Statues of traitors proudly displayed in the US Capital Building.

[Scrofula]

That's what I mean. They had one real and one quasi-invasion by a group trying to claim moral high-ground, and continues to make jokes about their insophistication, and backwards mentality.

I'd be pissed. Not enough to pretend the civil war wasn't about slavery, but I'd have a pretty big chip on my shoulder.

 

[Cream Gravy?]

They had one real and one quasi-invasion by a group trying to claim moral high-ground, and continues to make jokes about their insophistication, and backwards mentality.

"Hey, do yous guys ride horses to skewl? Lawl yer so backwerds I'm so smart I live in an East Coast city instead of a Southern wun."

 

[Scrofula]

Never heard the horse thing before, I thought y'all too broke for horses. Horses are fuckin expensive. What kind of equestrian bullshit is that? Do you slap the help with your riding crop if they don't have your organic heirloom cucumber tea sandwiches ready at tea?

I DID hear that incest and poor dental hygiene are frequent identifiers of Southern US citizens.

 

[Cream Gravy?]

What do you feel is being overlooked?

I'm just trying to highlight the human-nature of such a conflict and that it occured 150 years ago under a completely different political climate.

I really don't feel like explaining further or arguing the matter; take that as you will. I enjoy some debate but I must concede that my opinions on the Civil War are mostly colored by my heritage and upbringing.

 

[alpha_centauri]

oh please. 8)

care to reference which "leftists" are "arguing for Sharia law"?

antifascists are literally fighting against ISIS in Syria:

don't let the truth get in the sway of your confected outrage though - or calling people fools whilst hurling false accusations.

Linda Sarsour is fighting for legalising Sharia law. Antifas fools can claim that they are against ISIS/IS, etc. but their own actions and beliefs along with how they are pro-censorship show how they have a lot in common with ISIS/IS. Including how Antifas and ISIS/IS both are for revisionist history, and vandalism and total destruction of monuments, art, and artefacts that don't fit their political agenda or flawed revisionist history.



Don't let the truth get in the way of your silly pipe dreams.

 

[alpha_centauri]

Slavery has been rampant since civilisation begun and prol before that.

It got a lot of shit done. Doubt America would have grown as fast as it did without it.

It wasnt as if trade unions were around in Egypt when the pyramids were built.

Humans enslave each other. It just depends on whos got power and money and who doesnt.


The reason to keep slaves was based more on economics than anything to do with race tbh. Why pay your workforce when you dont gave to ?

Study history more. The Ancient Egyptians did not use slaves to build the pyramids.

 

[cj]

Unfortunately, because of political considerations after the war, Confederates never got the justice they deserved, nor was the iconology banned/disgrace to the lengths it should have been. Though there's an argument to be made that living in the south was worse punishment than just hanging them all.

The south is still suffering economically from the civil war.

 

[aihfl]

The south is still suffering economically from the civil war.

I don't have the time for a fully fleshed out response to this, so for the time being I'll ask have you been to Atlanta lately? Or Charlotte? Or Nashville? Heck even Orlando, Fla. (which hasn't been culturally "southern" for decades) recently removed a statue of a Confederate soldier in our main downtown city park, and honestly, I didn't even know it was a statue of a Confederate soldier and I've lived here 25 years. I thought it was a statue of Orlando Reeves, the soldier from the Seminole Wars, for which the city was supposedly named.

 

[Scrofula]

What is your point, that you don't read plaques?

Yes, I've been to Atlanta and Orlando which everyone agrees isn't Southern. I don't remember looking at statues either.

 

[aihfl]

What is your point, that you don't read plaques?

Yeah, that was my point 8(

No, my point really was that not all parts of the south are "suffering" economically, just like not all parts of the north are vibrantly diverse and tolerant and economically flourishing. Anyone been to Indiana lately? A lot of it are like Mississippi brought up north. I lived in Southern Vermont for a while. Beautiful state, but I had to leave because of the economic stagnation. And once you look past all the trust fund hippies and wealthy New Yorkers with second homes, you'll find that a good bit of the population is still like "Hi, I'm Larry, this is my brother Darryl and this is my other brother Darryl," from the Bob Newhart show.

I'm not motivated enough to go back and quote the post about the south being punished. Anyone who passed high school US History should understand the south WAS punished. Abraham Lincoln had a magnanimous plan to reintegrate the south back into the Union, but he was iced and succeeded by an incompetent, which led the way for Sen. Charles Sumner (R-MA) and Rep. Thaddeus Stevens (R-PA) to impose military occupation on the south. Sumner had the shit beat out of him on the Senate floor by Rep. Preston Brooks of South Carolina, so it was probably personal for him. So instead of getting a Marshall Plan, which the south needed, they got military occupation and carpetbaggers, who seized power for their own personal gain.

Not that I'm for any kind of celebration of the Confederate States of America. There was debate here in Florida to remove a statue of Confederate General Edmund Kirby-Smith (good) from the Florida capitol and replace it with Marjory Stoneman Douglas (good), author of "River of Grass," the environmentalist who first got everyone to notice that the Everglades were not a watery wasteland to be drained and paved over, but a vibrant (and critical) ecosystem to the environmental health of the southern half of the state. But some dumbass who represents a district north of Orlando gummed up the works because he felt Kirby-Smith should be replaced by fucking Walt Disney (bad) so Kirby-Smith remains.

 

[Scrofula]

See, I wasn't disagreeing or arguing with you, I just, what you posted doesn't relate to anything, which is OK, this thread was dead.

