Statues are not put up to remember people. Statues of people are erected to honor them.
So I ask you: Why are we honoring men who turned their coats and took up arms against this country? Why do we have statues of traitors in our public places and in the halls of government buildings? Why do we continue to honor the memory of men who fought for the right of rich men to own slaves?
Funny how it's overlooked that over 100,000 white Southerners were in the Union Army. Apparently, every Southern state, other than South Carolina,[1] had at least one organized battalion (or larger) of white soldiers.
The only statue that I know of which depicts Benedict Arnold[2] is of his foot. We don't have statues of the Loyalists who fought for the British. We didn't erect a statue of Tokyo Rose, Axis Sally, Lord Hee Haw or Americans who fought on the other side in any other war.
There are a lot of people that whose names are taught in schools without having a worshipful statue to gaze at: General Cornwallis. General Howe. General Gage. Col. Tarleton. Kaiser Wilhelm. General Ludendorff. General Goering. Adolf Hitler. Vladimir Lenin. Josef Stalin. Mao Zedong. Ho Chi Minh. William Tweed.
We can remember the generals who fought for the Confederacy and slavery. But we sure as shit don't have to honor them.
Tear them all down.
______________________________________
[1] State Motto: "The Birthplace of Treason."
[2] And there is, as far as I know, no statue of Abigail Dolbeare Hinman, who tried to shoot Arnold in New London during his raid there in 1781. Her musket misfired.
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Thursday, August 17, 2017
13 comments:
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I would like to see a number of them installed in museums, with a detailed explaination of when they were erected and why, and then when they were pulled down.
ReplyDeleteI discussed these statues with a gentlemen I work with. His view was that they were equivalent to the following:
"Let's say someone pinches your, knocks you down and knocks out a tooth. They then take that tooth and place it in a place of pride on their mantleplace, for you too see it whenever you visit his house. It's a reminder to us, that we took you down before, and don't get too upitty, or we might just do it again."
This explaination was very clarifying to me, and made it clear we must preserve some of these statues, in museums!
Anybody hear anything about why that helo went down, killing two state bulls? Been keeping my eye out for something. Having been through a couple of heli crash site investigations I realize these things take time, but... given the proximity of alcohol and firearms, no doubt methamphetamine, I'd like to hear transcript of their radio.
ReplyDeleteIt's a distinctive sound.
Good question, Thomas. I ran across one local news article with extra details a couple days ago. According to the article, the chopper had just left the scene and was on its way to provide coverage for the governor's motorcade. Last radar contact had it going 34mph at 2300'. They reported no distress call and apparently there was no cockpit recorder (dunno if that's unusual for these sort of helos or not). There were also some news stories playing up the fact that the same copter had a rough landing in 2010 that resulted in extensive repairs by Bell. Still, if they did their job correctly that shouldn't be an issue. Although it was determined to have been caused by improper repairs, so maybe the staties have been cheaping out on their maintenance?
ReplyDeletehttps://www.wsls.com/news/virginia/new-details-deadly-virginia-state-police-helicopter-crash
You know that Virginia voted overwhelmingly NOT to secede in April 1861?
ReplyDeletehttp://blueandgraytrail.com/event/Virginia_Secession_Convention
A week later Lincoln sent the navy to try to force the blockade of Ft. Sumter which was viewed as an act of war by the Federal government against a State. Certainly Robert E. Lee didn't think of himself as a traitor, but rather supporting his State against an attempt to amend the Constitution at the point of a bayonet.
We know how that all played out, but there's no doubt at all that Lincoln changed the Constitution at the point of a bayonet. There's a better claim of treason against old "Honest" Abe than Bobby Lee.
And FYI, I'm a Yankee born and bred, with a great grandfather who marched with Billy Sherman. But history is history and what happened, happened.
You folks need to learn some REAL history, not the meme you've been given about the Civil War.
ReplyDeleteSlavery was, indeed, one of the reasons. But far from the only one and far from the largest.
