When I first began “The Vortex” over a year ago, I always made a point of referencing all of the information that I had accumulated so that any readers would know that I wasn’t just pulling my facts from a fantasy that I’d built in my head (see some of my earlier posts from the archives). I quit doing this after a while because I knew that I was writing on a factual basis, and if anyone was truly interested in knowing if what I was saying was true, that they’d go look things up for themselves upon reading my posts.
Just because I don’t reference all of my facts anymore doesn’t mean that I don’t do my research before posting something.
The other day, after my post about Christopher Columbus, someone had the audacity to post a comment saying that I was weak on the facts concerning him. Whoever left the comment has a lot of guts saying such things, and clearly doesn’t know what they’re talking about or who they’re indicting. You serve just to annoy me, and maybe in the future I won’t respond to such silliness and just delete your ignorant comments. But for today, I’ll point out where you’re wrong, and where I was right.
First, you said that I asserted Vespucci was the first person to discover America. I never said that, I simply said that the distinction had been “ascribed to” Amerigo Vespucci. I made that statement with tongue-in-cheek (you know, a little literary humor) because I think that the very notion of Columbus, Vespucci or even the Vikings “discovering” a land that was already inhabited is a misnomer and laughable at best. Europeans wanted to believe that they discovered everything, and American text books seem to want to maintain these incorrect declarations, which is the subtle point that I was trying to make with that statement. They also wanted to make the inhabitants of the “New World” out to be savages and primitive peoples when in reality they had very complex societies and trade from South America to Africa is documented and had been going on for centuries before Columbus’ arrival.
Your second point that Columbus never traded for slaves is so incredibly false that I can’t believe you even made the statement. In fact, you’re so lazy that you didn’t even “google” the concept. If you go to http://www.google.com, and type in “Columbus Slave Trade” you return 809,000 hits, with 97 of the first 100 hits specifically referring to Columbus' role in opening up the Trans-Atlantic slave trade. Looks like you’ve bought into the USA elementary school educational stories concerning Columbus. You know, the ones that leave out his involvement in implementing slavery.
So, brief slave trade history lesson. Portugal is regarded as the first European nation to enslave people from Africa. The methods that they used were known to Columbus, and he used this knowledge to enslave the indigenous people (namely the Taino or Arawak people) of the Caribbean. In fact, I’ve read several accounts that all agree Columbus took between 300 and 1200 Taino slaves from the Caribbean and brought them to Spain to be sold as slaves in the same fashion that African slaves were being sold on the Iberian Peninsula in 1495. By 1502, for several reasons (including the drastic diminishing of natives in the Caribbean, as well as the natives’ prowess in hiding in the hills and mountains of their familiar lands) African slaves were then being used to work the fields and mines in the “New World.” And there’s much more to be said about it that I won’t get into, but anthropologists and historians agree Columbus both had slaves and was the catalyst in the trans-Atlantic slave trade in more ways than one.
And to point out a very critical flaw in your failed argument concerning Columbus and the slave trade: You said that “Columbus never traded for any slaves, never set up any slave trading systems, first of all he didn’t know where he was so how could he.” You also said that Columbus had come and gone from the New World 3 times (1492, 1493, and 1498). The inherent flaw in your argument is that if Columbus had come and gone those 3 times, then he certainly knew where he was going even if he didn’t know where on the globe he was. Therefore could have easily set up a slave trade.
Finally, I never said that people liked Columbus in his day, or that Columbus got rich off of the slaves or the goods he stole from the “New World.” However, that reality is exactly why he was involved in trading for slaves in the first place. The spices and things that he was supposed to bring back to Spain from India were clearly thousands of miles from his location on the map. However he did find that there was sugar cane and gold in the Caribbean. So in lieu of returning valuable spices to the Queen of Spain, he brought Taino slaves to the nation. Upon realizing that the Queen didn’t want anything to do with the slaves, Columbus began pillaging (with the aid of slaves) the Caribbean Islands for anything valuable (gold, sugar, etc.) to bring back to the Queen.
So, looks like the only thing you’ve got going for you is that you agree with me that Columbus shouldn’t have a national holiday in his honor. Outside of that, you simply suck and you really annoy me.
I guess this was a good exercise for me though. It gave me the opportunity to prove my pre-eminence as a thinker and a historian, so now when people read what I write they’ll have further confidence that what I’ve written here is based on facts.
So Mr. or Mrs. Anonymous commenter, maybe you should do your research or come up with valid peripheral arguments the next time you wanna do battle with me. Better yet, just save yourself the time, and go pester someone else because I will NEVER just post something here that isn’t based in fact if there’s factual evidence regarding a topic to be had.
On the facts, I stand pristine, magnanimous, and impeccable!
Now who’s weak on the facts?
-Maelstrom
PS: here are a few websites you might wanna read concerning your false comments. And if you don’t believe them, maybe you should go to your local Public Library and look it up.
http://www.hartford-hwp.com/Taino/docs/columbus.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Columbus_Day
http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/historyonline/con_columbus.cfm
http://www.ustrek.org/odyssey/semester1/093000/093000madcolumbus.html
http://www.illinimedia.com/di/archives/1995/October/9/edit1.html
http://www.link-mail.com/44200.html
http://www.dangerouscitizen.com/Opinions/921.aspx
http://www.usconstitution.net/consttop_slav.html
http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/tribune-review/opinion/columnists/purcell/s_381984.html
http://www.workers.org/ww/2000/africa0302.php
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1 comment:
I thought about letting you slide on your ridiculous comments and hypothesises but then I started to realize that kids may unfortunetly stumble onto your ramblings and be brainwashed like you unfortunetly have been by leftist hatemongers such as yourself. You're making Bill O'Reily look like he thinks his comments out...you're hurting no one but yourself and the movement Im sure you claim to be promoting.
Now we can both agree that a holiday for Columbus is awkward at best but your trying to portray Colombus as an evil man is just wrong. First, Colombus died thinking he had found land just a few miles away from Japan. He never went to Africa, the claim you're trying to make that because he made people a whole lot smarter than him aware of land that never existed means he should be held accountable for the slave trade is erroneous at best, Colombus is more like George W. Bush, not the Dick Cheney you portray him to be. You finally admitted to calling him a catalyst which is true, I can't and won't argue there but this architect persona that you tried to play up is flat out wrong.
Second you sounds afraid and weak even though you claim to be "pristine, magnanimous, and impeccable" (great use of a thesaurus by the way) to say you're going to delete the words of people trying to teach you right from wrong shows you are afraid of being challenges know you're weakness on the facts will ultimately leave you brutishly ignorant (I actually knew that word).
Get your facts right. Don't run from competition and let ya' momma know you have work to do. (yeah, I stole that one from you, should I cite my source as well?)
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