Apocalypse Then

washingtonpost.com ^ | February 26, 2006 | Joshua Foer

[tbird5]

A mysterious cataclysm almost brought about the end of the world some 250 million years ago

The last time Earth experienced a mass extinction, some 65 million years ago, at the end of the Cretaceous period, there is little doubt about what happened. A humongous meteor slammed into the Yucatan Peninsula, incinerating everything around for thousands of miles. Plumes of vaporized rock blanketed the planet in a layer of thick ash, blocking the sun and choking off photosynthesis. The entire global ecosystem virtually collapsed in a geological eye-blink.

Though the dinosaurs might find it crass to say so, the late Cretaceous cataclysm that did them in was a planetary bad hair day compared to the mass extinction that occurred some 250 million years ago, at the end of the Permian period. The Permian event is probably the closest that life on Earth ever came to being completely extinguished. Around 95 percent of marine species and 70 percent of terrestrial vertebrates were wiped out -- a greater percentage of the Earth's species than the next two largest mass extinctions combined. The break in the fossil record at the Permian boundary is so severe that 19th-century geologists saw it as evidence of two completely separate creations of life.

[JasonC]

Ruling the midwest isn't hard if you are the only one there. It has nothing to do with population. The population density of hunter-gatherer societies is tiny compared even to agricultural ones, let alone urbanized ones. Objective estimates of the total American Indian population north of the Rio Grande at date of first extensive contact with westerners run about 1.1 million. Some scholars get higher estimates in the range of 1.85 million to 3.8 million, but to do so they have to assume the population was higher than ever actually recorded but was then reduced by epidemics, before extensive contact with westerners.

The present American Indian population is 4.3 million, based on self IDs in census reports. Which undoubtedly underestimates the number of actual descendents of American Indians, because many are interbred with westerners at modest enough portions (1/8th, 1/16th, etc) that they do not so identity themselves. Only about 1/3rd of those who list no other identity group for themselves live in tribal lands, incidentally - almost all are entirely assimilated to the rest of the culture.

On vastly better lives, yes a median income of $27,000 a year in a free society with real justice and ready cooperation, abundant wealth, technology, food, and all creature comforts, is vastly better than scraping a meager existence from hunting while living in tents with no medicine beyond magical superstition and no justice beyond brazen torture by whoever it locally stronger today.

Watermelon greens opposed to modernity, capitalism, technology, and for that matter even agriculture and population, have systematically romanticised the American Indian past, in a tradition going back to Rosseau. And extending to desires to see civilization eliminated as a cancer to the planet and a reversion to hunter-gatherer existence, even though they know it would mean the demise of 99% of the human race - because anything else is dangerous to their precious wilderness. And that is commie nonsense every bit as murderous at bottom as Nazis or Stalinists. Yes murderous. Banning DDT alone has caused 500 million preventable human deaths from malaria since the early 1960s.

It is all utter rot. The American Indians were not noble, just savages. They were not helpless victims, they were torturers. After all the horrible aspects of their society have been eliminated by present justice, one can lament whatever nicer bits their stories, culture, folk traditions etc might have had in romantic fashion, that's fine as mere poetry. But if any one of them wants to actually live like that again, they have only to buy a ticket to New Guineau, and they can die from untreatable disease or starvation to their hearts content. They don't want to. A few just want to earn ideological points with leftist identity politicians by castigating their benefactors.

[Lochlainnach]

I often wonder what the world would be like if the Europeans' immune systems were as weak to the Native populations diseases as the Natives were to Europeans...and, on the other hand, why Africans seemed to have little problem with European diseases.

And kudos for being up so early...or late...

[Lochlainnach]

You should search someone out before branding them with a label.

I'm not saying they're noble...I, as you seem to, don't believe in the BS about the noble savage who roamed the earth free from society's laws and restrictions. But they were more than torturers. You seem so worried about Watermelon Greens that you've faded into dark.

The Indians were not merely victims. They fought against growing Western influence, and won many battles before, obviously, ultimately losing.

But don't throw this romanticized notion of Our real justice, or the onwards march of glorious Civilization. It sounds too English, c. 1880's. You have some interesting points, but a civilization shouldn't be judged by how many citizens it has...especially when that population is three million larger than it was, what, a hundred and fifty or sixty years ago.

