subsequent diseases, or the polices of Ecomienda and the Latifundia system is ridiculous.
Millennia of isolation from the Eurasia/Africa landmass meant that any sort of prolonged contact, before the advent of modern medicine, was going to expose indigenous populations to massive epidemics with extremely high mortality rates.
Centuries of the Spanish Reconquista formed the institutions of the Encomienda and the Latifundia system.
And it also has to be said that not only were the indigenous societies still at stone-age or bronze age levels of material technology, but also at stone-age and bronze age levels of social technology.
There was just no way sustained contact was going to end well for the indigenous populations, no matter which civilization made that contact.
That's what I was thinking. What was the possible alternate outcome? It was going to be bad no matter what. There is an awful lot of self-loathing in modern culture, but it's mostly masturbation because no one even knows what to do tho correct perceived "wrongs". Excuse me. They are, as long as someone else does it like "The Government" or "The One Percent".
Hypoxia
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Columbus Day was established as Italian-Americans gained political power. Renaming it Indigenous Peoples' Day merely shows a shift of social consciousness. We can fret just as much over the canonization of Junipero Serra, who either helped or oppressed Native Americans in San Luis Potosi and California. (He was a complex guy who could be considered psychotic today.) Power rules: the conquerors get to name the territory, draw the maps, write the history, and name the heroes.
NOIRTRASH
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3rd World shitholes pull down monuments every time the season changes. And what we celebrate today will be pissed on later.
America is doing what it did before our Civil War, that is disparaging its sectional celebrities with gusto.
We need a bloody civil war, to totally fuck up lotsa lives.
America is doing what it did before our Civil War, that is disparaging its sectional celebrities with gusto.
We need a bloody civil war, to totally fuck up lotsa lives.
One bozo's hero is another bozo's zero...
In the progressive politically-correct cleansing world of forcibly conforming everything and everyone to their socialist ideals of "diversity", "open-mindedness", "tolerance", and "equality", even Mahatma Gandhi is found guilty as the PPiecesOSS charge:
University of Ghana to remove statue of Gandhi, who was racist against black people
https://mic.com/articles/156191/uni...d-racist-things-about-black-people#.aRNVj4dGg
All the GB PPiecesOSS - especially certain black tokens here - better start wiping all their past comments exalting Gandhi before their comrades (re)discover them and then turn on them, too.
PPiecesOSS are exactly like the NSA: they are so pathetically afraid of the fantasizes in their own minds that they need to seek out and vet every one and every bit to sterilize the terrorizing fear produced by pretty much nothing but their own paranoia.
Friggin' clinical psychos need to all be committed so the real world can get back to its regular business without these little, annoying, pposs mites bugging the shit out of it all the time.
In the progressive politically-correct cleansing world of forcibly conforming everything and everyone to their socialist ideals of "diversity", "open-mindedness", "tolerance", and "equality", even Mahatma Gandhi is found guilty as the PPiecesOSS charge:
University of Ghana to remove statue of Gandhi, who was racist against black people
https://mic.com/articles/156191/uni...d-racist-things-about-black-people#.aRNVj4dGg
All the GB PPiecesOSS - especially certain black tokens here - better start wiping all their past comments exalting Gandhi before their comrades (re)discover them and then turn on them, too.
PPiecesOSS are exactly like the NSA: they are so pathetically afraid of the fantasizes in their own minds that they need to seek out and vet every one and every bit to sterilize the terrorizing fear produced by pretty much nothing but their own paranoia.
Friggin' clinical psychos need to all be committed so the real world can get back to its regular business without these little, annoying, pposs mites bugging the shit out of it all the time.
pointless
¿por qué no?
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and all for a guy who was really nothing more than a lucky moron.
Brollyanna
Doo-wop thou wilt.
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He was going to the East Indies, though...
trysail
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Read Dava Sobel's Longitude for an explanation of why 15th century cartographers underestimated the earth's circumference.
The attempt to reach the East Indies by sailing west was absolutely correct given the "facts" provided by the boffins of his day.
ryan8558
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BoyNextDoor
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It is fair to challenge how historical figures actions are interpreted, and update those interpretations given our maturity as a nation? It sure is.
Culture is the production and dissemination of meaning. Since you gave the thread a title of "Christopher Columbus" let's look at good old CC.
Trysail posted an important interpretation about his seamanship. Zumi posted a Native American giving CC the finger and saying "Fuck you".
I would just say that an enormous amount of attention, effort, media time, ink in the textbooks and scholarly effort (and Trysail give a few excellent references) have been devoted to CC as the seaman, discoverer and merchant. I m not sure there needs to be much more celebration or examination of this aspect. It has been done.
