Our Mom raised us to live by the “Golden Rule: do unto others as you would have others do unto you”. That has been my “religion” for the most part. “Full disclosure here” multiple transgressions have been committed, while residing in San Diego County – related to members of the opposite gender. Put in the terms of my Caregiver, I was a “ho-bag”. In my view, it was just another uncompensated public service.
This is a monumentally abridged retelling of a slice of unthinkable American history. Nothing new here. My conscience compelled me to publish it. And it’s definitely inaccurate in the details especially in regards to timing. Hey – I’m no historian. Even my own yesterdays are escaping me.
The Good Stuff:
My Christian European ancestors were outstanding and very brave (or rum – drunken) mariners. I have been at sea in a couple of hard storms – but not in a wooden vessel under sail power.
It was not an adventure to be bending over the railing, feeding the fish with my stomach contents, while getting chillingly drenched with seawater. By the way seawater is usually fucking COLD.
Navigation was done almost completely by electronic means. And more importantly, many had gone before us. Not so for my European ancestors. So Kudos to them for accomplishing that great feat.
Here is the unthinkable shit they actually did:
Eventually, they found dry land, disembarked and claimed a miniscule piece of land for living. Land that was already inhabited by human beings. No big deal – we had firearms. In most cases, the natives were gracious and willing to trade all sorts of knowledge and items for our sparkly but worthless stuff.
Then we started arriving in ever-increasing numbers and settling on the land wherever without any regard as to who was here first. This eventually resulted in more and more negative physical encounters.
Because the religious beliefs of my Christian European ancestors prohibited most acts against other persons that would prove to be quite useful, the natives had to be “dehumanized”. After all who wants to burn in Hell forever? So we transformed them into subhuman “Savages”, not even former Human Beings.
The way was then clear for: murder, mass murder, rape, torture, kidnapping, slavery, starvation, theft of any and all property (especially including real estate). Whatever my Christian Europeans wanted to do to other recently Human Beings was done with impunity and even accolades. And all without that inconvenient, pesky issue of burning in hell for eternity. How very clever indeed. Perhaps a Jewish lawyer was among them.
My forebears have gone completely unpunished (and largely unapologetic) for unthinkable crimes against humanity, worse than for what many Nazis and Hideki Tojo would be hanged.
My thoughts, more and more, are about the never to be known stories of ALL the Human Beings, their families, even their dogs and cats, and their land, that my existence is now overlaying.