That’s Why We Call Them Savages

travis_kavulla
ABOVE: Travis Kavulla

Travis Kavulla, America’s Shittiest Website™
Avatar’s Central Fallacy

  • Avatar was nothing more than Pocahantas in 3-D, except that the Iroquois1 were blue people who rode around on flying dragons. I only got through the movie because I brought my own liquor, which helps me through lots of other things too, like early mornings and hangovers and long afternoons and winter nights. Anywhoo, the myth perpetrated by Avatar is that indigenous people like the environment when, in fact, the Indians liked to start forest fires for no reason at all.2 Put that in your peace pipe, libs, and smoke it. What Douthat said, also.

‘Shorter’ concept created by Daniel Davies and perfected by Elton Beard. We are aware of all Internet traditions.™


1Er, no, Mr. Gates Scholar, the Iroquois were in upstate New York and Pocohantas was a Powhatan in Virginia. So given your obvious expertise in this matter we await with keen interest the comments we anticipate you’ll soon make about how awful indigenous Americans were.

2And, woot, there it is. The wholly-anticipated and inevitable slander of Native Americans as crazed arsonists who burned forests for the fun of it. In fact, it is generally believed that Native Americans, although they did set fires, did so in a controlled fashion to increase habitat diversity and to provide security.

 

Comments: 113

 
 
 

Always. Trust. The. Shorter.™

Seriously…he compared Avatar to Pocahontas? I haven’t seen Avatar, so I have to rely on your ridicule, TinTin but it seems likely to me that part of Pocahontas’ tale relies on the fact that the British were barely up from dying from their own cupidity and arrogance and the First Nationers extended a hand…and nearly slaughtered for it, precisely because of the unthinking rape of their lands by the invaders.

Is that an accurate summary of Avatar?

 
 

Gosh, when the trees grow back because the fire opened their seed-pods or the burnt places grow grass for the meatier denizens of the land to graze so you may then eat them… Yeah, fire was nothing.

It’s not like they were burning everything and not letting anything grow.

 
 

And we didn’t fully recover from the environmental devestation left by the native American peoples until Reagan appointed James Watt as Secretary of the Interior to clean up their mess.

 
 

It’s not like they were burning everything and not letting anything grow.

You can see how that would be a confusing concept for a conservative.

 
TruculentandUnreliable
 

I didn’t trust the shorter. Had to step outside for an intermission and a tip from the hip flask just to get through.

 
 

Smut Clyde has proven that Avatar is actually a remake of FernGully.

 
TruculentandUnreliable
 

the Indians liked to start forest fires for no reason at all

Is that why that Italian dude was crying on that old timey littering commercial?

 
 

Avatar’s Central Fallacy

These blue-skinned dragon-riding space aliens ought to burning down trees. I mean, that’s just plain logic and anything else is just ignorant.

 
 

“though of course the Iroquois were not tall and blue, did not ride dragons, and had only to contend with the modestly equipped John Smith & company, not a full-fledged battalion of space-bound “jarheads”).”

Yeah, like all those colonists that came and settled all up and down the coast and traveled inland were just a buncha nicety-nice hippies.

“…and killed animals for reasons other than food.” as for religious reasons, to worship the earth and the animals and plants like a bunch of hippie freaks on an all-night trance dance thing, having visions, some even eating hallucinogenic plants.

“In either case, America or Africa, it was Europeans who laid out romantic notions of preserving wilderness — a concept that simply did not exist in pre-colonial times.”

No, because destroying the wilderness seemed utterly impossible and stupid until capitalists came along and ruined the planet for everyone.

for most indigenous peoples around the globe, “stewardship” means something like “slash-and-burn.”

No stupid, that’s the rich white man hiring the indigenous people for pennies a day to burn their land to send lumber to white people. Us Westerners sure teached them primitives a thing or two about stewardship!

They make aggressive use of the land, and not always in a manner we would call “renewable.”

I dunno, history seems to show the opposite, how many thousands of years have people lived on this planet? How many years has it taken the westerners to bring it to its precipice?

“Ross and I are members of the small and eccentric group of editors emeriti of the Harvard Salient, and I have to wonder what unspoken indoctrination occurred, since we share so many opinions.”

Oh no doubt its because you are such a genius, you and Ross and that small eccentric group of college scribblers.

 
 

Avatar is actually a decent movie.

