The American Revolution

It is hard to describe something as complex as the American Revolution in one word, when I think of the commonly used words a few general terms come to mind, independence, patriotism, and justice, but one word that best describes the revolution to me is greed. The American Revolution was a large scale rebellion guided by a handful of important business men, plantation owners, and politicians in hopes of shifting the revenue and power the colonies yielded from the British Empire to themselves. All of the imports and exports coming to and from America were making the Empire extensive amounts of money, and the colonists were not getting their cut of the revenue. The colonists were done abiding by an overseas authority that absorbed the fruits of their labor and sucked them dry through unfair taxation and numerous oppressing forces. The American Revolution, the counter act to the binding force applied by the British Empire on the American colonies, was driven by greed and the desire for personal gain.

It was no secret to the British Empire that their economy hinged on the mass amounts of money from the imports and exports to and from America, so they did everything in their power to keep control of the colonies. They were very strict with rules and regulations that the colonists were forced to abide by. They did everything from unfair taxations to regulating where the colonists could inhabit land. It is safe to say that Britain did not have support from most of the colonists during the years prior to the revolution. For over twenty years the colonists built up a strong hatred towards the people making decisions in Britain, King Gorge III and his committee. They were subject to things like the Quartering Act in 1765. This act required that all colonists must house and feed British soldiers at their own expense, and most colonists were barely scraping by as it was. It took a group of highly ranked colonists to engage a revolution that would ultimately shift the control and wealth of the colonies to themselves.

When you ponder the motives of the men that lead the revolution, it is quite obvious that money was a key driving force. Most of the men that were the leaders owned plantations and businesses such as, Thomas Jefferson, Gorge Washington, and John Adams, that generated a great deal of money that filtered back to Britain and not to themselves. This was unacceptable to these men; they wanted to reap the full benefit of their labor. Britain did not aid these men with the costly expenses of running their businesses, they had to pay for their slaves, supplies, and themselves, so they saw no reason for the money to be absorbed into the British economy. The colonies produced 500,000 pounds in 1700 and by 1770 they were producing an upwards of 2,800,000 pounds per year, and nearly all of the money was seized by Britain. This was on top of heavy taxation for illegitimate reasons that Britain forced them to pay. They were tired of Britain steeling their hard earned money and keeping it overseas for themselves.

To run their businesses the owners needed large plots of land to plant crops and house the thousands of slaves they owned. As colonies grew larger in population, from 270,000 people in 1702 to 2,200,000 people in 1765, things became crowded. Colonists that were promised land were many times refused, and the plantation owners that wanted more land to work with, were not able to expand. The colonists wanted to move westward to the vast open plains of the midwest, but the King prohibited them from moving past the Appalachians, due to issues with the Indians. The wealthy colonists could not stand the fact that they had to limit themselves even though there was plenty of land to be utilized. This cut the amount of money that the colonists knew they could be making. Almost all of the colonists were effected by this regulation because as the population increased exponentially, the amount of space for every colonist to live and work decreased. It angered the colonists to be confined like slaves, especially because they knew that there was plenty of land that they could be using. It killed them to watch Indians dance on the fertile lands that they could be using to make money. The fact that the colonists could not move past the Appalachians because of an arrangement with the Indians strikes me as very odd. I find it odd because British imperialists did not care about taking the Indians land when they first migrated to the continent, but now they cared about the conflict they caused with the Indians. It makes me wonder if Britain was scared of the definite possibility of the colonies becoming more powerful than themselves. So they tried to suppress them with unfair regulations in hopes of slowing the country's roll that was soon to devour them.

The last piece of evidence I have is, once the founding fathers gained independence nothing changed for the poor or the slaves. Once the power was shifted from Britain to colonists, life only changed for the people that were now in charge, rich white men. They did not move to abolish slavery for a hundred years, women still were only good for babies, and the vast majority of the population was still poor. However, the men that lead the revolution now regulated the power, money, and land. The separation between the rich and the poor lengthened because the rich became richer and the poor stayed about the same. Fifty percent of the wealth was owned by 10 percent of the colonists. Finally, the founding fathers got what they wanted, the control of what was soon to be the super power we now know as America.

The American Revolution was nothing more than the result of a few powerful men's journey in the conquest of land, money, and power. The founding fathers were fed up with their money being wrongfully stolen and being strictly regulated by a man over a thousand miles away. They were tired of not being able to occupy the expansive west America and loosing sleep over how much more money they could be making. Even when they did gain control, they did not help the poor, they kept all of the money to themselves. It makes you question the foundation of the country we so comfortably inhabit and support. It makes you question the motives of the men that pioneered this country. Did they yearn for money so badly that they hoarded it from their fellow colonists in desperate need of support? Was the desire so powerful that they would let their fellow Americans struggle so that they could prosper? If our country was based off of the ideals of power hungry men, then what does that say about our country and the people who we praise so much for founding it? Are the men who founded this country at all better than King Gorge III and the British Empire? Should America really be thought of as a model country or are we on the same level as the countries we accuse of such atrocities?

Crash

Crash was a very powerful movie, to say the least; I literally do not think that the producers could have fit more racism and confusing character connections into that movie. Every scene made you go “oh that’s that guy’s brother or that’s that lady.” A new insight I gained about human beings was that we are keeping stereotypes alive by treating racism as a joke. The majority of society is desensitized to racist comments and jokes, due to the abundance of it on TV, American culture, and verbal interaction. A great amount of people in the last few generations started to treat it as a joke. They crusaded a trickle effect down generation after generation until the point that our generation treats it in a complete joking manner.

