Many people associate that date with Columbus, the year he returned with 17 ships and the multi-century salvation massacre of indigenous North Americans commenced. We don’t know our own history and this creates all sorts of cognitive dissonance and other cultural blockages not at all unrelated to sustainable issues. We recognize who we are in what we’ve done – we identify ourselves with wars and conquests in ways that most, if not all, of those more malign events happen of their own volition and/or the hand of destiny – we just don’t know who or what is responsible for those. That our popular entertainments mostly exacerbate this self-re-certification in terms of all we know as good and true, and hence lead to indictments of culture and entertainments, are crimes which appear to be their own punishments.
And if it’s too early in the week for you to follow that kind of Calvinist logic, remember: the best way to discover anything to be willing to find out.
Take it from a no good coward, an American, too. (A North American, that is).