Lee Camp is a descendant of Robert E. Lee
"My family also descends from George Washington and John Marshall, the fourth chief justice of the Supreme Court. (The oligarchy was a rather small club back in the day.) And I, along with many other Lee descendants, say: Remove the statues."
Four Giant Reasons to Remove the Statues, From a Robert E. Lee Descendant
Yet, this week President Donald Trump has made it his mission to catch and prosecute those who have taken down statues. I’m positive he’s not doing it out of any racist ideology, although it doesn’t help that he also retweeted a white power message soon afterwards.With that said, here are four exceedingly stupid reasons to keep the statues in place, and how to refute them. If you agree with any of these arguments… ummm, stop doing that.
I just learned this morning that the statues were put up during Jim Crow and from Lee that the confederate flag was created when Truman started talking about the civil rights movement.
I agree that the confederate statues should come down. The confederate flag should be seen for what it is. A symbol of racism and white supremacy.
Thanks again, Marie.
Comments
I totally agree.
My grandmother’s barn sat where Clarendon Circle (on the NoVa side of the bridge into Georgetown in DC) stands but the family sold it in the Great Depresdion. It adjoined the Custis- Lee Estate, now Arlington Cemetary. My great great uncle was an officer in the Army of Northern Virginia. I went to VPI where the fight song was Dixie. It took me a long time to understand that while he was an honorable man and incredible military leader, he and my great great uncle were traitors as well as totally wrong. It’s long past time to eliminate the hero worship of those times.
A friend and his wife from Roma, yes that Roma, visited us a few months before we moved from Franklin, TN to Cuenca. We had dinner in the downtown area. The circle in front of the courthouse has a war memorial to those confederates who fell in the Battle of Franklin. Enrico was really stumped to understand how a memorial to traitors who caused our country’s worst war in our history would be allowed to stand. Romans sure as hell wouldn’t allow such a thing. And they have a long history of treachery and treason.
"Ah, but I was so much older then, I'm younger than that now..."
The confederate flags date from the
civil. They made a comeback with the Dixicrats (Strom Thurmond) in 1948 as southerners began to recognize that their Jim Crow south was coming under scrutiny. So, their use today is a wholly racist symbol.
Republicans opposed slavery but they never claimed to be anti-racist. Hence at the federal level that was dominated by Republicans from 1869 through 1932 (unless one excludes Cleveland and Wilson) tolerated Jim Crow laws once the federal reconstruction efforts were ended.
And Wilson was as racist as they come.
In a few short years, we would be calling people like him "Dixiecrats".
There is no justice. There can be no peace.
So, about that flag...
I have the bailiff pal from Florida. He is a cop.
He told me he flew a Confederate flag over the gate to his property. He said it was because his ancestors fought bravely in the Civil War, and the flag paid homage to his heritage.
Does he think that ANYBODY, especially blacks, see that damn flag as a tribute to one's ancestors? Really?
When blacks start proudly displaying it, for whatever reason, I will stop thinking of that flag as a symbol of whites over blacks.
I see those flags daily. Usually with some sticker on the bubba truck that says "I shoot first, ask questions later".
"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981
Your pal is full of ***
Nobody symbolically advertises that he is a descendant of losers.
I know that, Marie.
I think he twisted it into knots so I would not tear a section of his ass off.
What he did, however, was espouse rationale very similar to things I have heard all my life. It was a good example of their white supremacist dog whistles.
"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981
I do and did above.
My great great uncle fought for his country which at the time was most often thought of as ones state. Lee was very clear when he went to the chief of the US Army to resign his commission in person. He had been offered that job but he said he could not and would not fight his family and friends who believed they were defending their homes and families against Northern aggression. Though horribly misguided and stone cold deaf to much larger issues like slavery, it was a prevailing attitude of both sides at the time. They lived in their time by their rules as do we. How will we be judged by coming generations? I'm glad I'll never have to face that reckoning. One well made point by historians is that prior to the end of the Civil War The United States was considered plural and became thought of as singular following the war.
