Why are you here Americans?

[MissBarbara]

B.....I am so sorry.  It's just that it's plumb pitiful that a National Holiday is declared to remind folks to be grateful.

Thanksgiving is Macy's Day Parade, and belching guys watching football, and hearing all the women fussin' in the kitchin getting food on the table, hearing all the kids asking in their whiney voice, "when are we gonna eat, I'm  hungry?"  Is waiting for whoever's saying the blessing to hurry up.  Thanksgiving should be everyday.

My apologies to the board for steering away from OP.

TD, you've absolutely nothing to be sorry for!

I agree with your comment about the highly objectionable "origin" of the Thanksgiving holiday, which represented the beginning of close to four centuries of depredations visited upon Indians by Western European settlers -- and their generations of progeny.

And I also agree that Thanksgiving should be everyday. Perhaps it's a sad comment that we need a national holiday to remind Americans to do something that they already should be doing as a matter of course. But, to my mind, if having a national holiday does, in fact, inspire people to gratitude, then I can't see the harm in that.

[MissBarbara]

Just because others have committed similar atrocities does not excuse or justify those committed by your previous generations.

Nor does the guilt for atrocities one's ancestors committed necessarily redound to succeeding generations.

[MissBarbara]

Just because others have committed similar atrocities does not excuse or justify those committed by your previous generations.

Nor does the guilt for atrocities one's ancestors committed necessarily redound to succeeding generations.

I know, but the appropriate response when someone brings it up is not "hey if you think that's bad, wait 'till I tell you about the Germans and the Japanese!"

Sorry, I completely missed your point.

You're right, we Americans do tend to try push our treatment of blacks and Indians aside by pointing fingers at the Nazis.

And, of course, there's our treatment of Japanese-Americans on the West Coast during World War II.

[watcher1]

Well, firstly I have no idea what that has to do with the genocide committed against Native Americans. Anyway, those situations occur exactly because of the logic you and Rope have used here. "I don't see why what we did was so especially bad when you look at what they did." There are no excuses and there is no justification for genocide. If the goal is to avoid retaliation, then honest acceptance of responsibility with no ifs, ands or buts is the solution.

GB - you read that from what I wrote?  I never said that. I was just saying every country has a sordid history when it comes to treating people different then they.

[coacheric]

Hey B, I fixed his original post for him....he did ask nicely!

Explain?

He had lots of spelling errors and asked for the post to be fixed because he was on his phone. I fixed it

[MissBarbara]

Friday, I received a "happy Thanksgiving" note from my Japanese customer. LoL. Now I know, he must be following GRM's posts on KB.

(Can I get a grammatical score on this post? It took me 2 minutes to type it out on my phone.)

Ah... the full stop went over my head. What is a full stop is?

He had lots of spelling errors and asked for the post to be fixed because he was on his phone. I fixed it

I could get extra anal about the structure of that first paragraph too and the way the second one is all within the same set of brackets.

Do you mean:

On Friday, I received a "Happy Thanksgiving" note from my Japanese customer. He must be following GRM's posts on KB, lol.

[mikki]

LOL @ this whole indictment of our previous generations...

They were, after all, mostly of European decent.

King and Country- and all that...

There are winners and there are losers all throughout history.

Probably it's not anything that will change soon, regardless the bleeding hearts-

sad but true.


mikki

[Katiebee]

Why are we here?

Hey! We stole this land, fair and square!

[mikki]

Why are we here?

Hey! We stole this land, fair and square!

actually... we didn't.
our forefathers made that decision (thank God) and kicked some Indian ass to take it.

mikki

[Lostforkate]

Thank you Barb. 

But I was speaking to someone by the name of Friday?

 I am going to have write to those smart phone people and ask to be the beta testing for autocorrect eatures.

Friday, I received a "happy Thanksgiving" note from my Japanese customer. LoL. Now I know, he must be following GRM's posts on KB.

(Can I get a grammatical score on this post? It took me 2 minutes to type it out on my phone.)

Ah... the full stop went over my head. What is a full stop is?

He had lots of spelling errors and asked for the post to be fixed because he was on his phone. I fixed it

I could get extra anal about the structure of that first paragraph too and the way the second one is all within the same set of brackets.

Do you mean:

On Friday, I received a "Happy Thanksgiving" note from my Japanese customer. He must be following GRM's posts on KB, lol.

[Vicki V.]

The fun part about this thread was waiting for the correction.

[watcher1]

Why are we here?

Hey! We stole this land, fair and square!

actually... we didn't.
our forefathers made that decision (thank God) and kicked some Indian ass to take it.

mikki

When we kicked some Indian "ass" that was called a great victory over the savages.  When they kicked our ass, say at Little Big Horn, it was called a massacre.

[GermanChick]

I think we (as humans) are getting better at telling the story of the 'hunted' - but there is still a lot to learn imo.

[Katiebee]

Perspective, watcher, perspective.

[Lostforkate]

Manifest Destiny.

I am not going to defend or reject the wars and such with the Indians. The exploitation of the wealth of resources eventually lead to nation that made a difference in WW2. Would Hitler have won? What Europe look like if Indians controlled 95% or American turf?

Would Hitler keep expanding till he ran out resourses and lost anyway? He had a mechanized army thread shreaded calvary. IE Poland.

All the alternate histories are limitless.

[watcher1]

Perspective, watcher, perspective.

Yep.  History books are full of perspectives by the victors.

[mikki]

Why are we here?

Hey! We stole this land, fair and square!

actually... we didn't.
our forefathers made that decision (thank God) and kicked some Indian ass to take it.

mikki

When we kicked some Indian "ass" that was called a great victory over the savages.  When they kicked our ass, say at Little Big Horn, it was called a massacre.

i wonder what the Indians called it.

those were indeed some savage times.

mikki

[TinyDancer]

The Lakota tribe called it The Battle of the Greasy Grass.

[Lostforkate]

Other perspective - 5 colonist where killed in the Boston Massacre.

[Lostforkate]

It might be fun to answer the thread's title, "why are you here americans?" from a general perspective, as opposed to why we are on line. I will start...

My english roots settled in the 1600s in Milford (or new milford?) Connecticut. They left England, (chalgrave area?) to avoid paying taxes, and religious freedom.  It is documented they obtained the land through barter, giving mirrors, and other trinkets to the natives.

My german roots, several lines, left Mechklenburg (sp?), Bremen, Hanover region during the 1870s when german nationalism was trumping principalities. They probably did not like Bismarck's politics.

My scottish roots? Don't know, they were probably bastard children.