UNITY brought to you by genocide and fixed games
Monday, July 26, 2010 at 11:09PM Hi Readers!
Disclaimer: I`m assuming this site has readers and not just confused viewers who wind up here while searching for keigel devices.
So what has Laura been up to over the weekend? Gambling! I took the bus down to Connecticut with a bunch of over 50's sporting gams you could match to a AAA map.
My first stop was Foxwoods-a mecca of teal, purple, and white stretching high into the sky. Foxwoods is a casino and resort run by the Pequot Tribe of Connecticut. Through ancient spiritual wisdom, the Pequot discovered that you can make a ton of money by offering Vegas-ish facilities in close proximity to Puritanical states that only flirt with the idea of legalized gambling before the loudest person in the room starts screaming "But think of the children!"
Having their own severely underserved nation also means the Pequot can legalize indoor smoking. Which is prettty spectacular considering people in the Northeast are only allowed to smoke indoors if said structure is a shed in their backyard housing mostly old Barbie Power Wheels Jammin Jeeps and Bud Light Lime cans. So by offering the dual elicit pleasures of gambling and smoking indoors, the privileged few Pequot who run these casinos make a KILLING.
Speaking of killing....here's my little summary of The Pequot War. American history is full of stories involving Anglos mowing down Natives like crab grass they would later pay Hispanics a substandard wage to take care of. But, The Pequot War of the 17th century was one of a few settler-Native conflicts that featured native tribes, in this case the Mohegan and Narragansett tribes, siding with the English, and they joined in slaying 1,500 Pequots. As various tribes had done in wars before the arrival of the Puritans, the Mohegans took Pequots hostage and did a lot of nasty violent shit that made the Puritans totally jealous, so much so that the Puritans called a little time out, took the hostages back and abused them in classic Christian spirit: slavery, starvation, dehydration, rape, mutilation, etc, etc.
A few of the lucky (and in this case the title of "lucky" goes to the person who wasn't burned alive) Pequots were sold to plantations in the Caribbean, because if being a slave in New England sucks, being a slave on foreign lands with disease spreading mosquitoes sucks that extra 1000%. You can find more of this in the wonderful Sarah Vowell book The Wordy Shipmates.
Eventually they were all screwed over by the state of Connecticut, in what we'd call a unifying moment. Today, the Mohegans also run a Connecticut based casino. Sadly, the Pequots are continuing to get their asses beat by the Mohegans but now in a less bloody fashion. Mohegan Sun is a way better casino than Foxwoods! Better design, and arcade for kids, more stores, and they have a KRISPY KREME! Have you ever had a Krispy Kreme donut? Its like an angel came on your taste buds.
But, what makes any casino is the people, and both Foxwoods and Mohegan Sun attract what polite people would call "real characters", but I`m not polite so I think of them as a hodepodge of bored folks, skewing heavily towards the elderly, Asians of all ages who like to smoke indoors and play Baccarat, and poker playing single men with unfortunate taste in sunglasses.
The preponderance of old white folks will really make you chuckle, as their age group dominates The Tea Party, and calls for less government waste (aka social programs not designed to benefit them directly). But, they find nothing wrong with blowing their money on computerized (rigged) slot machines for hours.
The physical location of Mohegan Sun and Foxwoods also creates a peaceful site of interaction for Yankees and Red Sox fans, two groups who would typically describe in depth their desire to stick baseball bats up each others rectums, and not in a sexy Robert Maplethorpe sort of way.
What can we draw from my weekend in gambling land? Americans deep down want UNITY, particularly if it means getting to absolve the guilt of a history of genocide, forgetting about the dangers of smoking, and how every game is designed to send them to an even crappier poor house than the one they're probably already living in.
Reader Comments (5)
Your generalization of the Pequot War is misleading. Native Americans and European settlers fought along side and against one another since the white man stepped foot in North America. The Pequot War is far more complex then simple brutality or Indian on Indian violence, it was a power struggle/retaliation among other things. The "Puritan Rescue" of Indian POW's is generally bullshit. The Indians who were "saved" were either Christianized or made in house servants(slaves). Ultimately, the end result was their being shipped out to a praying towns,ex. Deer Island, to starve and eventually die of dehydration. So either way they were screwed and to get us back they built a haven for hoover rounds and a place for people to spend their money instead of a dentist's office, as you clearly stated.
The history of relations between the Pequot and the Puritans is complicated for sure-there were episodes where Pequots retaliated violently against the Puritans for being on their lands in a way that we would consider completely unlawful today so you could say that there was an element of retaliation at play with the Pequot War. But, lets not forget the vast majority of ruling Puritan's goals were always to take over land as they saw fit, and convert non-believers to Christianity. The Mohegans and the Pequot had a history of competition and war before the white man set foot on North America. But, in retrospect, which is the only way we can view any historical event, it is pretty depressing to see the glee that Mohegans took in slaughtering Pequots alongside the same people who would eventually fuck them over, is it not? Furthermore, I basically state that the Pequots who were slaves of the Puritans were shipped to the Carribean and enslaved, no where do I paint slavery as a rosy picture. Your details are helpful sure. But, most adults can understand slavery=horrible. There's always more room for detail and nuance in blog posts, particularly blog posts that are comical in nature. I tried to also give a recommendation for more advanced knowledge on the subject of early Puritan-Native interactions with the Sarah Vowell nod. Sometimes there's just not enough room to say all that needs to be said. But, I`m glad you read it and wanted to add something to this.
enslaved* in New England as well as in the Carribean. either location is horrible morally and a reprehensible way to treat humans.
In light of comments, some updates made, thanks for reading!
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