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Comment by purerandomness | Hacker News Reader

> Your joke

I'm not amused. Are you amused?

> They created a new society on the land.

I see my message didn't quite get through.

You're almost there however. Think one step further: What stops the next "immigrants" from renaming your cute "society" that you currently have there, and declare a proper, civilized society, with a proper culture for once?

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Nothing! If a superior civilization comes to America and wipes it out and builds a new society in its place, then those people will also be “settlers” not “immigrants.”

Do you mean the kind of superior civilization that progressed from chattel slavery to being run by a cabal of pedophiles?

The kind that invented the internet and the airplane and the microchip and put a man on the moon.

> The kind that invented the internet

Seriously did not expect a MiniTel reference here. Vive Le France‽

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minitel

ARPAnet had already been out a decade by then. TCP/IP was standardized the same year MiniTel came out.

I'm worried about your use of "superior" here but yeah the rest of that is right.

Why? It is demonstrably superior. If it wasn’t we wouldn’t be debating whether it’s immoral to not let everyone else on the planet in.

The only real advantage of European settlers was smallpox immunity. If not for that the history could move in a very different direction.

This entire thread is filled with people willfully lying about history like you are right now. It’s incredible to see. I can’t tell if it’s because this is a simple is vs ought distinction and you are having a hard to reconciling your ought with the is.

Eh. I wouldn't say only but it was the biggest advantage. The Europeans brought better tech and bad racism along with the terrible diseases. If they had established trade without disasters we might have seen the natives be very successful too.

In his last book “The Dawn of Everything” David Graeber very convincingly argued that the idea of modern democracy came from Indian tribes in Northern America.

And it is also interesting how easily European countries went back to authoritarian or even totalitarian states given the opportunity. Yet US is more resilient and one explanation is subtle influence of Indian culture that still affects US.

As for technological advantage of Europe then 3000 years ago Ancient Egypt was way more advanced than Europe. 1000 years ago Arabic countries were more advance and 500 years ago China was more advanced. And Europe was lucky that China was focused on internal problems and not territorial expansion.

I think you have to be on drugs to think that American democracy came from Indian tribes. I grew up in the Midwest, so this mirror universe explanation for the origins of my country isn’t going to work on me.

>1000 years ago Arabic countries were more advance [sic] and 500 years ago China was more advanced.

Yeah real life isn’t your science fiction fantasy. None of this is true. I am aghast at how ostensibly smart people have, just in the last couple years, adopted a view of history that is completely at odds with the written record.

Ah, that explains the Israeli "settlers" in Gaza.

I think it’s telling that you have the opinion that a superior civilization would wipe out another at all.

> Think one step further: What stops the next "immigrants" from renaming your cute "society" that you currently have there, and declare a proper, civilized society, with a proper culture for once?

Nothing, but it is our right, as Trump does, to call that an invasion and forcibly reject it.

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