History and Confederate Statues
From Karl Marx:
(also available as PDF: https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/download/pdf/18th-Brumaire.pdf )
Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past. The tradition of all dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brains of the living. And just as they seem to be occupied with revolutionizing themselves and things, creating something that did not exist before, precisely in such epochs of revolutionary crisis they anxiously conjure up the spirits of the past to their service, borrowing from them names, battle slogans, and costumes in order to present this new scene in world history in time-honored disguise and borrowed language.
In the case of the US it's pretty clear what the "tradition of all dead generations" means. It's slavery, and Jim Crow. There's been no apology, no reparations for the descendants whose lives are marked by a dozen generations of stolen legacy, and for two years nobody among the elite class really cared if a majority Black city like Flint, Michigan had lead in its municipal water. And the resultant Black-white wealth gap? Are you kidding?
And what about the struggle to revolutionize ourselves and things? It's got a great potential; we could actually make history, and blaze a new path for ourselves and others. One way to begin to make history is to understand what a new path actually is; this is to be done by teaching history, and by making our claims about politics or about society into documented claims about real history. Much of what we say about politics and society gets us into trouble because it's ahistorical; Donald Trump's revealed ignorance of history in his statements about Charlottesville is only an outsized example of this ignorance.
History must be understood because a new path is the opposite of merely repeating history; in knowing what our ancestors did, we can avoid repeating their mistakes. The beginnings of understanding a new path, then, rely upon understanding history, and understanding history means teaching history. For starters, teaching history means making adequate mention of history's victims; the late Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States does an admirable job of this, as do historians such as James Loewen, William Blum, and others. Today our teachings of history are false because, under the weight of Race to the Top, No Child Left Behind, and their ancestors, history has become what's on the test, and forgetting has become routine once the bubbles have been filled in. So in creating the new path we blaze the trail out of school-as-it-currently-is, and toward real learning.
But that's just a start. Sometimes it's necessary to remove reverent, and thus false, depictions of a history which merits our full attention. This is why the Confederate statues have to go. Put them in a museum or something if you want to save them. Today we are caught up in capitalist history, and most of that history was in fact a nightmare. Moreover, the nightmare continues to plague us if we don't know it, or if we pretend that there were pleasant parts to it that weren't really pleasant at all.
We could keep the old, reverent statues, I suppose, if we had enough equal-time statues, say, statues of Sally Hemings and her family, or of the multitudes who perished in the great smallpox epidemics which ensued upon the conquest of the Americas, or of the mass victims of American colonialism in the Philippines, to name just three examples. But let's be honest: if we were to go down that path, we'd be creating statues for a very long time. Imperialism was the kewl thing back then for far longer than we'd like to admit today, and today in fact it's still kewl, though we forget that conveniently.
History, though, still persists. What we do in this light is to conjure up the spirits of some of those dead slaveholders, candying them up in borrowed language, and fighting their battles as ours. Yay America y'know, because liberty and freedom and Labor Day barbecues and all that. But it's not worth it, because in the end the great ball-and-chain of "liberty" as we've conceptualized it, the capitalist system, promises us a future of abrupt climate change and economic victimhood, which is no future at all. Much better to revolutionize the social imaginary, the better to know our past and create a new path to the future.
Comments
I respectfully disagree.
Removing history from all historical context creates an insane standard.
Are we to judge Gandhi based off his racism and failure to properly kowtow to his Muslim neighbors? Are we to judge Winston Churchill solely for his behavior as a colonial enforcer? Are we to judge Benito Juarez because he rose up against a "Legitimate" government?
How is what we are doing any different than the Taliban and their destruction of the Buddhist statues in Afghanistan? We disagree with the message and claim the message is counter to our values. As a result this type of behavior strikes me as very similar to behavior we condemn around the world.
We need to look at times that history has been "Purged" for being wrong. The first one that leaps to mind is the Chinese Cultural Revolution where those that were not in favor were accused of thought crimes and counter revolutionary behavior. They were of course killed.
