A Protest in Virginia With Echoes of the Klan

Should how people react to a statue, or feel about a statue, dictate whether it should stand or not? Didn't the Taliban destroy several historically important Buddhists sites in Afghanistan to the horror of many? While Generasl Lee was not the Buddha, he was a real, relevant, historical figure. Slavery was real. The Jim Crow era occurred. Whites did feel superior to blacks. Should we erase all signs of that reality? Or should we be reminded of it, just as we are reminded of Auschwitz.

A Protest in Virginia With Echoes of the Klan


By THE EDITORIAL BOARDMAY 17, 2017

• The mayor of Charlottesville, Va., was on the mark when he compared the people who marched with torches on Saturday to protest the planned removal of a Confederate monument to Ku Klux Klansmen, who terrorized Southern nights with cross-burnings and violence. By embracing the symbols and rhetoric of racial terror, the demonstrators made clear that they valued the Confederate memorial not for civic or aesthetic reasons but as a testament to white supremacy.
  
  ...........................snip............................
  
  Many of those who argue for keeping the sculpture in place see it as an innocuous symbol of the South. The demonstrators discredited that idea when they massed around it brandishing burning torches and chanted white supremacist slogans.
  
  https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/17/...lick&contentCollection=Opinion&pgtype=article

 

Welcome to Trump's America.

 

Well, it's certainly part of the America Trump capitalized on.

 

Absolutely.

A key demographic of the Trump coalition.

 

The problem is that the same symbol, statue, painting, whatever else can have different meanings to different people. The point of art or artistic vision is that specifically perception drives the piece. Destroying history isn't the way to achieve a lasting peace anyway. Allowing it to stay to serve as a reminder of where we started, what we've been through, and how far we've come, is far more important than tearing it down for the sake of feelings. But as is too common with the left, feelings supercede all logic, all reason, and all evidence, as demonstrated in this thread already.

History repeats itself because we forget the lessons of the past. Burying it will only hasten those lessons' return.

 

you are acting like a hysterical revisionist. no one is destroying anything you are making that up. I assure you northerners are more then willing to remind confederate apologists what losers the confederacy was and how evil it was.

 

Supporting the preservation of art and history is making me out to be a "hysterical revisionist" ? Jesus Christ what do you people do to convince yourself of some of these things? The whole point of history is to show the conflicting sides, not simply the end result of one side winning, and only sharing their views and opinions on it.

 

you are not supporting the preservation of history those of us with any brain know better.

 

I assume this is where you accuse me of being a white supremacist, Nazi, or whatever else, right?

 

Where were all these concerns about "destroying history" when we were blowing up and pulling down monuments to Saddam and making sure it was on the news constantly?

 

nope but you defend keeping monuments to confederates in important public places you are certainly not defending or preserving history. your assertion that history is being destroyed is so incorrect that one does have to wonder about your motives. Civility would suggest removing something that most blacks find onerous which is not mentioned once by you and your ilk. yes your motives at best are questionable.

 

Me and my ilk? Who would that be? Lifelong independents from Northern States? Monuments, whether on the "right" or "wrong" side of history are important to preserve, because it causes people to ask questions they might not otherwise when they're seen. Your definition of civility is incorrect, because you're trying to equate civility to feelings instead of to the pursuit of truth and historical accuracy. Pain is supposed to be remembered because that very pain can be the thing that prevents a return to that style of thought.

At this point, I'm going to go ahead and just cease the conversation. You seemingly have no interest in a discussion, as all you've done here is continually throw out accusations at me instead of defending your position for the removal of the statue. An easy sign of a weak argument.

 

no one is destroying history. How is it that that isnt sinking in? Now I know how bereft of civility confederate apologists are.

 

Of course they're destroying history. The statue, of General Lee, was put up almost 100 years ago. If it reflects different times, so be it.

 

Most of the Confederate Monuments that are under scrutiny were initially erected by the UDC.
The UDC was a political branch of the Democratic Party. The women of the South were not under as much post-war pressure.
So the women collected the money as the men put on their hoods.

So what you really have are Democratic Party apologists at work.

Sally Yates will never tell you that her ancestors, the Terrell family, were known as some of the best lynchers in south Georgia.

