Forget Trump. Why Would Virginia’s Dems Go To Jamestown Anyway?

Lemme get this straight.

Virginia’s Democratic lawmakers, eager for President Donald Trump to be seen as more racist than Governor Blackface, are threatening to boycott the 400th anniversary of Virginia’s General Assembly at Jamestown on July 30, if the president honors an invitation extended to him - in writing - by the Democratic governor himself.

I hesitate to bring this up, but aren’t they members of a party that’s increasingly offended by America’s “racist” white guy heritage? Aren’t they the ones rewriting history to erase the accomplishments of slaveholding Founding Fathers, such as George Washington and Thomas Jefferson?

Yep. That’s what I thought.

Then, why in God’s name are they planning to attend the Jamestown festivities at all? I mean Jamestown was the first permanent English settlement in the Americas. It’s the place where all the bad stuff began.

Perhaps the left-leaning lawmakers are a bit rusty on their history. Or they haven’t gotten around to hating the Jamestown colonists yet.

They will. 

To help put these revisionists on the path to historical purity, here’s an abbreviated version of colonial Virginia’s past, assembled, condensed and interpreted by me. (Kids, feel free to refer to this as you cram for those SOLs):

Jamestown was settled over 400 years ago during the reign of King James I by English colonists. You know, wealthy white “gentlemen” who came to the New World to plunder the land and spread smallpox among the natives.

They were atrocious farmers and the servants they brought with them weren’t much better, so they nearly starved to death and at times resorted to cannibalism. Or so it’s said.

Oh, and as it happens, their little settlement was right smack in the middle of tribal lands used by Native Americans. That proved problematical.

At times the Powhatan were kind to the pasty-faced foreigners who arrived in Virginia. They fed these failed farmers and traded with them.

But eventually the greedy colonists took more and more of the Indian lands for tobacco, the one crop they managed to grow.

The year 1619 was a notable one for Jamestown not only because because the first Virginia General Assembly convened, but because it also marked the arrival of the first African slaves in Jamestown. They were delivered by a Dutch ship.

It’s often noted that some of these black people earned their freedom by converting to Christianity, some were treated as indentured servants and some went on to own slaves of their own. So they weren’t technically slaves. But they were, sort of.

It’s not like they came to Jamestown on their own.

Back to the Native Americans. Relations between the colonists and the locals was tense for decades, with several Indian uprisings and massacres of the settlers.

What the natives didn’t know was that there was an endless supply of Englishmen ready to replace the dead guys.

In the end, the colonists prevailed and the indigenous people were pushed off their hunting and fishing grounds and eventually onto a reservation.

Fast forward to the present: The governor of Virginia and the attorney general are free to clown around in blackface and their fellow Democrats still love them - OK, tolerate them. But when some blockheads at a Trump rally got carried away with their intense dislike for an unlikable, anti-semitic member of Congress and chanted “send her back” it was such an outrage that prominent Democrats in Richmond decided they didn’t want the president to join them and Governor you-know-who to honor the wonderful things that happened at Jamestown.

After all, why shouldn’t embattled Virginia Democrats - reeling from a trifecta of scandals - politicize and ruin a birthday party for what’s often called “oldest continuously operating legislative assembly in the world?”

I mean is 400 years really such a big deal when you have a chance to score a few cheesy political points?