[polairscience]

It might have begun far before the railroads but it only became worse with time. The sand creek massacre was in 1864. Square in the railroad era. Not to mention every broken treaty of that era that was directly incentivized by the new massive industrial access to western land.

One could and probably should understand that the beauty of the Railroad is inseperable from the subjugation of the indiginous tribes and the labor abuses that built it. Should those things be ignored because they make you uncomfortable? It's perfectly contextual to have that in this piece....

... though I do concede the way that's mentioned and the article in general seems low effort and mediocre. But that's a different argument than "stop making me uncomfortable".

[timr]

Sure. But you can pick pretty much any piece of technology from the era and say the same thing: "How the hammer led to the oppression of Indigenous People in the American west".

> One could and probably should understand that the beauty of the Railroad is inseperable from the subjugation of the indiginous tribes and the labor abuses that built it. Should those things be ignored because they make you uncomfortable? It's perfectly contextual to have that in this piece....

Someone else on this thread tried the same rhetorical feint. Who told you that I am "uncomfortable"? Did the fact that I cited events and dates somehow convince you that I didn't know about these events before now? That I just became aware of the story of the US westward expansion because this author dropped it into her Amtrak feature?

Look, if you want to write (or read) a thesis on the influence of the locomotive on the oppression of indigenous people, that's great. I bet there's one to be written. But this is just lazy, dumb, superficial propaganda, dropped into a puff piece.