Cortes the Killer

The trial to determine the guilt of Cortes, though not the most organized of trials, really got me thinking. Not about whether or not it was morally correct to utilize the means he did to reach his end, but whether or not he thought he made the right decisions, or even if he believed he was doing good deeds. I think it’s rather obvious that massacring thousands of natives and providing false information to get them going about killing themselves off as well is, by any, or at least most modern standards, immoral. But since his goal was conquest and ownership of the continent, Cortes must have thought that what he was doing was at least in his best interest, and in that of Spain’s. What I would be interested to know is if he thought he was improving anything by being there. As far as I know, there isn’t much left to determine one way or the other.

This weekend I also went to the Air and Space museum for the first time in a few years. The museum of my childhood was gone. As soon as I entered, I started to analyze the layout of the exhibits and tried to “read” the museum. Gone was my child-like simple wonder. When you walk in, the put all the cool replicas right there so you can immediately think “wow, look at all that cool shiny stuff we can put way up there”. A new addition was a model of the SpaceShipOne, the first privately owned and operated vehicle to enter space. The museum showcased the technological superiority of the United States and how it helped us in air battles since World War I. On the whole, I think the museum exists to elicit a sense of patriotism, “NASA is really cool”, and “we beat them commies good”.