But don't let reality get in the way of your current Two Minute Hate.
Better tear down Chamberlain's statue too, he had the Army of the Potomac salute the Confederates as they marched by at Appomattox. Then go after Grant's, he owned slaves and issued General Order #11. Better take down General Winfield Scott's statue in D.C. too, he accepted all the resignations of all those federal officers - thus relieving them of their oath to defend the Constitution - of those officers who later fought for the Confederate States. After that take another look at the Constitution and see if you can find a prohibition on leaving the Union. Then consider why the Federal government never charged anyone with treason after the war or why Californians think it is okay to do so now.
ReplyDelete1) Fort Sumter was, and is, in South Carolina. Virigina's vote is irrelevant to that point.
ReplyDelete2) South Carolina fired upon a U.S. supply ship in Jan of 1861...sent by Buchanan. Lincoln did what, he started a war by sending ships four months after South Carolina had fired upon U.S. ships, really? Who looks uneducated now?
3) Changed the Constitution eh? Really, are we going to play the it don't say you can't leave game? You see, once you joined, you seceded your independent foreign policy and such to the Federal Government. The Federal Government was charged, in that Constitution, with defending the United States, implicitly against all enemies external and internal.
4) Slavery, and the inequality of the negro race, was cited by EVERY seceding state as the primary reason. The old trope about it being about States Rights is bullshit, made up whole cloth in the Jim Crow era to justify the inhumanity piled upon the negros.
5) "Whatabouts" trying to equate so and so with Lee and Jackson are straw men designed to avoid answering the question of why we are erecting a statue to Lee or Jackson, and why we should honor them and their cause.
6) The decision to avoid treason charges was a pragmatic one.
Bobby Lee, Jeffy Davis, Jeb Stuart, Stoneywall Jackson all brought arms to bear against the USA. Enemies of the state, all of em. The south lost the war but most of the dumbasses are still fighting. Clinging to what little "heritage" they seem to think they had, a heritage of enslavement, bigotry and jealousy. Pathetic.
ReplyDeleteDale
Go read the Cornerstone speech again. I'll wait.
ReplyDeleteI guess monuments can mean different things to different people, but it probably isn't helpful to say, a little black girl who has to walk past a giant statue of somebody who fought to deny her humanity on her way to school and back.
I once had a conversation with a Hell's Angel whose dad was a high officer in that organization in which I asked him what was up with the Nazi and SS paraphernalia they seemed so fond of, and I got a clarifying three word answer: spoils of war.
I seriously don't see anything anywhere near that clean in the motives of those who want to keep monuments to an insurrection that were themselves installed as big, granite, "fuck yous" to the country and especially to the freed slaves and their descendants.
-Doug in Oakland
As someone who grew up in the South and loathed it:
ReplyDeleteThe South is sore and a loser. They hate and hated it. The whites there had their way of life destroyed and invalidated. So they recreated it with blacks as peons instead of slaves. That was somewhat destroyed and invalidated.
Nobody likes to be wrong, to be told that they can't live the life they want, much less be told that that life is immoral and wrong in so many ways. So they (the whites) resist in so many (counterproductive) ways. The South will rise again...after it takes its bigotry out into the sunlight and shoots it dead on the crossroads. Like Germany has done with Nazism. Not that you can even kill bigotry and prejudice....human beings purely love being right and pissing down on somebody/race/other else...but you can beat it back to the background if you acknowledge it (just like 12 step) and try to change. But I'm not holding my breath about the South.
And there's plenty of bigotry and prejudice up North....
And there's a container ship load of the statues, not just the generals
ReplyDeletehttp://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2017/08/but-is-it-art/
It was a bloody industry....with mass produced statues for both North and South....
The statue torn down in Durham was a generic "boys in gray " erected in 1924 by the United Daughters of the Confederacy. The history it celebrates is that of the UDC.
ReplyDeleteThe whole gotten out of hand, throw down all the statues of white people.
ReplyDeleteYou want to talk about history, boy?