I don't see anything uniquely American about it. More like The Human Way™ :p
(You do realize that all the societies are maintained with brutal force, right? And pick any country, go back a few centuries and you will find conflicts with as many casualties as American genocide).
>I don't see anything uniquely American about it. More like The Human Way™ :p
The uniquely American bit is the 300 years of institutionalized slavery which bred and sold humans like cattle by the millions and treated them as agricultural equipment on a scale unrivaled in all of human history.
Of course many societies have had slavery, but the transatlantic African slave trade (which was the very economic basis of the New World, centered on tobacco, sugar, and cotton production) was far and beyond the most brutal act ever committed against a race of people.
If you want to play a numbers game, that's fine, but you don't provide any sources for your numbers, anyway.
The slave trade was far from American-only. It began and continued through European support when those places were European colonies. It lasted well into the 19th century through Arab slave trading along the African coasts, and the Belgian Congo as of 1918 was as despotic a place as any. The Germans, British, and Dutch maimed, raped, tortured, and enslaved natives up until at least 1900 in southern Africa. The Dutch were notorious for their actions in the East. The Russians had defactos slavery and pogroms against minorities until at least 1850.
You're being myopic about history.
was far and beyond the most brutal act ever committed against a race of people
This is a contest nobody wants to win, but I'm not sure how you can say that with such confidence when we had actions like the Holocaust, Japan's attacks on China in WW2, Turkish atrocities against Armenians, etc.
This is the real world. Humans have historically been horrific to each other. If you really believe the US is some outlier, you are wrong.
(You do realize that all the societies are maintained with brutal force, right? And pick any country, go back a few centuries and you will find conflicts with as many casualties as American genocide).