...and, please, stay focused. Nazis? Stalinists? Using these references is usually solid proof of stretching an argument a too far. The Greens, the more sane ones, want to provide a balance against rampant industrialism, the kind that doesn't mind dumping waste near drinking water because it's cheaper, but some of them go too far in worshiping Mother Earth.

DDT? Where did that come from? I know Carson erroneously reported on findings about...was it quails or pheasants, and how many eggs hatched, but I fail to see how this connects in any way to any statement I've so far made?

[JasonC]

Greens are not innocent idealists, they are murdering ideologues who need to be utterly smashed.

Civilization does not get a margin of error to tolerate nonsense deliberately targeted at undermining and destroying it.

All cultures are equal nonsense, green nonsense, identity politics nonsense, hatred of America capitalism civilization etc, are rampant and real. They need to be seen, diagnosed, challenged directly, and utterly defeated. Not compromised with and granted half ass accomodation. You regurgiated some of the nonsense such ideologues spread. I called you on it. That is all.

[Lochlainnach]

You are raving. Called me on what? Denying the atrocities committed by colonialists. I don't care if you don't see Native populations as people deserving to live, but get off the soap box. I never said all cultures were equal, nor did I stand up for Greens, either. I never even mentioned Greens until referencing a man I know quite well who is not a murderous ideologue, or a tree hugging sandal wearing long hair who plays a guitar at a commune. He works in a capitalist system. If you didn't have your head so far up your ass, you could see that not everyone you disagree with is trying to destroy the world...you have a bad habit of transferring broad, half-serious statements into A credo of defense for anything you hate and want to rage against, which seems plenty.

The original statement, I assume, you chose to ramble about had to do with the development of "Western" names by an ironic misunderstanding. Yucatan. I never referenced merely American Indians, and if you'd have tried to open a dialogue before tirading everywhere, you would have understood that the Indians I was talking about in the post, I believe, you replied to, were the national Indians (Gandhi).

A few tips.

1)Learn to stay on point in an argument, thus your statement won't degrade into some rambling tirade against cut with half-developed ideas of evil.

2)Don't talk so much. Once you start rambling off topic you start to sound like a schizophrenic fascist.

[JasonC]

"I was more referring to the American Indian populations... The Sioux ruled most of the midwest... I never referenced merely American Indians."

So now you are merely lying.

And the people as such did not deserve extermination and weren't, they were assimilated, that is why they have more descendents now than they had population then. The culture did deserve elimination and was eliminated. Its innocuous aspects - the arts, stories, folk traditions, etc - survive just fine, because they were innocuous. Cutting off the tops of enemies heads and torturing captives for personal pleasure did not survive because they didn't deserve to, and plenty of individual practitioners of such pastimes didn't, either. But the peoples did, just fine.

In other words, once again, it is all a pack of lies that you apparently swallowed uncritically in grade school, and have never taken the time to examine. Then you pretend to correct others - am I high or just stupid? - when you don't know what you are talking about, yourself.

[Lochlainnach]

Listen, you are twisting whatever I say, so I'm done. I couldn't even possibly begin to understand what I'm lying about because we are obviously having two different conversations. You bring up random, far-reaching smears and I answer, and then you act like the tid bit I responded with (the Sioux ruled the Midwest) is some universal Commie point I'm making. You seem obsessed with proving how wrong I am about Indians out of a smart ass quote I made about egotistic Occidentals ironically naming sights.

Yes, when I hear what Yucatan meant in the native language, it makes me laugh about Westerners. It always will. But I live in America, where the Indians used to rule, so obviously I'm not crying too hard about living on "their" land. But give me a break about the head chopping off stuff; you could look at any society and point out the atrocities they've committed. The saving grace in the West is that, at least when we did the awful things we did, there seemed to be some good intention for society--mainly that society's freedom vis-a-vis expanding their market and territory (more true with the English and Germans and Dutch). But look what that did in Africa. It's not assimilation when the natives don't want it, or, more importantly, I believe, aren't ready for it...especially when you high tail and leave, for myriad of reasons, the land you have half developed, allowing whoever has the biggest guns to rule.