The Civil war united us in some ways but continues to separate us in some important ways. Failure to have a truth commission that looked into both sides of the cause and conduct of the war is often considered a terrible mistake. Both sides had much to atone for but it's so much easier to blame the losers and "look forward, not backward". That's the US in a nutshell.
I have no problem looking at me and my conduct nor do I have the slightest qualm about looking at my confederate uncle. He was fighting for his people and his country. I have no doubt he was perfectly justified in his conscience. Like Lee and many people of his time. He was probably honorable and served that way. What I don't understand is that our family moved from New York in the 1850s where they had been farmers and tradesmen since landing on the second boatload from England with Peter Stuyvesent (SP?) in the 1620s. Where did such loyalty come from?
Regardless, there's a lot to be learned from such stories and histories through honest, unbiased study. I can appreciate the concepts of honor, duty, and service while deploring slavery, racism, and the twisting of reality to fit some asshole's belief in lies and damned lies for their own benefit.
"Ah, but I was so much older then, I'm younger than that now..."
Interesting question
From NY to where? Relocating in the 1850s was late in the game and positions well hardened (in hearts and minds) among those in existing states. Opposition to slavery wasn't absent among whites in slave states, but don't know if they were in the minority or the political power in slave states was held by the minority. Kansas was the tipping point for slave state owners/politicians. Their majority and power in DC was lost for the foreseeable future; so, might as well secede.
Family lore
suggests it was a states' rights issue. Family lore like my memory of such things is notoriously inaccurate. Most of what I know is from an hour or so with my grandmother and one of her old steamer trunks. She still had my great great uncle's uniform, sash, and officer's saber. It was the spring of '72 and my senior saber for the Corps of Cadets at Va Tech had just arrived which prompted the history lesson. The sabers were remarkably alike which was without any doubt intentional.
Being farmers and craftsmen in the growing industrial northeast could have put them in the sights of big business or they could have been squeezed by big land owners. I don't know. Researching the possibilities would be easier if I knew where their farm(s) were. For some reason north of the city but not that far out comes oozing out of the deep reaches of my memory. Plus, even in those days buying that land in Arlington couldn't have been cheap. My sister did some deep diving into the family history, genealogy on my mother's side I think, but like the generation before us, she is gone from CJD 16 months ago.
"Ah, but I was so much older then, I'm younger than that now..."
Family lore and memories
tend not to be that accurate. (Might be why I didn't listen to any of that. From something my mother said, my sister says that we're DAR, but Sis doesn't hear and recall that well and Mom was a great one for embellishing. Possible but probably got it mixed up with an ancestor that was an OH regiment Union soldier, but he did have a pre-Revolutionary War ancestor. Otherwise, we're descendants of later 19th and 20th century economic immigrants.)
Whatever it was that led a family settled in NY for a couple hundred years to pull up stakes for Arlington, VA during the 1850s is probably lost forever. For that time, doesn't compute as an economic migration and states rights seems a weak reason. Perhaps only appears odd over a hundred and sixty years later and was perfectly rational back then.
Lots of people *think* they're related to R.E. Lee
More often than not, they're mistaken. (And boy do they hate to hear that!)
Thing is, there were and are a whole lot of Lee families - and most of them aren't even related to each other. (One of the more interesting not-related Lee families moved west with a gaggle of Hankses and Lincolns and LaFollettes.)
PS: Abe Lincoln was related to that Lee family, and not to R.E. Lee at all.
There is no justice. There can be no peace.
Stars, bars and scars
I grew up working class in Miami in the 70s and 80s in the same county public school system my mom had gone to in the 50s and 60s. We went to different grade schools, attended the same high school, but when my mom went the schools were still segregated. I started Kindergarten after desegregation but not long after, so the system I entered had a whole lot of sons and daughters of the confederacy in it, and a whole lot of tension almost no one in any kind of leadership position was dealing with in a responsible kind of way. Plenty of teachers, administrators, and parents were pushing that "heritage" bullshit about the flag, and some of us littles were pushing back before we even were tall enough to get on some of the kiddie rides at the fair.
