The reason we got here wasn’t “rugged individualism”. It was part of a large, long effort, to find a better path to india. We weren’t even the first Europeans that made it here. The reason we kept coming here is because aristocrats demanded people go there, and colonize to expand their empires. The reason the US and Canada aren’t in a state more like Israel, is that the people we colonized had little defense to the diseases we brought. In fact, Desoto’s campaigns to find more precious metals in the Appalachians, where he killed, raped, and enslaved his was through the region, in the name of Spain, happened long before the first solid colonies developed here, and this triggered an apocalyptic event to the people living their from the disease that the Spanish spread.
This bully theory is horseshit, and reducing reality down to a binary of you are either a bully or a pacifist is fucking stupid. Bullying is how to garner thin, short-term, control. People get tired of the bully, and turn on them, and the bully finds out it is now all alone when everyone is turning on them. That or everyone else grows and progresses their lives, while the bully stays as they are, and just fades into irrelevance.
you make salient points but so do i, and as you said, the truth isn’t exactly binary. maybe we’re both right. maybe we’re both wrong. the fact remains that the tool that makes the change is raw power in whatever form it takes. you either wield it or someone wields it against you.
i’d love nothing more than to participate in a big old kumbaya love fest, but i can’t do that until the goddamned sociopaths are in the ground.
The reason we got here wasn’t “rugged individualism”. It was part of a large, long effort, to find a better path to india. We weren’t even the first Europeans that made it here. The reason we kept coming here is because aristocrats demanded people go there, and colonize to expand their empires. The reason the US and Canada aren’t in a state more like Israel, is that the people we colonized had little defense to the diseases we brought. In fact, Desoto’s campaigns to find more precious metals in the Appalachians, where he killed, raped, and enslaved his was through the region, in the name of Spain, happened long before the first solid colonies developed here, and this triggered an apocalyptic event to the people living their from the disease that the Spanish spread.
This bully theory is horseshit, and reducing reality down to a binary of you are either a bully or a pacifist is fucking stupid. Bullying is how to garner thin, short-term, control. People get tired of the bully, and turn on them, and the bully finds out it is now all alone when everyone is turning on them. That or everyone else grows and progresses their lives, while the bully stays as they are, and just fades into irrelevance.
you make salient points but so do i, and as you said, the truth isn’t exactly binary. maybe we’re both right. maybe we’re both wrong. the fact remains that the tool that makes the change is raw power in whatever form it takes. you either wield it or someone wields it against you.
i’d love nothing more than to participate in a big old kumbaya love fest, but i can’t do that until the goddamned sociopaths are in the ground.