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Why Boston’s “Embrace Statue” has led me to embrace Western chauvinism
Boston Common is a beautiful park in America’s true historic city. It’s a must see when visiting, and features a number of old monuments. There’s the Soldiers and Sailors monument, the Robert Gould Shaw memorial, and a memorial to the Boston Massacre. All of these are in a beautiful timeless design that the common man appreciates, which is appropriate for the common park of Boston. I wouldn’t say these monuments compare to achievements in European cities, but they are nevertheless noble attempts to celebrate the glories of the nation. As in all great art, the form befits the content, and the statues artfully imitate the gravity of their depicted scene.
Boston liberals decided to plop down a new monument, called “Embrace”, in dedication of MLK Jr — a figure mired in controversy over his support and instructions on raping women and the evidence that he plagiarized both his PhD thesis and his famous dream speech. (If that sentence was strange to read, it’s because I’m trying a new writing style where I introduce progressive heroes like they introduce mine). But the reason I disagree with the statue isn’t because MLK is a cheat or a misogynistic rape-enabler. Were the statue beautiful and heroic, and adequately conveyed the perseverance and dedication and cultural significance of MLK, this post wouldn’t be written. But that didn’t happen. Instead the statue looks like shit.
I mean this literally: it looks like a gigantic turd. The real world angles (not the architectural projections) make it look like a man firmly gripping monumental dung [1]. Some go further, and say it looks like a man gripping a monumental dong — that Boston has erected nothing short of an erection [2] [3] [4]. Surely the view of the common people should take primacy for the statues of the Boston Common, and Twitter is filled with normal people laughing hysterically at this statue.
So why erect something so ugly? The root cause here is the conscious betrayal of the Western legacy. What we see in the Boston Common is what we saw in Obama’s official portrait, with many questioning the artist’s choice of a casual background and hiding semen in his work [5]. The Western legacy and its hundreds of years of artistic development, which made a science out of beautiful monuments, is seen as intrinsically white — which is intrinsically bad. And so the novelty of experimental artists is privileged over the traditional and beautiful forms of art. Many of these artists make bad and gaudy work. The public knows this, but they are chosen anyway by the powers that be, who notoriously have an undeveloped sense of beauty.
And so I embrace western chauvinism. The West is the best, not in all the ways, but in important ones. Their statuary history is surely the best. Because the West is the best, we should privilege the traditional modes of art. Accepting this fact would make the public beautiful again.
From another point of view looks like he is between pair of thighs and munching like it is his last meal ...
https://twitter.com/AmakaUbakaTV/status/1614002232180998145
Look it is the public fault. In democracy what happens in the public square is eventually the voters responsibility.
For better or for worse, that isn't really true of a representative democracy. You can vote out someone that does something stupid. You can, if there is such a candidate, vote for a candidate who promises to undo the stupid thing. But for any given issue, there's no guarantee that candidates for office will even realize that $issue is something the voters care about and want to change. In many elections you simply will not have the option to weigh in on a given issue by using your vote.
It never cease to amaze me how little we expect from politicians and state employees compared to CEOs ... if only there was fiduciary duty for poilticians ...
I think there are a couple factors, or at least I can think of a couple which make a difference. One is that politicians are selected by the general public, which is not always wise to put it mildly. Anyone who has worked in a customer facing job can tell you how foolish the raw unfiltered public can be. And those people are picking our leaders too.
Second thing is that as you get to positions representing more people, they get more and more out of touch with those people. A mayor in a small city can have a decent idea what people want from him because there aren't as many voices to listen to. A mayor of a big city has a much harder time, and so on. When you get to an office like the president of the US, there's simply no way any human could listen to all his constituents and follow what they want. Businesses have the same problem too, but they aren't as big as governments (generally) so it's not as pronounced.
Finally there's a coordination problem in how you deal with it, which makes things tough. If your CEO is fucking up, the board of directors replaces him. That is a pretty small group compared to even a small city, which will have hundreds or thousands of voting adults you need to convince to get rid of a politician. That makes it a lot harder to hold them accountable, of course.
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