It’s not really mainly an environmentalist movie, however, as much as a movie that’s opposed to the following philosophy: “Those people built their house on top of stuff that we want. Let’s kill them, burn down their house and take it. It’s totally justified because they are the bad guys. We know because they fought back when we tried to kill them and take the valuable minerals they are living on top of.”

The blue aliens do resemble Native Americans I’ve seen in some movies. (Except for being blue, inhumanly tall, and riding dragons as well as horses.) It is true that the Natives do seem to be living more in harmony with nature than the humans do on their own planet, and this fact is remarked on more than once.

But really, it’s about oil… er… unobtainium and the war to get it.

 
 

Huh. I just posted this in the previous thread but I’ll spam you folks with it because I want to generate a HBD or two for the Ho and to make sure everyone is jealous of the fantabulous meal he’s getting tonight.
—-
It’s the Ho’s b’day today so I’m off to see Avatar in 3D with him. Then, his favorite dinner. I’ll start with pan seared foie gras dressed with veal demi-glace and blackberries. Salad will be mesclun and arugula with roasted beets, supremes of cara cara orange, candied pecans and Rogue Creamery blue cheese. Sherry vinaigrette. Entree is osso bucco alla Milanese and saffron risotto. Creme brulee to finish.

Ta.

 
 

it was Europeans who laid out romantic notions of preserving wilderness

::blink::

I don’t think setting aside less than one percent of an urban area as parkland…and pisspoor parkland to boot, counts as “preserving wilderness”.

About the closest this dickhead’s point might get is that lords might preserve a forest around his castle…to protect it from other marauding lords.

 
 

unobtainium

This is a reference to geeks and sex?

 
 

Avatar’s Central Fallacy

this has been another episode of When Very Solemn Stupidity Happens To Silly Ephemera

or, Obsess My Prejudice Much?
.

 
 

Unobtainium

i have met many women who were apparantly made of this
.

 
 

I love how much time and energy these fucksticks expend to debunk what is essentially an escapist bit of fantasy/adventure. Does it have a message? Sure. So do Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings and Alice In Wonderland. So what? Expending vast column-inches disputing it is like holding court about how there could never really be a magic dragon named “Puff”.

Cheese and Rice, if you don’t like it, don’t watch it.

 
 

i have met many women who were apparantly made of this

The ones I meet are made of slapmeum

 
 

The romantic notion of preserving wilderness was a European thing. The practical notion of preserving wilderness was, of course, not.

 
TruculentandUnreliable
 

But really, it’s about oil… er… unobtainium and the war to get it.

That’s the funny thing to me about this…the cons are all up in arms about the parallels to the European domination of American Indians, but I haven’t seen word one about the obvious connection to the Iraq war. Again, dude literally says something about “shock and awe.” Are they just pretending the war doesn’t exist?

 
 

The ones I meet are made of slapmeum

From the context, it would appear that those are not the good slaps.

 
 

From the context, it would appear that those are not the good slaps.

Sometimes an atom of slapmeum finds a loose ticklemeum atom….

 
 

travis, duuuuude, love the frat party picture! awesome!

 
 

Actually, that Western notion of preserving “wilderness” was in denial about the land being populated, and having been extensively altered by the occupants. The early Westerners didn’t understand that a lot of the lush landscapes they assumed to be naturally formed were the result of human intervention.

 
 

travis, duuuuude, love the frat party picture! awesome!

He does look small and eccentric.

 
 

I’ll start with pan seared foie gras dressed with veal demi-glace and blackberries. Salad will be mesclun and arugula with roasted beets, supremes of cara cara orange, candied pecans and Rogue Creamery blue cheese. Sherry vinaigrette. Entree is osso bucco alla Milanese and saffron risotto. Creme brulee to finish.

Stealing a line from Doghouse Riley, sounds like you’re trying to get laid.

 
 

Are they just pretending the war doesn’t exist?

Yes.

SA2SQ, episode whatever.

 
 

I guess I was naive to think that a movie with the primary message “Don’t kill people just so you can take their stuff” would be uncontroversial, but Peak Wingnut continues to live with us.

 
 

wingnut is not peaking, it is merely getting denser.

 
 

Wait, Pocahantas wasn’t in 3-D?

What about the really intense colors and the light trails following everybody around?

 
 

wingnut is not peaking, it is merely getting denser.

We should build a sphere of unobtainium around the event horizon.

 
 

What about the really intense colors and the light trails following everybody around?

That was the mescaline.

 
 

“But that is our sacred mountain.”

“That’s all right injun, that there’s our sacred radio tower!”