This is a dangerous path, even when trod with the greatest of intentions. To claim that the only issue here is that of slavery ignores the very real complaints of those who fought in the war, and reduces families and people to cartoonish villains who it becomes acceptable to hate.
And more than anything else, I find that hatred is what blinds us. Hatred keeps us focused upon injustice and retribution, exacerbating the pain. There can be healing, but many of those people who would most happily support forgiveness and reconciliation are painted as evil for even suggesting that the story is not as simple as the PTB would have us believe.
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NdNpFoWrBDQ]
Edit: Fixed a couple typos. aaaaand Added a Video for comic relief.
I do not pretend I know what I do not know.
yes,
which is what Confederate statues in public places do. Where are the statues of their slaves? Eh? And so, consequently, we're insane.
Like I said in the diary, put them in a museum if you have to save them.
"The war on Gaza, backed by the West, is a demonstration that the West is willing to cross all lines. That it will discard any nuance of humanity. That it is willing to commit genocide" -- Moon of Alabama
@detroitmechworks
"If it's not love, then it's the bomb, the bomb, the bomb, the bomb, the bomb that will bring us together."
"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha
"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver
Just leave the statues alone.
Whatever feelings of moral superiority you may get from this silly exercise in destroying symbols from the past pale in comparison to the divisiveness those acts cause in the present. Unless, of course, you think a race war is a great way to jump start your revolution.
I also find it ironic that you quote Marx, because I'm sure he would recognize that the revolution doesn't start by embracing the elites attempts to divide the proletariat over meaningless talismans. He would also recognize that destroying those symbols are no less experiments in social control than the acts of the people who made the statues in the first place.
American History is about more than one generation's need to prove its developmental primacy. It's about the continuum of how it gets from one stage to the next. It's also about recognizing that not everyone views historical events in the same light, and that by allowing the currently dominant paradigm to destroy all others, we lose an important part the story of how that paradigm came to be.
So you want to judge the past by your present morals? Fine. Because you won't be around when the future judges us for wasting our time bickering about ancient icons when truly existential dangers faced us in the present about which we did next to nothing.
The current working assumption appears to be that our Shroedinger's Cat system is still alive. But what if we all suspect it's not, and the real problem is we just can't bring ourselves to open the box?
Toppling of the moai
It's what the Easter Islanders did when their ecological crunch started biting their asses. We have of course no way to know if there were organized groups trying to defend their local moai, but human nature being what it is, it would be strange indeed if there were none.
The topplers "won" in the long run, but nobody really won.
There is no justice. There can be no peace.
Maybe you can start a fund --
for the new set of statues, the ones reflecting what history was really like.
If Marx were alive today he'd comment, first of all, upon the falsehood we make of history.
"The war on Gaza, backed by the West, is a demonstration that the West is willing to cross all lines. That it will discard any nuance of humanity. That it is willing to commit genocide" -- Moon of Alabama
Why would I bother?
My whole point is this is a silly distraction.
You're the one who sees some sort of moral imperative in addressing this non-existent problem.
The current working assumption appears to be that our Shroedinger's Cat system is still alive. But what if we all suspect it's not, and the real problem is we just can't bring ourselves to open the box?
Texas Whitewashes History
All American text book publishers cater to the political demands of Texas School boards to provide "politically correct" content by their conservative standards.
There are two goals for the Charter School movement:
(1.) Skim massive profits from public education budgets.
(2.) Control the content of the entire American educational system.
Unvarnished history course would include the content of History Is A Weapon:
http://www.historyisaweapon.com/zinnapeopleshistory.html
http://www.historyisaweapon.com/defcon1/zinncol1.html
"They'll say we're disturbing the peace, but there is no peace. What really bothers them is that we are disturbing the war." Howard Zinn
Henry Kissinger On History
(Excerpts from the second link about Columbus):
"They'll say we're disturbing the peace, but there is no peace. What really bothers them is that we are disturbing the war." Howard Zinn
Kissinger was a jackass on so many levels apart form
being a war criminal.
