Hello, Life: Goodbye, Columbus! Celebrating One of History's Most Famous Failures!

 

October 12 is Columbus Day.

Or at least it used to be, because that was the day he "discovered" America in 1492.

This year, it is on Monday, October 9.

It is a Monday, so federal, state and local government agencies can have a three-day weekend.

Schools will be closed, as well.

It is a federal holiday, so everyone else has to work that day and everything other than government will be open.

The purpose of Columbus Day is to "honor" the man who proved that the Earth wasn't flat and discovered America in the process.

Which, of course, wasn't the case.

The common myths regarding Columbus have been depicted in a Bugs Bunny cartoon where Columbus appeals to a Mae Westian version of Queen Isabel of Castille and a stereotypical Hispanic King Fernando of Aragon for ships to prove that the world wasn't flat.

While funny as Hell, none of it is true.

A little background is necessary here.

Sixteen hundred years previously, Eratosthenes of Cyrene understood that the Earth was spherical in shape and calculated the circumference of Earth.

He was off by only 250 miles!

And since that time mariners knew that the Earth was not flat, even if most Europeans in their ignorance persisted in the belief that the world was flat, encouraged in that belief by religious fundamentalists who would cite passages in Christian religious texts referring to the four corners of the Earth.

Furthermore, early in the fifteenth century, Portugal's Prince Henry (the Navigator) founded a school for mariners and developed more tools for sailors to better navigate the open seas, resulting in Portugal's reaching the Indies and enriching themselves on the spice trade, since the conquest of the Near-East by the Ottomans cut off that lucrative business from Western Europe.

That was the real reason Isabel (excluding Fernando) was interested in Columbus's proposal that by sailing West he would be able to reach the Indies and cut into Portugals virtual monopoly on trade with that region.

Unfortunately, Columbus miscalculated on the actual size of Earth, believing it to be much smaller in diameter than it was by nearly ten thousand miles which is why he was scoffed at by his contemporaries who knew Eratosthenes's calculations to be almost perfect.

Christopher Columbus was presumably born in Genoa, a city-state republic that had a trading empire in the Eastern Mediterranean that had seen better days, which is why he cast about looking for patronage from other countries, but didn't find too many takers.

Until 1492.

That was the year that Isabel finally conquered Grenada, the last Moorish kingdom in southern Spain, which made the Queen of Castille a legend in her own time, even though incessant years of warfare bankrupted Castille.

Just as an interesting historical curiosity, while modern historians refer to her as Queen Isabella, she was never referred to as such by her contemporaries. She always signed herself as "I, the Queen," or as "Ysabel."

That was the year that Isabel also promised freedom of worship to the Moors, upon which she promptly reneged.

That was the year she expelled the Jews from Spain unless they converted to Christianity.

That was the year she instituted the "Spanish Inquisition" to root out heresy and first only applied it to Conversos but then applied it to anyone who questioned orthodox Christian (meaning Roman Catholic) teachings, which resulted in a form of thought control that stifled intellectual creativity in Spain for nearly 500 years.

That was also the year that Isabel met with Columbus.

The idea of cutting into Portugal's trade appealed to her in order to fill her empty treasury.

Convincing Isabel that sailing west was a shorter route to the Indies, despite all of the evidence, to the contrary, Columbus finally got the royal patronage he had sought for years.

Sort of.

Given the chaotic state of Castilian finances after the Moorish wars, the best she could provide Columbus with were three small ships, the Pinta, Nina and Santa Maria.

Charging Columbus with bringing back as much valuable stuff as he could and promoting Christianity among the Indians (since they both thought he would reach India and the natives there to this day are called Indians), Isabel also provided him with one of the stupidest greeting letters to a presumed fellow monarch in history.

It was printed in Townsend Miller's "The Castles and the Crowns," and I reprint it below:

"To King (blank space),

We have heard that Your Highness and your subjects entertain great love for us and for Spain. We are informed, moreover, that you and your subjects very much wish to hear news from Spain. We therefore send our Admiral, Christopher Columbus, who will tell you that we are in good health and perfect prosperity."

