A Day that should Live in Infamy

Christopher Columbus: mug shot

 My thoughts on C-Day: Columbus was both immoral and lame. He was wrong, utterly wrong about his discovery. He mis-named the people he discovered, thus causing centuries of confusion. What he found out, he did by accident. His voyage was not difficult. He blundered into the fastest way to the Americas and the fastest way back from sheer luck. (For a heroic voyage that tested human fortitude, see Magellan, who discovered something more remarkable than the Americas, the Pacific Ocean.) 

He was agent of a couple of fanatical, theocratic tyrants, who were otherwise busy committing genocide and religious cleansing on Jews and Muslims. When he arrived, he immediately allowed his men to rape and plunder from the natives, thus setting European-American relations for the likes of Cortez and Pizarro. When couldn't find gold he made his discovery profitable by abducting the Native Americans into slavery. Yes, slavery in the New World started with Columbus. There is really nothing good about the guy.

If there's anyone who should be remembered from the early colonial period, it should be Tisquantum, known to the English as Squanto. After being abducted into slavery, then escaping and coming to find his whole village wiped out from an epidemics accidentally brought by European, he still saved the Puritan's lives.

That shows a superhuman capacity to forgive, that's worthy of being remembered for centuries. He should be the best known person from the whole Euro-America colonial disaster. That's who the European-Americans should commemorate, at least in North America. And it should be a holiday where we ask for forgiveness. 

Instead, he's almost forgotten and buried in an unmarked grave.

Moreover, there are various myths that most everyone believes about American Colonization. To have them corrected, you have to go to a comedy website.