All Statues and Monuments must come down

[VRAMdemon]

I think that the line is drawn where the community wants to draw it and that includes the ENTIRE community, not just a small section of old white people, or even a small section of angry mob. The line will eventually be drawn wherever the voting majority want it. Monuments are not public necessities. Generally, when approaching civic matters, no person or monument or memorial should be held sacred. If a person is depicted, is the subject of a memorial or monument or something is named for that person, the community has an ongoing, continuous right and obligation to re-asses and reconsider whether that person still should be honored in that way. How it may be relevant to today’s population.

Having said that, there s a conversation to be had here, sans the identity politics..

You’re not going to find many, if any examples of powerful people who were perfect in history 100 to 300 years ago or even today. I think we can reasonably assume that people who may be perfect by 2020 standards will fall short of some new standard that will have evolved by, say... 2120, or sooner. There is no one who will ever be worthy of anyone’s admiration, unless they are evaluated properly - in the context of their times, and whether their deeds ultimately advanced, (albeit not necessarily perfected) human progress or opposed it.

In that light, I don't see the necessity to tear down memorials of Washington, Jefferson, etc or even Grant. The memorials to Washington and Jefferson celebrate their roles in founding this country. I don’t see how that’s insulting America, as a whole. To attack the founding fathers for being people of their times is misguided since these protesters would not have the right to assemble and protest without them. ‘Let’s burn down the house of Jefferson isn’t really a cooperative effort at reaching a common understanding.

But, to echo what I said earlier up thread, I don't relate to the fascination with monuments and statues. I don’t really care if all this is a slippery slope that leads to Washington, Lincoln, or Jefferson getting reevaluated or removed. History belongs in books, documentaries and museums. Most statues that are political, or glorify blindly are just propaganda. I have no reason to get worked up about it.

 

[mikeymikec]

I’ve stated several times that I support the removal of Confederate statues given their context within the civil rights movement. I specifically challenge the logic of tearing down a statue of someone like Ulysses S. Grant within the context of the BLM movement. That is the act of an irrational mob that is applying an absurd purity test to historical figures that does not take into account the totality of their character within the historical context of slavery.

Try not to put your back out.

 

[MtnMan]

The monuments might as well come down, for as a people we are completely incapable of learning from history.

 

[pmv]

The monuments might as well come down, for as a people we are completely incapable of learning from history.

The trouble with 'learning from history' is that there's a vast range of possible 'lessons' one could learn from any given period of history, and, history tells me that people most often learn the wrong one and just make a different - even opposite - but every-bit-as-disastrous - mistake the next time. History never repeats itself exactly, it's a constant flux in constantly-changing circumstances. Many disasters have been caused by misguided attempts to avoid repeating a previous disaster.

 

[Starbuck1975]

Try not to put your back out.

Which positions did I change. Be specific.

 

[dmcowen674]

The monuments might as well come down, for as a people we are completely incapable of learning from history.

It is being termed as Cancel Culture

 

[zinfamous]

If people are getting their history that way, they're getting not just a grossly incomplete version, but a distorted version. Statues are a reflection of who a society, or subculture within a society, chooses to revere at whatever moment in time the statue is put up. That is all.

You know, I just remembered, the Simpsons long ago covered the absurdity of public statues and their general intent to muddy or re-write history.

Lisa the Iconoclast - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[zinfamous]

So basically white privilege. I am well aware of this history, my family came to this country with nothing and faced discrimination, and I choose to address societal inequities by volunteering my time to charities and mentoring programs.

The people tearing down the wrong statues are the problem, not me.

It’s been weird to me to watch previously rational people lose any sense of perspective.

Translation: it's been weird to watch the world move on while I continue to stagnate in my meaningless older age.

Yes, it happens to all of us. We all get there. I think that is primarily what you are dealing with. You just don't know it.

 

[mikeymikec]

Which positions did I change. Be specific.

You turned a generalised point about statue removal being irrational to a specific one about Ulysses S. Grant.

You also completely skipped past the main point in my response.

You know this, yet you have the audacity to act like you have good reason to call me out when it's you who's being deliberately evasive.

 

[dmcowen674]

6-24-2020

7th Vice President removed from history

South Carolina Officials are removing Statue right now

The only place that will show he existed is John C. Calhoun - Wikipedia

 

[brycejones]

6-24-2020

7th Vice President removed from history

South Carolina Officials are removing Statue right now

The only place that will show he existed is John C. Calhoun - Wikipedia

He has not been removed from history as you ironically point out in your post.

 

[Starbuck1975]

You turned a generalised point about statue removal being irrational to a specific one about Ulysses S. Grant.