Starting very early on I had lots of arguments with my teachers and school friends about [sex/gender, social roles,] race and power. Fists were involved by the time we were 7 or 8, and it was almost always the cops' kids in the dumbest fights. A Spanish teacher overheard me say something he mistakenly thought was racist the year I was 9 and he actually grabbed me by the hair and dragged me across the room, throwing me out into the hallway before I even knew wtf was going on. (Idk about today but it was perfectly legal for them to throw us around and hit us back then, and they often did.) The whole scene was hard on all the kids, but in hindsight I feel fortunate for growing up in such a diverse and rough environment because it taught me so much about people, power, and ethics.
My classmates and I were 10 the year the immigrants on the Mariel boatlifts arrived and we lived less than a mile from Little Havana, so the situation sort-of gained a dimension around then. By the time we got to high school, there were arguments in the parking lots and ballfields and hallways and classrooms on the daily. It was a working class high school so most of our parents didn't have college educations, the arguments were never high art, but they were constant and fierce. My very diverse friendship group (many of my childhood friends were multi-racial and multi-lingual) enjoyed a lot of power in high school and we tolerated no racist bullshit from any direction, including the stars and bars, which among us was colloquially known as The Loser Flag.
Tons of people from other places that considered themselves and their communities better than us would have looked at me, looked at my friends, and judged us instantly as being Florida-trash, but even as little kids we were fighting the good fights these cowards are still running from as grownass adults.
Your personal history
reinforces that integration at a young age is key. Much harder to sustain the notion that the non-white kid sitting next to one in classrooms for twelve years is the "other."
This shows how enlightened you and your friends were: "including the stars and bars, which among us was colloquially known as The Loser Flag." Wider adoption of that label would reduce the prevalence of its display.
Rock of ages
Definitely true but I think in that "necessary but by itself insufficient" kind of way, if you know what I mean.
For some kids whose home lives were more or less restricted to their own race/ethnicity, the increasingly diverse environment in our schools was instructive in all kinds of positive ways, as you learn a lot from experience and people of goodwill are usually patient with ignorance and try to distinguish that from malice.
On the other hand, I don't know if you've seen any of the school-to-prison pipeline documentaries but my school system was featured in one of those. So those kids whose parents were telling them all kinds of ridiculous lies about "others" had those views bolstered at school by teachers and textbooks with revised versions of history and skewed science. Administrators who funneled lots of immigrant students and a disproportionate number of black students into the harshest punishment for any tiny infractions while giving the Anglo white students a pass and telling them things like "you've earned another chance" fed their views too, so they either never meaningfully confronted the immorality of it because they never really had to, or else they knew it was wrong and they were learning how to use the power structure to maintain the injustice.
More anecdata: one of these kids grew up just a few houses down the street from me, we weren't really organically friends but our moms always had us playing together and telling us to watch each other's back so we knew each other all the way through, from preschool to adulthood. We had a lot of the same friends and teachers, went to all the same schools and parties, all of that, and today she's a thin blue line fascist and her brother is a good ole boy Florida cop, and I'm...something real different.
Yeah people catching enlightenment is always an effective solution to these kinds of problems, but, you know, people are an awfully enlightenment-resistant species, heh.
Yes, necessary and insufficient
"The hone" instructs children earlier than school does, changes more slowly than schools can, and is a constant. Then there's also religion in the mix. OTOH, there is no excuse for government to employ unqualified teachers. (Or police officers.) Real/authentic history is fascinating, but I had to learn that from books and not in those dreary history classes and textbooks, but at least I didn't have teachers passing down their own racial prejudices.
As you were never really friends with your childhood neighbors, not too surprising that you would diverge significantly as adults. As politics and religion were unspoken matters among my K-12 school friends, we wouldn't have had much in common after that and we never stayed in touch.
many different Confederate flags
Most people think of this as the flag
However this was the flag for most of the war (with stars added as states succeeded).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flags_of_the_Confederate_States_of_America
Wiki didn't include the Bonnie Blue flag
http://confederateflags.org/secession-flags/fotcbbf/
Like in OTC neighborhood, it is common the see the battle flag flying in the back of pick ups and people's yards. The idea that any war is honored is foolish from my view. In fact the US flag ain't so great either with it's red blood and white (folks) stripes.