This movie made me think about the question, is racism natural? Racism is both environmental and situational, it is not natural. For example, the cop in the movie was raised by a working class father that owned a janitorial company with many other guys, and the policies that stated that companies had to hire a certain amount of minorities lead his father to lose his job to a black man. The father lost his wife and house in result to the loss of his job. After this, the cop had predispositions about black people in the work force. The fact that he was a cop gave him the ability to oppress minorities because no one would ever speak against a white cop. When he pulls over the black couple, he had his way with the wife because it was on his terms and no one was in danger. However, when the black lady was in the car accident he had no second thoughts about helping her. When he saw the crash his human instinct kicked in and he was on the mission to save whoever was in danger. This shows that the racism is situational, he had pulled the couple over less than 24 hours before, therefore he did not have any mental shift in the way he felt about minorities.

The Persian daughter buying blanks was the best thing that happened in the movie. When she purchased the blanks, she knew her father was not fit to handle a gun, therefore she was ultimately protecting him from himself. And her hunch was just because in the end of the movie the father goes to kill the locksmith, who he thought had cheated him, and when the locksmith was bickering with the Persian in the driveway his daughter ran out and the trigger was pulled. The little girl thought she was ok because she was wearing the invincible cloak, but her father knew better. The director makes you think that the guy shot the daughter but she is miraculously fine. It makes you ponder if the fake cloak was actually real or if the guy simply missed, but then you remember that the daughter bought a special bullet which happened to be blanks. In an instant, the scene that brings tears to your eyes, is turned into a laughing relief. The Persian daughter obviously knew a lot about her father and she made the right decision to censor his gun. I can see why this movie one so many awards it was such a good balance of humor, humanity, and tragedy.   

Christopher Columbus- Hero or Villain

When contemplating the account of Christopher Columbus it is difficult to distinguish an opinion of whether he is a hero or a villain, but there is definite evidence that Christopher Columbus is a villain. Through out the aging of America Columbus came to be known as the man that discovered this country, which is partly true, he was not the first to come here but he did discover that there was other land west of Africa. He did learn some valuable things that modern society, Africans, Europeans, and Asians, formally did not know. He did prove that the world was the shape of a ball, not the shape of a breast or just flat. These are the few things that Columbus deserves praise for, but the bad doings certainly out way the good. I would like to start off talking about the Indians or indigenous people to what is now America. When Columbus first landed on what he called San Salvador, what is now known as the Bahamas, the natives lined the shores to see the inconceivable sight of the godly dressed white man on the horizon in three, ninety foot boats. The Indians were said to be very hospitable, so they welcomed Columbus with everything that they had to offer. They were also quite ignorant in the ways of finance and personal property, because in their culture that was not what all actions were based on. Columbus immediately took advantage of this ignorance, “They willingly traded everything they owned... With fifty men we could subjugate them all and make them do whatever we want.” This shows the mindset that he set out on his voyage with: take all that is valuable and claim the land in the name of the king.

This raises the question, why was Columbus so eager to please the monarchial system he so thankfully claimed to? Was it because he knew that the man who found the new route to India would be forever known and documented in the historical fibers of humanity? As Howard Zinn puts it, “He concluded his report by asking for a little help from their Majesties, and in return he would bring them from his next voyage “as much gold as they need... and as many slaves as they ask.” (Page 4)

There are many anecdotes about Columbus being a selfish man driven by personal gain. When he set out on his first voyage King Ferdinand said whoever first spotted land would receive a life long pension, one of the crew members spotted land and Columbus claimed it was he that spotted white sands first. Columbus took the pension even though he was much better off than the majority of his crew; it was miniscule acts like these that translated into the biggest atrocities committed by the Spaniards. They would travel island to island combing through villages and taking whatever they saw fit. The natives would flee to the forest and cower in fear when they spotted ships. Bartolome De Las Casas expands on the topic, “The Spaniards came along and behaved like ravening wild beasts, wolves, tiger, or lion that had been starved for many days... killing, terrorizing, afflicting, torturing, and destroying the native people... the strangest and most varied new methods of cruelty, never seen or heard before, and to such a degree that this island of Hispaniola once so populous, now has a population of barely two hundred people.” As you can see, Columbus's voyage was not so much exploration and noble deeds, it was full of pillage, social abusing, and quest for personal gain.

We now have a day every year to commemorate Columbus, and it is quite the controversy, For obvious reasons it is hard to see the validity in celebrating the life of a man who almost exterminated a race. Is Columbus worth dedicating a day to? I would have to say no. If you would have asked me that question a year ago I would have said yes, but I only knew what had been fed to me as a child going through school. I grew up thinking of Columbus being on the same level as the founding fathers. Now I see that he was a lot like Hitler, in that they both were astonishing men brilliant and talented in their craft, both men used their opportunities to exile others. Both committed acts of genocide, even though nobody remembers Columbus as being an engineer of terror. I do not believe that Columbus should have a day or a city or a street in his name let alone our respect beyond the fact that he was a fool with good luck.

There is one thing that Columbus did do well, and that was find a place for society to flourish. It is hard to doubt that with out him society would not be were it is now. It is hard to say if anyone would have ever discovered the Americas let alone go there. Where would America, a modern super power, be if it was not settled by imperialistic leaders? If there is anything that I credit to Columbus, it is that he indirectly developed a base for society to build on. If this nation was not discovered by a technologically advanced culture would we still be savages? Would we be living in simplicity much like animals, or would some other man have stumbled upon our country simply to get the same credit Columbus did? It is hard to say because there is no way to know for certain; if there was one thing that he did that actually deserves praise was finding a place for a much needed westward expansion. With out it what would have happened to Europe, a place of intolerance and Kings. There was no place for minorities to be free and that is what America was founded upon. Columbus was an undoubtedly smart man who did do some good things, but he should be remembered as a villain.