 
 

“In either case, America or Africa, it was Europeans who laid out romantic notions of preserving wilderness — a concept that simply did not exist in pre-colonial times.”

Huh? WTF? It wasn’t necessary to have a notion of preserving wilderness in pre-colonial times – the wilderness wasn’t in danger of becoming extinct until the Europeans showed up, after having trashed their own land.

The Europeans were well on their way to trashing North America as badly as they trashed their own lands before it ever occurred to even a few dissenting members of that tribe to promote preserving the wilderness.

Has this idiot ever heard of how the city of Paris was so vile, stinking and unhealthy by the mid 1700s that they had to have city planning imposed on them by imperial force, just to prevent decaying corpses from polluting the groundwater? How London burned down in the 17th century because its human inhabitants made into a filthy and dangerously overcrowded shanty-town? How the entire island of Ireland was mono-cropped to the point of environmental disaster that starved its inhabitants? How the mass conversion of the landscape of the Scottish Highlands from wilderness to sheepfarming drove people off the land and wiped half the population off the map?

Are these the noble and romantic Europeans he’s holding up as examples?

 
 

a concept that simply did not exist in pre-colonial times

it is possible to make this statement because of the detailed knowledge of pre-columbian intellectual life that the angel moroni has granted to travis
.

 
 

The Native American population didn’t have a perfect environmental record — I mean, it’s not an accident that the wooly mammoth and the saber-toothed tiger just happened to go extinct within a few thousand years of humanity getting to the Americas. It’s just that the European invaders had a worse environmental record. More important, they were stealing the land from people who already owned it, while simultaneously committing ethnic cleansing from sea to shining sea.

You know, most conservatives claim to respect property rights, which would ordinarily mean that it wouldn’t matter if the Native Americans were strip-mining their lands just for fun — only a hippy-dippy envirowacko would care about that. But of course, since these are not white-skinned people we’re talking about, their lack of a perfect environmental record is proof that they’re really savages who needed to be taught that burning forests to promote growth is evil, but clear-cutting forests and wantonly slaughtering bison is proper stewardship of the land.

 
 

angel morani has granted to travis

Fixed!

 
 

These ones are so fun!

“You libtards are so stupid, you think the Indians cared about the planet, when really it was good, white Europeans who invented conserving nature, those stupid hippy scumbags, because the idea of saving the planet is completely ridiculous and unnecessary, which the Indians knew, which you libs don’t, because you, uh, uh, HEHINDEEDHEHINDEEDHEHINDEED

 
 

Avatar’s Central Fallacy

Veiled Penis-in-Doughnut-Hole ref?

 
 

The Na’vi are WAY MORE embedded in their ecosystem than even hunter-gatherer humans ever were, and it’s shown repeatedly in the movie! Sure there’s some parallels but jeez. It’s a MOVIE about an ALIEN PLANET, not a freakin documentary.

 
 

Yeah, it’s a movie, but that won’t prevent the wingnuts from looking for excuses to steal the unobtainium.

 
 

“it’s just that they don’t exist in a cult-like, James Cameron thrall to the ascetic majesties of nature”

ascetic, huh? I don’t think that word means what he thinks it means. or maybe he’s still nipping at the hip flask.

 
 

What about the really intense colors and the light trails following everybody around?

That was the mescaline.

OK, so how do you account for those colors of the wind?

 
 

Why are conservatives alwAys so defensive?

 
 

What about the really intense colors and the light trails following everybody around?

I think that’s called “fag dust.”

 
 

“though of course the Iroquois were not tall and blue, did not ride dragons, and had only to contend with the modestly super-lethally equipped John Smith & company his full complement of pathogens for which they had no resistance, not a full-fledged battalion of space-bound “jarheads”).”

Fizzixed!

The Native American population didn’t have a perfect environmental record — I mean, it’s not an accident that the wooly mammoth and the saber-toothed tiger just happened to go extinct within a few thousand years of humanity getting to the Americas.

Clovis! Clovis! Clovis!

 
 

The main observations I take away from reading conservative commentary is that the smart conservatives are evil, the not-so-evil conservatives are stupid, and most conservatives are a particularly unattractive combination of stupid AND evil.

This is not meant as an insult. Like I said up top, it’s an observation.

 
 

Many happy returns to PeeJ’s hubby, with gratuitous epicurean envy for good measure.

*drools*

No wonder these wussy-babies don’t allow comments – although I suppose 400 or so reiterations of “ROTFLMAO!” would get kind of monotonous after a while.

Do these knuckleheads ever NOT fail?

