What fueled the Spaniards’ cruelties wasn’t human nature. It was civilization. Civilization convinced the Spaniards that their superior weapons made them superior beings. Civilization created the filthy cities in which their ancestors acquired immunity to the pathogens that wiped out millions in the Americas. Civilization convinced Columbus and his men that gold was more valuable than the lives of the people they destroyed to get it. Civilization twisted their souls into somehow concluding that their savior, supposedly the embodiment of love and mercy, would have approved of—demanded, even—the
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