Editors’ note: The opinions and ideas expressed in The Accidental Gentrifist are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the outlook and belief of anyone else in the Ist network.

I went downtown today, in heady expectation. I brought my 15th Century captain's cap, my red and gold Aragonese flag, and my ceremonial saber and musket. But to my disappointment—and to my shocking disbelief—the architects of this city’s civic pride had once again failed to organize a Columbus Day parade. It was such a bummer. To add insult to injury, the day was also snubbed by Google, the search engine malevolently declining to cutely modify their logo in honor of the navigator. Come on. It wasn’t like he intended to instigate genocide. He simply wanted to make a fortune… based on a rather enormous assumption supported by a huge mathematical error.

No, he didn’t sign onto an ‘off-grid’ mortgage in order to live in the resplendent 78702. Actually, it’s kind of a funny story. When Columbus figured that the Earth’s circumference was no greater than 15,692 miles, the partially-educated explorer made several small errors in calculation, not the least of which was his belief that 9th Century Transoxanian astronomer and cartographer Al-Farghani measured his maps in Italian miles, and not the much larger Arabic miles… which I’m not so sure Columbus should get a pass on. I mean, I realize he didn’t finish his full four years at Genoa Tech, but please. Why didn’t he know Al-Farghani’s maps were calculated in Arabic? Shouldn’t his first clue have been that the man’s name was ‘Al-Farghani?’ In any case, the Earth is closer to 24,854 miles around, not that Columbus would ever know the whole truth. (Fortunately for him though, the Bahamas’ indigenous Guanahani had not only perfected the cultivation of tobacco, but they had already initiated rudimentary marketing schemes for the finished product. For Columbus, the return trip was much easier, once he worked out that the distance from San Juan back to Andalusia was in fact only 4,600 Marlboro Miles, or a mere 92 cartons.)

I suppose that each East Austin Gentrifist is, in his or her own way, a kind of Columbus: Making assumptions based on projections of the real estate market, alternately worshiping or shaking their fist at the spate of new condominiums, depending on their particular deities—‘discovering’ new parks and stores, trying to understand the strange speech and habits of the natives, semi-aware that their very presence contains a pathogen of tax hikes that threaten to exterminate the indigenous population.

'Gentrification,’ really, is just a new word for an old practice. Specifically, using one’s inherent advantages to displace a preëxisting population, provided there is both opportunity and cause. As the motives have changed—one can no longer claim glory or God, although, admittedly, there is some gold to be had—we have become increasingly aware of our human capacity for passive-self destruction, gentrification and climate change being the most obvious examples because they threaten our existence, in various meanings of the word. But still, for the most part, these swings are the result of the mass accruement of millions of individual actions. As long as free Americans are allowed to better their lot, gentrification will be.

But that doesn't mean we can continue to collectively feign ignorance. While it’s only recently become fashionable to point at older families suddenly faced with the choice of selling fast or being taxed out of their homes, at younger renters moving steadily east, and at the overall character shifts in historically non-affluent neighborhoods—a nascent awareness that human opportunism is typically one-sided has been with us for awhile. Just look at movies about our most human-like non-human competitors: space aliens.

The storyline usually goes like this: either on earth or in space, humans encounter a far superior race of beings who can shapeshift, read our minds, and/or telekinetically choke us to death. Resistance is futile. The army is helpless, the air force gets swatted down like so many flies, and the president’s brain is inevitably replaced by a squid-like simbiant. While maybe nobody notices the final development, the interlopers quite easily become our masters. Humanity only triumphs in the eleventh hour, usually due to some unexpected phenomenon previously considered a flaw.

On the contrary, how many movies can you name where humans leave earth, find an extant population of sentient beings on a previously unknown planet, and then systematically subdue and destroy the unprepared and over-matched populace? After the rape and slaughter, there could be a scene at the end where everybody kicks back, opens a beer, and talks about where they’re going to put up their duplex and above-ground pool. I mean, what’s wrong with that story? We’re all humans here, right?

That wouldn't work, because these space movies are a reflection of humanity from another perspective. For the West, it's only disguised as ‘our' story. In reality, it’s our indirect apology, because it allows us an escapist moment of empathetic terror that we may someday meet the same fate as those whose bones line the missions and nickel mines of the American past. These alien narratives are our indirect admission of complicity in the current construction of ‘the way things are.’ There are no aliens, because they’re us. That’s us sucking brains through a straw. If you want the story that ends with Schlitz and barbecue—well, I guess that was your high school American History textbook.

And we should be fortunate that the literal aliens remain relegated to science fiction. Because the last part—the part where the reckless cast-out proves himself worthy after all and helps his fellow humans triumph against the aliens—it’s a total, bald-faced lie. There is no way we could beat them at anything, except maybe Donkey Kong, or quarters. Are we nuts? They can travel from a place in the universe that we apparently can’t even see. It’s not personal. Their rock just beats our plastic, left-handed, child-safe scissors… that are still sticky from the pbj Mom packed us for lunch.

I totally believe there’s intelligent life on other planets, I just pray they don’t stop here. Because it’ll likely result in all of us moving to the moon. Not because the aliens will have brutally subjugated the poor souls still on Earth—No, because if they have superior technology, they’ll probably have a superior economy, too. Whatever strange currency they’ll import, it’ll likely be even stronger than California dirt with a home on it—worse even than the Euro. We’ll be displaced right off the rock. And then what’ll they call it—‘extra-terrestrialification?’