@Timmethy2.0
That was the only problem with his noble ideal. It excluded all women and anyone who wasn't fish-belly pale.

They looked at Europe and saw absolute monarchs and also saw a lot of questioning of the monarchies by people like Voltaire and John Locke. They also saw a slightly more democratic monarchy in England which maybe offered an example of something to build on. The Constitution was revolutionary for its time and the Declaration of Independence did say "All men are created equal". These were radical ideas that inspired the French revolution and later revolutions. Yeah Jefferson was a slave owner, but he also created the basis for emancipation which was huge.

@Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal There is a call to purge history of everything that doesn't comport with current sensibilities. The reactionary elements of history are to be purged, and then afterwards, we'll purge math, science and other disciplines from reactionary elements too. The Chinese did this, so did the French, and many others.

In no case did it end well.

So...if the institution of slavery had a perceptible effect on a historical event, then we now understand that historical event as being because of slavery? So a complicated historical event, which arguably happened for many reasons, is now rendered as "The Revolutionary War was fought to preserve slavery?" Because the abolitionism of a British aristocrat got the South on the Revolutionary side?

In other words, if slavery is involved in a historical event at all, we understand it as the paramount cause of that event--perhaps even its exclusive cause.

I'm grateful to know about Lord Dunmore's proclamation and its effect on the pre-Revolutionary South. But the fact that a threat to the institution of slavery convinced those who ran the Southern States to revolt doesn't mean that the Revolutionary War was "fought to preserve slavery." What about the industrial North? They had their own reasons to revolt. Likely those reasons didn't involve slavery, since their economy wasn't run on slave labor. It was run on some other shitty things, but not that.

I realize that this essay is actually trying to complicate reductive attitudes out there with facts that don't fit, and I'm grateful. But I'm also a little freaked out by how basically all it takes is for people to talk about slavery and racism and Nazis, and lots of people are willing to abandon complex thinking and reduce their understanding of both history and politics to something frighteningly simplistic. It's even worse because there's a moral imperative, sometimes expressed, sometimes not, to agree with the reductive explanation, else be considered a racist. Sort of like a few years ago we had to agree with reductive explanations or be considered traitors and terrorist sympathizers.

.

These days, it seems like you have to be reductive to be good. Complexity is for easier times and issues. We can't afford it when there are Nazis and racists threatening Black people. Just like we couldn't afford it in the early years of this century because there were terrorists threatening the United States.

This looks an awful lot like the white left's version of 9/11. Because we aren't right-wing, and we probably don't have a hell of a lot of sympathy for them--and understandably so, given how they've often acted--it might be unclear that for a right-wing person, the spectacle of a foreign power destroying skyscrapers in New York City created just as much a moral imperative for them as racism and Nazism does for left-wing white people: a moral imperative to defend and protect their nation, to which they had allegiance, against those trying to destroy it. Therefore it was necessary to stop thinking complex thoughts about foreign relations and a bunch of inconvenient facts about the attack, and fall in line to protect your country. In order to be on the moral side under those conditions, you had to abandon any doubts or complexities and accept whatever the leadership of the country said.

For us, the spectacle of Nazis and Black people clashing creates the moral imperative to side against the Nazis and fall in line behind whatever Black people and left-wing white allies might be opposing them. It's a moral imperative to side with the oppressed against the oppressor, Black people against white people, and left-wing people against right-wing people. I'd like to say it's a moral imperative to defend human rights, which it used to be, but that concept is basically dead now even with people who are trying hard not to get murdered by racists. If that weren't the case, nobody would talk about white people's freedom to walk to the store without being shot in the head by a cop as a "white privilege." If not getting arbitrarily murdered constitutes a privilege--rather than a right--then the concept of basic human rights is dead.

But that's a tangent. The fact is that there is no longer much room for a moral politics which manages to both oppose racism--and, of course, Nazism--and also to support the values of reason: openness to complexity, willingness to listen and to learn, skepticism without limit but also without vitriol, rigorous analysis based on as much discoverable fact as you can muster, and respect for dissent. Pretty soon, there will be no room at all.

It doesn't help that the whole thing looks like a macabre puppet show to me, with the wealthy white establishment at the very least reaping rich benefits from these events and the reductionist politics which arises from them, if not actively engaging in manipulation.

@Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal

So...if the institution of slavery had a perceptible effect on a historical event, then we now understand that historical event as being because of slavery? So a complicated historical event, which arguably happened for many reasons, is now rendered as "The Revolutionary War was fought to preserve slavery?" Because the abolitionism of a British aristocrat got the South on the Revolutionary side?

In other words, if slavery is involved in a historical event at all, we understand it as the paramount cause of that event--perhaps even its exclusive cause.

I'm grateful to know about Lord Dunmore's proclamation and its effect on the pre-Revolutionary South. But the fact that a threat to the institution of slavery convinced those who ran the Southern States to revolt doesn't mean that the Revolutionary War was "fought to preserve slavery." What about the industrial North? They had their own reasons to revolt. Likely those reasons didn't involve slavery, since their economy wasn't run on slave labor. It was run on some other shitty things, but not that.

I realize that this essay is actually trying to complicate reductive attitudes out there with facts that don't fit, and I'm grateful. But I'm also a little freaked out by how basically all it takes is for people to talk about slavery and racism and Nazis, and lots of people are willing to abandon complex thinking and reduce their understanding of both history and politics to something frighteningly simplistic. It's even worse because there's a moral imperative, sometimes expressed, sometimes not, to agree with the reductive explanation, else be considered a racist. Sort of like a few years ago we had to agree with reductive explanations or be considered traitors and terrorist sympathizers.

.

These days, it seems like you have to be reductive to be good. Complexity is for easier times and issues. We can't afford it when there are Nazis and racists threatening Black people. Just like we couldn't afford it in the early years of this century because there were terrorists threatening the United States.

This looks an awful lot like the white left's version of 9/11. Because we aren't right-wing, and we probably don't have a hell of a lot of sympathy for them--and understandably so, given how they've often acted--it might be unclear that for a right-wing person, the spectacle of a foreign power destroying skyscrapers in New York City created just as much a moral imperative for them as racism and Nazism does for left-wing white people: a moral imperative to defend and protect their nation, to which they had allegiance, against those trying to destroy it. Therefore it was necessary to stop thinking complex thoughts about foreign relations and a bunch of inconvenient facts about the attack, and fall in line to protect your country. In order to be on the moral side under those conditions, you had to abandon any doubts or complexities and accept whatever the leadership of the country said.

For us, the spectacle of Nazis and Black people clashing creates the moral imperative to side against the Nazis and fall in line behind whatever Black people and left-wing white allies might be opposing them. It's a moral imperative to side with the oppressed against the oppressor, Black people against white people, and left-wing people against right-wing people. I'd like to say it's a moral imperative to defend human rights, which it used to be, but that concept is basically dead now even with people who are trying hard not to get murdered by racists. If that weren't the case, nobody would talk about white people's freedom to walk to the store without being shot in the head by a cop as a "white privilege." If not getting arbitrarily murdered constitutes a privilege--rather than a right--then the concept of basic human rights is dead.

But that's a tangent. The fact is that there is no longer much room for a moral politics which manages to both oppose racism--and, of course, Nazism--and also to support the values of reason: openness to complexity, willingness to listen and to learn, skepticism without limit but also without vitriol, rigorous analysis based on as much discoverable fact as you can muster, and respect for dissent. Pretty soon, there will be no room at all.

It doesn't help that the whole thing looks like a macabre puppet show to me, with the wealthy white establishment at the very least reaping rich benefits from these events and the reductionist politics which arises from them, if not actively engaging in manipulation.

@Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal that "Omigod we gotta tear down monuments because of slaves." But that's not the best argument for taking down Confederate statues and putting them in museums, not by a long shot. As I've argued here, the best argument for taking down Confederate statues is that they served, in real life, as a reinforcement of Jim Crow. No statue of George Washington ever did as much because, as you've pointed out here, the Revolutionary War served for quite a few people (in quite a few non-slave states) as more than a slaveholder's revolt.

So...if the institution of slavery had a perceptible effect on a historical event, then we now understand that historical event as being because of slavery? So a complicated historical event, which arguably happened for many reasons, is now rendered as "The Revolutionary War was fought to preserve slavery?" Because the abolitionism of a British aristocrat got the South on the Revolutionary side?

In other words, if slavery is involved in a historical event at all, we understand it as the paramount cause of that event--perhaps even its exclusive cause.