Democratic Senator Bill Nelson of Florida will never tell you that he proudly attended a cross burning at Rochelle, Florida with his fraternity brothers during the initial integration period at the University of Florida.

 

The south was Democratic then, it's Republican now. Your post is BS.

 

Oh, Trump!? inflamed and heightened racial divisiveness by using the Oval Office as a bully pulpit for race-baiting over and over for 8 years? What a load of crap.

To the topic. 1. Regardless of where you fall on the causes of the Civil War, every rational adult should agree that hundreds of thousands fought who neither owned slaves not benefitted from them... yet they fought. So surely people fought and died for other reasons than slavery. Those people have families. Thus, since commemoration of the CW is not "all about slavery," neither are the statues. So making these historical artifacts all about "slavery" or "the Klan" is a lie narrative on its face.

2. Due to decades of identity politics and false victimologies, African slavery in the Americas is overemphasized as some special evil in human history. OP does it in the first post by equating slavery to the Holocaust. Sorry, not even remotely close. In fact African slavery in the U.S. not only isn't the worst thing to ever happen to people in the world, IT'S NOT EVEN IN THE TOP 100, as a matter of irrefutable, historical fact and not opinion.

You see, A. Every human being has some form of slavery or the equivalent in their family tree, some ancient, some relatively recent. If that affects their lives due to being enslaved themselves, or their parents, maybe even their grandparents, then they have a material reason to complain. If not that recent, they have a reason to understand, appreciate and commemorate their history like everyone else, but not to dwell on it and create some kind of endless victimology based on it towards political capital. That's what weak, mentally ill, dishonest people would do, try to blame the distant past that doesn't affect them for their own failings, and try to take from others wrongfully.

B. Everyone who has suffered conscription, indentured service, impressment, or has history of that in their family, has suffered slavery. Conscription may be the WORST type of slavery because it not only forces servitude, but forces you to risk and possibly lose your very life. So claiming that "the slavery of MY history is some especially BAD slavery" is transparently dishonest and self-absorbed. WE ALL HAVE SOME FORM OF SLAVERY IN OUR PAST.

3. In light of the above, since ALL countries have slavery in their history, and ALL military statues and commemoration are based on military conscription/impressment, then if we tear CSA statues down, we must tear them ALL down. We must tear all Union statues down, all WW1 and WW2 statues down, all Viet Nam statues down. We must tear down ALL statues of anything and anyone.

Or we can act like adults in the year 2017, not widdie biddie special babies, and move on with our lives with the knowledge that different people in different places have different forms of historical commemoration, and if we happen to object to the ANCIENT ****ING HISTORY that is being commemorated, we can be RATIONAL enough and not FEELY-EMOTIONAL to understand that everything in the world is not about us and our precious, tender feelings.

 

Straw man/red herring, that's not what the poster said. No it's an excellent point, one reason Democrats are always wailing about Confederate history is that it exposes the racist, violent past of the Democratic Party. Don't like that fact? Tough.

 

The two I just mentioned are active Southern DEMOCRATS.

75% of the Jews who lived in the South prior to 1860 owned slaves. And there were several who lived in the North and owned slaves as surrogate property.
Are you going to tell me that they are all Republicans now?

Joe Biden had to lock an Orlando Sentinel reporter in a closet at a Bill Nelson fundraiser to keep the reporter away from the KKK donors who showed up.
http://www.miaminewtimes.com/news/joe-biden-locks-florida-journalist-in-closet-6535726

Sally Yates has just pulled her name from the list of contenders running for Governor of Georgia. Justified !

 

I think most people are aware that before the civil rights act the south was Democratic. After that they switched parties, and the south is now Republican. Both of your posts are BS.

 

Not just the past...

Have you bothered to read the racist reality of the DNC e-mails? The Democratic Party still thinks of the Black population as their property.

And if Blacks express differing political opinions, they are treated as runaways.

 

Sorry to burst your bubble, but you are the latest victim of a false narrative. The ancestors of the slave owners of the past are still overwhelmingly members of the Democratic Party.

 

Take that sheet off, we can't see you.

 

Got a link, dink?