Fail – Slash & burn? O RLY? Yeah, not so much. In places like New Guinea & Amazonia, the anthropologists figured out that they could always tell where the natives’ settlements had been, because those were the areas with greater biodiversity & soil fertility – because they knew what they were doing.

Fail Part 2: Electric KooKooKaChoo – Beam me up, Jeebus – & nuke the site from orbit, because there’s no intelligent life on Teh Corner. “Europeans came up with the idea of environmentalism” my ass – who does he think they got that idea from? The Greenpeace Fairy? The early naturalists all cited native cultures as a primary inspiration for their ideas … but then, who’d expect a “Gates Scholar” to know shit I knew by the time I entered puberty?

Fail Part 3: This Time, It’s Spirochetes – He cites some git who brings up how Tanzania now has more elephants than it did before colonization. OH SNAP! Yeah, that tends to happen once you’ve wiped out enough of the predators that used to keep their numbers in check, & breed them as workhorses/living ivory-farms … & let’s just overlook the fact that too many of them creates an environmental nightmare of its own as they EAT FUCKING EVERYTHING THAT ISN’T NAILED DOWN. Ecccccchhhhhhh.

 
 

Speaking of stupid, I was at Carls Jr. today when one of the workers asked some of the customers if they were having a good Christmas. The woman responded:

We don’t call it Christmas. We call it Jesus’ birthday. And it’s not Santa who brings the toys. It’s Jesus. (But I guess it’s OK to tell kids that Santa is Jesus’ helper.) I make a birthday cake for Jesus every year.

I managed to repress my desire to say: How many candles do you put on it?

 
 

We don’t call it Christmas. We call it Jesus’ birthday. And it’s not Santa who brings the toys. It’s Jesus.

It’s Jesus’s birthday and he has to bring his own toys? That’s just mean.

 
Big Bad Bald Bastard
 

This is not meant as an insult. Like I said up top, it’s an observation.

Said in pity, not in anger!

Fail – Slash & burn? O RLY? Yeah, not so much. In places like New Guinea & Amazonia, the anthropologists figured out that they could always tell where the natives’ settlements had been, because those were the areas with greater biodiversity & soil fertility – because they knew what they were doing.

Would it be too much to ask the fucker if he knew diddly-squat about ecosystems that are dependent on periodic wildfires?

http://plant-ecology.suite101.com/article.cfm/botanical_effects_of_bush_fires

http://www.pinelandsalliance.org/ecology/fire/

 
 

Hey Travis, take the vibrator out of your ass. It’s scrambling your brain.

 
 

It’s Jesus’s birthday and he has to bring his own toys? That’s just mean.

OMG Jesus is a Hobbit!

 
 

Before the last 200 years or so, westerners didn’t really think of “the environment”. There were just a lot of trees and shit. It wasn’t until the industrial revolution was in full swing that people even realised that human activity could put a dent in the natural workings of the world.

Christianity is probably to blame. It has always been very adamant that the world is just a background prop, built as a convenience for us humans.

On the other hand, most “pagan” religious traditions seem to be built around the idea that gods are built into the scenery, expressing their power directly through the sun, the rain, and other things like that which are of major concern to hunter/gatherer/farmer societies. Land, and the things on it, are assumed to have inherent significance.

Of course, nowadays we have a much better grasp of how and why the environment does what it does. We can say for definite whether or not setting shit on fire is a good idea, or tipping mercury into the river, or flattening mountains.

And yet, some stupid bastards have no time for facts, knowledge, or actual understanding, so they would rather just rely on prejudice, kneejerk reactions, selfishness, and just a touch of racism.

 
 

Don’t you think it’s arrogant to think that puny, little mankind can ever have any effect on the environment? Look around you. I mean, if you didn’t know there were cities and cars and people and stuff around, you wouldn’t know there were cities and cars and people and stuff around.

Now, what’s NOT arrogant is a) thinking that you know exactly what God wants well enough to speak for him and to legislate his will; and b) thinking that the American military can turn the Middle East into a democratic paradise (but only when a Republican is in the Wiote House).

 
 

Creme brulee to finish.

Certainly it would finish *me*.

Christ almighty. That’s not dinner, that’s a pagan ritual.

And Happy BirthDay Ho!! Mwah!

 
 

Stereotype much?

Europeans bad, Natives good?
Natives bad, Europeans Good?

I only know that one group has to be bad and the other group has to be good and that ambiguity gives me a headache.

