Columbus was a mass murdering tyrant
Not the man of character portrayed in this film.
That is all.
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MovieChat Forums > 1492: Conquest of Paradise (1992) Discussion > Columbus was a mass murdering tyrant
The Indians were not the peaceful hippies the libs like to paint them as. The majority of them were tribes based on war that were constantly fighting for more land. Europeans came and won the land. In today's standard its wrong but its subjective. The majority of what is now the US wasn't even populated and history points to a black death type destruction that happened before the Europeans got to America. There were atrocities done on both sides just because one side won doesn't mean they should feel guilty because they did. The notion that they still have reservations proves that some civility was used.
share"There were atrocities done on both sides just because one side won doesn't mean they should feel guilty because they did. "
THAT kind of thinking is the problem.
No one's saying people should feel "guilty". But there's a difference between not feeling guilty about things that happened centuries before you were born, and mythologizing the past beyond recognition in order to feel good about your country.
People just can't understand that. You cannot build your understanding of history on myths and lies. That's just an immature vision of the past and, no matter what people say about the need for cohesion and "national myths"... Building your identity on lies cannot be good.
In the same way that when you grow up, you stop thinking your parents are right about everything, but you still love them (hopefully)... a mature citizen should be able to love his country without feeling the need to lie about its past, or "sugar-coat" history in a mix of denial and dishonest rationalizations.
Acknowledging that Colombus was just not a very nice man, EVEN for his times, shouldn't be that hard. Acknowledging that saying he "discovered" a continent, is racist because it's a eurocentric perspective that mentally wipes out the existence of all the indigenous peoples who were there at the time, is just a matter of common sense.
But for some reason, as you can see from reading these boards, people love their myths.
That's the paradox, actually : the same people who will claim that "we should not be held responsible for the past" because it happened so long ago, "the times were different" and so on... will be the same who fight like mad to defend myths that are actually trying to provide moral justifications for their country's past.