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Two days ago, I came across some ex-post facto morality from NBC News in my YouTube feed. Here’s the video:
Now, I’m not saying European-on-Indian cruelty isn’t news. It is. But why is it news in the days leading up to Thanksgiving? And why is the news regarding one of mankind’s most tragic clash of civilizations so one-sided? How come, in the days prior to Thanksgiving, we never see stories about Indian-on-European cruelty?
Do yourself a favor and read Empire of the Summer Moon. It will disabuse you of any notion that American Indians were the embodiment of virtue and benevolence during America’s pioneering days.
Here, for example, is how the Comanches treated pregnant Rachel Plummer, who was captured in a raid on a white settlement and reduced to slavery:
In October 1836 [Rachel] gave birth to her second son. She knew immediately that the child was in danger. She spoke the Comanche language well enough to, as she put it, “expostulate with my mistress to advise me what to do to save my child.” To no avail. Her master thought the infant too much trouble, and feeding him meant that Rachel was not able to work full-time. One morning, when the baby was seven weeks old, half a dozen men came. While several of them held Rachel, one of them strangled the baby, then handed him to her. When he showed signs of life, they took him again, this time tying a rope around his neck and dragging him through prickly pear cactus, and eventually dragged him behind a horse around a hundred-yard circuit. “My little innocent one was not only dead, but literally torn to pieces,” wrote Rachel.
Here is how the Comanches treated a rival Indian tribe called the Tonkawas:
According to the account of a former child captive named Herman Lehmann, who later became a full-fledged warrior, a group of Comanches had attacked some Tonkawa Indians, in their camp. They had killed some of them and run off the rest. In the abandoned camp, they found some meat roasting in the fire. It turned out to be the leg of a Comanche. The Tonkawas, known for their cannibalism, had been preparing a feast. This sent the Comanches into a fury of vengeance, and they pursued the Tonkawas. A fierce battle followed, in which eight Comanches were killed and forty were wounded. Still, they were victorious, and now, in the battle’s aftermath, they turned to deal with the enemy’s wounded and dying. “A great many were gasping for water,” wrote Lehmann, who was there,
but we heeded not their pleadings. We scalped them, amputated their arms, cut off their legs, cut out their tongues, and threw their mangled bodies and limbs upon their own campfire, put on more brushwood and piled the living, dying and dead Tonkawas on the fire. Some of them were able to flinch and work as worms, and some were able to speak and plead for mercy. We piled them up, put on more wood, and danced around in great glee as we saw the grease and blood run from their bodies, and were delighted to see them swell up and hear the hide pop as it would burst in the fire.
Finally, one more account of a Comanche atrocity from Empire of the Summer Moon:
On November 26, a group of seventeen braves from Nocona’s force arrived at the Sherman home. The Shermans were having dinner at the time. The Indians entered the cabin, actually shook hands with the family, then asked for something to eat. The Shermans, nervous and unsure what was happening, gave the Indians their table. Once they had eaten, the Indians turned the family out, though with continuing professions of goodwill. “Vamoose,” they said. “No hurt, vamoose.” The Shermans’ seven-year-old son fled and hid himself. The others got away as fast as they could, stumbling in the driving rain across their fields toward a nearby farm.
They weren’t fast enough. Half a mile from their house, the Indians reappeared. Now they seized Martha, who was nine months pregnant. While Ezra and his two children continued on, they dragged Martha back to a point about two hundred yards from the cabin. There she was gang-raped. When they were finished, they shot several arrows into her and then did something that was unusually cruel, even for them. They scalped her alive by making deep cuts below her ears and, in effect, peeling the top of her head entirely off. As she later explained, this was difficult for the Indians to do, and took a long time to accomplish. Bleeding, she managed to drag herself back inside her house, which the heavy rain had prevented the Indians from burning, where her husband found her. She lived for four days, during which time she was coherent enough to tell the story to her neighbors. She gave birth to a still-born infant. She probably died of peritonitis: Comanches knew what it was and often aimed their arrows at a victim’s navel.
The Twisted Game
Okay, here’s the twisted game that our Woke Overlords play:
They take a crime that everyone’s guilty of, or they define a crime in such a way that makes everyone guilty, and then they only prosecute the people they don’t like.
A great example of this is the “crime” of privilege, which our Woke Overlords define as any unearned advantage a person receives. And because this definition of privilege makes no distinction between legitimate unearned advantages (e.g., being born with great looks) and illegitimate unearned advantages (e.g., owning a business that receives tax breaks denied to the competition), everyone is guilty of having some form of privilege. But our Woke Overlords never affix a Scarlet P on a non-white person. Their indignation for unearned advantages is only reserved for the unearned advantages of white people. So the white person who was born into a middle-class two-parent family is shamed, and the poorly-qualified black person* who gains admission to an elite college via affirmative action is given a pass.
* Quick aside: By poorly-qualified black person, I mean a black person who is poorly qualified relative to his or her competition. A black person who gets 650 to 680 and the math section of the SAT is a very capable person. But that score would easily put him or her in the bottom one percent of the freshmen class if he or she were accepted to MIT, Cal-Tech, or any other elite engineering school.
Another great example of this twisted game is the exercise of ex-post facto morality described above. No past civilization, country, tribe, race, or ethnicity looks particularly good when judged by today’s moral standards. But our Woke Overlords never use ex-post facto morality to demean or humble non-white civilizations, countries, and groups. Ex-post facto morality is only reserved for whitey. So now that Thanksgiving is upon us, our Woke Overlords will make sure that we are treated to plenty of stories of European-on-Indian cruelty. When it comes to including American Indians in the ex-post facto morality game, however, you can forget about it. Our Woke Overlords have no interest in treating us to stories of Indian-on-European cruelty, Sitting Bull’s take on multiculturalism (did he dedicate a month to celebrating the achievements of Europeans?), Crazy Horse’s thoughts on the great European migration to the Western Hemisphere (was he for or against undocumented migrants?), or Geronimo’s stance on LGBTQIA+ rights (did he have any gay or transgender tribesmen in positions of power?).
Final Thoughts
Okay, groovy freedomist, that’s all I got. Thanksgiving is a glorious holiday that brings the family together and promotes the spiritual medicine of gratitude. Don’t let our twisted Woke Overlords ruin it for you with their twisted game of ex-post facto morality. Peace.