I'm more of Pete's view...
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CCGCS3Kp8ZA]
Be aware that by pushing for removal of signs of the confederacy you are adding fire to racists and the trumpeteers. I'm not suggesting that we should honor that elitist war, but I'm not for sticking my finger in the eye of the foolish people that do honor it.
I'm for building a stronger union not reviving and reliving that war. Those of you who are not from the South may not understand. People have strong (and usually ill informed opinions) about southern heritage. I know OTC has a good idea what things are like.
Your mileage may vary.
“Until justice rolls down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream.”
The Civil War was a lot more complicated than our
conversations about it can ever be. And rather than trying to erase history through statue removal, why not let those statues serve as a basis for conversations in schools and communities?
If we pull down Lee for serving the Confederacy, shall we also tear down Madison and Jefferson for authoring the resolutions on nullification which left the country wallowing in the mire of potential secession and civil war?
Has anyone seen a statue of Abraham Lincoln that had an accompanying plaque informing the public of his myriad of Constitutional violations of press and speech rights?
Or Franklin Roosevelt for the huge violations of Japanese citizens' rights?
Where does the tearing down stop and the EDUCATING start?
"Without the right to offend, freedom of speech does not exist." Taslima Nasrin
Proper education should have been started in jim Crow
glory days. Before the statues were erected.
leaving them in places of government perpetuates the ignorance.
I have no problem taking down statues of any founding father who was a slave owner.
I respect their accomplishment to some degree, although their government was designed by them, for them, and of them, not the 99%. I have never honored them, and never will.
http://www.sovanow.com/index.php?/opinion/article/debating_robert_e._lee...
"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981
Statues of living or once living
people are inherently somewhat creepy. (Including the MLK, Jr. "Stone of Hope" imho)
I'm good with the Washington Monument. Not so much with the Lincoln Statue.
Those defending retaining Confederate statues seem to dismiss the fact that statues are created to honor and glorify the person. Succession and slavery should never be honored nor glorified.
I probably wouldn't use the sole criteria of slave holding in the late 18th/early 19th century to take down statues. Yes, they were the elites of their time and established a government that favored them and theirs. But that's no different from practically every other country. Even when not designed as such, it doesn't take long for a ruling elite to emerge and become entrenched. So far, a solution continues to elude humans.
just curious...
but other so called war heroes should be honored... as most statue glorify our eternal conflicts.
Also wonder where you live and how much contact you've had with southerners. Lincoln wisely had empathy after the war. And even then reconstruction was no picnic further enhancing the elite.
And let me say I'm in total agreement that honoring slavery is horrid. As are enslaved prisoners used for labor today.
“Until justice rolls down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream.”
off topic and a large leap
I've already said that I don't much like statues of living and once living people. So, that would include all the "war hero" statues. However, most of those are innocuous enough and not placed as a constant reminder of the pain such heroes perpetrated against large numbers of the current population or their ancestors.
Also don't see any reason to build or retain statues of conquerors. We can't change the past, but no reason to venerate people that inflicted so much pain on so many innocent people.
fyi - I'm a Californian. Not that that should matter.
I agree...
I wonder how many would want the carving on Stone MT blown away. Most statues in the US are WWI honorings. That was a pretty foolish war. Should we pull down all those?
So I'm in total agreement the 1% who owned slaves conned the 99% who didn't to fight like hell against often their own brothers. It was a terrible mistake, and a false premise. The jim crow statues were also a sad mistake. But I hang with working people of the south, and let me suggest that this will cause more trouble than it solves. As a career teacher I found you can't make the horse drink if it ain't thirsty.
As a scientist let me say, for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. Do you think it just coincidental that Obummer, the first black prez, was followed by supremacist Trump?
As I said above your mileage may vary, but I think unity and progress to benefit all is better than division.
“Until justice rolls down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream.”