It's only the third post up, you appeared to object to the statement that the South still has economic issues left over from the war, to which you replied about Orlando Reeves. Then this post you say Vermont sucks, among other statue stuff.

A person just has to feel out a post like that, in a thread like this one, to know if it's OUTRAGE worthy or not. Cause there's only two sides, of course, saying "eh, yeah, probably should take those off public land" and "the South was a great and noble place once, and these statues merely commemorate the sacrifices and heroism of the poor soldiers, who merely were fighting for our heritage and way of life, and slavery? what slavery?"

FWIW, I think there's some truth to persistent economic hardship, maybe with social problems as the root, since Mississippi and Alabama always seem to rank dead last on just about every measure, from test scores to obesity.

 

[Escher's Waterfall]

FWIW, I think there's some truth to persistent economic hardship, maybe with social problems as the root, since Mississippi and Alabama always seem to rank dead last on just about every measure, from test scores to obesity.

Social problems are probably a huge factor. Can't keep something like 1 out of every three or four people as second class citizens without a huge hit to your standard of living, which was historically the case in both states (and probably still is).

 

[socko]

Socko et al., the thread that already discussed the second-place trophies coming down

They were put up to intimidate, they should come down.

Oh right, nazis pissed some people off and they destroyed some public property in like two places. That's bad and they should feel bad.

We still have white supremists in the highest law enforcement position, and advising the president. Don't let a hunk of bronze racist coming down distract you from that.

ETA: seconding astrojunk: A lot of "heritage" came to be when blacks started making a fuss about being allowed to vote for-realsie, and the police responded with dogs and firehoses. And arson and murder. I'm not sure what the permit status was.

Moved from the charlottesvill thread.

The statues need to stay mainly because they are part of history and part of a cautionary tale. That tale is cromulent with respect to the racial conflict that continues.

Turn them into a learning opportunity. For every Confederate statue, surround it with statues to civil rights leaders ,abolitionists, and others who fought slavery or supported national unity from the same era. There are many historic figures that would be appropriate: Dred Scott, Nat Turner, Harriet Tubman, John Woolman, John Marrant, Nathaniel Bacon, George Fox, Thomas Payne....

Destroying history is wrong. Keep the statues but turn them into an opportunity to educate.

Not really related, but Trump's comment that they are 'beautiful' brings to mind that many areas where they stand are esthetically bleak. There is abosolutely no representational art. Instead, these locations are surrounded by soulless buildings tht look like Kleenix Boxes.At least with Lee on his horse Trigger, one has more to look at than bad architecture and the giant spheres and cubes that masquerade as municipal art.

 

[Scrofula]

Right, just like they put up a monument to the Third Reich next to the Holocaust memorial. I mean, without it, you'd forget WWII ever happened. It's even better that they waited until a neonazi resurgence to put it up.

 

[socko]

" reductio ad Nazium does not counter my point. Hitler loved destroying history.

Holocaust memorials do in fact contain Nazi artifacts. It is needed to give the lesson context .

 

[Scrofula]

Yes, if you read the thread we make the point that history is in museums. I tried to make that point in my comment too.

And we're talking about oppressors putting up statues when the underclass starts agitating. Statues of people who fought to enslave them. How is my comparison not apt? Because plantation owners kept their chattle as labor for longer?

What if the cities hung bronze nooses from trees, called it heritage? It's the same thing, only a little more subtle.

 

[socko]

Your point is that history is in museums. True it is in museums, but it should not be confined to museums. The expression "out of sight out of mind" is appropriate for that viewpoint. People forget their history fast. Just look at US student performance on history tests. The fact that Americans bulldoze every historical monument and building the minute some so-called "developer" wants to build a new strip mall doesn't help matters.

History should be everywhere. Europeans live and breath their history. There are historical momunets, many of them controversial, everywhere. Historical monuments need to be left at their original sites to be properly appreciated. Auschwitz is an example.

Auschwitz is a kind of monument built by Nazis. It has been left on location and mostly intact. For its lesson to be understood, its context needs to be preserved. It is a daily reminder to the people who stood by and let it happen. It's similar with Lee. Same with bronze nooses.

Not only the Civil War but the racism and anti-civil rights sentiment that contributed to its erection needs to be understood and never forgotten. Properly understanding such monuments requires that they be left in place. It needs to be remembered that those in power were at least in part motivated by racism when they built them.

NOt only that, but their meaning needs to be understood in the context of unity, not racism. Along with the Lee statues, statues of figures who fought for civil rights (from colonisation to the 1960s) need to be put in the same public places.

Back to the point about why there weren't any history buffs protesting their removal: any self-respecting history buff would have avoided the protest the minute they learned that it had been organised by white nationalists. Seeing the nighttime march of torch-carrying nazi sympathisers would have scared away everybody else except anti-skinheads/antifa.

 

[Escher's Waterfall]

Why not add a nice explanation of the Lee statues then - that this was a traitor who fought for a rebellion that believed whites were the superior race and that slavery was desirable.

How well do you think that would go over? Seriously?

 

[Cream Gravy?]

Well put Socko

 

[Scrofula]

Socko, since you're a supporter of history education, find me an example anywhere in history of a nation allowing monuments to defeated insurgents to go up on public land.

Do you agree that most of these statues were put up as intimidation?

Or do you believe they were put up during the civil rights struggles in the 50's as a coincidence, a desire to teach history to the area's youth. By putting up heroic monuments of soldiers who fought to enslave black people. They merely reflect heritage.