Once upon a time long, long ago, a European warship sailed to America. The Norwegian crew came from a country with a small population, so they were never destined to write the history book and received no mention in reports issuing from the victors. Several centuries later, the Empire of the United States of America (RIP, some say) was ‘properly founded’ by Christopher Columbus who paved the way for hardworking Europeans escaping heavy-handed, autocratic rule and religious persecution. The first settlers were tolerant, peace-loving, forward-thinking democrats. No, stop! That is all a lie say proponents of truth and reconciliation. Just ask its many victims that have come up on stage in recent years. Here is their quite different take on the early days of the empire:
Look under a rock and you will find snakes. The country was settled by lawless opportunists, European power players, Freemasons, principals and special interests. (Wasn’t Jesse James robbing stagecoaches to finance a coup?) The big families that stole California from the Mexicans murdered their own kind to stifle competition and register a bigger grubstake. They got rich off the Blacks and the Chinese and picked on them forever after for expecting to be treated as human beings. The whiteys killed off the buffalo in the northern plains to starve the Indians into submission. The early settlers were a playful sort—big-hearted, fun-loving people that uprooted and killed as many of the Indigenous population as they could manage on sporting weekends considering the little time they had on their hands outside their agricultural and religious duties. They took not the time to distinguish which tribes were a threat and which were not. All got treated fairly to a bullet. Puritans who established the white man’s rule of law were so generous and broad-minded that they sacrificed live animals and burned innocent women at the stake to prove their loyalty to God and demonstrate the purity of their souls. So… who exactly is the We in United We Stand?
Is that all true? Of course not! The truth, which surely rests on good intentions if not actions, is somewhere closer to the middle and probably includes some or all of those claims. . . . to be continued