I remember reading an article in a local Charlottesville VA
newspaper when the first clashes were occurring over statue removal. The reporter noted that at the city hall meetings, a good portion of the black citizens were actually against removal So he did a little door to door survey of the black community and found the same thing. I mentioned this in a comment on Daily Kos and was roundly put down by Administration (who was the guy that had the eye patch?). He said he knew lots of blacks who didn't feel that way and who was I to post such a thing.
Most of the black community surveyed felt that leaving the statues up would remind people of the number of figures in racism and how they still needed to be vigilant for their rights.
But heck, what do I know?
"Without the right to offend, freedom of speech does not exist." Taslima Nasrin
If O had been anything more than a token Oreo
we might never have gotten stuck with Trump. Or if the DNC hadn't hammered on the scales till they broke in order to get HerHeinous the nomination. Or if a lot of other things that have nothing to do with Trump's assholishness.
There is no justice. There can be no peace.
I once posted an essay against taking the statues down
But I've come around to being neutral on the subject now.
If the people in the area want or don't want the statues up, then it's their business.
I think educating people about their history is more important than whether a statue is standing or not, but that's another topic.
Actually it is the topic
And the one Lee makes in the article.
So far I’ve seen no discussion about what he said. Did anyone read the 4 points he made and his lively commentary?
The Vietnam wall should also have some plaques around it educating people to the atrocities we did as well as every war we’ve been in. The Iraq war one should say that no one who was for it believed that Saddam had WMDs but went for it anyway. Let’s start with what Clinton and Bush 1 did to them before the lesser invaded.
“When out of fear you twist the lesser evil into the lie that it is something good, you eventually rob people of the capacity to distinguish between good and evil.”
~ Hannah Arendt
That's the opposite of a convincing argument that I heard here
I don't remember who said it, but someone here changed my mind on this topic by making the point that "you don't learn history from statues. you learn it in a history book."
And that's why tearing down the statues doesn't harm history, and isn't that important.
I couldn't argue with the logic. That's why I changed my position.
See, I'm not THAT closed-minded. I listen to the people here.
I just thought it was amusing that you are telling me the opposite.
Statues are not history.
They are strategically made and placed to remind, glorify, and slant historical events in a way to suit the push for approval sought by whomever commissioned the statues. It isn't that hard to understand they are a type of propaganda, gjohnsit.
"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981
I’m confused
Have I misunderstood what you said? I agree with it. If you missed it we talked about our horrid education which seems to be a lot of mumbled propaganda in my deplorable essay. It’d be nice if we learned our true history instead of the crap I got taught.
“When out of fear you twist the lesser evil into the lie that it is something good, you eventually rob people of the capacity to distinguish between good and evil.”
~ Hannah Arendt
I think that we are saying almost the same thing
The history we got taught in school was just awful, and is the cause of a lot of problems in our world today.
I've got an essay in mind about it.
Leave The Wall
just as it is; it's perfect and informative plaques would take away from it. (There's an information center there that can add all the material for visitors that you think is missing.)
Put the informative plaques
beside it. The named dead are dead, most of whom were drafted. What did we task our solders to do in that conflict? Illegal atrocities. Lots of my high school pals died after being drafted, then going to Nam to commit war crimes. The ones that survived admit to me what they did in the name of the mighty US of A.
"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981
The Wall is intensely emotional
plaques around it would diffuse and reduce that intensity. It's really unique as far as war monuments go. It doesn't glorify or shame. It speaks to all the family and friends of those that died regardless of their political position. It speaks to those that have no personal connection to that unnecessary horror.
(I can't think about The Wall without also remembering and feeling sad for two classmates that didn't make it to their 21st birthday.)
The biggest mistake the anti-war movement made
during the Vietnam War was doing as you're suggesting. They went after the easy target, the obvious target - rank and file service members. Fucking with the Wall is far worse and would be one of the most counterproductive acts those who oppose war could consider doing. Anybody too thick to know the history or understand this simple idea is plain an idiot or intends to discredit anti-war proponents. If this is something Lee Camp is proposing then he's more than suspect in my opinion. No, I didn't watch his video/read the article. By now my stance on the blathering media mouthpieces of whichever flavor shouldn't be a mystery.
