Nice day, today, temperature in the seventies, and a fitting close to the last day of the last version of summer. By the way, it is also Columbus Day, from Brian Regal, Star-Ledger:
Our attitudes about Columbus have changed over the years. He has gone from great and intrepid “Admiral of the Ocean Sea,” braving unknown terrors to lead the way to a New World, to a conniving scoundrel intent on enslaving the native people, and back again. Regardless of how one feels about Columbus — hero or villain — his voyages cannot be dismissed as unimportant. Unlike all who came before him, Columbus opened a floodgate of follow-on explorers, mercenaries and, eventually, permanent settlers. In the North, this meant a horde of people made up in various parts by schemers, dreamers, religious fanatics, the genuinely pious, escapees from turmoil, war refugees and other lost souls looking for a way out. They all helped create the United States.
[…]
Columbus saw his status rise beyond earlier explorers, however, because he filled the young nation’s need for an individual hero. He ticked all the right boxes: European, Christian and male.
Why are what we might call indigenous American people, labeled as Indians? Columbus thought that he had sailed to India. and applied what he thought to be an appropriate description. Sadly, over five hundred years latter, nobody has yet offered a better one. Sobeit.
It is interesting, as Regal points out, that while nothing new has been learned about Columbus, and indeed never will, attitudes concerning Columbus has changed radically.
Did Columbus discover American? Close enough. We know he got here and nobody has had to re-discover the continent.
So Columbus was evil because he was a European, Christian and male. Sadly, for Mrs. Clinton, she is not quite old enough to have discovered the continent. There simply is no non-European, non-Christian or non-Male who fills the bill. So Columbus is credited with, of blamed for, the discovery of American. Nobody has yet offered a better one. Sobeit.