 
 

The Celts were supposed to be close to nature, which is good/bad. But they were also European, which is apparently bad/good.

So were they Good Europeans gone bad , or bad European gone good?

 
 

London and Paris a mess, you betcha, wink wink. But not this: How the entire island of Ireland was mono-cropped to the point of environmental disaster that starved its inhabitants? In the 1840s, during the height/depths of the potato blight, Ireland was a net exporter of food to England. Wheat, corn etc plus sheep and cattle.

Records show Irish lands exported food even during the worst years of the Famine. The bloody English

 
 

“Creme brulee to finish.”

Veiled….well, I don’t even want to think about it.

 
 

We don’t call it Christmas

So which side of the War on Christmas is this lady supposed to be on, then?

 
Big Bad Bald Bastard
 

Happy birthday to the Ho!

Tom M,
this thread had an extensive discussion of the Great Hunger towards the end.

The Celts were supposed to be close to nature, which is good/bad. But they were also European, which is apparently bad/good.

They were also headhunters, who are usually characterized as folk of darker hue.

 
 

I made a Jesus’ Birthday cake once, though mine was ironic.

Mostly I did it because I found this awesomely cheap tiny plastic nativity scene, that looked like it belonged on the top of the cake. Since I was having the party anyway, I figured, why not?

 
 

They were also headhunters,

hey, but who isn’t?

 
 

it is generally believed that Native Americans, although they did set fires, did so in a controlled fashion to increase habitat diversity and to provide security.

You’d think the dumbass would have Googled controlled fires before posting that rubbish. The practice helps prevent catastrophic forest fires.

 
 

@ Lolly, December 24, 2009 at 0:24…

“OK, so how do you account for those colors of the wind?”

That’s what happens when the mescaline metabolizes though the large intestine.

 
 

I hear headhunters help you find a job.

 
 

“I hear headhunters help you find a job.”

…then they kill you and eat your BRANES. Which makes them slightly better than zombies.

 
 

…then they kill you and eat your BRANES. Which makes them slightly better than zombies.

This is why reading this handy manual is the best prep you can have for an interview.

 
 

I guess for Wingaz, this is like ten thousand times cooler than that tree-huggy crap.

http://www.archive.org/details/Aluminum1956

 
 

And it’s not Santa who brings the toys. It’s Jesus.

Does Jesus also lay all those chocolate eggs at Easter? Inquiring minds want to know.

 
 

Does Jesus also lay all those chocolate eggs at Easter? Inquiring minds want to know.

Uhhhhh…..those aren’t eggs….

 
 

I celebrate Jesus’ half-birthday.

 
 

I see it is politically acceptable to hate on zombies, even during a season of peace and love.

Sigh. We still have a long way to go.

 
 

Yes, Undead-Americans are the last minority upon whom it is still acceptable to shit.

Next thing you know, you’ll want to intermarry with breathers and then where will society be?

 
 

And it’s not Santa who brings the toys. It’s Jesus.

I think this is an awesome idea! All parents should do this.

Then, when the kids are old enough, sit them down and explain that Jesus isn’t real and all those cheap, (possibly toxic) plastic toys were actually made by child labour in godless China and shipped around the world on big polluting ocean freighters and then trucked to your nearest Wal~Mart where they were purchased using mother’s tip money that she managed to scrimp and save from that second job she took waiting tables at the Hooters in order to pay the rent – a job which she wouldn’t have to do if Jesus actually existed.

Seriously, have these fucking morans thought this through at all? How are they going to explain this to the kids one day?
“No, Jesus didn’t bring you the toys – oh he’s real! Of course he’s real!! My, my, my, yes! It’s just he doesn’t bring toys. Well, he doesn’t actually ever do anything tangible at all but you should still continue to believe in him and worship him just like you did when you thought he was bringing you toys because you behaved exactly how we told you to behave – but he wasn’t bringing you toys. Never. Not once was it him. But he’s really real and he really loves you and if you don’t believe in him and behave exactly how we tell you to behave, you won’t be able to go to the magical kingdom when you die. This time we are telling the truth – I swear to God (who is also real). Drugs are bad.”

There may have been a run-on sentence in there somewhere. Sorry.

 
 

Next thing you know, you’ll want to intermarry with breathers and then where will society be?

I think the problem is less mixed-marriage and more mixed-menu.

The whole “kissing the bride” thing could get out of hand, though.

 
 

Can I hate on James Cameron? Because I just got back from Avatar. It was a visually stunning movie, lovingly crafted to support a ridiculous fucking plot. Jesus Christ.