Practically every name on that wall and the hundreds of thousands not on the Wall but who all answered when called and served in and out of combat in Vietnam were as much victims as those they killed in a war that was illegal and immoral. There is nothing immoral or wrong with serving and following legal orders no matter whether you agree with them or not. That goes double for all of the misadventures since Vietnam.
War is political. 100% so. When politics fails soldiers, sailors, airmen, and marines pay the butcher's bill. Disrespecting and discrediting them is not the answer to stopping war. Going after them is blaming the tool rather than those who wield the tool. Those who benefit from making war and the politicians who do their dirty work are who must be stopped if we want to stop our forever wars.
"Ah, but I was so much older then, I'm younger than that now..."
I dated a conscientious objector.
Educating us about atrocities, and reminding us of the bombs in Laos and Cambodia is a good thing. I know others that weaseled out with phony blood tests showing diabetes, etc...
The poor ass boys from the farm did NOT answer the call. They got drafted, did their time in service killing villagers instead of going to prison. Not to honor, but to preserve their criminal history.
Don't call anyone here an idiot who disagrees with you. The people who's names appear on the wall are dead. Bet they would all say, "no more war".
NOBODY thinks that war was good, and NOBODY now dying of Agent Orange related cancer thinks it was worth it.
Did you volunteer? Did you answer the call? Do you have any problem with telling the truth, in public, about the atrocities, or should atrocities be kept...elsewhere, or in secret museums underground?
"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981
"The poor ass boys from the farm"
did in fact answer the call. They were drafted and did their duty as they saw it to do. Those who didn't answer their draft notices and went to Canada or elsewhere did so for their own reasons. I have no quarrel with them whatsoever. They followed their conscience and were subject to consequences for their actions. They, like the anti-war crowd, were right. It was an illegal war entered on false pretenses and criminally mismanaged.
Those are entirely different issues. Sticking to the topic seems to be difficult.
"Oh, I wasn't talking about draftees." doesn't cut it when placing "educational material" at a monument honoring those who fought and died or simply fought as their government directed. How the fuck do you separate those who were drafted, essentially calling them innocents, but dishonoring those who went of their own free will? One thing those without a military experience don't seem to fully understand is that we stand together. We get to disagree with each other and trash talk each other but don't mess with brothers. Even ones we may not like or agree with.
That the government was wrong gets no argument from me. It took a long time for me to understand why and to have the evidence to support the position. That could only happen after I understood that believe and faith are utterly useless when sorting though fact and evidence. I was wrong to believe the government that called the war righteous, I wasn't willing to be wrong to switch positions without evidence. My first clue was in USAF UPT (Undergraduate Pilot Training in the spring of '74. All but a couple of IPs in my T-38 flight were Vietnam combat vets. The Lt. Colonel who soloed me had over 130 combat missions in the Thud over the North. There is not a single solitary one of those men who had anything good to say about the war or thought the reasons they were sent had fuck all to do with freedom or communism or was a good idea. Zero. The closest they came to support was a common agreement that "it was a good war but it was the one we fought." They are the professionals who honored their oath to support and defend the Constitution and follow the orders of their superiors.
For those of you thinking right now that the war was fucked up and illegal and totally wrong so they should have stood up and said no, you might want to play that tape all the way to the end. The US at that time had a military dedicated to the idea of civilian control of the military. It is in US military tradition completely subordinate to elected civilian leaders. (There's little argument from me that this tradition has been battered in many ways though mostly locally.) How do you think life would be like living in a country where the military as a whole or individuals in the military get to choose which orders they will follow? The US is fucked up now but that would end us as a country worth living in.
But if y'all want to go disrespecting veterans and war dead. It won't go anything like you might expect. You sure won't receive any anti-war support. And don't be surprised when the response is "Go fuck yourself" and a whole lot of aggression.
"Ah, but I was so much older then, I'm younger than that now..."
I tell ya what...