[JasonC]

You aren't arguing about jokes or names. "Nothing makes Europeans look dumber, other than the destruction of numerous civilizations...I was more referring to the American Indian populations...must be far inferior to a society that dumped industrial waste into the poorer working class' drinking water and living quarters... if it weren't so, we would have enslaved them instead of Africans...yeah!"

You are arguing that "Europeans" destroyed civilizations that are morally superior because Europeans are genocidal polluting slavers. When the only justice there is in the world is due to our power and arms, slavery was only abolished by our principles and our blood. The pollution nonsense is characteristic of green agitprop nonsense. You have swallowed a boatload of utter nonsense about your own civilization, you spread it around, and moreover you pretend anyone who doesn't agree with you about every lick of it is a crazy stupid fascist. Then you have the gall to get defensive about being called on it, and apparently don't even notice what about.

So you are an enemy pure and simple. Of mankind, of modern civilization, of justice, above all of truth. When you reflect on where you came by such opinions and how flimsy their basis actually is, and the collosal injustice you yourself are guilty of toward far better men who made possible every scrap of decency you have ever known, then maybe that will change. Entirely up to you. We've seen off far worse and we will defeat your whining PC idiocies.

[JasonC]

Oh and if any Indians want to, they can go to REI and buy a tent and a hatchet, and go hunt deer with whatever they can make of them. Or start a buffalo ranch if they prefer. You can farm corn on half an acre instead of letting ADM do it for you, and don't need to sweat the price if you are doing it yourself. But for some strange reason, people apparently prefer a house in sprawling Phoenix suburbs, a pick up truck, cable TV, and a job at Wal-Mart. The moral is that people being free doesn't mean every civilization survives, because voting with their feet, they will leave some ways of life as fast as they can.

[Lochlainnach]

Once again you are making an argument that I agree with in the main.

I'm going to say it one more time. Yucatan. That's funny to me. In a sick way, the British arrogance towards Indians (and everyone else in the world) is funny to me. There is a downside to Colonialism, as well as an upside. Europeans are not excused from the harsh brutalities you seem to claim only American Indians perpetrated. Look at the English's drive for freedom: beheaded their King(Charles I), Cromwell paves the way for the subjugation of Ireland, dies, and is eventually replaced with the executed king's son (Charles II) within an 11 year period...and everyone that supported the Regicide was arrested (supposedly).

Just because someone understands the darker moments of colonialism doesn't mean they want 99% of the population killed so that the survivors can go back and live in tents and hunt buffalo. Maybe Kevin Costner thinks that's cool, but I haven't used a hatchet since I was seven, and even then I probably wasn't proficient with it, although I'm more than proficient with an electric meat slicer.

[JasonC]

So am I high or just stupid?

Is the west guilty of the destruction of any number of noble previous societies, and is this the thing that makes them look worst of all, or not?

Are you done like you said, or will you hang around for years like old luggage, trying to get the last word in for your regurgitated Stalinist agitprop?

Will you continually raise red herrings in post after post, every one of them alleging some imaginary crime by some dead white European male, or will you ever admit your original slander was unjust? And that your arguing with those who told you so is likewise unjust?

Last, will you ever so the slightest graditude to your moral superiors who have provided the most just society in the history of the world and given it to you gratis, or will you continue endlessly to vomit your filth on them and call it high mindedness?

[Lochlainnach]

You're the worst kind of dumb, the kind that runs with a few facts. For the last time, I'm not defending the Native Americans. If you read these posts before sending messages back, you'd probably have realized this by now.

I hope you're done vomiting filth in my direction and forcing my hand.

Quit acting like your spitting some great truths. Indians make 27,000 a year. Wow. Way to use Google. I'm sorry that your head is so tightly wound that you can't take the good of history with the bad of history. But you're purified "history" is just as twisted as the "Commie" history I supposedly received from my life-long Republican High school history teachers.

[JasonC]

Are you or are you not attacking western civilization as supposedly immoral in its founding acts, the sins of colonialism slavery pollution etc?

