Police Encounter With Hawaiian National in Pahoa

[MattKarma]

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Originally posted by imagtek

I apologize sincerely and humbly in advance for any offence.

But the notion that a militarily defenceless Kingdom of Hawaii would have experienced anything other than invasion and occupation in the late 19th and early 20th century is a fantasy. Any serious reading of the history of this era indicates that, in the event of American disavowal of any security interest, Hawaii would have been promptly militarily occupied by Japan, Russia or France. A Japanese occupation would have been particularly disastrous for Hawaiians because late 19th century Japan was territorially expansionist and brutally racist. The estimated body count of Japanese occupation in China and Korea alone during this period numbers over a millions. Perhaps native Hawaiian culture might have fared better under Russian, and certainly French occupation than US occupation, but we will never know. Ideally, Hawaii should have been made an independent and sovereign protectorate of the US, but that presumes the best of all possible worlds and did not happen. In the brutal, racist, real world as it existed over a century ago, the notion that Hawaii would have stood alone as the single ancient society in human history occupying a strategic location to escape colonial occupation is simply not plausible. I do not defend this on any sort of moral grounds. Like any civilized person today I find past injustices and their motivations appalling.

Human history is ugly. There is no other word. It is easy to cast judgement in hindsight, and the temptation to do so is high. Many feel we should revisit history and right wrongs, but life has moved on after a century and, world court or not, that is not as morally straightforward as one might think. I'm only expressing an opinion based upon a lifetime of study of human history from a specific cultural perspective. Others may come to contrary conclusions from other perspectives and their opinions are no less valid or worthy than mine.

I know there are people whom I respect deeply who may be offended by my opinions and all I can say is that I apologize where that is the case.

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Yeh, very balanced and insightfull POV, Mark.

As for me, I can recycle the answer I gave the nice ladies at the Hawaiian National Table in at the Kau Coffee festival:

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Well, back in those days, it was OK

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Covers the range pretty much; history sees a lot of conquest and conflict that certainly seemed right to somebody at the time, but looks vicious and sad now.