Thus was Columbus sent off to India on August 3, only to discover that the voyage was taking longer than he thought and his ships were not provisioned for such a long journey and he had to stop off in the Canary Islands to restock before continuing West.

On October 12, he landed on the island of Hispaniola, claiming it for Castile and promptly imprisoning native Indians, demanding to be shown the source of their gold so he could steal it,

That was the first contact between native Carribean peoples, and it wouldn't be the last. 

That's why we celebrated Columbus Day on October 12. Because he "discovered" America.

But he never set foot on the North American continent.

And Columbus never realized that a wholly unknown continental structure was interposed between Europe and East Asia and always believed he was in the Indies, although a good many other mariners, primarily Portuguese, believed (correctly) otherwise.

Columbus returned to Spain with a less than impressive haul, but he did bring natives that he enslaved so he was eager to try again to find all of the riches that Portuguese had been so successfully acquiring, so he made three more trips to find vast wealth.

He never did, for which the Crown of Castile refused to reward him for his failure

Although there was vast wealth to be had in South and Central America, those lands would be acquired later, long after Columbus died broke with his reputation as a successful mariner in tatters.

And everyone knew that Columbus had accidentally landed in islands offshore of the "new" continents of North and South America, not East Asia or the Indies.

But we still refer to the Caribbean islands as the West Indies and the natives to be found there and in the Americas as "Indians."

At least until some White, spoiled college-educated elites got it into their head that all Americans of European descent should feel guilty for despoiling the native peoples of their lands, enslaving them, decimating their populations through the introduction of diseases for which they had no natural or acquired immunity, which resulted in the importation of Black African slaves to take their places working on European-owned plantations and largely destroying their native culture, replacing it with a hybridized European culture, dominated by Europeans at the top of the social food chain.

This resulted in the condemnation of Columbus as the primary source of these incidents and the removal of memorials to and statues of him throughout the United States, with demands that Columbus Day cease to be celebrated because to do such was racist and a glorification of genocide.

Never mind that fact that many Americans of Italian descent were proud to celebrate Columbus Day as a source of ethnic pride, usually with parade and overly long speeches

To assuage their feelings of guilt, those same White, spoiled, college-educated elites proposed scrapping Columbus Day and all symbols of colonialism and replace it with a new holiday called "Indigenous Peoples Day," without asking Native Americans how THEY felt about it, because liberal elites never ASK, they just DO!

And if it pisses off Americans of Italian descent, tant pis to them if they dare to object which, if they aren't politicians, they do.

Even more nauseating are the attempts of White politicians, like Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren, claiming to have some Native American blood in her to appeal to woke progressive voters.

The only problem is that Senator Warren's genealogy has proved that she has no such native American ancestry and that she is a hysterical leftist looking to put one over on potential woke progressive voters.

I am also certain that her purported claims to have Black blood in her, too, is merely social media misinformation, but it wouldn't surprise me if she did make such a claim.

So, what's the conclusion I can bring this particular blog to?

Well, Christopher Columbus was a failure, although he remains a source of pride to Americans of Italian descent.

That he didn't discover a shorter route to India by sailing West.

That he badly miscalculated the size of Earth.

That he died broke.

But his actions DID set into motion a chain of events that we have been forced to endure to this day, especially since liberal Democratic claptrap has become vogue.

And now he is the subject of the mindless cancel culture promoted by the woke progressive left who chant "mea culpa," hoping to impose their bogus guilt on the rest of us as a form of thought control.

And as for "Indigenous Peoples Day?"

It is really only celebrated and promoted by White woke progressive politicians.

There are no popular parades and festivities "celebrating" that day, except some inane proclamation by the mayor in City Hall, lasting a whopping 15 minutes, before an audience consisting mostly of city Hall employees so the local media can report on the cheering crowd who turned out for "Indigenous Peoples Day."

Those politicians no longer refer to "Columbus Day," although most people over thirty know what it is.

We're just not allowed to say it without recriminations from Democratic leftists.

Like Senator Elizabeth Warren.

But then, she, and people like her, object to everything.

Goodbye, Columbus.