1491

I’m starting a political movement called 1491. I want a do-over.

In this one Columbus gets lost, goes back to Spain. His mother is a revolutionary and she smacks him upside his head. The Jews and the Muslims regroup in Morocco and come back and trounce Isabelle and Ferdinand. Isabella and Ferdinand open a small bed and breakfast but are otherwise never heard from again.

The victors establish a matriarchal society based on hospitality so that everyone has to feed everybody else at least a few nights a week. A century later the Haudenosenee send a ship over and two matrilineal societies negotiate a trade alliance so that they can have coffee in North America and tomatoes and peppers in North Africa and Southern Europe.

Meanwhile Africa is economically booming. There is a pan-African decision to get in on our matrileneal trade and exchange confederacy. We form a major trade alliance across three continents. We learn from the Haudenosenee and refine our democratic practices. We don't pollute the earth. The oceans are clean. Universities are beautiful gardens with free education for all. Guns are never invented. Technology is subject to ethical interrogation. Trees and animals and insects and all non-humans get a say.

Sometime in the late twenty-first century, we make contacts with aliens. They invite us on a major cruise around the universe. We make friends and form incredible orchestras to make spectral music that cheers everybody up. Turns out that mushrooms have been composing pop songs for millenia. They teach us the lyrics and the entire mycological world chimes in.

Later, the whales figure, okay they've got it now and they decide to let us know they could speak human languages all along. They open up under-water amusement parks and teach us all to speak whale which turns out to be the single best language to tell jokes in.

Peace rolls on.

The end. We could still do this.