[meteorite-list] Meteorite novels -gifts II

[Sterling K. Webb]

Hi, Doug, Martin, List,

    Operating on the principle that the longer I talk,
the more likely my chance to really annoy someone
becomes, I snipped a lot of sentences out of what
I originally wrote.

    The history of the USA up until 1900-1910 is best
described as a kind of "ongoing conflict," somewhat
short of formal war. I was going to say that, so no
disagreement there. In fact, the history of most nations
can be so described with some accuracy.

    Even with Martin's addition of a few hundred more
wars for Europe, there's a background of conflict that
generates them. The Serbian obsession with Kosovo,
its ancient "homeland," dates from a conquest late in
the first millennium AD of the people who still live there,
the Illyrians, or rather their descendents, who were there
before the first millennium BC, which makes the Serbian
"historical" claim look a little silly.

    But these ethnic histories solve nothing; one has only
to look at the Middle East to have that demonstrated.
Such arguments over who is exclusively entitled to the
"land" are endless, unending, and productive of nothing
but carnage, even between folks as completely and
totally indistinguishable as two Irishmen.

    United Statesians (so as to avoid the over-broad usage
of "Americans") mostly have what is so often called a
"naive" view: "Why doesn't everybody just forget about
settling the score for the past and try to work on solving
the problems that exist NOW?"

    The scorn of the sophisticated not withstanding, there
is a another name for this: SANITY. If the price of this
mental health is to be achieved by, say, modern Europeans,
acting as if THEY never had a war, being morally superior
to those so backward as to get stuck in conflicts, well,
sanity is worth that. That IS the idea -- to dump the past.
"History," said James Joyce a century ago, "is a nightmare
I'm trying to wake up from."

> does Europe have a "Battle of Little Bighorn", which...
> was the fight leading to the demise of a race of people?

    Duh. Yeah! And the Sioux (and all the other tribes
that participated in an INDIAN victory there) still exist,
no thanks to General Custer, just as Jews still exist, no
thanks to... We weren't going to drag up the past,
were we?

> if the Indians had caught on quicker...

    American natives caught on right away. They each
and all sat in council about what to do about the odd
newcomers from the very year they first showed up!
Every strategy you can imagine was tried. It's common-
place to present these centuries of native statecraft as
if they all sat there like idiots until the late 1800's, but
that notion is what is really demeaning. A delay of a
potential annihilation for centuries is a major achievement;
there are innumerable spots around the globe where
indigenous peoples have been destroyed in a decade
or three. As for uniting scores, even hundreds, of
nations with no common language, belief, or culture,
ask Tecumseh about how that worked out...

    The real "war" was epidemiological. The "Black
Death" made its way into North America ahead of the
Europeans, in the 15th century, and was followed
shortly by a flood of new European diseases in the
next century. Europeans, in person, were entering
devastated and de-populated lands everywhere in
the "New World," north and south. Not that they
weren't trying to kill the locals, just that their efforts
were puny compared to what the microbes (whose
existence both sides were unaware of) accomplished.
It's hard to slow down an invasion when your own
population is reduced by up to 90%!

    I'm sorry you were so upset by General Oglethorpe
and the Battle of Bloody Marsh, Doug, but I will remind
you that it took place after Jerkins carted his ear-in-a-jar
up to the British Parliment and got Walpole to declare
the Ear War. Had the fortunes of war fallen differently,
why, you would be walking the picturesque calles de
Neuvo Atlanta, capitol of Las Floridas del Norte, while
avoiding the camera-toting USian tourists in their garish
shirts and plastic flip-flops...

    I would love to "kick around" the causes of the
five-day "Football War" with you, Doug, but I think
that it breaks the tenuous chain that links Jenkins' ear
to a wet meteorite in a moat surrounded by mocking
Frenchmen!


Sterling K. Webb
------------------------------------------------------------------
And Bill just summed it up in three sentences better
than either of us, I think...
------------------------------------------------------------------
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "MexicoDoug" <MexicoDoug at aim.com>
To: "Sterling K. Webb" <sterling_k_webb at sbcglobal.net>
Cc: <meteorite-list at meteoritecentral.com>
Sent: Saturday, November 25, 2006 8:56 PM
Subject: Re: [meteorite-list] Meteorite novels -gifts II


> Sterling wrote:
> "1739-1740 War of Jenkins' Ear"
> "And [the USA's] certainly never managed to have a war as magnificently 
> named as "The War of Jenkins' Ear"! Now, that's how to name a war! Clear, 
> concise, and everybody knows exactly what it's all about."
>
> Hey Sterling,
>
> Hah! remember studies in Western Civ - between Physics and philosophy 
> class :-) -, really, the USA has darn well so managed to have a war 
> equally magnificient in name as the "War of Jenkin's Ear".
>
> It was called "The War of Jenkin's Ear"; Same Jenkins - and it wasn't 
> Jenkin's other ear.  Don't forget that Jenkin's ear was supposedly severed 
> in the Americas, and he was as English as George Washington at the time. 
> So I'd Argue that not only did the Americans participate in that war - 
> they also started it.  Not to mention the USA started the funiest named 
> war of all: The "Quasi-War" as thanks to the French right after the French 
> supported the American Independence effort.
>
> That particular Jenkin's Ear war in the 1740's is actually the same war 
> that was contracted by the European continent and spread to Bohemia and 
> resulted in the French tossing the Elbogen Iron meteorite down the to the 
> bottom of the Bohemian well where it rusted for 40 years.  It was a small 
> world back then, too.  In the USA, in the great American State of Georgia, 
> the military general who founded Georgia wasted no time to marshal his 
> proud Savannah compatriots and adventurous Charlestonians out of South 
> Carolina to pillage everything from Jacksonville, Florida to St. 
> Augustine, and that was only openers.
>
> Oh the United States has had oogles more practically nameless wars than 
> you give it credit for in those years.  They don't Google easily out of a 
> database like your nice European ones, but they were bloodier if Indians 
> are men considered equal in the eyes of the Creator.  You've got to 
> consider that in Europe all those wars were spread among 20-30 countries. 
> How many Indian real nations do you think the singular USA trounced in a 
> religious ferver to achieve its destiny?  The USA is a nation that was 
> perpetually at war on its own and its extended frontiers.  There are more 
> Indian wars alone, than Indian nations that yielded in defeat against the 
> cleansing of the continent from Atlantic to Pacific.  Take Florida, which 
> heaped war upon wars, genocide and forced relocation.  Or maybe Missouri - 
> if the Indians had caught on quicker, you might be living in a teepee 
> today, or at least your neighbor  :-)
>
> As for the lack of colorful names of wars in the USA even without 
> considering who started the War of Jenkin's Ear, does Europe have a 
> "Battle of Little Bighorn", which is a battle the war easily can assume 
> for the name, and really was the fight leading to the demise of a race of 
> people? If that isn't enough, how about the Gipper's "Star Wars", who has 
> one of those programs besides George Lucas?  And I am convinced that the 
> US participated as a silent partner in the infamous "Football War," as 
> well...
>
> Best wishes, Doug
> (no slights to any nation, no offense; we are who we are and I can live 
> with that just fine, until someone else tosses a spectacular iron in a 
> well to fester.  Guess the Evian was too depleted in minerals for their 
> taste)
>
>
> thread truncated...