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Judging the past on the standards of the present isn't a productive line of reasoning. Using past mistakes to rationalize further atrocities is beyond regressiv

Judging the past on the standards of the present isn't a productive line of reasoning. Using past mistakes to rationalize further atrocities is beyond regressive.

coldtea 6y ago
>Judging the past on the standards of the present isn't a productive line of reasoning. Well, the US still has Hawaii, Mexico, Puerto Rico, the Native Americans confined in reservations, and so on. They're not giving those back anytime soon. Those, plus, 3-4 invasions and tons of bombings of different places (sovereign countries) in the last 20 years alone. Plus a continuous such history throughtout the 20th century. Plus several proxy states, thousands of bases, and so on. That's not some "distant" past...
- QuesnayJr 6y ago
  Wait, you think Native Americans are confined in reservations? Like there's a big fence around the reservation, and they can't go out? Puerto Rico can have independence any time they want. They've had several referenda, and independence has yet to win.
  - coldtea 6y ago
    >Wait, you think Native Americans are confined in reservations? Like there's a big fence around the reservation, and they can't go out? Good one, no. I think that the lands they lived and had autonomy and their rule of law etc, have been taken from them as their ancestral places, and have been confined to the reservations. The fact that they can move "freely" to New York or the greater South Dakota are irrelevant. It's like someone coming over, taking your house, handing you over the "right" to live and rule over the backyard, but also giving you the "freedom" to rent/buy/live in a room on their own old house if they want. And that's with tons of shady behavior from the federal/state level even for them living there and their resources (e.g. when uranium was discovered in those places).
tzs 6y ago
True. On the other hand, many of those past behaviors that we see as wrong for today were a big part of how we got to our present high standard of living. Doing those bad things was cheaper and faster than less bad methods. If we are going to tell lower standard of living countries that they need to take the slower or more expensive routes to wealth instead of using the same bad ways we did, we should be using some of our wealth to subsidize those more expensive routes for them.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- stjohnswarts 6y ago
  So what happens next? 300 million people in the USA pull up stakes and move back to their (or ancestors) country of origin out of guilt?
Aunche 6y ago
It's not that the US government suddenly decided to be nicer to Native Americans. Rather, they're no longer deemed to be a threat to the United States and barely have anything that can be forcibly taken. In an alternate universe where Native Americans had connections with Islamic extremists, Native American reservations would closely resemble Xinjiang. Buildings getting their windows smashed in is enough to call the National Guard, so I can't imagine what real domestic tension would do to the US. 100 years from now, Xinjiang will most likely be peaceful when the last traditional Uyghurs pass away, and China will no longer have to force assimilation. That doesn't absolve China of its wrongdoings today.

Judging the past on the standards of the present isn't a productive line of reasoning. Using past mistakes to rationalize further atrocities is beyond regressive.

coldtea 6y ago

>Judging the past on the standards of the present isn't a productive line of reasoning. Well, the US still has Hawaii, Mexico, Puerto Rico, the Native Americans confined in reservations, and so on. They're not giving those back anytime soon. Those, plus, 3-4 invasions and tons of bombings of different places (sovereign countries) in the last 20 years alone. Plus a continuous such history throughtout the 20th century. Plus several proxy states, thousands of bases, and so on. That's not some "distant" past...

QuesnayJr 6y ago
Wait, you think Native Americans are confined in reservations? Like there's a big fence around the reservation, and they can't go out? Puerto Rico can have independence any time they want. They've had several referenda, and independence has yet to win.
- coldtea 6y ago
  >Wait, you think Native Americans are confined in reservations? Like there's a big fence around the reservation, and they can't go out? Good one, no. I think that the lands they lived and had autonomy and their rule of law etc, have been taken from them as their ancestral places, and have been confined to the reservations. The fact that they can move "freely" to New York or the greater South Dakota are irrelevant. It's like someone coming over, taking your house, handing you over the "right" to live and rule over the backyard, but also giving you the "freedom" to rent/buy/live in a room on their own old house if they want. And that's with tons of shady behavior from the federal/state level even for them living there and their resources (e.g. when uranium was discovered in those places).

tzs 6y ago

True. On the other hand, many of those past behaviors that we see as wrong for today were a big part of how we got to our present high standard of living. Doing those bad things was cheaper and faster than less bad methods. If we are going to tell lower standard of living countries that they need to take the slower or more expensive routes to wealth instead of using the same bad ways we did, we should be using some of our wealth to subsidize those more expensive routes for them.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
stjohnswarts 6y ago
So what happens next? 300 million people in the USA pull up stakes and move back to their (or ancestors) country of origin out of guilt?

Aunche 6y ago

It's not that the US government suddenly decided to be nicer to Native Americans. Rather, they're no longer deemed to be a threat to the United States and barely have anything that can be forcibly taken. In an alternate universe where Native Americans had connections with Islamic extremists, Native American reservations would closely resemble Xinjiang. Buildings getting their windows smashed in is enough to call the National Guard, so I can't imagine what real domestic tension would do to the US. 100 years from now, Xinjiang will most likely be peaceful when the last traditional Uyghurs pass away, and China will no longer have to force assimilation. That doesn't absolve China of its wrongdoings today.