Sounds like fight night, right? No, it’s a disgusting conservative challenging the right of Puerto Rico to be considered an entity, an extant item in the world, beside the great and glorious WESTERN civilization (read White).
So the lovely Democratic Socialist Alejandra Ocasio-Cortez responded with something rare in the conservative world and thus unknown to D’Souza: facts.
to quote:
“- Hundreds of thousands of soldiers to the US military
– Nat’l supply of hospital IV bags & medical supplies
– Historically, sugar, coffee, crops
– A strategic port in the Atlantic
& Importantly for the 1%, one of the biggest loophole tax havens for the super-rich.
It is revealing that this question:
a) comes from quite the colonial mindset of “what value is this territory providing us anyway?” (Do we ask that about Appalachia, etc?)
b) implies that PR’s current status is somehow an act of charity – also a sentiment rooted in colonialism”
What is even more revealing is D’Souza’s name. I was just reading a review of a book on the Portuguese Empire and I thought of D’Souza and the many other products of miscegenation between Portuguese and local populations in Africa, the Indian Ocean, and elsewhere. While the Portuguese were horribly brutal and bigoted, they actually settled in these out-of-the-way outposts and intermarried with the local people, especially the powerful and wealthy, starting Indo-Portuguese, Afro-Portuguese, etc. dynasties. Those families were the progenitors of a long line of people whose advantages accrued via their connections to both worlds.
So I would turn the concept of colonial on D’Souza thus: what has been the contribution of the Indo-Portuguese to the world? How has the amalgam of the two cultures benefitted each? How much of this heritage did your parents pass on to you? Are you proud of this heritage or do you even know about it? And if you are aware of it, what about it allows you to disparage people who were not European at the time of contact but became Europeanized to some degree or another? Europe touched all parts of the world, all continents, all regions, even if only by the extension of influences without the accompanying people. Catholicism extended far beyond the reach of the Portuguese in West Central Africa, Christianizing a good portion of the Congolese people in the centuries after contact, with no missionaries, priests or other emissaries from Europe.
As is true of conservatives generally, you engage in linear thinking, a simplistic view of the world: colonies were established to supply the mother country in Europe with goods, raw material, and people, often slaves, and in turn to provide a market for European exports and a haven for Europeans seeking a better life. The U.S. would not be “America” without all those people, including people like yourself. Yet your appreciation of this massive process covering over five centuries seems limited to an ecomomic pipeline. A very limited view, D’Souza, and AOC set you straight. Got that?