 
 

subject aside, is this not about the gayest sentence ever written:

Ross and I are members of the small and eccentric group of editors emeriti of the Harvard Salient….

you know Mr Slave is too

 
 

The Celts were supposed to be close to nature, which is good/bad. But they were also European, which is apparently bad/good.

it was the damn Xtians that fucked us up (headhunting aside, that is)…

 
 

The whole “kissing the bride” thing could get out of hand, though.

If you’re doing it right, sure.

 
 

You know, most conservatives claim to respect property rights…

But only if you have a flag. That’s the rules.

 
 

The flag made all the difference for the Iroquois Federation.

 
 

“It was a visually stunning movie, lovingly crafted to support a ridiculous fucking plot. Jesus Christ.”

I just got back from seeing it myself. In THREE-D!!!!111one!

Sure, the plot was silly and predictable — it’s a blockbuster, what do you expect? I thought even that was done well for what it was. And visually: stunning. My two geeky kids and I had a great time.

 
 

“The Iroquois were in upstate New York”?? No, the Iroquois ARE in upstate NY. Sorry your genocide didn’t work out the way you thought it did.

 
 

In context “were in New York” was referring to the time that Pocahantas, who “was” a Powhatan, was alive and was not intended to refer to where the Iroquois are now.

 
 

Dead wrong, uh, Tintin. If you were looking for context, you’d say, the Iroquois at the time were in NY, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Canada and Vermont.

 
 

man, it must be boring to go through life as Travis. What a tool

 
 

It would be more exciting if one of these wingnuts defended the genocide. Complaining about anything vaguely “green” is so tedious; let’s see the corner crowd complain about the mean depiction of ethnic cleansing as a tool of profiteering!

 
 

it was the damn Xtians that fucked us up (headhunting aside, that is)…

Which Xtians? Surely the Dan Brown/”Sacred-Feminine”-worshipping kind!

 
 

Maybe someone can help me to understand something. Suppose there were a huge, successful, massively popular and well-received thing. And suppose that thing had no particular point of view, I mean, certainly no more or less than anything else can be said to have a particular point of view that is entirely mass-marketed and homogenized.

Now suppose that you yourself had a particular, specific point of view, one which you hoped to promulgate to a larger audience.

How, precisely would it profit you to associate the huge, successful and massively popular thing with no particular point of view with a point of view entirely at odds with your own, and then rage against it? Wouldn’t it make more sense in the long run to simply invent an imaginary point of view for the hugely popular thing that that was identical to the one you wished to espouse, rather than antithetical to it?

I mean, I get that resentment and self-victimization play a role in the process, but honestly, it seems like such an ass-backward approach to something that is clearly an organized, focused action (I’m the one who posted the craigslist ad the other day, BTW. The one that was actually soliciting right wing bloggers to write nasty things about the movie).

So how does any of this make sense? Am I missing something, or am I just being too logical?

 
 

No, rosyviolet, you’re not missing anything. Conservatives with points of view that are decidedly unpopular often rail against popular, and opposing points of view, especially when those are sublimated into the background of almost every work of film, fiction, or art that they see. And once you’re a conservative (and have lost every functioning synapse in your head), ideas that contradict your philosophy are BAD BAD BAD things, but fortunately they give you a license to talk about those bad ideas, as in preach to the choir, especially when they are presented in a popular, mainstream venue.

Conservatives have tried to emulate what they think film and musical media are doing, but unfortunately when you are NOT in agreement with the mainstream, movies pimping your ideas just seem like shitty, poorly-executed propaganda at the hands of talentless hacks.

 
 

I haven’t seen Avatar, but can I just say this – I never understand the need of people (usually conservatives, in the States) to bitch when a movie, book or other work of art or entertainment has a “message,” which is thus “liberally biased” and “indoctrination.”

Art, like everything else, is made by human beings, who in virtue of being human have opinions and beliefs and like to express them. American technothriller fiction is hugely slanted towards conservatism and parts of it read like a GOP manifesto; it doesn’t stop plenty of liberals and moderates, myself included, from enjoying a lot of it. Why? Because “The Hunt for Red October” and “Final Flight” are damn good books, that’s why, and we can appreciate them as that while taking the conservative slant in stride. Maybe you should try that someday.

Lastly, it’s hilarious that the people who hate PC and keep telling blacks, immigrants, Muslims et al to chin up and not be so sensitive, are also the ones who scream the loudest whenever mainstream culture produces something they don’t like, and have a bigger victimhood and persecution complex than every minority in the country thrown together. Conservatives, please get some thicker skin. Man up. Grow a pair already you freakin pansies.

