This is going to be a long post so stay with me on this.
You have to be relative when it comes to history. Yes slavery was wrong but this was pre industrial times. Before the industrial revolution you didnt have the advantage of machining and fabricating large quantities of goods without the need for a large workforce. Slavery was the most efficent way to solve this problem, slavery was mostly normal throughout the world. As soon as the industrial revolution came around slavery would be too expensive to keep up and slavery would fall hard into disfavor for economic reasons not only the moral push to ban slavery. The racial divide that came for 100 years afterward was due to slowly humanizing the slave class. To own a slave you had to convince yourself that your slaves weren't actually people more of a really intelligent animal.
The native Americans of the America's were screwed from the start when they came to America 5000 + years ago. America lacked large domesticatable animals such as oxen that allowed Europeans and asians to plow feilds much more efficiently by hand allowing farming to be a staple in life. Hunting and gathering was much more viable in north america while in south america slavery once again solved the problem of food production. The natives also didnt have the benefit of being near live animals thier entire lives bringing resistances to animal diseases. The Europeans lost a third of thier population to the black plague that was given to them by the mongols during thier grand conquest. Europeans with their trading with around the known world also granted them an extreme resistance to diseases such as small pox (yes it was a problem but not as bad as the native Americans) that's the reason why there wasnt some American only plague that killed off all the Europeans that landed. Europeans just had better resistances. Ironically enough this was also the reason why the african slave trade became such a popular source. There wasnt a good supply of native Americans to have a decent slave source unlike the African supply.
The internment camps of ww2 was a good show of what paranoia comes from conflict in such racially diverse country like America. While it was a disagreeable concept now the internment camps served as both a defence from Japanese spies and the protection of the Japanese citizens away from the highly paranoid populace losing thier sons in the Pacific theater.
All around no country can say they are truly pure. Since we humans are flawed due to our both extreme logic and our ability to not care about our fellow man. America is an oddity in the world. A centralized country that is inhabited by all races on the planet mostly without conflict. I do truly believe America may not be the perfect country but is by far the most perfect country history has ever currently manufactured.
Excellent post. I think there are a lot of people who think like OP about America right now. It’s understandable, but it’s not like every other country doesn’t have their own baggage as well.
As you pointed out, slavery was a staple to many countries before the industrial revolution. In fact, if you look at slave routes in the 1700-1800s, Peru imported the most slaves because it was cheaper to work them to death and simply buy new ones.
The native Americans were also, as you pointed out, screwed. Spain committed atrocities against those in Mexico and South America similar to the English. The French were a little more friendly with the fur trade, but had they tried colonizing the continental US instead of selling to the Americans in the Louisiana purchase, I don’t see how any country would have let the natives keep all that land (could you really imagine natives still living as they did back then in 2010+)?
Think of it in terms of your own analogy to Nazi Germany OP: what did the Germans (and the world for that matter) do at the end of World War II? They rebuilt the country and restructured Europe. Sure, Germany was split into two countries until about 1990, but the German people rebuilt their country and their heritage from the ground up and made it a better place. If you like America and her ideals, you can fight for those while still fighting against the parts of her history that are unacceptable to a modern civilized society.
IIN I sometimes feel ashamed to be an American?
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This is going to be a long post so stay with me on this.
You have to be relative when it comes to history. Yes slavery was wrong but this was pre industrial times. Before the industrial revolution you didnt have the advantage of machining and fabricating large quantities of goods without the need for a large workforce. Slavery was the most efficent way to solve this problem, slavery was mostly normal throughout the world. As soon as the industrial revolution came around slavery would be too expensive to keep up and slavery would fall hard into disfavor for economic reasons not only the moral push to ban slavery. The racial divide that came for 100 years afterward was due to slowly humanizing the slave class. To own a slave you had to convince yourself that your slaves weren't actually people more of a really intelligent animal.
The native Americans of the America's were screwed from the start when they came to America 5000 + years ago. America lacked large domesticatable animals such as oxen that allowed Europeans and asians to plow feilds much more efficiently by hand allowing farming to be a staple in life. Hunting and gathering was much more viable in north america while in south america slavery once again solved the problem of food production. The natives also didnt have the benefit of being near live animals thier entire lives bringing resistances to animal diseases. The Europeans lost a third of thier population to the black plague that was given to them by the mongols during thier grand conquest. Europeans with their trading with around the known world also granted them an extreme resistance to diseases such as small pox (yes it was a problem but not as bad as the native Americans) that's the reason why there wasnt some American only plague that killed off all the Europeans that landed. Europeans just had better resistances. Ironically enough this was also the reason why the african slave trade became such a popular source. There wasnt a good supply of native Americans to have a decent slave source unlike the African supply.
The internment camps of ww2 was a good show of what paranoia comes from conflict in such racially diverse country like America. While it was a disagreeable concept now the internment camps served as both a defence from Japanese spies and the protection of the Japanese citizens away from the highly paranoid populace losing thier sons in the Pacific theater.
All around no country can say they are truly pure. Since we humans are flawed due to our both extreme logic and our ability to not care about our fellow man. America is an oddity in the world. A centralized country that is inhabited by all races on the planet mostly without conflict. I do truly believe America may not be the perfect country but is by far the most perfect country history has ever currently manufactured.
Lecture over, thanks for reading.
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LaughinSkull
4 years ago
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jethro
4 years ago
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Excellent post. I think there are a lot of people who think like OP about America right now. It’s understandable, but it’s not like every other country doesn’t have their own baggage as well.
As you pointed out, slavery was a staple to many countries before the industrial revolution. In fact, if you look at slave routes in the 1700-1800s, Peru imported the most slaves because it was cheaper to work them to death and simply buy new ones.
The native Americans were also, as you pointed out, screwed. Spain committed atrocities against those in Mexico and South America similar to the English. The French were a little more friendly with the fur trade, but had they tried colonizing the continental US instead of selling to the Americans in the Louisiana purchase, I don’t see how any country would have let the natives keep all that land (could you really imagine natives still living as they did back then in 2010+)?
Think of it in terms of your own analogy to Nazi Germany OP: what did the Germans (and the world for that matter) do at the end of World War II? They rebuilt the country and restructured Europe. Sure, Germany was split into two countries until about 1990, but the German people rebuilt their country and their heritage from the ground up and made it a better place. If you like America and her ideals, you can fight for those while still fighting against the parts of her history that are unacceptable to a modern civilized society.
Now that was the best response I have ever read on this or any other site. Good show.
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LloydAsher
4 years ago
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Well thank you for the complement. I dont get that often.