Give me a lecture when you can discern the difference between a soldier acting within their right to disobey an order, and your ancestors, of whom you are still proud, shooting Americans.
I was raised by a military family, virtually all neighbors and teachers were military, and I asked you if you were drafted, and you didn't answer.
Did you obtain a deferment? If so, I am glad for you.
It is fine with me for you to defend your slave owning ancestors, and it fine with me for you to give honor to the soldiers who just might have committed some Calley sort of war crimes.
In fact, I am glad to know these things about you.
And as a proud USA kind of guy,have a great life in Ecuador escaping the one you hated here.
"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981
Still proud?
I understand the reasoning of those who fought for the confederacy historically and respect their choice, also from a historical perspective, but still clearly state they were traitors. That's one huge leap to proud. Too nuanced?
Read some of the rest of my writing in this thread and come back to see if you have answers to your questions and se if your assumptions of the direction I come from is the same. Start with the very first comment, top of the page, and see if you can discern any hint of an approaching problem. Thou doth ass-u-me too much. You are so far off base it's frightening.
"Ah, but I was so much older then, I'm younger than that now..."
I’m not taking about any troops who were drafted
I’m talking about the 3 million Vietnamese we bombed or the ones who got sprayed with agent orange. I’m talking about the real reason we decided to decimate Vietnam and sent 58,000 men to die for no reason except for American exceptionalism bullshit.
Did you just call me an idiot?
Bullshit!
“When out of fear you twist the lesser evil into the lie that it is something good, you eventually rob people of the capacity to distinguish between good and evil.”
~ Hannah Arendt
I call bullshit as well.
There are ways for soldiers to fail tofollow illegal orders.
"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981
Once such refusal
Then how can you make this decision?
You have no idea what Lee said since you didn’t bother to read the article, but disagreed with whatever you think he said? And then called me an idiot for what I believe. I don’t get why people comment on something they don’t bother to read about first.
People who were drafted into war weren’t answering the call out of patriotism, but because they were made to go into some country that our leaders decided to destroy and kill people who were no threat to them or our precious non existent freedoms. The same ‘freedoms' that congress ignores whenever it suits them.
Your insults have no place here. If you’re not interested in what I write feel free to not read my essays. This seems to be getting worse when you reply to me.
“When out of fear you twist the lesser evil into the lie that it is something good, you eventually rob people of the capacity to distinguish between good and evil.”
~ Hannah Arendt
Don't write if you can't accept a response.
In the meantime explain how you plan to separate those dead who were draftees from those who went with your educational material. It's a terrible idea and that you don't understand why is a matter of perspective and experience.
If the Wall idea is yours, not Lee's, then it's not Lee who doesn't know the history. Lee I couldn't care less about. He's not someone I know anything about or want to. You, I've read and took my time to answer. That you don't like what I had to say is none of my business.
I said nothing to you about being an idiot. That's your opinion. On the contrary, your writing is usually excellent although you do get worked up about things over which you have no influence or control. Apparently, you also seem to think I'm picking on you. I'm not. I'll challenge anyone with whom I disagree enough to make it worth my effort. That happens infrequently these days but I've come to the point where it has to be way over the top for me to speak up. I'm seeing way too many things written here that except for the position taken could be from trumpistas. Don't get spun up, that's not directed at you in this thread.
"Ah, but I was so much older then, I'm younger than that now..."
Please point out the site's Trumpistas.
It is an open site, and there have been some here, but I am not reading any nowadays.
And re-read your "idiot' comment. Maybe bad sentence composition, but everyone who doesn't see your point and agree with it is an idiot. Why don't you edit to clarify.
"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981
Reading comprehension isn't really that difficult is it?
I said nothing about trumpistas on the site. It is the same victim and "they" are out to get me mentality. Not long ago I remember some recognizing how some of our more prolific and well respected writers had sort of disappeared. Wonder why?
FFS. I was just told I should go elsewhere by someone who like many here are so outraged by alleged censorship. Someone who is outraged by insults assumed but not offered. Sounds like a people feeling persecuted to me. Makes my point precisely. It's the same story, different slant I get from the other bunch.
