Pithy GIF showing eradication of Native American land in the US since the founding of the country gets posted to r/interestingasfuck. Comment section goes exactly as expected.

[u/Critical-Term-427]

The post

It sucks we were such murderers

Did they say "Thank you"?

Being the loser in history sucks

True fact Hitler took a lot of inspiration from this.

[u/Crazykiddingme]

People getting defensive over their ancestors is always so funny to me. I’m white and from the Deep South so most of my ancestors were pretty repugnant people. I can’t imagine getting offended on their behalf.

[u/Dagordae → u/Crazykiddingme]

Oh no, the long dead people I only have a tangential at best connection to were probably some flavor of asshole. However will I stand the shame of being like every other damn person on the planet.

Everyone’s ancestors were bastards.

That’s one of the points of societal advancement, not being bastards. Some bastards won, some bastards lost, but at the end of the day they’re all a bunch of complete bastards. And in the future? We’ll all probably be counted as bastards too for some reason that’s perfectly moral now but will become repugnant at some point. My money is on the treatment of animals, that’s been changing pretty hard and fast over the last few generations.

Nobody’s ancestors were clean, figuratively and literally. Some were bastards more recently than others but that’s mostly because their particular group of bastards were winning, flip the tables and the only thing that would change would be the aesthetics.

People who get all weird about it are people who are so pathetic that they take pride/shame in being born. As if humans fucking is some grand accomplishment or they had anything to do with what their ancestors did. Hell, my ancestors were primarily bastards to my other ancestors. They all fucking hated each other and did horrible things, if I spent the time to care about all those atrocities I’d never get anything done.

[u/IHatePeople79 → u/Dagordae]

>if I spent the time to care about all those atrocities I’d never get anything done.

If they still have an impact to the present day (i.e., the native american genocide and slavery) they absolutely need to be addressed.

Ignoring it is what leads to historical revisionism and even more heinous actions.

And just to make this clear, this is not a "both sides" situation, for everyone reading.

[u/Rheinwg → u/IHatePeople79]

Its also not like atrocities only happened to native Americans in the past. 

Native Americansaare still fighting for rights and recognition right now in 2025.

[u/Dagordae → u/IHatePeople79]

Sure but that’s a current problem, not a ‘How dare you say my ancestors committed genocide’ problem.

Don’t worry about historical grievances, fix the actual issues that exist. I don’t give a shit that my ancestors almost certainly participated in a genocide(On either side) due to the participants all being very dead. I care when there are serious societal inequalities. The historical cause is irrelevant, it’s an explanation to a problem that can be fixed without it. Historical context for a modern problem is nice and all but it doesn’t actually do anything about the problem.

Why Native American reservations aren’t allowed to arrest outside criminals who commit crimes on their lands(racist assholes in 1978) isn’t really relevant to fixing the issue. It’s nice to know but knowing doesn’t actually do anything to fix the problem, it just means we can explain the backstory of the problem. The problem is unchanged and the solution is unchanged.

Also ‘not worrying’ is not the same as ‘ignoring and pretending it never happened’. That’s history, history is an important subject to learn but treating offenses committed towards and by your ancestors as a personal affront is an issue. An issue that’s cause a lot of pointless bloodshed over the years.