In fourteen hundred ninety-two
Columbus sailed the ocean blue.He had three ships and left from Spain;
He sailed through sunshine, wind and rain.He sailed by night; he sailed by day;
He used the stars to find his way.A compass also helped him know
How to find the way to go……
If you are old AF, you learned that poem (or some variation) in elementary school to celebrate Christopher Columbus’s discovery of the New World. If you attended a government school post-1993, you celebrated Indigenous People’s Day because Ol’ Chris was a “murderous, enslaving, sexual-abusing, treacherous colonizer” of the poor, put-upon Taino people. Thank all y’all who hate White European types. Even though Chris was debatably White.
Christopher was born Christofaro Colombo was born in Geneoa in 1451 and died in Spain in 1506. Recently, there are claims that Christofaro Colombo was a Sephardic Jew. These claims will probably be debunked soon, according to El Pais:
“The documentary rushes to a conclusion that Christopher Columbus was a Sephardic Jew originally from the Spanish Levant. This hypothesis is, to say the least, surprising: there is no Y chromosome that can be uniquely defined as Sephardic-Jewish,” argues Salas. “Even if all of an individual’s DNA were recovered, it would still be impossible to reach definitive conclusions about his or her exact geographic origin.
Okay, then, right. Importantly, why do people get their knickers in a knot over Christofaro Columbo and Indigenous Persons anyways? I am Scots/Irish. My ancestors were conquered by the Vikings (among others) and the Vikings established great port cities. That ended up good. The Vikings raped and pillaged. That’s frowned on today.
The answer is not as much is known about the original Scots and Irish and their history was not exploited. The Indigenous Peoples of the Americas were not completely wiped out and they got great Public Relations Representation in the 60’s and 70’s. Cristopher Columbus got shoved aside. For instance, Nancy Pelosi’s Father Mayor Tommy D’Alesandro dedicated the statue of Columbus in Baltimore as young Nancy watched. Nearly 40 years later, the statue was torn down and tossed in the Baltimore harbor. Nancy Pelosi’s reaction to the statue being torn down:
Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) on Thursday said “people will do what they do” in response to a question about the toppling of a statue of Christopher Columbus in Baltimore, adding that if a community doesn’t want a statue, “the statue shouldn’t be there.”
At her press conference, Pelosi, who is from Baltimore, said she was “not one of those people who is wedded to a, ‘Oh, a statue of somebody someplace is an important thing.’”
“I don’t – again, if the community doesn’t want the statue, the statue shouldn’t be there,” she added.
Pelosi said the Columbus statue being toppled did not “diminish my pride in my Italian American heritage and the fact that it was a country discovered by an Italian and named for an Italian, Amerigo Vespucci. So I have that pride, but I don’t care that much about statues.”
Nancy is a woman of such great sensibilities.
Kamala Harris is down with Indigenous People’s Day:
The Trump campaign slammed Vice President Kamala Harris for allegedly wanting to “cancel American traditions,” citing her 2019 comments supporting efforts to rename Columbus Day to Indigenous People’s Day.
“Kamala Harris is your stereotypical leftist. Not only does she want to raise taxes and defund the police – she also wants to cancel American traditions like Columbus Day,” Trump campaign national press secretary Karoline Leavitt exclusively told Fox News Digital.
“President Trump will make sure Christopher Columbus’ great legacy is honored and protect this holiday from radical leftists who want to erase our nation’s history like Kamala Harris.”
Leavitt was referring to Harris’ 2019 comments when she spoke to voters in New Hampshire about a month after launching her ultimately failed 2020 bid for the White House.
“Count me in on support,” Harris told a voter when asked if she supports renaming Columbus Day “Indigenous People’s Day,” footage of the event shows.
In 2021, Kamala did a video for Indigenous People’s Day:
Kamala Harris on Columbus Day:
"European explorers ushered in a wave of devastation, violence, stealing land, and widespread disease" pic.twitter.com/3XijDf5Ldo
— End Wokeness (@EndWokeness) October 14, 2024
“Violence?” because those Indigenous People’s were ever so peaceful and caring of their own people:
“Stolen Lands?” were more commonly know worldwide as “Conquered Lands”. On every continent, lands were conquered, people were enslaved or wiped out, their stories often gone forever.
Was Christopher Columbus a “pussy-footing, tea drinker”? No. He was a man of his times. He did bad things. He also opened up trade routes and the idea of migration to the new world. The old world was hidebound. The New World livened things up.
The Indigenous Peoples are just the latest people in a locale because they wiped out the people there before. They have some wisdom and some superstition:
On this #IndigenousPeoplesDay, we celebrate the deep-rooted wisdom and traditions of Indigenous peoples, particularly those of the Pacific Islands, who have long safeguarded our oceans. https://t.co/aJFgGmiT9i
— Living Oceans (@LivingOceansFdn) October 14, 2024
Conquering and subjugation are world history for millennia. I take the Tony Soprano approach to Christopher Columbus:
Basta!
Featured Image: Columbus Returning to Queen Isabella/wikimedia commons.org/cropped//Public Domain/Inset:Darleen Click for Victory Girls
Que says: Ryan McBeth, who authors one of my favorite Substack accounts, once said in a video (and I’m paraphrasing here): “You may not like it, but the truth is that you’re alive today only because thousands of years ago your tribe wiped out another tribe.” Harsh, but true. Anyone who has had their DNA mapped through Ancestry or other sites can attest to that.
Toni Williams says: Why don’t people understand that?
GWB says: Indigenous peoples, particularly those of the Pacific Islands, who have long safeguarded our oceans.
WTH? When have Pacific Islanders ever safeguarded our oceans? At least, before modern times when they, say, joined the US Navy? From whom did they protect those oceans, and how did they do so? In their dugout outrigger canoes? By waving sharktooth-edged war clubs at sailing ships with cannon?
You people say s**t like this without any thought given to meaning of your words and whether or not it well exceeds hyperbole and moves into the realm of fantasy. THIS is why y’all need to be stripped of your ability to “educate” anyone.
GWB says: Oh, and let me just say that I have no problem celebrating Indigenous People’s Day, on two conditions:
1) It doesn’t replace any other holiday, or diminish our celebration of other’s greatness, and
2) I’m allowed to celebrate by cutting the still-beating heart out of my neighbors’ chests and sacrifice them in the fire (for certain values of “neighbor”).
Toni Williams says: Your conditions are acceptable.
Ken says: Should be noted that after the Columbus statue was tossed into Baltimore’s Inner Harber, the local Italian “social” club quietly retrieved it and stored it away. Baltimore’s Little Italy neighborhood is very near the statue’s prior location. I’m sure Pelosi and her father had linguini and clam sauce more than once at one of Little Italy’s incredible restaurants!
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