The audacity! Obama changes the name of Mt. Mckinley to Mt. Denali! Past is the past people!

[LuckyTrouble]

spurgeonryan said:

LuckyTrouble said:

Yeah, um, if you had read the article, you'd understand that we forcefully changed the name to begin with, and basically took a dump all over the heritage of the native Alaskan people for a president hardly anybody actually talks about. I mean, why did a mountain in Alaska need to pay tribute to a president from Ohio? Because it was something we hadn't forcefully seized in a show of imperialism yet?

To me, this is a long overdue move that shouldn't be even remotely controversial. And I swear, if people start using the slippery slope argument, they're getting a slap.

Ok, yeah...Saw that on the news. If we go back and change everything we "forcefully" changed or stole we would change everything. I don't need to be bullshitted.  According to your logic, we should be able to send African Americans back to African and be allowed to give them their land back that we stole them from. Or maybe we should just give California back to Mexico? Or lets not stop there! Lets force all South Americans to stop speaking Spanish and go back to their native language, since their rights were stolen from them long ago.

 

The past is the past. Sorry we had slaves, but reparations are over. Sorry we bombed Japan twice, but shit happens and their government was craxy back then, sorry Mexico lost half of America to us, but it is ours now.

I'm slapping you with my strong hand.

There is no slippery slope, and yeah, the history of US land taking is something we act proud of, but is really a history of subjugation, murder, bigotry, and hatred. I do agree that the past should be the past, but if we can do small things like changing a mountain name back to what it was originally to improve government relations between the US government and remaining native people today, I think we should. Of all the people the US government has forcefully wronged over the past 150 years, and the predecessors to our US government in the 150 years prior to that, the native people of North America have been wronged the worst. Because of that, relations with them have been, at best, tense, as we tiptoe around special legislation meant to give them some degree of autonomy, when really, it's the government equivalent of telling your child they're allowed to drive on their own.

In the long run, the US government does owe the remaining native people significantly in a way that can never really be paid back. If they're appeased by small gestures like this, you know, I'd say they're a damn good choice.

Nothing else is part of the discussion. This isn't about whether or not the US should feel guilty about its history, but rather, whether the US is interested in setting centuries of troubled relations at least partially right.