I'm grateful to know about Lord Dunmore's proclamation and its effect on the pre-Revolutionary South. But the fact that a threat to the institution of slavery convinced those who ran the Southern States to revolt doesn't mean that the Revolutionary War was "fought to preserve slavery." What about the industrial North? They had their own reasons to revolt. Likely those reasons didn't involve slavery, since their economy wasn't run on slave labor. It was run on some other shitty things, but not that.

I realize that this essay is actually trying to complicate reductive attitudes out there with facts that don't fit, and I'm grateful. But I'm also a little freaked out by how basically all it takes is for people to talk about slavery and racism and Nazis, and lots of people are willing to abandon complex thinking and reduce their understanding of both history and politics to something frighteningly simplistic. It's even worse because there's a moral imperative, sometimes expressed, sometimes not, to agree with the reductive explanation, else be considered a racist. Sort of like a few years ago we had to agree with reductive explanations or be considered traitors and terrorist sympathizers.

.

These days, it seems like you have to be reductive to be good. Complexity is for easier times and issues. We can't afford it when there are Nazis and racists threatening Black people. Just like we couldn't afford it in the early years of this century because there were terrorists threatening the United States.

This looks an awful lot like the white left's version of 9/11. Because we aren't right-wing, and we probably don't have a hell of a lot of sympathy for them--and understandably so, given how they've often acted--it might be unclear that for a right-wing person, the spectacle of a foreign power destroying skyscrapers in New York City created just as much a moral imperative for them as racism and Nazism does for left-wing white people: a moral imperative to defend and protect their nation, to which they had allegiance, against those trying to destroy it. Therefore it was necessary to stop thinking complex thoughts about foreign relations and a bunch of inconvenient facts about the attack, and fall in line to protect your country. In order to be on the moral side under those conditions, you had to abandon any doubts or complexities and accept whatever the leadership of the country said.

For us, the spectacle of Nazis and Black people clashing creates the moral imperative to side against the Nazis and fall in line behind whatever Black people and left-wing white allies might be opposing them. It's a moral imperative to side with the oppressed against the oppressor, Black people against white people, and left-wing people against right-wing people. I'd like to say it's a moral imperative to defend human rights, which it used to be, but that concept is basically dead now even with people who are trying hard not to get murdered by racists. If that weren't the case, nobody would talk about white people's freedom to walk to the store without being shot in the head by a cop as a "white privilege." If not getting arbitrarily murdered constitutes a privilege--rather than a right--then the concept of basic human rights is dead.

But that's a tangent. The fact is that there is no longer much room for a moral politics which manages to both oppose racism--and, of course, Nazism--and also to support the values of reason: openness to complexity, willingness to listen and to learn, skepticism without limit but also without vitriol, rigorous analysis based on as much discoverable fact as you can muster, and respect for dissent. Pretty soon, there will be no room at all.

It doesn't help that the whole thing looks like a macabre puppet show to me, with the wealthy white establishment at the very least reaping rich benefits from these events and the reductionist politics which arises from them, if not actively engaging in manipulation.

.

@Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal

... I'd like to say it's a moral imperative to defend human rights, which it used to be, but that concept is basically dead now even with people who are trying hard not to get murdered by racists. If that weren't the case, nobody would talk about white people's freedom to walk to the store without being shot in the head by a cop as a "white privilege." If not getting arbitrarily murdered constitutes a privilege--rather than a right--then the concept of basic human rights is dead. ...

Actually, when that aspect of 'White privilege' suddenly appeared, I rather thought that this looked like propaganda intended to incrementally move the perception of 'not being shot by police for being there at all' into the category of being a 'privilege not a right' within the public consciousness. And I still believe this, even more strongly now, in view of all that's been occurring/that I've learnt since, specifically including the 'legalization' of government propaganda and of the lawless kidnapping and 'disappearing' of citizens at whim under Obama.

If not being randomly murdered/forever-kidnapped and held incognito until death by police/spy agencies is seen as merely having your 'special privileges' withdrawn, rather than having basic human rights - also Constitutionally guaranteed throughout the US, albeit in the face of a promoted Constitution Convention for a rewrite by corporate political representatives - fatally abused, where's the source, never mind the 'legal' support for, citizen outrage, following (Billionaire) Simon Says corporate-determined domestic law within a corporate/billionaire-selected Justice Department/Supreme Court system, never mind off-shored domestic corporate/billionaire-imposed law?

