Archive for October 13th, 2008


Columbus Day Tirade

October 13th, 2008 by Oskar Kennedy

In Fourteen Hundred and Ninety-Two, Columbus sailed the ocean blue. That’s about the only part of the legend that stands up to historical scrutiny. The rest of what most people think about Columbus is a mash-up of popular misconceptions perpetuated by eager elementary school teachers.

Columbus didn’t discover America.
It’s just absurd to credit Columbus with “discovering” a continent that had been explored by other civilizations hundreds of years prior to his landing. There’s also the tiny matter of the millions of people already living in the Western Hemisphere when Columbus showed up with his puny flag. Finally, he never actually landed in North America, let alone the area which later became the good ol’ U.S. of A.

More to the point, Columbus thought he’d landed somewhere in Asia. If I get in the car and drive to Cleveland, then I go home and tell people that I went to California, would I get credit for “discovering” Ohio? No.

What Columbus DID do was record and report information about the Caribbean back to a European government with sufficiently advanced resources to take advantage of the region for a profit. He opened up the New World for trade, exploitation and colonization. It’s a big, history-making deal, but he didn’t “discover” anything. Which leads me to my next point.

Columbus wasn’t all that hot an explorer.
He didn’t know where he was going. He didn’t know where he was when he got there. He went to his death believing that he’d sailed to Asia and back. In the grand pantheon of accomplished explorers, Columbus just outranks the cast of the Disney cartoon TaleSpin. Just.

Nor was he a particularly accomplished leader. He often resorted to coercion and subterfuge to motivate his crew. If you’re hanging out on a Caribbean island, and you have to burn your ships to keep the crew from leaving, you’re doing something wrong.

Columbus isn’t an icon of Italian ingenuity and awesomocity.
Columbus sailed under the Spanish flag, with a mostly German crew, paid for by the Spanish crown. He did this because the Italian government refused to bankroll his wildly speculative venture. You don’t get to send the guy packing, begging to a foreign power, and then claim him as a favored native son once he turns up something cool.

Columbus wasn’t exactly an unalloyed success for the entire world.
Remember those millions of people living in the Western Hemisphere when Columbus showed up with his Spanish flag? They got the short end of a very sharp stick. Many more millions of them died of disease, famine and generally being enslaved and killed than were murdered in the Nazi Holocaust. It was just a bit more gradual and disjointed, and Steven Spielberg hasn’t made a movie out of it, so it doesn’t get as much press.

So hey, enjoy your day off, if you get one. Just try to remember that not everything you hear at the parade is exactly right.

EDIT: Crapcakes, I can’t believe I forgot this one.

Columbus did NOT prove that the world was round.
The Greeks figured that out about 2,000 years before Columbus dipped his pinky toe into the Atlantic. No serious scholar (and very few of the silly ones) had any doubt that the Earth was spherical. The modern Flat-Earther are 2,500 years stupid.

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Why is This Surprising?

October 13th, 2008 by Oskar Kennedy

At a recent political rally, a Christian pastor asked his god to help John McCain win, so that all those people around the world praying to different gods for an Obama victory would be put in their places. For some reason, people find this shocking.

For those people, I have a simple question. What part of “monotheistic religion” do you not understand. This is the WHOLE POINT of Christianity. Everybody who doesn’t believe, who prays to their own god or gods, is inferior and hellbound. If you’re at all shocked that this is the attitude of a Christian preacher, than you need to wake the fuck up.

Allow me to demonstrate. Here is the horrible thing that the pastor said:

“I would also pray, Lord, that your reputation is involved in all that happens between now and November, because there are millions of people around this world praying to their god — whether it’s Hindu, Buddha, Allah — that his opponent wins, for a variety of reasons.”

And Lord, I pray that you would guard your own reputation, because they’re going to think that their god is bigger than you, if that happens.”
- Rev. Arnold Conrad, at a rally for Senator John McCain

Now, here is what his god says:

“I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery; Do not have any other gods before me. You shall not make for yourself an idol, whether in the form of anything that is in heaven above, or that is on the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I the Lord your God am a jealous God, punishing children for the iniquity of parents, to the third and the fourth generation of those who reject me.”
- God (as told to some guy pretending to be Moses, Exodus 20:2-1, New Revised Standard Version)

And just in case you think this kind of elitism is confined to the old testament:

“I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”
- Jesus (who, by some trick of math is also God, John 14:6, New International Version)

That’s the central tent of Christianity. Nobody can go to heaven unless they believe that Jesus was his own father, born to a teenage virgin, and that he eventually got up and went for a walk after being dead for three days. It’s inherently exclusive. Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Shintoists, everybody who doesn’t believe this story is going to be tortured for all eternity.

So tell me, exactly what is it that’s so shocking about the Rev. Conrad’s statement. That this is what his religion teaches, or that he made the mistake of telling the truth about his faith in public?

And by the way, this is the religion of both candidates. This faith, that teaches that damnation and torture are in store for everyone who doesn’t agree, that the world will end in fire and darkness, and that only those that believe will be saved. They both believe this. The Republicans are just a little more upfront about it.

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