Keep Christ(obal) In Columbus Day!

Okay, it's Columbus day, and every year, a lot of people feel it is clever to point out that Columbus (and other European explorers like him,) "stole" this country from the Native North and South Americans.  And they seem to feel that posting these things in a tone of righteous indignation makes them edgy and poignant.

But it's time to let it go, people.  If you would stop and look at all the other shit that happened that long ago, it might make you wonder why we still fixate on it so.  It happened, it sucked, but it was sort of what people did back then.  Acting like we in America are somehow barbaric because of this secret shame in our background is asinine.

EVERYONE has this shit in their history.  Conquest is largely an outdated concept today (we have U.N.s and stuff for that,) but it was simply how things got done back then.  If your empire needed to grow, you needed more resources.  If the people next door had 'em, and you could take 'em, you got 'em.

Everyone in Europe was doing it to each other, but they were too evenly matched for there to be much success.  Do you feel Columbus' conquest was an unfair fight because the natives didn't have guns?  Maybe you don't understand how war works.  I'm not trying to draw a comparison between the two conflicts, but how many people felt the US invasion of Afghanistan was a bad thing because we had better weapons?  That's kind of our thing, you know?

When colonial powers roll up into your territory with vastly superior weaponry and technology, you're getting conquered, end of story.  You think the American Indians got a raw deal?  Go talk to some Indian Indians.  They had a massive, successful culture that was a hell of a lot more advanced than anything the Aztecs put together.  But guns?  They missed that lesson, and that's why they speak English when you call tech support.

And yet, the same internet dwellers who post snarky shit about Columbus, and consider his actions a hate crime, will think nothing of dressing up in Victorian cosplay and reenact the era when plenty of native cultures fell beneath the old 'reeking tube and iron shard.'

So how about you cut the famed explorer some slack, shut up about what a thief Columbus was, and instead get back to bitching that you still have to work today, and yet you can't go to the damn bank because those pricks get the day off.