Tearing down statues

[stillafool]

24 minutes ago, Weezy1973 said:

Are there statues of Margaret Sanger? Or are talking about actual Planned Parenthood buildings?

No there's a bust of her at the Smithsonian which is bad enough.   However yes why not the buildings where her plans are being carried out?  Black people should be livid, I know I am.

[Weezy1973]

18 minutes ago, stillafool said:

No there's a bust of her at the Smithsonian which is bad enough.   However yes why not the buildings where her plans are being carried out?  Black people should be livid, I know I am.

Buildings are functional, but statues don’t really have much use except for the purpose people make up in their minds. No problems removing statues if it’s causing this much angst.

[mark clemson]

Hmmm. So the argument is that because the founder of PP had negative intentions for it, that women who themselves actively want the services provided should be denied them?

Seems like by a similar logic that, since many of the founding fathers owned slaves and never gave black people or women the right to vote, you'd be happy to end our current government and democracy and we can all lose the benefits of it and everything so many have fought and died to defend?

Or is the plan to tear down the PP buildings and inefficiently/unnecessarily replace them with others that aren't "tainted" but provide that wanted service?

While you may not agree with the views of those set on tearing down statues, it seems like the vast majority of them at least merely want to reform the system and also be rid of what are (to them) obvious symbols of oppression, not take down our entire government (at least not over the "taint" of a checkered history). Even the more (IMO) unrealistic ones seem to want reparations (presumably denominated in US dollars) not an ending to the entire system.

[stillafool]

22 minutes ago, Weezy1973 said:

Buildings are functional, but statues don’t really have much use except for the purpose people make up in their minds. No problems removing statues if it’s causing this much angst.

Well actually I was thinking for what the buildings stand for and who was behind them.  Isn't that why the statues are being torn down?   However I'm not in favor or tearing down statues or burning buildings.

[Ellener]

1 hour ago, stillafool said:

what the buildings stand for and who was behind them.  Isn't that why the statues are being torn down?  

Planned Parenthood 2020 is a helping agency isn't it? nonprofit organization that provides reproductive health care in the United States and globally.

Maybe statues of people have had their era? It seems a pompous thing to have in this day and age, who would want a statue of themself out there forever? 

1 hour ago, stillafool said:

I'm not in favor or tearing down statues or burning buildings.

Me neither, but I do see how it happens. 

[lana-banana]

I would absolutely support getting rid of Mount Rushmore if it was remotely feasible (let's be honest, bombs in the side of mountains are probably going to cause more problems than they solve). That was sacred land belonging to people who faced centuries of oppression, murder, and flat-out genocide. Carving people's faces on a site with extreme cultural/religious significance is pretty awful.

[mark clemson]

Seems to me wanting to remove the Mt. Rushmore faces for the reasons stated is NOT the same thing as actual insurrection. The system we have changes over time - witness all those amendments to the constitution, supreme court decisions etc. IMO, reasonable, flexible people don't need to feel threatened by change to the point of proposing a civil war. People protest, counter protest. That happened in the 1960's - 50+ years ago. We're still here.

IMO, if you've got real faith in the democratic processes you claim to be upholding, that shouldn't be necessary. If you don't, how is this approach better than, say, Stalin's? Kill everyone who doesn't see it my way and we'll have "peace"?

Only the most extreme protesters are advocating say, ending the federal government, abolishing the supreme court, disbanding congress or the like. And the folks like that (the few that there are) are on both sides.

Sure, people are circumventing the democratic process right now. But that's transitory venting. I'd bet within 10-20 years some of those statues get put back up, perhaps with explanatory plaques acknowledging the harm that was done to some as we transitioned from a less to a more fully free and open society. No doubt there are folks preparing to advocate for that right now.

Cutting to civil war seems like a loss of perspective to me.

[Piddy]

To my knowledge there aren't any statues of Benedict Arnold.  He was a trader, just as  Robert E.  Lee and Stonewall Jackson etc. were.

They killed thousands of fellow Americans fighting to keep people in bondage.  Think about that.

It's an abomination to have monuments to these men.  

Edited July 4, 2020 by Piddy

[Ellener]

US President Donald Trump has ordered the creation of a "National Garden of American Heroes" to defend what he calls "our great national story" against those who vandalise statues.

His executive order gives a new task force 60 days to present plans, including a location, for the garden.

He insists the new statues must be lifelike, "not abstract or modernist".

~BBC today

[NuevoYorko]

So not only are we going to continue to heap honor on people who fought to not only maintain and profit from the institution of slavery and to literally destroy the USA, but they will be designated as "American Heroes"?  That's just lame.

