/lit/ - Literature

Early on the original violater, Boone, had become aghast at the destruction that had been unleashed. A failed land speculator himself who had refused his own opportunity to become a white Indian, he lamented to Audubon the almost instantaneous depletion of the vast stores of game and the replacement of them by noisome herds of settlers and speculators more successful than he.
Of this last breed, there now appeared to be almost as many as passenger pigeons, only they were impossible to quarry. With a telling consistency the federal government was unable to frame land acts or ordinances that would favor the individual settler over the speculator, for in truth the government itself was but a manifestation of a culture long committed to speculation in unknown lands. And while Roy Robbins has shown that the history of the American public domain has been that of a protracted battle between the settler/squatter and the speculator, in fact there seems never to have been such a class as permanent settlers since most of them thought of themselves as at least potential realtors. Like the old conquistadores who would carve up the plundered lands of the islands and New Spain and then move on, few of these Americans would condescend to settle and grow roots. Instead, they would drive restlessly, relentlessly on, nameless, petty, misguided Coronados searching for their Cibolas ever westward.

Attracted by the fertility of the soil and the prospects of instant gain, hundreds of thousands left the East for the Mississippi Valley. "Ohio Fever" threatened to depopulate Connecticut, once the much coveted land of the Mohican, and large sections of western Massachusetts and upper New York became deserted, the stone walls of their fields spilling into the weeds, the houses, barns, and outbuildings crumbling down to their sills, and the pruned-back woodlands recommencing their slow and ironic advances. Speculators in the newer region gobbled up huge portions of land, holding them out to feverish hordes, driving up the prices, and selling ever smaller individual lots to those who could afford no larger. Metropolises in woods and swamps were mapped out on the grid plan that, as Lewis Mumford notes, had the preeminent advantage of facilitating the sale and resale of lots. And sold and resold they were, each individual buying up as much as he possibly could and far more than he ever intended to use, betting against tomorrow that newcomers would purchase from him at double his original investment. Almost none of these metropolises ever materialized, of course, though some survived as county seats presided over by hulking courthouses, outsized, stranded monuments to baseless ambition and expectation.

surely the situation will fix itself

>>13165277
Totalitarian High Tech surveillance of Islamic-Slanteyed Shitskin workforce, whilst culture of outrage is being made mandatory.


Internet has already become its worst-case scenario.