My opinion is that the US should have come to terms with
it's role in the slave trade by now. It's how the statues are used rather than their actual existence that matters. Some Americans unfortunately have not come to terms with:
1] The civil war is over.
2] The slave owners lost.
3] That equality for all is normal.
I would also say that these statues are an affront to many and their positioning in a town/city often significant and quite often deliberately provocative.
Wiping out history is dangerous, ignoring it equally so and so is twisting it to celebrate those that protected evil.
I would say storing them in a shed somewhere would be acceptable?
The Statue Nazi
There are few if any historic Americans with totally clean hands. Barack Obama droned American civilians to death without benefit of trial. No statues for him!! Bill Clinton is responsible for the deaths of half a million Iraqi children. No statues for him!!
George Washington owned slaves. Should we tear down the Washington Monument? No statues for him!! Abraham Lincoln was a racist who thought blacks inferior to whites. Should we Taliban the Lincoln Memorial out of existence and rename all the public schools named after him? No statues for him!!
After the statues are gone, do we proceed to removing objectionable individuals from history books? Do we rename all the MLK Jr. Boulevards across America because Dr. King believed gayness was curable? ("The type of feeling that you have toward boys is probably not an innate tendency, but something that has been culturally acquired,” King wrote. “You are already on the right road toward a solution, since you honestly recognize the problem and have a desire to solve it.”) No statues for him!!
Where exactly do we stop the cultural revolution and who gets to decide what is kept and what is Talibanned?
[Edit by EdG] If you don't understand the "Statue Nazi" reference, it's a play on the "Soup Nazi" from the Seinfeld TV show.
Clinton also murdered
51 children in Waco.
Using a strange number and range of arguments there.
I'm not a fan of statues to anyone, especially gods. I don't know why you are going off on me. The hero worship of the founding fathers has often worried me but I suppose most foundation myths do, the constitution and our nations laws have evolved since then, not always for the better mind you.
I spoke only of the Confederacy and slavery, Obama is another discussion.
As for Mount Rushmore I agree with many Native Americans, it's an insult.
As I said above:
This is often the case an not uniquely and American problem, often for various reasons people have pulled them down especially the provocatively positioned ones. These acts have not effected the actual history in themselves, that has been done by others notably the victors in most cases.
Nothing personal.
I'm not "going off" on you.
The "strange number and range of arguments" is merely a rhetorical device.
I like and respect you.
I know you limited your comment to the Confederacy and slavery. I'm asking what's next? After the Confederate statues are gone, do we progress to the founding fathers and the 12 US presidents that owned slaves? Extending the discussion to Native Americans, should we tear down statues of the presidents and generals responsible for their genocide? If we're discussing immoral death and destruction, shouldn't Obama be included?
Please let me know if responses to your comments are restricted to only the exact topic you wrote about and I will edit or delete this comment and extend my humble apology.
I will repeat for each and every statue ever built to anybody
at any time in history
Positioning is fundamental.
I have nothing against their existence.
I do however have objections if their positioning is deliberately provocative.
Many of the these confederacy statues were erected during very specific times well after the civil war to deliberately provoke and frighten.
@LaFeminista
Nothing I wrote disagrees with your position. I'm sorry I somehow offended you.
Sorry if you think I'm angry at you, I'm just angry at the
moment.
I regard the issue as a complex one as it is without throwing in distractions of current affairs. Obama! Russians! Trump! whatever, sheesh
Even forgetting the civil war itself, just regarding the history of the statues themselves and why they were made and where they were put is important. Each stature and its placement can be analysed most were made in the 20's.
@edg I thought someone
I thought someone had already asked for a statue of George Washington to be taken down.
http://www.cnn.com/videos/politics/2017/08/18/angela-rye-statues-washing...
"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha
"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver
Don't forget Sherman.
The guy laid a two hundred mile wide swath of scorched earth from Atlanta to Charleston, killing, raping and pillaging civilians as he went in a hideous act of collective punishment that, by the standards of both then and today, was a heinous war crime.