[Ellener]

1 hour ago, NuevoYorko said:

So not only are we going to continue to heap honor on people who fought to not only maintain and profit from the institution of slavery and to literally destroy the USA, but they will be designated as "American Heroes"?  That's just lame.

I thought it telling that they can't be abstract or modernist! Dictating art now. Never learns.

I like the Statue of Responsibility project if we're putting up new symbols:

Freedom is only part of the story and half of the truth. Freedom is but the negative aspect of the whole phenomenon whose positive aspect is responsibleness. In fact, freedom is in danger of degenerating into mere arbitrariness unless it is lived in terms of responsibleness. That is why I recommend that the Statue of Liberty on the East Coast be supplemented by a Statue of Responsibility on the West Coast.

~ Viktor Frankl, Man’s Search For Meaning.

 

[NuevoYorko]

This whole statue discussion gets quite convoluted.  I know I am not only speaking for myself when I say that the point is not to "erase history."  The main goal is to make an unequivocal statement, as a nation, that we don't honor the institution of slavery OR the treasonous act of trying to break this very nation apart and, in the process, killing many citizens of the nation.  

Keep in mind that the confederacy was a rebellion AGAINST the United States.  Lee was not an American citizen.  His citizenship was not reinstated after the Civil War.  He was finally an American citizen posthumously, in 1975.

 

[Angelle]

2 hours ago, Ellener said:

US President Donald Trump has ordered the creation of a "National Garden of American Heroes" to defend what he calls "our great national story" against those who vandalise statues.

His executive order gives a new task force 60 days to present plans, including a location, for the garden.

He insists the new statues must be lifelike, "not abstract or modernist".

~BBC today

I wonder if the "Straight Outta Applebees" couple will be included. 

[mark clemson]

5 hours ago, Ellener said:

US President Donald Trump has ordered the creation of a "National Garden of American Heroes" to defend what he calls "our great national story" against those who vandalise statues.

I wonder if there will be a national referendum on whom to include among the "heroes" to make it a truly democratic project? My guess would be no.

The democratic process was circumvented in the destruction of statues. Now it will be circumvented in the creation of this new symbolic project as well.

You (far left) got to take down the statues unilaterally, well we'll (far right and probably some center folks on many of them like Columbus, but not others like those confederate generals) just put more back up.

Perhaps next time around there could be a discussion about taking them down and moved onto private land or into museums for those who consider them "heritage" (not all of whom are avowed racists or anything, BTW).

This art project thing does makes more sense than starting a civil war over how sanitized you want to keep your view of history. So credit on that IMO.

Appease the disgruntled and vaguely threatened feeling masses. Now if we could only get them decent jobs!

Edited July 4, 2020 by mark clemson

[Angelle]

15 minutes ago, mark clemson said:

I wonder if there will be a national referendum on whom to include among the "heroes" to make it a truly democratic project? My guess would be no.

The democratic process was circumvented in the destruction of statues. Now it will be circumvented in the creation of this new symbolic project as well.

You (far left) got to take down the statues unilaterally, well we'll (far right and probably some center folks on many of them like Columbus, but not others like those confederate generals) just put more back up.

Perhaps next time around there could be a discussion about taking them down and moved onto private land or into museums for those who consider them "heritage" (not all of whom are avowed racists or anything, BTW).

It does makes more sense than starting a civil war over how sanitized you want to keep your view of history. So credit on that IMO.

Appease the disgruntled and vaguely threatened feeling masses. Now if we could only get them decent jobs!

It had nothing to do with sanitizing history. 

Why do you assume that they don't have jobs? 

Edited July 4, 2020 by Angelle

[Ellener]

1 hour ago, mark clemson said:

You (far left) got to take down the statues unilaterally, well we'll (far right and probably some center folks on many of them like Columbus, but not others like those confederate generals) just put more back up.

I take it that is meant in parentheses?

Just to be clear, I personally have neither been destroying nor erecting same 😃

1 hour ago, mark clemson said:

national referendum

Good idea. 

[mark clemson]

16 minutes ago, Angelle said:

It had nothing to do with sanitizing history. 

It doesn't? Interesting view. George Washington had, I believe, something like 300 slaves? Are you saying you expect them to be mentioned in Trump's garden project?

I'd say that would be a dose of realism. NOT one that I'd realistically expect though.

He's a HERO (he was, in his day), not a SLAVE OWNER (well, he was that too). Not a person who believed in the "natural inferiority" of black people (I've read he was that too).