Are you or are you not aware that there are live men running around the world today justifying the outright murder of any American on the basis that we are all little Eichmanns because of such things? And that every word of it is a lie, from start to finish?

Do you, or do you not, enjoy all of the benefits of modern justice and comfort, created by exactly the people you are castigating as supposedly immoral monsters? Are there any people in the world today still fighting for you to continue to possess those things, and is there anybody actively fighting against them, calling their power unjust, and seeking actively to overthrow it?

Are you so stupid you expect applause for attacking western civilization, and haven't noticed yet that those who think it wonderful to applaud attacking western civilization, would kill you in an instant for the imaginary crimes you are denouncing? If you think they'd stay their hand a split second because you denounce it all yourself, you are dreaming. You are just a useful idiot for them.

It isn't an academic dispute about jokes. Western civilization is under deliberate and systematic attack. Not metaphorical attack, real actually killing people attack, and not fifty years ago, this instant. And those attacks are justified, on exactly the specious history you are spouting. That is why those who got you to spout it invented the lies in the first place - to destroy western civilization.

Pick a side. Or you remain an idiot, but not an ally.

[Lochlainnach]

Ok. Listen, I understand why you're hot and bothered.

I'm not attacking West. Civilization for founding its outposts through the world. I am talking about the unnecessary brutalities of colonialism, which is not confined to the West (Japan's invasion of China during WWII was so vicious that the Nazi's were horrified) No matter what the cause, if you're barbaric, it comes back to haunt you. But fighting is not tantamount to barbarism.

The American characterization as "little Eichmanns" is ridiculously used as a 'fire-starter' line to galvanize those that already hate us. It's used against anyone who isn't weak militarily, and is an obvious emotional ploy. It's along the same lines as calling someone you don't agree with a Stalinist, or anti-American.

I'm not castigating people who fought for their freedom...and this is where you really irk me, because you make a sweeping generalization about freedom and justice while taking out of context quotes. Every generation of my family has served in the military dating back to the 1920's...we weren't here before that. But I'm not a flag waver. That doesn't make me a Stalinist.

I don't expect any applause from anyone, nor do I expect some ranting blogger to lump me in with terrorists because I brought up a point about colonial brutality. It happened, in many more places than the US (Germany, 1904 in Sudwestafrica, killing 100,000 Hereros); and serves as an example for US especially in our current undertaking in Iraq as what and what not to do. And we are doing a fine job, from the info I can gather, which seems to become harder and harder every day due to the bulk of news outlets focusing solely on the negative aspects of the war. But then again, this isn't straight colonialism. This is different.

But you go too wide with your generalization and that's what pisses me off. You took a blurb and extrapolated it into a diatribe against everything the West stands for. I'm not attacking Western Civ., I'm attacking the cruel aspects of colonialism, an "old" colonialism, that we've learned from. Nor were we having an in-depth discussion about geo-politics, but making half-assed quips about language difficulties...and then I said that I think the West looks bad, stupid, when we look back at the massacres, when we look at slavery in the South, which many our Fathers were against and could do little about. It's not just the West that looks bad, but the West is what we were speaking of.

I don't walk party lines, and I don't adhere to the love it or leave it b.s. But I am, as the saying goes, happy to be an American, want to stay an American, and want to die an American.

[JasonC]

"I'm not attacking West. Civilization for..."

Stop right there. Do you deny that you are attacking western civilization? Because you are. If you are just quibbling about the bill of indictment, rest assured it is a matter of utter indifference, and any reckless charge will be quite sufficient to saw off your own particular head.

Western civilization is not guilty of anything in the matter of colonialism, full stop. Colonialism was not and is not a crime, full stop. Americans did not exterminate the Indians, full stop. They are still here. Yes there were sporadic wars between Americans and various Indian nations throughout the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries. Most of them started by Indians, I might add, but finished by Americans. Indians no more deserve lionizing because they started wars with us they lost, than Al Qaida does.

There are no unnecessary brutalities involved, and certainly not exclusively on the winning side. Which was in absolutely every respect the more just side. Panties on heads do not justify car bombings, and grazing right disputes do not justify scalpings or burning people alive - both not rare, but entirely normal sports of Indian warfare.