No statue for you Sherman!
The current working assumption appears to be that our Shroedinger's Cat system is still alive. But what if we all suspect it's not, and the real problem is we just can't bring ourselves to open the box?
Sherman
abandoned his supply lines after the fall of Atlanta. He has to live of the land. People who cooperated were given script that could be redeemed for federal money after the war. Most of the destruction southerners like to attribute to Sherman was committed by retreating confederate forces trying to destroy anything Sherman's army could use.
Sherman had a simple rule to increase the supply of forage available. If you burned your forage you didn't need a barn, so he burned it down.
When he headed north through South Carolina he behaved much closer to your description. I think he held them responsible for starting the war. His treatment of native Americans after the war was worse, particularly since he knew President Grant wanted treaties honored.
Interesting point...
One which actually makes a lot of tactical sense from the southerners POV.
In any event, supply issues aside, Sherman still has a lot to answer for.
The current working assumption appears to be that our Shroedinger's Cat system is still alive. But what if we all suspect it's not, and the real problem is we just can't bring ourselves to open the box?
I understand your point
however I can't help making a distinction between the desire to "form a more perfect union" and destroying a nation to form a more perfect slavery. I don't think statues should be destroyed, it IS art after all, but should be parked in a museum. If they MUST remain in place, additional statues of slavery and their treatment with plaques, explaining what that person was promoting, be erected at the foot of the memorial.
There is no such thing as TMI. It can always be held in reserve for extortion.
@edg In general, I agree
In general, I agree with you. Erasure is not a preferable tactic. However, the whole fight seems oddly pointless to me. The corporations/rich are already no doubt mangling the history that gets taught in the public schools, which was, before the rise of this current police state, already sporting several gaping holes where large numbers of people were left out of the story. Also, fighting over the American experiment when the American experiment is over, rather than fighting for the well-being of people, strikes me as a shitty choice. I wonder what would happen if this much energy were being put into providing an alternative source of water to the people of Flint (I keep thinking sustainability experts and engineers could create a rainbarrel-based system for a neighborhood and see how it works), or creating a national network of buying co-ops organized through Black churches, or an African-American-focused Rolling Jubilee, or community gardens in food deserts, or?
"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha
"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver
I agree. And if we were a truly honest
country that truly wanted to honestly confront the ugliness of just how this country was founded, we'd have them in perhaps a National Museum right in DC, with full historical explanations of what they represent, just who they depict with full details, when they were made, where they were placed and why they were placed where they were along with who put them there. Expose it all and educate along the way.
But I don't see that happening, that would be an actual truth and an actual confrontation and education of how this country came to be. It would thereby expose much of the fallacy we've all been taught so stringently to believe in, that this country was EVER truly set up for equality for all. It was not and still is not and maybe will never be.
Only a fool lets someone else tell him who his enemy is. Assata Shakur
I would be happy with a Museum
Again I will state it is their positioning that is often provocative.
And I completely agree with that point,
specifically. How does any black person feel when they look at one of these reverent monuments to that war? A war fought to keep them enslaved? How would a Jewish person feel if confronted daily with reverent statues of Hitler? And I think that was the whole point of putting them where they were put - to make damned sure that anyone who disagreed with that reverence would know that they have NO power, the powers that be are intent on keeping things just as they were, and it's only the fact that they lost that war that's stopping them too.
Only a fool lets someone else tell him who his enemy is. Assata Shakur
It seems that many miss one of the most basic reasons why
Southerners went to war and, consequently, why those statues are there. Many --most?--Southerners went to war only because their neighbors and family members were going and they went to stand with them. They owned no slaves and could never afford one. They didn't go because of "sectionalism" or any other -ism. Some went out of fealty to the one who formed the regiment. The rest went so that those first few didn't stand alone. This is a very basic human instinct, yet not one single person on this site has ever (to my knowledge) presented it. Some people see slave owners--the 1%--when they look at those statues. Not so long ago most people saw their kin and friends of the family who charged into the mouths of a hundred cannons because that was what they were there for. You can take away the statues all you want, but you can't take that away from them.