"Ah, but I was so much older then, I'm younger than that now..."
Reading comprehension
has a direct bearing on what is being read.
You just commented on mine, found it wanting, but that is not an insult, correct? You are helping be understand, and be a stronger person, and not be a victim, correct?
I am picking a jury, running cross-examination questions through my mind.
Thanks for giving me a mental tune up!
"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981
….
Seems it’s you that has reading comprehension difficulties. I said that I’m not talking about the troops, but the reason why the Vietnam war was started and what we did to THE PEOPLE THERE.
You keep saying that and ignoring my denial. I’m not upset about things I have no control over. Talk about reading comprehension. Again I’m asking why you bother to comment on things you don’t read? It’s just nonsense to have an opinion on something you don’t know about, but then take others to task for something you made up.
I’ll just ignore what you say from now on. It’s not worth 'my getting upset.'
“When out of fear you twist the lesser evil into the lie that it is something good, you eventually rob people of the capacity to distinguish between good and evil.”
~ Hannah Arendt
Please consider that vtcc73 is correct
about The Wall. Remembrance and healing aren't facilitated by dividing the dead and living into the factions there were in back then. The dead didn't have the opportunity to change. The living misremember much.
A stat you should be aware of:
What isn't known are the various reasons why the 75% enlisted. We only know that there were many reasons why they would have. And many surely regretted that decision once they were in Vietnam. All of their lives were cut short by very bad decisions by people in power. That's the reflection in The Wall.
(Not that we seem to have learned a damn thing since then other than how to severely limit the deaths of US troops in combat.)
Agree that The Wall should
be left just as it is.
However, our reasons for that agreement may be very different based on your introductory comment:
How does one make such a mistake if it never happened? You seem to have forgotten o never knew that the anti-Vietnam War effort began with enlisted/drafted men. (Pacifists were against it from the beginning but they are always ignored by the wider public and their DC reps.) The anti-war movement and protestors were well aware of their allies and enemies. Supported draft dodgers. Did what we could to win over returning soldiers and their families. Confronting belligerent pro-war supporters was a waste of time; neither did we back down like cowards from confrontations they initiated. It was sort of a tricky balancing act because most of those that served in Vietnam had enlisted; so, they were predisposed to support the war-criminal in chief. Psychologically doing a 180 is very difficult even having experienced the horror and folly of that original position.
Much of that history has been rewritten by those that never changed. That they weren't honored and thanked for their service. They blame the anti-war movement for them being shortchanged when it was the USG that shortchanged them.
Returning to be spit upon was not a government program.
Men who have returned to Vietnam to connect with their opponents have had little difficulty doing so and leaving their animosity for them behind. For their treatment by large sections of the American people who mistreated so many of them, there is no such willingness to let it go.
"Ah, but I was so much older then, I'm younger than that now..."
They weren't spit on
that's an urban legend. Usually told as "hippie girls" spit on them." But women then didn't spit, much less spit on anyone. With the exception of anti-school desegregation whites, both men and women, in southern states.
See my reply above to Lookout.
"Without the right to offend, freedom of speech does not exist." Taslima Nasrin
Here ya go, Snoopydawg
Point 1. Removal of the statues from a public place does not erase history. It does remove the propagandizing aspect of the art, making the art less representative of heroic historical emphasis. It should not displease educators, as it infuriates the organizations who commissioned the art to promote their view of history.
Point 2. The value of the art is to benefit the propagandists. See Point 1.
Point 3. Glorifying a soldier leading the fight to continue slavery is glorifying a white supremacist. Oh, one that killed United States of America soldiers and civilians. Because they wouldn't fight against the slave owners in their home states.
Point 4. I thought this went off into comedy. And that it is nuts.
Take them to a museum, please, and State's Rights is the argument of a state's right to demand slavery be legal.
As an aside, the slavery issue spurred the Texas Revolution. The people coming to colonial Texas wanted slavery, Mexico said hell no!
Texas joined the Confederacy, and got their asses rightfully handed to them.
"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981