No, I made a generalized assertion about statues and backed up that assertion by citing a specific example.

You also completely skipped past the main point in my response.

Which point do you feel I did not address, I am happy to respond to it.

 

[Starbuck1975]

Translation: it's been weird to watch the world move on while I continue to stagnate in my meaningless older age.

Yes, it happens to all of us. We all get there. I think that is primarily what you are dealing with. You just don't know it.

You see the world moving on. I see a pendulum swinging back and forth with no forward progress at all.

 

[mikeymikec]

No, I made a generalized assertion about statues and backed up that assertion by citing a specific example.

Logically it would make little sense to back up a generalisation with an exception, so in that case, would you like to confirm that you believe that BLM-type protesters typically go after statues of Grant rather than typical figures of the Confederacy?

Which point do you feel I did not address, I am happy to respond to it.

Page 10 - All Statues and Monuments must come down

Page 10 - Seeking answers? Join the AnandTech community: where nearly half-a-million members share solutions and discuss the latest tech.

forums.anandtech.com

The first three paragraphs in response to your comments relating to "their interpretation of history".

 

[snoopy7548]

Yes, all statues and monuments must come down, whether they are good or bad. It's up to the new generation to replace the old. We aren't going to have statues of 200 year old men standing up forever; there are "younger" people who deserve their own statues, so that the next few generations can learn about and admire them.

At some point, history will need to be confined to textbooks and museums. It's a cycle that will never end, and you can't stop it.

 

[Svnla]

Peaceful protesters, eh? Only Confederate, eh?

In Madison, statues of Wisconsin's motto "Forward" and of Col. Hans Christian Heg were dragged away from their spots guarding the statehouse.

Heg was an anti-slavery activist who fought and died for the Union during the U.S. Civil War. His nearly 100-year-old sculpture was decapitated and thrown into a Madison lake by protesters.

A state senator, a Democrat, was attack and a Molotov was throw.

Madison protesters tear down Capitol statues, attack state senator from Milwaukee as fury erupts again

A statue of Col. Hans Christian Heg, an abolitionist, was thrown into a Madison lake, and State Sen. Tim Carpenter was attacked by a group of protesters.

www.jsonline.com

 

[Starbuck1975]

Logically it would make little sense to back up a generalisation with an exception, so in that case, would you like to confirm that you believe that BLM-type protesters typically go after statues of Grant rather than typical figures of the Confederacy?

As the OP continues to demonstrate with examples, protestors are targeting the wrong historical figures, and there is a growing chorus of voices asking that the protestors maintain their focus on Confederate icons or risk undermining the momentum of the movement. Grant was not an exception.

The first three paragraphs in response to your comments relating to "their interpretation of history".

Actions are always open to interpretation. I understand people are angry. I don’t believe targeting the wrong monuments is the right solution. I see no problem in pointing this out. You are welcome to disagree with that interpretation.

 

[zinfamous]

It's weird how Dave seems to have become an entity that has been put together from parts of both the extremes of right and left. There is literally no middle ground with this dude. I don't think such a person exists on this planet yet, right?

It's interesting.

 

[snoopy7548]

It's weird how Dave seems to have become an entity that has been put together from parts of both the extremes of right and left. There is literally no middle ground with this dude. I don't think such a person exists on this planet yet, right?

It's interesting.

"He" could be proof that we are living inside a simulation.

 

[VRAMdemon]

You see the world moving on. I see a pendulum swinging back and forth with no forward progress at all.

The world constantly "moves on". And history goes through “historical revisionism.” all the time . Historical Revision is what actual, professional historians do all the time. Interpretations of history change, sometimes due to new evidence and archival sources, but just as often due to changing ideas about what constitutes an important topic of study, or an important analytical approach. The efforts to remove any statues or monuments constitutes historical revisionism, because it involves a revision of earlier attitudes to these men, and to the circumstances in which the statues were erected.

If there were no historical revisionism, teachers in the south might be teaching college-level history students that slavery wasn’t so bad, and that African Americans had a pretty decent life. They would be teaching them that the Reconstruction period after the Civil War was terrible because corrupt, uneducated, and racially inferior blacks were getting involved with politics. Those were some of the predominant historical interpretations, agreed upon by many professional historians, in the first half of the twentieth century.

 

[zinfamous]

You see the world moving on. I see a pendulum swinging back and forth with no forward progress at all.

haha, of course and why this admission of yours is the perfect expression of what everyone is saying:

It isn't about you! You see no progress because you generally see nothing outside of yourself and your life experience. You never grew up as a minority in this country. It is literally impossible for you to appreciate that life experience. Same with me, same with the majority that still remains in this country. But a lot of us can empathize with that--this is the primary malfunction in your brain. You absolutely lack this.