No, we can't take that away.
But what we CAN do is to show that in a very honest light - why did those men go to certain death? Just for family members and others? Why did so many go, and for whom and WHAT were they really fighting? But I will say again, IF we as a country ever truly decided to confront those questions, we would most likely come away with the very unvarnished truth that those men, while brave and fighting for their peers, were indeed sent to a needless death for something they themselves did not believe in and stood almost no chance of gaining anything FROM. And why was that? Who put that message into their heads that this was a brave and gallant fight? Why, the guy up the road sitting in that massive plantation house, hoping to hell that all those poor whites would not only learn hatred of the slave but would revere that hatred, thus keeping that plantation owner from facing down any potential labor issues from non-slaves or financial losses.
If slavery didn't exist, how many of those who went would have been poor with nothing to gain? Would they have been killed at all in that case? And just who should be honored by these monuments to a brutal war? The general on the horse, who perhaps had as much financial incentive as the slave owner, or the guy down in the trenches who was duped into his death for the cause of money? We could surely ask the same questions about America's current wars and the answers, if truthful, would indeed show that cynical hypocrisy used to get others to fight one's own battles. And die doing it.
Only a fool lets someone else tell him who his enemy is. Assata Shakur
You ask a lot of questions that appear to
answer themselves by supposition. You are, of course, reciting the history of the victors: the keeper of the "honest light". We can agree that there is a critical issue here in that eyes need to be opened to see who the real enemy is, but
why did those men go to certain death
Telling someone why their kin went to certain death doesn't work so well.
Telling them they were stupid dupes doesn't work so well, either. Have you said that to your parents yet? Your family? Your friends? If not, you might want to try it out and see how it goes.
Since it applies to all of us for one thing or the other, it must apply to them as well. And talking down to them from an elevated position in history will only make matters worse. One more iteration and you will be the revisionist.
I was more asking people to ask themselves
those questions when they insist that these monuments are somehow so sacred they may not be touched because not everyone who fought was a slave holder. I am trying, badly apparently, to get to the questions I think should be asked of anyone who sees monuments to war as something sacred. And really, its just my own fucking opinion.
As for my own confrontations personally, I've said it before and I will say it again - you're damned right I've confronted some of my own RWNJ parents and relatives with their blatant hypocrisy. And yes, I get pretty fucking angry at them because they indeed have thought all their lives that these things are somehow to be worshipped and many of them would insist also that they're not racists either, while their everyday rhetoric betrays just that. Should I just let that go so I don't hurt anyone's fee-fees? I've already hurt their fee-fees just as their subtle bigotry hurt mine, and some I no longer communicate with at all. I don't HAVE to be loving towards a bigot and I am not going to either.
As for my condescending tone, you're taking it that way, I'm not trying to be that but I sure as hell do think my stupid questions are a LOT more important than some monuments, not only of slave holders since we seem to be fixating on just who owned slaves, but the open insurrection against a government we seem to have chosen for this country. While this country is NOT what it ever purported to be, I for one don't see that worshipping open secession from it was OK just because the economic powers in control thought they were entitled to enslave others for cheap labor. And at the end of the day? Cheap labor was indeed what it was about. Keeping poor whites and poor blacks apart and hating each other is the name of the game, its as old as this country is for fuck's sake.
As for military service? Well, I did mine, thank you very much, and I got extremely lucky in that I never had to fight a war - but had I been called to do that, I sure as hell would, and as you state I would do that for the others around me, not for a shitty ass war for oil. My niece is currently Air Force and she keeps the planes in the air that drop the bombs. I have not directly "confronted" her on that, YET. But its wrong, and I see that now so much more clearly, and I find it highly personally disturbing and fucking ugly that I have family members practically dropping bombs on innocents. There's more than enough outrage to go around there. Why did she join? Like I did, for the college money. And we can argue all fucking day long how right or wrong that is too. But it's there and it isn't going away any time soon. If our system was set up fairly, she would NOT be there and that, to me, is the crux of the argument.
