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PaperclipPerfector  7mo ago (text post)   24940 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 30, 2023

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I assure you that this will be followed by another act of teabagging, namely that some bougie black avantgarde artist will be paid big bucks by the city to use the melted-down iron to construct some hideous-looking crappy statue of some mythologized slave rebellion leader or some other black "hero".

Eh, if they replaced Robert E Lee with John Brown that would generate so much public seethe you'd be able to say the change was a work of performance art!

I feel bad for the man himself, everything I've read about him seems to suggest he was a very respectable, highly principled, honourable human being. Shame he was born in the American south. Had he be born in the north the war may well have ended earlier with a lot fewer Union deaths.

if they replaced Robert E Lee with John Brown that would generate so much public seethe you'd be able to say the change was a work of performance art!

Yeah, fair enough. Or maybe put up a statue of John Brown alongside Lee or something. A statue of John Brown represents this: the valorization of a man who attempted to overthrow an unjust system by force.

Eh. Modern historiography that is less triumphal and heroic puts almost all the blame for southern success on early northern incompetence and sheer bad luck with who went where.

Eg, Lee could have been replaced by any number of Dudes in the south, as long as the Cav turned coat whichever guy the pick still gets his early licks until the north relearns how to do horsey shit.

Actually, Lee probably lost the war for the south even faster than it would have gone otherwise by trying to repeat his early Dramatic Battle successes well after the North got some real killers in charge that stopped walking into bad situations.

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