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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   29100 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 23, 2023

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Take 2.

I posted and deleted this because I don't want to get banned, but if I can't talk about the things I want to talk about then I don't see much point in caring about the account, anyway. Still, I'll try to be subdued.

The Robert E Lee statue from Charlottesville has been destroyed. Liquidated, actually, and slated to be replaced with some statue for black people, which is striking symbolism of how Americans are being liquidated to be replaced by foreigners.

I'm posting the reactions on twitter, because there are dozens of two-sentence sentiments that I share. I'll quote a couple, for posterity, and you can get the gist of the other side from the WP article.

Columbia Bugle

Disgusting. Why not give the Lee statue to a museum? Because people might enjoy visiting it, or one day decide to restore it. This is a reminder that the Left wont stop after displacing historic American heroes. They want to deface, destroy and replace them with their own ridiculous idols.

Jack Posobiec

Columbus is next. Followed by Teddy. Then Jefferson. Then George Washington

Jack again

Glenn Youngkin let them do this. His AG too

Never forget it. These squishes aren't built for this fight

Maarblek

people with no heroes and no accomplishments doing the only thing they know: crying to the courts to allow them to turn beautiful things that other people made into garbage

BlueandGray1864

"We'll put them in museums", it was always a lie. The destruction of historical artifacts has begun. Shame on anyone who supports this.

God Bless Robert E. Lee

Spencer Klavan

“How delightful it was to smash to pieces those arrogant faces, to raise our swords against them, to cut them ferociously with our axes, as if blood and pain would follow our blows”

Pliny on the destruction of Domitian's statues. The relish and vindictiveness in this process isn't an accident: it's a symbol and an effigy, an expression of violent hatred.

That last one is really quite striking, given this line from the WP article:

It was a grim act of justice and a celebration all in one.

Really, you should read the article, too. In it, I saw the genocide of my race, and it scares the hell out of me. I suppose this must be how the Jews feel.

So, is it justice? Is it vengeance? Should it be celebrated? Should it be destroyed?

And does the symbolism of liquidating the statue of a white man apply to the declining white population in America? Is the deliberate melting down of this statue a parallel to the deliberate replacement of the American race?

ETA: One more tweet from this morning, just a few hours ago:

GigaThaad

Literally my ancestor. We carry the Lee name as a first/middle in my family

While I didn't need a directly insulting gesture to tell me that my kind is hated and many seek our extinction (the implicit cues were strong enough) I appreciate this image making it absolutely clear.

Elon Musk

They absolutely want your extinction

Musk, as a white man born in South Africa, should know what it looks like when your native country changes and now wants you and yours dead and gone.

I have to assume you mean this WaPo article.

If so, I guess I’d better head off any misunderstandings. There’s really no sense in getting heated over this long-dead loser. Even in its current state, this statue holds together better than the Lost Cause mythos. It’s more defensible than the Confederacy, too. I think Lee’s just getting caught up with what Sherman did to Georgia.

Also, it looks like the detractors are doing this legally. I don’t see why you should get the final say over whether Lee’s body parts get to remain in a Union.

  • -11

Even in its current state, this statue holds together better than the Lost Cause mythos. It’s more defensible than the Confederacy, too.

I don't know. Personally, I consider myself a rather patriotic American, and I have no particular sadness that it remains a single country, and no particular fondness for the idea of the Confederacy. In general, I'm of the opinion that while political division is sometimes necessary, union is preferable because we really are stronger together when we peacefully work out our differences.

That said, I find it amusing at a principled level that modern neoliberalism doesn't seem to have met a separatist group it doesn't like: see the cause of Scottish secession, 20th century ex-colonial independence movements, and more recent splits like Kosovo and South Sudan, or even supporting an independent Ukraine against Russia. There's a lot of political momentum behind the idea of self determination -- as long as you're not from Virginia or Georgia: American jurisdiction is indivisible for any reason. One could point to slavery as the key point of contention, but that rule isn't exactly applied consistently: France's interests in North Africa were originally justified as ending the Barbary slave trade, and ongoing human trafficking in the region to this day apparently doesn't justify external political control (which I personally agree with!).

Under my principles, I'd rather maintain the US as it is, but I think one can make a reasonable argument about "Biden's 120,000 active-duty troops at Fort Benning Moore occupying Georgia" that comes across a reasonable fraction as convincing as the Chinese in Tibet, US troops in Afghanistan, or any number of similar cases that the world seems to agree are morally-questionable "occupation".

