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Time for report about another culture war battle that just flared up.
This time not current titanic struggle concerning fate of all mankind, but small reminiscence of another titanic struggle of remote past.
On May 1, New Hampshire Department of Natural & Cultural Resources unveiled in town of Concord new memorial marker honoring famous daughter of the city, one Elizabeth Gurley Flynn.
EGF was famous woman in her time, her adventurous life culminated in position of first chairwoman of Communist Party USA and after her death she was honored with official state funeral at Red Square.
It is easy to understand why many people are not amused with this decision.
...
So far, this stays local teapot tempest, blame game going between the state and the city, but it can easily escalate into major Culture War battle, it could take only some national right wing politicians or influencers take notice.
Concord better get ready for long hot summer of battles between red hat crowds trying to tear down the sign and black flag ones trying to defend it.
We had on this forum long and hard debates about historical statues and memorials, Confederate in the US, colonialist and slave trader in the UK, Soviet and Czarist in Eastern Europe, both debates about who deserves to be publicly honored and meta debates about who deserves to decide who gets to be publicly honored.
My take? If there is any issue fit for democratic decision of the people, it is exactly this one. Let people, actual people of the city, debate and vote who deserves to be memorialized.
If the citizens want statue of Czar, Lenin, Stalin, Hitler, Satan or Nathan Bedford Forrest on their town square, it is their choice and no one else.
I'm glad that there is now a communist statue to mirror the situation with confederate statues.
I have ancestors that fought for the south in the civil war. I think slavery was an evil institution, but it probably could have been ended without a very bloody war.
I hate communism, and I've disliked many communists that I've met (the feeling was usually mutual, "You'll be one of the first ones against the wall" they'd tell me).
All of that just to say that I feel the same about this monument and the confederate statues: what a stupid thing to argue about. Building it in the first place seems like a waste of funds when your political group is in power. I'd much rather have "my" politicians setting up some kind of bullshit slush fund project that funnels money to favored people. Its also a waste of money to take it down.
If you are local and it really bothers you that much, just resort to good old minor vandalism. The legal penalties aren't that hefty. If you are a local business person with too much to lose, just bail out a local vandal from a legal situation and point him in the right direction.
There is this general vibe that America seems to be picking up that everything political must be solved through the political process.
No! Terrible thought process! The political process has some pros. Its slow, has a lot of deliberation, optimizes for optics over all other considerations, and requires buy in from the semi-respectable class of people in society. Those are also all the cons.
There are three ways to short circuit the political process:
Ignoring it. Sometimes political entities like to talk a big game, but they don't have any actual power. I remember seeing this hilariously illustrated when the student governing council at my college would occasionally pass resolutions or support for foreign countries. Fucking idiots. They couldn't even dictate the menu at the school run cafeteria. Their resolutions of support were time wasters for an entirely impotent "governing" body.
Market solutions. Other times politics finds a problem and claims they can solve it. But unless its a public goods problem, or a tragedy of the commons, we really don't need them. Markets are great at providing goods and services. Hopefully somebody can just provide the product better cheaper and faster than the government can.
[other options]. I once heard of this guy. He had a tree adjacent to his property. The tree was maybe on land owned by the city. The tree would dump acorns and other annoying detritus in his pool. The city didn't really like removing living trees. Well suddenly the tree died over a very short time period. Some kind of weird ground poisoning. Strange! Anyways, tree is gone now.
This is like tearing down statues. You only get to do it if enough people in the government covertly support you that you don't get arrested for it. It wouldn't be difficult for the government to arrest him for killing the tree even with little evidence that he did it, they just decided not to.
Yeah, I'd second this. It's very easy to get away with property damage to a third party if the government wants the property damaged, but that this is at best mixed-benefit in the same way that a "needs killing" defense to murder has a pretty sordid history.
And it goes worse: Wallingford v Bonta has a lot of procedural hilarity, but in addition to the more generic (and caught-on-camera) threats aimed at the Wallingfords, Mrs. Nyugen also poured bleach on a tree on their property. The court issued a multi-year restraining order against the Wallingfords officially for pointing cameras past their own property line, but pragmatically for not submitting.
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