 
 

Wouldn’t it make more sense in the long run to simply invent an imaginary point of view for the hugely popular thing that that was identical to the one you wished to espouse, rather than antithetical to it?

Hey, let’s be fair; they do that too.

I’m really not sure what process they use to decide whether to say “Wall-E is radical leftist propaganda” or “Wall-E is actually very conservative, if you think about it”. It doesn’t really have much to do with the nature of the art itself, that’s for sure.

 
 

Okay, and, honestly now, North America is a big fucking continent. There were all kinds of different ways of interacting with the environment here, some more successful then others.

The exact same thing can be said about Europe.

Also, on the Wooly Mammoth thing: that was 10,000 years ago. Let it go, people.

 
 

Forget the Wooly Mammoth — what about the gruncheons, targalisks, shupops, calinatifacts, thists, worches, and pritons?

 
 

Here’s what I don’t get. Why do they all approach criticism of this movie with some variation of “Oh yeah? Well, Native Americans weren’t exactly tree hugging enviro-granolas, you know?” I just want to say, “So?” Let us suppose that every member of the Mic Mac, Iroquois, Cherokee and Blackfoot nation spent his entire life despoiling the wilderness to the very best of his ability. That still didn’t give you the right to kill him and take his stuff. It is not necessary for the native inhabitants to have been Noble Savages, or saints, or whatever, for them to have fundamental human rights. They just need to be, you know, human.

Honestly, I don’t think your average wingnut ever mentally progressed past the grade school playground. That’s why their entire foreign and domestic security policies are based on the He Started It Doctrine. They just never got that two wrongs don’t make a right.

 
 

as far as the extinction of the megafauna, nobody can really say for certain why they went extinct. people may have had a role, but they probably werent solely responsible.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/stoneage/megafauna.html

and heres another take that blames a comet
http://video.pbs.org/video/1108903659/

and here is something that just appeared this week in the nytimes.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/22/science/22obtundra.html

 
 

Because I have no sense of humour (we are the most discriminated-against people on this weblog, somebody owes me a Christmas cookie), a brief explanation of why shitheads like this write shit like this.

1. It is inconceivable that anyone could hold an opinion which is not conservative.
2. Therefore, when people express opinions which are not conservative, they are doing so against their will.
3. Therefore they must have been brainwashed into their false consciousness.
4. Therefore, all works of the imagination which express opinions which are not conservative are part of the brainwashing process.
5. Therefore the Hollywood elite are menacing our right to pump sulphur dioxide into the ozone layer, thus saving the planet.
6. Therefore it is time to introduce a Publications Control Board with the power to ban all works of the imagination for possession and distribution.

Or am I being too innocent here?

 
 

As an actual American Indian I can sincerely tell this guy to fuck off. Just read some of the journals of the early European explorers to get an idea of the ecological abundance that was present in the Americas. Sure we used fire – to promote blueberry growth among other things. Ignorant bastard.

As for the Overkill hypothesis – I don’t buy it. As one scholar put it “tribes probably killed one mammoth per generation and then bragged about it for two”.

 
 

Therefore it is time to introduce a Publications Control Board with the power to ban all works of the imagination

They revoked my Poetic License!!

 
 

Pretty clear from the comments that there’s a lack of comprehension of what I’m actually arguing here. (Perhaps the “short short version” is to blame.)

My argument is not that coastal Indians started fires “for no reason at all.” On the contrary, they and other indigenous peoples have excellent reasons for “slash-and-burn”. They quite understand what fires do to soil fertility and crop diversity (somebody above pointed out the post-fire abundance of wild strawberries, which is one of Bill Cronon’s examples). Where the foliage is thick and the population is thin, it makes economic and agronomic sense to slash and burn, rather than clear by ax, adze, and hoe. Only a minority of indigenous peoples, living in truly hard-up environments like India’s Himalayan province of Ladakh, were thrifty with resources like wood and water.

My point, simply, is that the unspoiled, wild land that is so frequently portrayed as the natural environment of indigenous peoples the world over is a fiction — one invented by Westerners, who feeling bad about their own depredation of land, have a tendency to conjure the moral opposite. This wouldn’t necessarily be a problem, if 1) it didn’t smugly use indigenous peoples as a blank slate for our own beliefs (a denial of agency which, friends, is the very definition of cultural imperialism), or 2) have practical and distorting consequences in the way we set up wildernesses across the world.

