I’d argue Johnson sealed our fate when he rolled over for Confederates after the war.
But really the argument could bemade that the moment European explorers realized they could just kill people and take their homes away and nobody would stop them, they decided to make it a core part of their identity by rationalizing everything they can, and dismissing whatever they can’t.
The devil works hard, but colonizers work harder.
The suffering is just a side effect. Massive death is the goal, they just don’t want to have to get their hands dirty.
It’s probable that they’re betting on technological innovation to bring about a post-scarcity economy where profit and capital are irrelevant. And relatively speaking, that could a good thing.
The issue is instead of taking a reasonable utilitarian approach, these people would rather lean on things like:
unmitigated greed
racism
a romanticization of historical imperialism
the social construct within the Western capitalist mindset to incessantly seek new frontiers of exploitation
and the insidious belief that other people don’t deserve to participate in such a society; either because of their beliefs or because of immutable characteristics that deem them unworthy or otherwise burdensome to the system.
IMO, the tragedy is that while the rich want to bet on consolidating enough capital to shoot themselves out into space, the statistical likelihood that they will find anything within reach that even remotely resembles the beauty and habitability of our planet is very low. Too bad they will kill all of us first before realizing that.
Something something, when we cut down the last tree and poison the last river…
Please don’t have kids.
False equivalency. Own your own country’s bigotry instead of shaming people for protecting their sovereignty.
Lol you think the West has just become the baddies?