The Indians were savages. Understand? No nuance, no excuses, they were merciless savages who tortured to death anybody they feeled like killing. They no more deserved their own states than Ted Bundy, when they made war. When they made peace, they were left their reservations and free to assimilate to the wider (just!) culture. Muslims who cut off heads for recruitment videos or blow up crowds of innocents are savages. No excuses, no noble resistence, no own way of life. Deserve nothing. Any Muslim who instead wants to live at peace is free to do so.

"No matter what the cause, if you're barbaric, it comes back to haunt you."

But I wasn't. Nor were we as a nation or as a civilization. It is all lies. No Indian ever received at US cavalry hands treatment worse than he would have given said cavalryman, or innocent settler for that matter, or each other. They were waging ruthless wars of extermination against each other for centuries before they caught sight of a European.

"The American characterization as "little Eichmanns" is ridiculously used as a 'fire-starter' line to galvanize those that already hate us."

It is a direct quote from a US history professor and fake Indian who said those in the towers deserved it because of what happened to the American Indians. Direct quote. Not some foreigner, a leftist ideologue with tenure on the faculty of a state university in Colorado. Understand?

"I'm not castigating people who fought for their freedom..."

Yes, you are. You are free instead of roasting over an American Indian's open fire because the US cavalry shot the bloody bastards until they couldn't take it any more and became peaceful. And you are castigating those who did so for not being neat or tidy enough for you in the process. And men right around you, today, are doing exactly the same thing to exactly the same set of men protecting us from exactly the same sort of ruthless barbarian. Saying it is as illegitimate now as it was then.

And here you show that you intend precisely that lesson, by equating Iraq with the US in the 19th century. And you peddle utter rot about things then, the same as our enemies peddle about us now. You don't think Al Jaz has wall to wall allegations available about our massacring innocents? Lies are easy, a dime a dozen. You believe the most vicious slanders about your own ancestors on pretenses at least as thin as theirs.

There is justice in the world where US arms have carried it, and where US arms have not carried it, there is no justice to be found. You think you've learned from history? You haven't learned. If you had, you would notice that the standards you want to apply only exist inside a bubble made by the very arms you are denouncing.

That bubble is called civilization, and what is outside it is called barbarism. And fighting for civilization against barbarism is not an "unnecessary brutality", it is not a crime, it is necessary and it is noble. And none of your utterly imaginary moral superiority to those who gave you your freedom has the slightest basis in reality.

"But you go too wide with your generalization"

Oh I go to wide in my generalization? You denounce western civilization as colonialist destroyers and polluters and slavers, but that isn't a wide generalization, no siree bob. Because obviously so ungrand and ignoble a thing can be plastered with all the world's spitballs for sport. But when it comes to Lochlainnach, great lord of morality and grand poohbah of the universe, why, heaven forbid that anyone should doubt his moral superiority just because he fires off a few baseless slanders.

The west doesn't look bad, you do.

[Lochlainnach]

Wow. You are definitely a fascist, idiot with a few facts, or just looking for an argument you want to twist. You've misquoted and misrepresented my words so many times that this isn't even worth a debate. Stop writing, because I won't read it. I'm sorry you feel so threatened by every fact that doesn't fit your belief that you can't even read clearly. Piss off, and I hope you fall under the thumb of someone as mean and twisted as yourself.

[JasonC]

I know more history of subjects you've never even heard of than you will ever know in your lifetime, and I'm educated to a level you can't even imagine. I am a conservative and a patriot and I eat fascists for breakfast. You've promised you'll give up and leave several times now and have stopped even trying to make rational arguments, but you still won't admit the slightest error, or leave. You show no graditude toward or understanding of the actual causes of your freedom or the justice you take for granted, and instead slander the memory of those who provided it for you.

When you first literally get down on your knees and beg forgiveness from the memory of fallen cavalrymen for your reckless slander, you can start humbling advancing your own opinions again. When you thank the British from the bottom of your heart for civilizing the world, you might be heard in a historical discussion of colonialism. When you humbly give thanks for the comfort and safety you have been showered with, without desert, you can again walk into the presence of your betters without shame. Your second hand PC filth, on the other hand, soils only the one hurling it.