Thursday, February 17, 2011

Evangelical assimilation

Bryan "Douche" Fischer just can't seem to let go of a certain topic. He thinks that the rest of them us just don't get it when it when it comes to the clash between native peoples and white Europeans. Here's his idea of how it should have gone down:
It’s arresting to think of how different the history of the American settlement and expansion could have been if the other indigenous peoples had followed Pocahontas’s example. She not only recognized the superiority of the God whom the colonists worshipped over the gods of her native people, she recognized the superiority (not the perfection) of their culture and adopted its patterns and language as her own.
You can just sense his blood racing at the thought. Fischer has the classic blind spot of ignorance about history, culture, and what constitutes "religion" in general even when he's thinking about his own. He has no more conception of the spiritual beliefs—much less the culture and values—of native Americans than they did of the white colonists. What he's really saying here is, "if only people who had for no rational reason stopped being themselves and become "us" it would have been so much better for us."

All it takes is an enormous and utterly vague sweep of the imagination and all of "our" problems with native Americans are solved, if only for a fleeting instant. It's easy for him to imagine this happening and impossible for him to grasp why it didn't, nay, couldn't happen.
The rotunda of the United States Capitol since 1840 (before political correctness began radically distorting American history) has featured a huge mural by John Gadsby Chapman which pictures the Christian baptism of Pocahontas.
"Political Correctness" is a shibboleth invented by you-know-fucking-who because they don't like their perennial lies being exposed. But fortunately for them, this story has a happy ending:
Early in 1617 Pocahontas and her party prepared to return to Virginia. However, she became ill while in the village at Gravesend. Pocahantas had developed a case of smallpox, an infectious and dangerous disease caused by a virus and leading to high fever. Pocahantas died from the disease and was buried in Gravesend Church.
I guess the Lord decided it was her time to go. Along with millions of other native Americans, thus making the rape of the Americas much simpler than Fischer's surprisingly naïve vision of assimilation, which would have left way too many undesirable, subhuman Christians around. Disease killed off the vast majority of them. The fool hasn't even thought of this yet. Maybe he'll get around to it in his next post.

1 comment:

ssslack said...

This mash of willful and directed ignorance from Dominionists and their talk radio counterparts may yet ferment into an armed insurrection.