Revisionist Fantasia

Native Americans botched it
they should have banded
bonded together across
both continents, independently
invented capitalism and proactively
become a bunch of bloodthirsty
industrialists driven to plunder
as progress, steps up the spiral
corkscrew staircase of technological
advance thousands of years ahead of us

and then,

by the time we showed up, all ye glorious
olden heroes and captains and thugs
of military evangelism and exploratory
speculative business endeavors, they

would have been like, FUCK YOU
WE BEEN TO THE MOON AND GOT THE BOMB
ALREADY, WHAT DO WE NEED YOU FOR
KEMOSABE, SOCIAL DISEASE AND BOOZE?
FUCK OFF BACK TO YOUR DUMBASS, BACKWARD
LANDS, BUTT HEAD, but

they didn't. Instead
they botched it.

How satisfying would that have been, though?
In hindsight? Picture the look on all our
faces! Whoops! Turns out this land was

already discovered, don'tcha know! Sorry bye!

We would have hauled ass back in armadas of ships
and reported to the assembled and trembling crownèd

heads:

"Don't fuck with those guys, they did their homework -
must of saw us coming!"

Then we'd timidly more or less prostrate ourselves
diplomatically, offering a "cultural [ art, music, booze
and sex germs] exchange" in trade
for their fantastically superior tech. "How many symphonies

will you take for a Warp Drive? We also have beads" but no,

Didn't.

Botched it, you see. They had that whole huge head start
on us, gigantic landmasses to themselves and they chose
to fritter it away in living in harmony with nature, war
sports, New Age spirituality and the perfection of
all sorts of woodcraftsy tricks, stunts and techniques.
The lesson in it is probably obvious,
but in case it isn't, it's this:

they kind of botched it