Donald Trump suggests that Syrian and Muslim refugees should have to register with the police in the United States. Maybe he has a point: Native Americans would still be alive if they hadn’t allowed British terrorists to slip in alongside religious refugees.
Dangerous Refugees
Ted Rall
Ted Rall is a syndicated political cartoonist for Andrews McMeel Syndication and WhoWhatWhy.org and Counterpoint. He is a contributor to Centerclip and co-host of "The Final Countdown" talk show on Radio Sputnik. He is a graphic novelist and author of many books of art and prose, and an occasional war correspondent. He is, recently, the author of the graphic novel "2024: Revisited."
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What exactly, then, would Mr Trump’s point be in the light of history ? That one should not allow refugees carrying better arms than one possesses oneself onto one’s land ? On the other hand, how is one to stop them ?…
Henri
The overwhelming problem that America’s natives had with the European is that they really weren’t suspicious enough of those refugees (and actually, so many invading Euro-terrorists really were refugees from religious and cultural oppression). What the “Indians” should have done is — in a way — become the enemy.
If they’d have known then what they know now, they possibly could have promoted among themselves an “information gravytrain.” They would have taken the progressive technology of the invaders and turned it around. With the overabundance of resources aroundm they could have learned how to counterfeit it enough in order to make their own iron-based weapons of defense. Therefore, by about 75 to 100 years down the road after the first white invaders arrived, suddenly, the Indians would have been our chemical-weapons (guns use explosive chemicals) competitors, instead of remaining just scavengers of opportunity.
Unfortunately for the Indians, they were already so Balkanized by their own thousands of quasi-stone age years of unrecorded history that their persistent tribal differences simply couldn’t let them see the long-term picture.
DanD
Well, you have the Guns and Steel part covered, but really, wasn’t it the Germs bit that left half the Eastern Seaboard more of less uninhabited when the Europeans moved in with a vengeance. The natives were hosed regardless. Their only real hope would have been germ warfare in defense.
«Their only real hope would have been germ warfare in defense.» Well, Chronofugit, if the theory that it was in the so-called New World that Treponema pallidum was first transmitted to Europeans is true, they [i e, the natives of what later came to be known as the Americas] did indeed engage in defensive germ warfare. As history shows, however, it failed as a defence….
Henri
Well Henri, I am not sure. But In the light of “Trump’s history”, his point would be to simply do what he has been doing – saying what he thinks will resonate most with the ignorant, angry, racist base that supports him right now, hoping for more support. As far as “stopping anyone”, that’s a moot point when you consider that the US Visa waiver program is way, way more porous than any refugee restrictions would provide, and that our geographical borders both north and south are pretty poor too, for anyone really determined to get past them.
Trump wants to make decapitation and waterboarding respectable (again). His crowd loves it.
Mass man is mass murder.
… and they never think it through. They just take it on faith that it will only be used on bad guys, not they, themselves.
The founders gave us ‘innocent until proven guilty’ and ‘trial by jury of peers’ on purpose. They had first-hand knowledge of what happened without those protections.
Other than the possibility of personally getting waterboarded, I think the RW stance on these kinds of issues is hilarious. They’ll swear up & down that they don’t trust government – then they want to give it these kinds of powers.
«… I think the RW stance on these kinds of issues is hilarious.» I’m not sure, CrrazyH, that «hilarious» is le mot juste, but I see your point. Best, perhaps, to purchase a snorkel….
Henri
“They’ll swear up & down that they don’t trust government – then they want to give it these kinds of powers.”
Cognitive Dissonance Alert:
Heads may unexpectedly explode when the immovable brain meets the irresistible idea.
Heck, do you think the values and culture of the Europeans was at odds with that of the Indians, and go down that road? – or was it that the Europeans did not see themselves as refugees, but instead more as explorers and did not see the Indians as as anywhere equal, even as humans? Did the Europeans feel a sort of manifest destiny to take what they wanted? Still, it is ironic that if the Indians, even as scattered tribes, had really thought of the situation as we are today with the Islamic refugees, that things might have been very different.
«… our geographical borders both north and south are pretty poor too, for anyone really determined to get past them.» I understand Mr Trump, with his (somewhat chequered) background in real estate, is interested in getting into the wall-building business….
Henri
Native American Indians didn’t like the smell of the bathing adverse Europeans.
They would have been better off pushing the newcomers back into the ocean than politely moving away from the bad smell.
But in being human they imagined the world was large enough for all live in.
> But in being human they imagined the world was large enough for all live in.
Hundreds of years later we *still* haven’t learned that it doesn’t work that way.
“Native Americans would still be alive…” WE ARE STILL ALIVE. As a Native person, it never ceases to shock me that the myth of the “vanishing Indian” is still alive and well. I know the author meant well but perpetuating this falsehood that Natives are extinct does more harm than good. He should change it to “Native Americans would be more than 1% of the population if they hadn’t allowed British terrorists to slip in alongside British refugees.”
Oop, you’re right – Ted usually doesn’t make that kind of mistake.
Indeed. Of course, it should be pointed out that British terrorists were not the only European terrorists who came to the so-called New World….
Henri