Anyways, thanks for reading and glad you dug up that picture. I’m usually photographed whilst glowering.

 
 

As a lefty professor of global history who tends to teach against the romanticization of “indigenes” as “more natural” peoples (racism of a different color, in my eyes), I actually find myself agreeing mostly with Travis. “Avid arsonists” was a pretty poor choice of words, though.

But you–Travis–are eliding one of the main points of Kjekshus’s book (based mostly on Ford’s argument)–that indigenous forms of landscape control in East Africa *were* clever and purposeful tropical environmental management, not idiotic degradations that European colonial governments claimed. East Africans acted with both conservation and exploitation in mind (the money for ivory in the nineteenth century was very good…). And East Africans are the ones who manage elephant populations now, as opposed to what you imply.

 
 

So Travis, here’s your argument the way I understood it: Industrialized nations start fires, clear-cut forests, pollute their air and water with toxic chemicals, and build shopping malls on top of the ruins. However, native peoples such as the Iroquois also started fires. Therefore, they are just as bad.
Of course, you probably have friends who compare Obama to Adolf Hitler using the same logic (they both made speeches to large crowds!) so I can’t say I’m surprised.

 
 

They burned the leaf litter on the forest floor to rid their camps of ticks, chiggers, and spiders. The ensuing smoke also drove away flies and mosquito.

 
 

Robert Sapolsky (left) has a great bit in A Primate’s Memoir where he’s staying in a hut in a mountain village somewhere in Africa:

I had been noting that these people in the second village, desert folk, for centuries until a decade ago, had still not adapted to their new settings. They made a fire inside their house, which was certainly necessary with the mountain cold, but they had not modified the architecture from the way it was back down in the desert–still completely shut. Thus, the smoke accumulated to a horrendous extent. The village was filled with red eyes and tubercular coughs from the smoke. As soon as Cassiano had left for the night, I blew out the all-night fire he had left–my sleeping bag was warm enough, and the smoke was sickening. I went to sleep.

Around midnight, I discovered the other reasons why they kept fires going all night. I awoke to a sound that will give me the chills for the rest of my life. I woke up thinking, Oh, it’s raining. Then I thought, Oh, it’s raining on me–I can feel the drops hitting my sleeping bag, my face. Then I remembered I was sleeping inside a hut. Suddenly, I was monstrously awake. Things were moving all over me. My hair was moving. I shined my flashlight around. The smoke was also meant to percolate through the grass thatched roof. This would drive away the giant cockroaches. In the absence of smoke, the cockroaches had poured in, all over the bags of maize meal.
But this was not the real problem.
Because following the cockroaches were the army ants

 
 

“Next thing you know, you’ll want to intermarry with breathers and then where will society be?”

“E’s my husband, y’know. I still love him. I still put the ring on my finger.”

“You go to bed with it?”

 
 

The guy really is failing if he’s mentioned Native American burning practices without understanding basic concepts of forest management, as the Aborigines have been doing for their entire existence. Just as earlier comments said, it was to clear underbrush, open pods and cones (at least one species of pine depends on fire to open its cones) and attract game when grass grows back, all of which promote a healthy forest when done when done at the right times.

 
 

My point, simply, is that the unspoiled, wild land that is so frequently portrayed as the natural environment of indigenous peoples the world over is a fiction — one invented by Westerners, who feeling bad about their own depredation of land, have a tendency to conjure the moral opposite

Nonsense.

It’s a moral fiction devised in order to make the settlers brag about how much harder they had things. God forbid, for example, a ready supply of berries be available when everyone knows real men eat “bar”.

 
 

I think it was in the water rather than subtle indoctrination: He and Douthat also share the same receding hairline.

But he exposes himself (UGH!) when he refers to indigenous people being “allowed to control” the elephants of Tanzania.

 
 

I always find it interesting to read different people’s reactions to fiction.

In this case, the interesting thing is this; Travis spends the entire article complaining about how it’s unfair that native people are portrayed as better than they are in real life. What he never gets into is whether or not the portrayal of “us” is fair. Reason being, of course, that it’s perfectly accurate, just a little ugly for Travis’ delicate tastes.

For years, conservatives have whined that portrayals of American Indians in the media are unfair because in reality, the Indians were cruel, nasty, brutish, violent people – “savages,” dare one say it. They never finish their thought and add that it was better for the world that they were all wiped out. They don’t have to. The racist base gets the message loud and clear.

 
 

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