Scottish secession

British 'neoliberals', however you want to define them, mostly don't like Scottish independence. Blair, Cameron etc., but broadly there is no decisive left-right political valence to it. Unionists run the gamut of the British and Scottish political spectrum, from Andrew Neil to Brown to George Galloway.

One could point to slavery as the key point of contention, but that rule isn't exactly applied consistently:

The point isn't just the South wasn't entitled self-determination because of slavery - it's that there was nothing to secession except slavery. There was no other real grievance or basis for 'national feeling' than that institution.

Georgia

They have endeavored to weaken our security, to disturb our domestic peace and tranquility, and persistently refused to comply with their express constitutional obligations to us in reference to that property, and by the use of their power in the Federal Government have striven to deprive us of an equal enjoyment of the common Territories of the Republic.

Our Northern confederates, after a full and calm hearing of all the facts, after a fair warning of our purpose not to submit to the rule of the authors of all these wrongs and injuries, have by a large majority committed the Government of the United States into their hands. The people of Georgia, after an equally full and fair and deliberate hearing of the case, have declared with equal firmness that they shall not rule over them.

The faithless conduct of our adversaries is not confined to such acts as might aggrandize themselves or their section of the Union. They are content if they can only injure us. The Constitution declares that persons charged with crimes in one State and fleeing to another shall be delivered up on the demand of the executive authority of the State from which they may flee, to be tried in the jurisdiction where the crime was committed. It would appear difficult to employ language freer from ambiguity, yet for above twenty years the non-slave-holding States generally have wholly refused to deliver up to us persons charged with crimes affecting slave property. Our confederates, with punic faith, shield and give sanctuary to all criminals who seek to deprive us of this property or who use it to destroy us. This clause of the Constitution has no other sanction than their good faith; that is withheld from us; we are remediless in the Union; out of it we are remitted to the laws of nations.

A similar provision of the Constitution requires them to surrender fugitives from labor. This provision and the one last referred to were our main inducements for confederating with the Northern States. Without them it is historically true that we would have rejected the Constitution. In the fourth year of the Republic Congress passed a law to give full vigor and efficiency to this important provision. This act depended to a considerable degree upon the local magistrates in the several States for its efficiency. The non-slave-holding States generally repealed all laws intended to aid the execution of that act, and imposed penalties upon those citizens whose loyalty to the Constitution and their oaths might induce them to discharge their duty. Congress then passed the act of 1850, providing for the complete execution of this duty by Federal officers. This law, which their own bad faith rendered absolutely indispensible for the protection of constitutional rights, was instantly met with ferocious revilings and all conceivable modes of hostility.

The South seceded because they were tired of the North ignoring all of their agreements and reneging on their established constitution. Yes, the North defected due to slavery, and the South seceded due to that defection. There were also free trade vs protectionist arguments raised where the North was being subsidized while the South was left to fend for itself, on the federal governments dime.

North ignoring all of their agreements

This is just credulously swallowing Southern propaganda whole, on several counts. Apart from the trivial point of 'ignoring their agreements about what' (i.e. slavery), there are several things to say here. Firstly, as Potter the 'compromise' of 1850 was never really so - it was in fact an armistice, with both sides ready to press an advantage if they felt they had it. Nothing wrong with this, it's just politics, but the point is both sides acted fairly similarly. If we want to talk about ignoring agreements, what about Dred Scott, which Southerners were only too happy to celebrate, or the attempts to advance the Lecompton constitution, the latter of which made a mockery of democracy and any pretence at popular sovereignty.

The fact is that the highest priority of most of the South - or the planter elite that dominated politics at any rate - was the continuation of slavery, and 'constitutional' government important mostly insofar as it protected that institution.

There are so many relevant quotes here, but perhaps John W. Overall summed up the Southern mindset best.

"The people of the South," says a contemporary, "are not fighting for slavery, but for independence."

Let us look into this matter. It is an easy task, we think, to show up this new fangled heresy---a heresy calculated to do us no good, for it cannot deceive foreign statesmen nor peoples, nor mislead any one here nor in Yankeeland.

Our doctrine is this: WE ARE FIGHTING FOR INDEPENDENCE THAT OUR GREAT AND NECESSARY DOMESTIC INSTITUTION OF SLAVERY SHALL BE PRESERVED, and for the preservation of other institutions of which slavery is the ground work.

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