RANT NINE

Columbus Day?

On this of all holidays we, as Americans, have a wonderful opportunity to ponder what, whom and why we celebrate the people and events we hold so dear to our hearts.  

Since 1971 Columbus Day has been declared a national holiday. Up until then, and for over two hundred years, Christopher Columbus has been set high on the list of American heroes.  

In 1492, history has it, Columbus set out from Spain with three main goals.  

1) Find a western, shorter route to the Far East to improve trade. In this he utterly fails.
2) Discover limitless supplies of gold for Spain and her queen. In this he utterly fails, as well.
3) Bring Christianity to the peoples beyond the shores of Europe. This he did, albeit through the spreading of disease, including sexually transmitted diseases, enslaving natives for use in Europe and murder through warfare against any community that resisted sexual molestation or enslavement. Christopher Columbus did manage to completely annihilate an entire population of island people within fifty years, leaving not one pure-blooded tribesman to survive.  

Having totally, utterly and thoroughly failed at achieving his three stated goals, we celebrate him for a fourth fabricated reason. His discovery of America is his claim to fame. Of course the 100 million non-Caucasian natives living here for generations have to be discounted. The fact that he did not discover America, did not want to discover America and had no intention of discovering America should have no bearing on his achievement either.  

Knowing our history helps us understand ourselves better, don't you think?  

Now that I think of it, all this murderous, STD-ridden failure did was cause the banks to be closed, which is a nasty surprise first thing Monday morning and a bitch the next morning trying to get into a bank.  

Columbus Day. Are you #*!$%^#& kidding me?