There was an appealing chain of logic about the whole thing.
Besides, I find bringing up atrocities committed against your family by the English is a little vulgar and adds nothing to talk at the dinner table.
What if I poked your mum in the eye?
(Anyway, I think Cromwell’s “to hell or to Connacht” forced conversion thing is a more popular source of anger amongst the cool kids these days.)
Huzzah! 
What of it? I’d add you to the long list of people who have oppressed my family line (and that includes, drum roll, the English!) that I really see no point in talking about.
If you’re only as interesting as the list of people who picked on your ancestors, I couldn’t be bothered chatting to you, I’ll catch them on the UKTV History channel instead.
:shrug:
Anyone who bashes Jackson but not Caesar, or William the Conqueror, or Alexander, or Cromwell has some splainin’ to do. 170 years is a long time to nurse a grievance, even a just one. Frothing at the mouth over it at this point is just silly. Almost everybody had their asses handed to them and their land stolen at some point in their family history.
We can still do something about Bush’s foolishness.
You must apologize to me for what your ancestor did to my ancestor.
Well, I am more culpabale than most, I guess. I actually own some of that formerly Cherokee land.
I ain’t givin’ it back, neither.
Besides, I’ve got a coupla drops of Cherokee blood-- enough to validate my claim, I figure.
Shrug?
Spoke, I’ve pretty much just been letting your sarcastic swipes at me and my family in this thread roll off my shoulder. I knew you’d drop in to defend the Indian Hater and remind us all of what you believe to have been his good intentions, and so I braced myself for it. But enough is enough, and **Guin ** or no Guin, I’m going to tell you what I think.
If you do not care about whatever attrocities were visited upon your people, that’s your business. But there has never been — and hopefully never will be again — a human tragedy on the scale of what happened to native peoples of this land over hundreds of years of European, and then American, aggression.
Nobody knows how many died. Millions or tens of millions. These weren’t wars between two powers over control of land; these were slaughters. Did the Indians fight back? Yes, we did. As best we could. So even though you paint us as savages because we raided white outposts, we did so because we lacked the means to effectively evict you. We couldn’t exactly march into Washington and use our Navy to send you all on a Voyage of Tears.
Nor can you compare what the whites did with Indians fighting against each other. These had been wars fought by relative equals, using primitive weapons, and most often over honor or family or some cause besides preemptive annihilation. The history is simply too rich to cover in detail here, from John Ross to Montezuma, and you know that. But despite whatever pleasant personalities you attach to Jackson and Cortez, they did the equivalent of nuking Switzerland.
Your force simply could not be matched. Your people relentlessly expanded, using every weapon at their disposal from rifles to diseased blankets, killing indiscriminately warriors and old men and women and children. This was genocide pure and simple, covering a massive area — an entire hemisphere — and lasting for generations. It was carried out against more than 500 different nations of people who were for all intents and purposes defenseless. There is nothing in the history of Europe that you can cite to compare. Hell, at least Ceasar allowed his captives to assimilate, rather than marching them off to the desert.
Jackson, for us, is the symbol of it all, if only for the betrayal he represented. Before his flowery speeches about doing what was good for us, he made very public his hatred for us, despite that we appeased him in every conceivable way from signing his worthless treaties to helping him win his battles. It is especially bizarre that you would cite something he said or wrote as a politician as evidence of his good intentions. Hell, you could do the same with Bush. Just take a speech he’s made and you’ll find all the reasons that we did what was good for Iraq.
Meanwhile, a hearty fuck you for trivializing what happened with sarcasm and one-liners about Caesar and your drop of Indian blood. Fuck you for believing the worthless words of a liar — the Indian Hater and those who excuse him. Fuck you for insinuating that I am overreacting and blowing out of proportion something you believe is a mere historical footnote. And fuck you for doing it all with such righteous glee, calling me stupid and ignorant, as though you’re the school marm who has stepped in to set the record straight with things you’ve read in text books.
Are you seriously trying to make an argument for your view of history while demeaning book knowledge?
No. It is his choice of books that bothers me, like a school marm popping out a Creationist biology book. Here is a good source of books. I recommend especially The Cherokee Removal and Trail of Tears, the Rise and Fall of the Cherokee.
ETA:
History necessarily entails points of view. People like **Spoke ** and **Guin ** would deny me mine while not hesitating to express their own.
My point was that the Trail of Tears, was not the only oppression of our ancestors. I don’t go on and on about the “Irish-Hater Cromwell” and the like.
Basically, what spoke- said:
I’m not going on and on about Bismarck, or Catherine the Great, or Cromwell.
There are much more recent events-yet I don’t see, oh, say Bricker (who I believe is Salvadoran) ranting constantly about La Matanza.
You’d think from the way Lib goes on about it, it happened a few years ago.
We’re not saying we don’t care, just because we don’t foam at the mouth. You seem to believe that what Jackson did was the WORST THING EVAR!!! And oh my god, because the rest of us aren’t screaming about it, we don’t care and we’re selfish
For fuck’s sake, Lib, I had a professor who spent time in the fucking gulags. My aunt is friends with a Holocaust survivor. What are YOU doing about the attrocities going on right now? Are you trying to help them? Or are you still more concerned with the past, rather than helping prevent anything like that from happening again?
You are not a “we” and not an “us”, and your sauwinachk pity party is getting really old. But uhm. Hmm.
If anyone out there is buying into the guilt trip and thinking of making reparations, I will take mine in the form of blowjobs.
From women.
Thanks, folks. That’s all.
Oh, just lose gracefully.
You mean the one you haven’t actually read?
If I read it, will you choose to respect my views? I’m willing to meet you halfway. Your and my history has never been hostile over anything but this, that I recall.
Thanks for clarifying. I’d like to read your books AND his.
Read the book for your own edification, not on my account.
Whether I respect your views after reading it is a question I can’t answer in advance. That may depend in part on whether you read the book with an open mind.
And I don’t harbor any personal ill will toward you, Liberal. I just think that history and histrionics don’t mix well.
A gracious refusal, I must say. Is there some reason the books I have read are incapable of edification?
Is that code for “whether you end up agreeing with me”?
You really have no idea how insulting that is, do you? I’m afraid there may be no possible way to communicate with you on this matter. I suppose it will remain status quo.
Again, Lib, why do you care so much more about the past, than you do the present?