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Comment by jqm | Hacker News Reader

I live in the US but I'm not taking credit for the smallpox thing. That was the doing of a few people at most, and I'm not one of them. I don't think it was even official policy, so my great grandfathers vote can't be implicated either.

I get very tired of the collective American guilt trip. I don't see how it does anyone any good.

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Read "American Holocaust" The Conquest of the New World by David Stannard. You will have a different conception of that period of history. After reading it I was convinced there was an official policy of wiping out the native inhabitants, which was largely successful. The smallpox may have been accidental, but beyond that it was genocide, in both South and North America.

Tribes wiped each other out from time to time. Native tribes did at as well as pale tribes coming over in boats.

It's awful. I don't think people should do it anymore. But "native inhabitants" isn't a uniform group any more than "white men". And both groups have had their share of unsavory individuals.

They fought but not with the degree of murderous violence that Europeans had, and native Americans were immediately enslaved, called subhuman, savaged etc and were deliberately exterminated without trying to hide the fact. Like I said I thought it was an exaggeration but having read the book, it changed my perspective on history.

When the first European explorers arrived in South America, there was a massive and advanced civilisation there. Far greater and larger than I ever thought. Massive cities were destroyed, some of them engineering marvels. The enslavement and murder of native Americans continued there for centuries.

Not with the degree of murderous violence?

You are aware of what the Aztecs (for instance) did with enslaved tribes?

They may have been brutal but I think it was exceeded by the scale of the European brutality. Are you aware of what Europeans did with captured natives? Made them work in silver mines in horrendous conditions, bound together with irons around their necks. Then if one fell down a mountain the whole gang did.

Even if it was official policy, it would have been official policy of the British government. The United States did not exist at the time of the weaponization of smallpox at Fort Pitt. Jeffrey Amherst, the Commander-in-Chief in North America at the time, was never on the colonies' side during the Revolutionary War.

English government, not British. I think? Don't imagine Scotland and Wales had much say.

What collective American guilt trip

But it may give you a different perspective as to how to deal with the problems of native Americans and disadvantaged communities today.

How so? These things happened a long time ago. At some point, we need to stop blaming all of their woes on decades or century old treatment.

Most immigrants were used as essentially slave labor at some point. The Chinese, for instance, were used to build the railroads in the US. The Italians and Irish were also treated poorly for decades.

I doubt it.

Seriously... this whole "you are a white man so you share blame for anything a white man ever did" is absolutely stupid.

Nor does collective national pride do net good.

How about Japan.

Net good?

Or the collective not my issue I wasn't alive pass the buck.

So what I got a full deck of cards and you got less. It wasn't my system so deal with it and don't make me own my advantage.

It's possible to affect positive change without being burdened by personal or historical guilt.

Yeah that worked so well US certainly doesn't have people caring about our past and trying to kill us.

If you want everyone to love you, be a kitten.

There isn't a country or a demographic in the world that isn't hated by someone.

Switzerland? New Zealand?

> Switzerland?

I'd wager that some people are pretty unhappy with their behavior during World War II.

> New Zealand?

I've got nothin'.

I mean, we're also trying to kill them. All this anger didn't come from nowhere.

I fully own all of my advantages and make a conscious decision not to share any of them with you, because you're an asshole.

I get the feeling that this is was the attitude take by the people who did all those bad things in the first place. Maybe they would have explained it as 'what god gave them'.

But that's neither here nor there - it's either your system now, to try and make things more equitable for the next people to come along, or you are part of what's keeping the unjust system in place.

So, sure, there's no reason to feel guilty for whatever anyone did, whenever they did it, and however much DNA you share with them. But, what >you< do to fix it, well, that is your responsibility, and your guilt if you do not.

It's not my responsibility to "fix" things that can't be fixed like greed and hate and violence from centuries ago. I don't believe there is a governmental social program that can fix it either.

The only thing I can do is try my best to be a good and fair and kind person in the time I'm in now. I can't atone for what assholes centuries ago did even if I wanted to.

This collective blame assignment is the same kind of evil thinking that led to someone trying to wipe out a race in the first place.

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