Echoes of history...

Botany Bay, a place for the British Empire to send it's unwashed masses of criminals. Botany Bay, a colony in Australia, built by convicts, providing the proud lineage of the Australian people. Yet, this should be the US. No, these were not colonies of free men protesting religious persecution, never mind all that wonderful foundational myth of Massachusetts Bay. Imagine this. You were a poor one in the mother country, man or woman, didn't matter... perhaps a teen. You were picked up for being a beggar, which was a crime. You were sent to prison and next thing you knew you were on your way to lands due West.

Once you arrived at oh Philadelphia. assuming you were still strong, you were taken down to the market, where you were sold and taken down to the fields of Tobacco. Perhaps you were lucky and you had a trade, in which case you were sold to an owner to practice your trade. For the next seven years, the average term, you were worked, and worked and worked... and if you are lucky enough to survive... then you were released and became a freedman. That is the origin of American residents on this land. Upwards of 50,000 were transported to these shores, as criminals... in a very much so privatized justice system.

Echoes of history, echoes that go very much against the foundational myth of the US. Nah we were scum...

“Sir they are a race of convicts and ought to be content with anything we allow them, short of hanging.” Doctor Johnson, 1764.

There are echoes that most of us are not aware off... but all of a sudden our privatized prison system is starting to make a little more sense, as well as the cheap labor in it...

I guess next Thanksgiving I will be thinking of the thousands taken in chains across the ocean... and not a few who fled for religious reasons... in fact, those tens of thousands have a lot to do with the national character, and our attitudes... I actually suspect a little more than Plymouth Rock.