The Conservative Cave

REVIEW: Aztecs, by Inga Clendinnen

https://www.thepsmiths.com/p/review-aztecs-by-inga-clendinnen

Aztecs: An Interpretation, Inga Clendinnen (Cambridge University Press, 1991).

When Hernán Cortés landed in the New World, the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan was one of the greatest cities anywhere on earth. It had more than twice the population of Seville, and was (as my grade school history textbooks always nervously assured me) cleaner, more orderly, and more magnificent than any contemporaneous European city. Its ochre towers and pyramids rose like a dream from the shimmering waters of Lake Texcoco. Unlike the organic maze of alleyways that characterized most Spanish cities, Tenochtitlan’s public gardens and temple districts and grand processional ways were a product of the sort of high modernist urban planning that Europe wouldn’t really see until Haussmann’s Paris in the 19th century. The walls of the city shone with lime and were decorated with paintings, so it glimmered like a bauble in the Mexican sun. The soldiers who followed Cortés on the one hand described it as so ethereal it seemed the three causeways joining it to the mainland were anchors without which it might float away, but on the other hand were overawed by the towering height and hallucinatory bulk of the Great Pyramid topped with its twin temples to Huitzilopochtli and Tlaloc.

... The questions people usually ask given all of this are, “How did the Spaniards win? And how did they win so quickly and decisively?” I understand the allure of these questions, and why they have captured the imaginations of generations of historians and anthropologists. They are reasonable questions. But after reading Inga Clendinnen’s book I find I no longer have any interest in these questions, because all of my thought is bent towards another one: “Why didn’t God destroy the Aztecs sooner?”

In fairness, He did destroy them pretty quickly. The ancestors of the Mexica wandered into the fertile basin that was to become their empire sometime in the late 1200s or early 1300s. They found it already settled with a mosaic of mostly Nahuatl-speaking city-states, and spent a few decades as mercenaries or tributaries for various stronger powers. One of those petty wars went badly, and they finally settled down as bedraggled refugees on the muck-covered islands that were to be the site of their future glory. Within a hundred years they were the most powerful city in the valley. Fifty years after that they were the unquestioned hegemon and begin to launch wars of imperial expansion towards the Pacific and Caribbean coasts. Another fifty years of imperial glory, and then they were destroyed utterly. ...
...
That empire was not gentle. Few empires are, but even by the sad standards of human history, the Mexica were extreme. I’m not speaking here about their legendarily creative and inventive ways of humiliating subject peoples,2 I’m speaking about the human sacrifices. No, these were not exaggerated by the colonizers, as some revisionist historians would have you believe.3 If anything, the Spaniards lacked the conceptual framework to fully comprehend the industrial-scale, ever-so-civilized and bureaucratic evil of the Mexica, and so they inadvertently downplayed it. The reality, as Clendinnen brilliantly documents, is that human sacrifice was not an occasional or incidental religious custom for the Mexica, like an extra-spicy church service for the people who only show up on Christmas or Easter. No, the mass-butchery of wailing, pleading captives of both sexes and all ages was the core activity around which their entire civilization and society revolved. Their art, their music, their poetry, their approach to warfare, their entire economic system, their kaleidoscopic array of holidays and festivals, all were singularly dedicated to the killing (often preceded by inventive torture) of helpless human beings. And everybody had their role to play:

IMO, Spain sent soldiers to plunder and conquer, not so much to settle and work the land. They were not like the Separatists and Puritans who started the Plymouth and Massachusetts Bay Colonies. That said ...

The sophisticated society - I cannot bring myself to use the word "civilization" - they conquered was horrific. Where the Spanish caused the deaths of many Aztecs, et al, through infectious diseases they did not understand or know they were carrying, capturing and exacting tribute of 10s of thousands of men (and women?) to rip out their hearts in human sacrifice was part of the core of Aztec society.

1. The trillions of $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$ of social programs bennies over the past 60 years were not a "bribe"?    

2. Why do I know that if I bothered to find a transcript of last night's speech that Trump said and meant something very different from Chasstev365's pretzellation?

While I think this is a very bad idea economically, the legacy media has already settled upon their preferred narrative: This proposal is likely illegal. The bribe thing is laughably a bad argument, how about proposing free healthcare and free childcare, are those not bribes?

It isn't illegal according to tax laws which are of course quite convoluted and difficult to understand unless one knows an expert in the field (hint, hint).

Chasstev365 (9,236 posts)

And so it's come to this:

Trump is so desperate he literally just offered to bribe the entire American electorate on camera.

If anyone is tempted to vote Republican to accept the bribe, I would just say;

* He would never actually give every American $ 5000

* Even if he did he did, IT'S YOUR ****ING MONEY!!!!!

https://democraticunderground.com/100221496306

I just knew this would come up with these idiots. They don't listen.

25 Years Later and We Need to Talk Truth
https://townhall.com/columnists/alanjosephbauer/2026/09/08/25-years-later-and-we-need-to-talk-truth-n2682583

Nothing has changed for the better with respect to the Religion of Peace.

I personally do not believe that facts can be racist. If blacks have an incarceration rate far higher than their percentage of the population or men run faster than women, these are facts. Sure, one can use such facts for nefarious purposes, but the truth remains the truth. As we approach the 25th anniversary of the terror attacks of 9/11, we could use a little truth. I believe that everything I list below was and is true. If not, the comments are open.

All of the hijackers were Muslims
The one who sent them, Osama Bin Laden, was also a Muslim
The only places that rejoiced over the 9/11 attacks were Muslim states and areas like the Palestinian Authority
Several hundred Jews and several thousand Christians were murdered in the four attacks
In Israel, there was great shock and sadness. I can attest that there were no celebrations by Jews over the destruction in the United States
The hijackers were predominantly from Saudi Arabia
There are legal proceedings to determine if the Saudis played an active role in the attacks
According to Mike Benz, CIA station chief in Saudi Arabia, John Brennan gave the terrorists their visas to the U.S.

9/11 was committed by radical Islamists. John Brennan gave the terrorists their visas to America.

Elizabeth Holmes And Lindsay Clancy Defenders Are Cut From The Same Sociopathic Cloth
https://thefederalist.com/2026/09/09/elizabeth-holmes-and-lindsay-clancy-defenders-are-cut-from-the-same-sociopathic-cloth/

There’s a little clip from an upcoming documentary making the rounds on social media. It’s from a film called You Can See Everything, which chronicles the final days before convicted felon Elizabeth Holmes is sent to prison.

If you don’t remember who Elizabeth Holmes is, she’s the erstwhile CEO of Theranos —a medical technology company that saw its value rise astronomically during the early 2010s based on claims that it possessed potentially revolutionary medical technology, making Holmes a fortune and winning the accolades of the corporate media for her trailblazing status as the youngest self-made female billionaire.

Turns out, it was all bunk, and a series of investigations starting in 2015 resulted in a total collapse of Theranos’ estimated value by 2018 and Holmes’ conviction for defrauding investors in 2022. She received 11.5 years in prison and began her term in 2023.

Females are not a gentler sex. There are plenty of female abusers, killers, and serial killers.