Discussion about this post

User's avatar
Jim McMurtry's avatar

As always, James Pew boldly enters a frontier of rational thought that frightens away most other journalists. He writes: “It is false and damaging to see the indigenous of the Americas as anything more than the first waves of explorers who lived a primitive existence in a brutally harsh environment until contact with Europeans catapulted them into modern civilization.” He is the post Postmodernist. He is the Howard Cosell of our times, telling it like it is. There is no exceptionalism in indigenous history. It is the same history for us all, just further back for advanced societies.

Expand full comment
James Bouryiotis's avatar

The Rousseauist context is well-stated here--and of course it is not a unique attitude that has developed in response to the Indigenous question, but a redeployment of Rousseauist/Romantic thinking that has fuelled the Left ever since Marx. Romanticism, idealism and emotionalism all run together to bypass rationality in any and every area that "progressives" choose to rally behind. That's why arguing (rationally) against these "progressive" ideas is largely futile: those who advocate and agitate for them are simply not operating on the basis of rationality (though, perversely, their Theorists are hyper-rational when putting together their ideas--but that is only because they are working from an established emotional "argument" which has already "won over" those in power, and which is actually a moral argument based in the redeployment of Christian values: We are the victim or are helping the victim--i.e., Jesus--and are therefore "good", and you are the oppressive "Roman" and are, therefore, "bad". There is absolutely no counter to this argument, and it is in truth the unacknowledged root of all power strategies).

Expand full comment
8 more comments...

No posts