6 Responses to “More fake outrage”

• #1

  Lady Mondegreen

  April 25, 2017 at 5:21 pm

  Politicians who are for destroying the statues, monuments and other artifacts of history are just like ISIS

  Just like ISIS! Except ISIS destroyed stuff, and these artifacts are being moved and will eventually be stored, probably in a museum somewhere. Also, ISIS destroyed priceless works of art and history, some millennia old, and these statues and monuments, which aren’t being destroyed, aren’t very old and are probably of moderate artistic value.

  But other than that this is just the same.
• #2

  iknklast

  April 25, 2017 at 5:22 pm

  Usually a country is not so eager to have war memorials raised to soldiers on the other side – we seem unwilling to note that this war was, in fact, treason. If the British had won the Revolution, does this guy think they would have allowed us to erect the Washington monument so that they could come pull it down a hundred years later? Wouldn’t have happened.

  We spend so much time catering to the “feelings” of the aggrieved southerners who feel they should have won the Civil War, and that they should be able to treat people of color as animals. The die was cast the day they were allowed to barter slavery in return for their support of our war against the colonial powers. From that day to this, the forces of bigotry have had too loud a voice in the national conversation.

  Politicians tend to retreat whimpering with their tails between their legs if chastised even ever so mildly by a southern state. We have reversed the old canard that history is written by the winners – in this case, they have rewritten many of our history books to suit themselves, and they have thundered and roared so loud and so often that they threaten to capsize the ship of state.

  Now we’re supposed to feel sorry for them because they’re losing their monuments to hatred. Boo hoo.
• #3

  John

  April 26, 2017 at 6:03 am

  Americans needs to reconcile themselves with their past…as ugly as some of its episodes may be.

  Obliterating that past is, then, an obstacle to that reconciliation.

  U.S history is what it is; face up to it because you own it.

  Early on in America’s history, slavery wasn’t restricted to the southern states at all…

  The first Black slaves recorded in the books laboured away in oh-so liberal New York.

  A true understanding of history requires knowledge of both the oppressors and the oppressed.

  A few years back, an ardent French Canadian nationalist ( Gilles Rhéaume) walked the 180 miles between Québec City and Montréal for no other reason than to urinate on a large marble statue of a scowling Queen Victoria…that ‘British Bitch’.

  Other French Canadians, somewhat more circumspect about the British conquest of 1759, called him an idiot…
• #4

  Ophelia Benson

  April 26, 2017 at 9:02 am

  Oh go fuck yourself, John. We don’t need a patronizing lecture on US history from you, and you’re wrong anyway. Removing shit monuments is not “obliterating the past.” That’s a Fox News talking point and it’s complete bullshit. Have you never heard of books? Museums? TV documentaries? This monument wasn’t there for the purpose of teaching the people of New Orleans about Reconstruction, it was there for the purpose of validating the fight against Reconstruction. Germany doesn’t put up monuments to Hitler, and it doesn’t need to start doing so as a way to “face up to” its past.
• #5

  iknklast

  April 26, 2017 at 9:06 am

  John, these monuments aren’t about remembering the ugly things in our past – they are about celebrating it, which we definitively do not need to do. We need to have an environment where we can freely teach about the ugliness and oppression that built large portions of this country.

  And as for teaching about northern slaves? I heard about that ad nauseum in my school history courses. You would have thought there were more slaves in the north, and for longer, than in the south. Perhaps that’s because I went to school in Oklahoma, and they like to fancy themselves southerners, though they were not a state at that time, and the state belonged to the indigenous population (for as long as the grass grows, the wind blows, and the sky is blue – or until oil is discovered, whichever comes first).

  I see nothing in taking down these statues that will hinder our learning about our heritage, and it may actually free teachers to discuss these incidents more objectively when they don’t have to deal with statues celebrating the horrible accomplishments.
• #6

  Acolyte of Sagan

  April 27, 2017 at 3:06 am

  Sort of off-topic, but I heard a marvelous phrase on the tv recently; “Them there Yankees is just like piles. If’n they come down and go back up, they fine, but if’n they come down and stay down they a pain in the ass”!