I don't see as much time and effort being given to the "Fuck You CC" side. It seems clear to me that CC's seamanship had a series of cascading effects and not all of them were good or beneficial for everyone. Reinterpreting the "discovery" (sic) of America seems like something that needs doing. If it were done in a similarly scholarly fashion then maybe something more interesting than a Native American giving CC the finger and saying "Fuck you" woudl come out of it
What did you mean by "self loathing"?
I mean that it is fashionable to emphasize negativity. I think we revise history to conform to today's standards, and I don't think it's fair to take things out of context. Columbus was a product of the world he lived in and it's OK to accept that things were different then. What happened to the indigenous people was going to happen whether it was Columbus, the Chinese, the Vikings or whatever. I'm not defending or condoning it. How else can you characterize Colin Kaepernick than self loathing. Blessed beyond belief, yet he disrespects his country. I understand what his position is and I agree with him. But we live in a country where change is possible and I choose to respect that, without being blind to the need for change.
IrezumiKiss
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https://media.giphy.com/media/u9pVdgN26tpK0/giphy.gif
All your past faves were problematic as fuck. However, privilege made some of them get statues, holidays and monuments like they were handing out flower bouquets and goodwill candy when they got off the boat. So yeah, "manifest destiny" and all that shit you were taught to think was all good, we're gonna keep it 100% and duly revise the exalting and the idolizing of colonizer mentality.
Chris C. doesn't represent me, neither figuratively or literally, so there's no self-loathing on my end, bebé. Hope you had a Happy Indigenous Peoples day!
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nerfhearder
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You can't hold someone from 500 years ago to current standards. Different world with different views, morals, etc.
Doesn't make him less of an asshole though and certainly doesn't mean we should celebrate him.
Doesn't make him less of an asshole though and certainly doesn't mean we should celebrate him.
Stewart_Pidd
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Don't mock the fact I'm vertically challenged. Elevators do smell different to midgets, bro.
Poor widdle self-enslaved despicables of perpetual victimhood better start cleansing themselves of their own numerous exaltations for heroes they've previously and proudly held-up as champions anti-minority oppression:
Forty-six years later, one of history's most proclaimed humanitarian champions of the oppressed fully backed-up his "racist" slant:
See, Gandhi intrinsically believed blacks were inferior and yet even black racist pieces of shit here on the GB have held him up as their champion, viewing themselves as common, oppressed victims, first.
Here's a big newsflash, folks: human beings - IN GENERAL - are savages. Every skin pigmentation under the sun has outright murdered, oppressed and enslaved other skin pigmentations since the dawn of time. Blacks in Africa and America most certainly can be total savages, just as whites or reds in America, or whites in Europe, or yellows in Asia, or browns in the mideast most definitely can be and are, too; thus, what all the whine is really about is who is the recognized king of the savage hill at any specific time - everyone else is then moaned-over as being oppressed, simply because their own savagery wasn't as effective at that time.
Boo-fucking-hoo - get back to me when your time to be the oppressor again comes around.
BTW, all you pposs, regardless of whatever skin pigmentation you show or your essential need to claim perpetual victimhood just so it's so much easier for you to ignore your own, natural savagery:
If you champion the intentional and torturous killing of completely innocent and totally defenseless human life simply for convenience, you cannot be in any other way oppressed or a victim...
...all you simply are is a fucking savage babykiller.
Forty-six years later, one of history's most proclaimed humanitarian champions of the oppressed fully backed-up his "racist" slant:
See, Gandhi intrinsically believed blacks were inferior and yet even black racist pieces of shit here on the GB have held him up as their champion, viewing themselves as common, oppressed victims, first.
Here's a big newsflash, folks: human beings - IN GENERAL - are savages. Every skin pigmentation under the sun has outright murdered, oppressed and enslaved other skin pigmentations since the dawn of time. Blacks in Africa and America most certainly can be total savages, just as whites or reds in America, or whites in Europe, or yellows in Asia, or browns in the mideast most definitely can be and are, too; thus, what all the whine is really about is who is the recognized king of the savage hill at any specific time - everyone else is then moaned-over as being oppressed, simply because their own savagery wasn't as effective at that time.
Boo-fucking-hoo - get back to me when your time to be the oppressor again comes around.
BTW, all you pposs, regardless of whatever skin pigmentation you show or your essential need to claim perpetual victimhood just so it's so much easier for you to ignore your own, natural savagery:
If you champion the intentional and torturous killing of completely innocent and totally defenseless human life simply for convenience, you cannot be in any other way oppressed or a victim...
...all you simply are is a fucking savage babykiller.
Stewart_Pidd
making dinner bro
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IrezumiKiss
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http://i1.mirror.co.uk/incoming/article6125095.ece/ALTERNATES/s615/underwear.jpg
Don't disparage the joy of alternative sexualities, that's an actual fetish, bro!
Zoom
Stewart_Pidd
making dinner bro
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