If the people cannot be conned/brainwashed into passively accepting ever-increasing levels of injustice and misery, what happens to the global conquest plans of those self-selected 'elites' pretending that they're fit and entitled to rule the world - by force - only because they've managed to drain so very much of the world's wealth and resources from other people and the world they're ever more rapidly destroying out of pathological greed?

So...if the institution of slavery had a perceptible effect on a historical event, then we now understand that historical event as being because of slavery? So a complicated historical event, which arguably happened for many reasons, is now rendered as "The Revolutionary War was fought to preserve slavery?" Because the abolitionism of a British aristocrat got the South on the Revolutionary side?

In other words, if slavery is involved in a historical event at all, we understand it as the paramount cause of that event--perhaps even its exclusive cause.

I'm grateful to know about Lord Dunmore's proclamation and its effect on the pre-Revolutionary South. But the fact that a threat to the institution of slavery convinced those who ran the Southern States to revolt doesn't mean that the Revolutionary War was "fought to preserve slavery." What about the industrial North? They had their own reasons to revolt. Likely those reasons didn't involve slavery, since their economy wasn't run on slave labor. It was run on some other shitty things, but not that.

I realize that this essay is actually trying to complicate reductive attitudes out there with facts that don't fit, and I'm grateful. But I'm also a little freaked out by how basically all it takes is for people to talk about slavery and racism and Nazis, and lots of people are willing to abandon complex thinking and reduce their understanding of both history and politics to something frighteningly simplistic. It's even worse because there's a moral imperative, sometimes expressed, sometimes not, to agree with the reductive explanation, else be considered a racist. Sort of like a few years ago we had to agree with reductive explanations or be considered traitors and terrorist sympathizers.

.

These days, it seems like you have to be reductive to be good. Complexity is for easier times and issues. We can't afford it when there are Nazis and racists threatening Black people. Just like we couldn't afford it in the early years of this century because there were terrorists threatening the United States.

This looks an awful lot like the white left's version of 9/11. Because we aren't right-wing, and we probably don't have a hell of a lot of sympathy for them--and understandably so, given how they've often acted--it might be unclear that for a right-wing person, the spectacle of a foreign power destroying skyscrapers in New York City created just as much a moral imperative for them as racism and Nazism does for left-wing white people: a moral imperative to defend and protect their nation, to which they had allegiance, against those trying to destroy it. Therefore it was necessary to stop thinking complex thoughts about foreign relations and a bunch of inconvenient facts about the attack, and fall in line to protect your country. In order to be on the moral side under those conditions, you had to abandon any doubts or complexities and accept whatever the leadership of the country said.

For us, the spectacle of Nazis and Black people clashing creates the moral imperative to side against the Nazis and fall in line behind whatever Black people and left-wing white allies might be opposing them. It's a moral imperative to side with the oppressed against the oppressor, Black people against white people, and left-wing people against right-wing people. I'd like to say it's a moral imperative to defend human rights, which it used to be, but that concept is basically dead now even with people who are trying hard not to get murdered by racists. If that weren't the case, nobody would talk about white people's freedom to walk to the store without being shot in the head by a cop as a "white privilege." If not getting arbitrarily murdered constitutes a privilege--rather than a right--then the concept of basic human rights is dead.

But that's a tangent. The fact is that there is no longer much room for a moral politics which manages to both oppose racism--and, of course, Nazism--and also to support the values of reason: openness to complexity, willingness to listen and to learn, skepticism without limit but also without vitriol, rigorous analysis based on as much discoverable fact as you can muster, and respect for dissent. Pretty soon, there will be no room at all.

It doesn't help that the whole thing looks like a macabre puppet show to me, with the wealthy white establishment at the very least reaping rich benefits from these events and the reductionist politics which arises from them, if not actively engaging in manipulation.

@Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal @Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal
Good post. Concerning the reductive, simplification, I interpreted gjohnsit's post, not as a simplistic attempt to reduce the Revolutionary War to another cause, but as an example of how the forces that have reduced the Civil War 'cause' have been used to obfuscate the multitude of causes for both of the wars...on purpose, for an agenda.