Reality is that we went from a system where for the most part only wealthy and powerful white males had political power, many people had views we'd consider racist, and slavery was a common practice to a much more egalitarian one. (And that's, of course, a very good thing.) The rest of the world has come a long way too. We're so used to that as the de facto standard now, that when we see the negative sides of our "heroes" we forget that in their day practices that we now find extremely negative and appalling were commonplace.

That's what I meant by sanitizing. Not mentioning it at all, because apparently we're not particularly good at understanding it in context.

Happy July 4th BTW!

Edited July 4, 2020 by mark clemson

[Ellener]

1 hour ago, mark clemson said:

He's a HERO

Meh, one man's hero is another man's villain, to paraphrase Star Trek.

When we look for heroes we are just projecting.

Even assuming a Jesus exists here and there, the balanced considerate person would neither be throwing branches one week or rocks and insults the next. 

Only hero we need in the US 2020 is HEROES Act to be finalised, decide which people are to be helped, which will have to fight it out on their own...

[mark clemson]

4 minutes ago, Ellener said:

Meh, one man's hero is another man's villain, to paraphrase Star Trek.

Agree...

 

On 6/11/2020 at 10:26 AM, mark clemson said:

One problem, of course, is that person X's hero (or at least noteworthy historical leader) is very often person Y's oppressor. I personally don't have a problem with removing confederate war "hero" statues (technically traitors IMO). However, others might and they're not all necessarily racists or interested in recreating the "good old days" or similar. So who's right?

 

[Ellener]

1 hour ago, mark clemson said:

they're not all necessarily racists

everyone is racist, to a greater or lesser extent and in one way or another. None of us humans are so multi-cultural and lacking human defects we respond perfectly to others in all situations.

In the past, people lived in the past. We don't have to in 2020 though!

[mark clemson]

Hmmm. Ok, I guess I meant severely bigoted or similar then, np.  🙂

[Ellener]

1 hour ago, mark clemson said:

Hmmm. Ok, I guess I meant severely bigoted or similar then, np.  🙂

Most people aren't as hateful as they may seem, just inexperienced in whatever they are 'bigoted' about. If you ( in parentheses ) get to know your next door gay/black/disabled/racist neighbour suddenly they are just another human alongside. Everybody has their own strengths, weaknesses, fears, needs etc.

I think for the world- y'all should give up commercial cable and get antenna tv, watch old-fashioned shows ( Touched by an Angel, NYPD Blue, Cagney and Lacey, Little House on the Prairie, The Waltons etc. ) It puts things in perspective somehow in a way it didn't the first airing. Hindsight.

The 2018 documentary of the life of Fred Rogers I think I was the only one there weeping in the cinema, because he was counter-culturally correct but nobody listened.

Being kind isn't very popular even if it's the only way that ever works in the long term. Whole religions have sprung up to try and prove Jesus wasn't kind!

His show ended August 2001, the time I emigrated and within days September 11th happened and America changed overnight...but not really. America was born of love of democracy and will only end when love of democracy ends. But as with Mr Rogers:

The gift of the Neighborhood to a child is stability, tranquility, ritual -- and adventure only in controlled doses.

( Washington Post 2001 )

The gift of America and democracy and freedom- it's pretty cool.

[Prudence V]

On 7/5/2020 at 12:32 AM, Ellener said:

The 2018 documentary of the life of Fred Rogers

Who was that?

[Prudence V]

On 7/3/2020 at 11:59 PM, mark clemson said:

IMO, if you've got real faith in the democratic processes you claim to be upholding, that shouldn't be necessary.

I can’t speak for your country, but here in the U.K., very few people have faith in the political process. We have a stupid “first past the post” electoral system that sees huge numbers of votes wasted, in a “constituency” democracy that was rigged to favour one party who is almost impossible to vote out of power. Plus then there’s the completely up democratic House of Lords, which still includes bishops, and aristocrats because unlike Europeans who sensibly beheaded theirs, Brits worship aristocrats and royals. It’s completely insane. 

I write to my MP at least once a week about issues and I’ve only once had any sense that he’s even heard what I’ve said. Mostly he just has his staff trot out the party line, before he goes off and acts in ways that directly disadvantage his constituents. He certainly doesn’t represent me, or anyone I know who lives in these parts. But some large, posh towns fall into this constituency and they’d never vote for anyone who isn’t a Tory, so his seat is safe, and our votes just get wasted every time. But those in power want to cling to it, so electoral reform will never happen. 

So taking to the streets, using direct action, is the only way people can get their voices heard. And if a few slave owner statues get thrown in the harbour in the process, so much the better! 

[sothereiwas]

Black lives matter protesters tearing down statues of Frederick Douglass. Priceless.