You don't see any of this as progress because it doesn't effect you. Plain and fucking simple. You can only see positives if you can find a way to personally benefit. Society, and certainly democratic societies, absolutely do not work that way (some benefit, some do not. The hope is that most will benefit, and the actual progress is only ever towards increasing that pool of "most"). The old adage: When you've lived a life of privilege, equality feels like oppression (or, perhaps, ambivalence? ...reason to complain?).

Notice how you didn't say this feels like regression, and how I am not saying that is what you said, and I am acknowledging this: you don't see yourself moving forward, because you can't/because that isn't what this is about. You define progress as me, not us.

For whatever reason, you choose this moment to complain about "how all those people are behaving" hand wave it away as "amounting to nothing!" but you must complain anyway. You decide nothing will happen, but will never fail to remind people that "I want things to get better, just not this way." It is because you see no personal benefit. None is expected for you. None is expected for me and many others, and that is the fucking point!

It is your libertarianism: the ultimate expression of extreme economic selfishness. Those who succeed deserve it because of their personal struggles...assumes everyone was born and proceeds with the exact same potential from day one. This is profoundly, inescapable false. But you refuse to accept this plain truth about the human condition. You simply will do everything in your power to argue around that plain truth and ignore it. You will obfuscate and shift goalposts, because your central social thesis is founded on a fundamental lie about humanity. It simply doesn't work, and you can never bring yourself to admit it.

Democratic societies shift and move in such ways, and they always will. You and yours have enjoyed unrestrained access to the ultimate privileges that our model as offered for more than 250 years now, more or less. You can't bring yourself to understand how completely absent that is for large swaths of our population. You don't want to believe it. Forward progress is happening. it's always happening. You just remain blind to it in the cases when it has no effect on your station--again, which is fucking fine. It seems you get that this will change nothing for you. ....GREAT! At least it means that you aren't running out trying to protest blackie and keep them down, "lock and load" preparing for the fake race war. That's an entirely different crew, and an entirely different sort of illness that doesn't seem to infect you. So, that's pretty good, really.

The pool of "most" might be increasing. You were already part of that, so obviously you see "no forward progress." Or perhaps, you think that if anything, you should be able to claw your way into that upper tier of the "absolute most" that we have allowed to grift us for generations now? Maybe that's the thing...if there is any progress to be had, for anyone, it should at least allow me to climb even further into the "bunker-building crowd of the elite?" I wonder if that is it....

....I just don't understand this need to complain about how when democracy finds its way at times, when the people get angry enough and effect legitimate change that is needed, it still must be either stopped or slowed or ignored...because "I don't benefit." Why is this?

 

[compuwiz1]

Right now, property is being destroyed, illegally, I might add. Veterans memorials and statues are protected by law and destruction of them is a punishable crime, up to 10 years in prison. I don't oppose confederate figures being removed, but at some point we must draw the line. These removals need to be done according to a vote. Angry mobs trashing them willy-nilly is not necessarily the will of the majority of the people. The most civil way possible is to put these removals to a vote, then go with what the "people" decide.

 

[pmv]

You see the world moving on. I see a pendulum swinging back and forth with no forward progress at all.

So that's a theory of history you have. Are you suggesting, then, that slavery is inevitably coming back? Or, maybe, that it will swing to the other extreme and black people will enslave white people for a while, before it reverts to the earlier form again?


Or are you saying it's all morally-equivalent, that a society without slavery is no better or worse than one with it?

I just don't see where you get this meta-historical-principle from anyway. It seems a pretty grand claim from very ambiguous and contingent evidence. How would one go about determining the truth-or-falsity of this pendulum theory? (which I very-vaguely remember was posited in Nineteen Eighty Four, with the suggestion that totalitarianism was necessary to stop the pendulum swinging)

I don't know that I entirely endorse the idea of history as progress, either, mind. I reckon it's more complicated than either. But such philosophy is above my intellectual level! I wish I could make sense of it all, but I can't even make sense of my own life-history, yet alone the entire world's!

 

[zinfamous]

Right now, property is being destroyed, illegally, I might add. Veterans memorials and statues are protected by law and destruction of them is a punishable crime, up to 10 years in prison. I don't oppose confederate figures being removed, but at some point we must draw the line. These removals need to be done according to a vote. Angry mobs trashing them willy-nilly is not necessarily the will of the majority of the people. The most civil way possible is to put these removals to a vote, then go with what the "people" decide.

again, putting it to a vote has been tried for decades. Do you know what tyranny of the majority means?

 

[CZroe]

again, putting it to a vote has been tried for decades. Do you know what tyranny of the majority means?

Socialist utopia?