The Revolution, through repeated propaganda = fight for freedom
The Civil, through repeated propaganda = fight for freedom from slavery

Neither is entirely true, and in fact, based on evidence, I would contend that the 'accepted' truth of these two wars that we have learned in school/tradition, is actually ascribed to what is actually a lesser reason/causes than what they really were because that was a desire of those systems that seek to shape our perceptions.

It doesn't help that the whole thing looks like a macabre puppet show to me, with the wealthy white establishment at the very least reaping rich benefits from these events and the reductionist politics which arises from them, if not actively engaging in manipulation.

Precisely. Fighting over statues is pointless and achieves nothing; it's like putting makeup on a bleeding wound, presuming that will contribute, or be some sort of 'step' toward a meaningful 'fix' of the problem. It does nothing.

So...if the institution of slavery had a perceptible effect on a historical event, then we now understand that historical event as being because of slavery? So a complicated historical event, which arguably happened for many reasons, is now rendered as "The Revolutionary War was fought to preserve slavery?" Because the abolitionism of a British aristocrat got the South on the Revolutionary side?

In other words, if slavery is involved in a historical event at all, we understand it as the paramount cause of that event--perhaps even its exclusive cause.

I'm grateful to know about Lord Dunmore's proclamation and its effect on the pre-Revolutionary South. But the fact that a threat to the institution of slavery convinced those who ran the Southern States to revolt doesn't mean that the Revolutionary War was "fought to preserve slavery." What about the industrial North? They had their own reasons to revolt. Likely those reasons didn't involve slavery, since their economy wasn't run on slave labor. It was run on some other shitty things, but not that.

I realize that this essay is actually trying to complicate reductive attitudes out there with facts that don't fit, and I'm grateful. But I'm also a little freaked out by how basically all it takes is for people to talk about slavery and racism and Nazis, and lots of people are willing to abandon complex thinking and reduce their understanding of both history and politics to something frighteningly simplistic. It's even worse because there's a moral imperative, sometimes expressed, sometimes not, to agree with the reductive explanation, else be considered a racist. Sort of like a few years ago we had to agree with reductive explanations or be considered traitors and terrorist sympathizers.

.

These days, it seems like you have to be reductive to be good. Complexity is for easier times and issues. We can't afford it when there are Nazis and racists threatening Black people. Just like we couldn't afford it in the early years of this century because there were terrorists threatening the United States.

This looks an awful lot like the white left's version of 9/11. Because we aren't right-wing, and we probably don't have a hell of a lot of sympathy for them--and understandably so, given how they've often acted--it might be unclear that for a right-wing person, the spectacle of a foreign power destroying skyscrapers in New York City created just as much a moral imperative for them as racism and Nazism does for left-wing white people: a moral imperative to defend and protect their nation, to which they had allegiance, against those trying to destroy it. Therefore it was necessary to stop thinking complex thoughts about foreign relations and a bunch of inconvenient facts about the attack, and fall in line to protect your country. In order to be on the moral side under those conditions, you had to abandon any doubts or complexities and accept whatever the leadership of the country said.

For us, the spectacle of Nazis and Black people clashing creates the moral imperative to side against the Nazis and fall in line behind whatever Black people and left-wing white allies might be opposing them. It's a moral imperative to side with the oppressed against the oppressor, Black people against white people, and left-wing people against right-wing people. I'd like to say it's a moral imperative to defend human rights, which it used to be, but that concept is basically dead now even with people who are trying hard not to get murdered by racists. If that weren't the case, nobody would talk about white people's freedom to walk to the store without being shot in the head by a cop as a "white privilege." If not getting arbitrarily murdered constitutes a privilege--rather than a right--then the concept of basic human rights is dead.

But that's a tangent. The fact is that there is no longer much room for a moral politics which manages to both oppose racism--and, of course, Nazism--and also to support the values of reason: openness to complexity, willingness to listen and to learn, skepticism without limit but also without vitriol, rigorous analysis based on as much discoverable fact as you can muster, and respect for dissent. Pretty soon, there will be no room at all.

It doesn't help that the whole thing looks like a macabre puppet show to me, with the wealthy white establishment at the very least reaping rich benefits from these events and the reductionist politics which arises from them, if not actively engaging in manipulation.