Only a fool lets someone else tell him who his enemy is. Assata Shakur
Thank you for your calm honest, and reasoned response to
my somewhat provocative questions. Please accept my confession:
Hello.
My name is Strollingone and
I am a recovering stupid dupe.
Sometimes I can go for a whole day without a relapse, but I am always one lie away from becoming a dupe again. That’s one reason that I like websites like this one because so many people here can see the lies quicker than I can.
Sometimes the desire to lash out at all the stupid dupes around me for being stupid dupes is overwhelming, but I have learned that is worse than believing a lie. One can discover the truth and move on from the lie, but one can never heal the wounds from a lashing because the injured ones deny that they are stupid dupes. And the scars can get so thick that they prevent the truth from getting through. Besides, most people are content with being stupid dupes. I learned this by way of alienating my parents, my brothers, and almost everyone that I grew up with. The only ones that I am still friendly with are the ones who don't give a shit one way or the other.
It seems to me that the most that a recovering stupid dupe can do for a denying stupid dupe is to remember what it feels like and to continuously point out in small ways that the truth might be other than what they are being told. Lots of people are now aware that there is an agenda and that they are being played. My challenge is to consistently point out what the agenda is and, when they ask, tell them who I think is writing the agenda and why. It’s pretty much one-on-one every chance I get.
The Confederate flag and statues have GOT to go.
Excellent piece, Cass. I agree completely.
The Confederacy's declaration of war was explicitly over their "State's Rights" to hold black people in human bondage. Apologists like to overlook that, but that's the score there. That carnage physically, economically, psychologically and spiritually is still reverberating today.
When Paul Robeson went to the United Nations in the 50's to present a document "We Charge Genocide" it was an indictment of a culture that was still inveighing and acting heavy against people with black pigmentation. Douglas Blackmon's "Slavery By Another Name" bookends Michelle Alexander's essential "The New Jim Crow," in laying out very clearly the litany of institutional oppression, intimidation and brutalization that was written into local laws occurring immediately after the "Reconstruction" to legally re-enslave "freed" people, which leads right up until its current manifestation of the drug war/prison industrial complex/school-to-prison pipeline that Alexander brilliantly documents.
For too long this ugly, pernicious tacit endorsement of open racism has gone unchecked. The statues are its physical reflection. If it's history, put them in a museum - next to a real life exhibition of all the depredations of what slavery truly was. Of course I'm not assuming this will miraculously vaunt us into a "post-racial" society. For deep wounds to start healing this is a first step.
To illustrate just how lopsided this whole thing, just ask yourself how many slave museums there are, how many plaques commemorating
lynchingmurder by mob, how many history books chronicle the many glorious slave uprisings all across the South, or any such "history" of black Americans not confined to status as slaves on one end and maybe sports stars on the other, etc - compared to the amount of Confederate monuments?This movement is long overdue and the massive momentum it now has should hopefully usher in some frank and honest dialogue of our history, with respect to slavery's brutality and oppression. Let's bring it to the finish line.
I'm with these guys, "Stonewall Jackson's Great-Great-Grandsons Call for Removal of Confederate Monuments."
Excerpts from their letter:
"If I should ever die, God forbid, let this be my epitaph:
THE ONLY PROOF HE NEEDED
FOR THE EXISTENCE OF GOD
WAS MUSIC"
- Kurt Vonnegut
Estimated 1500 official Confederate symbols on display in U.S.
Including the massive mount of intimidation, Stone Mountain in Georgia, larger than Mt. Rushmore (how's that for arrogance?).
Why so many Confederate flags breezily on display all over the South? Vox posits "Why you see swastikas in America but not Germany."
How many statues, monuments, and plaques dedicated to the slaves whipped, raped, murdered, families split up, or "lynched" by marauding mob? I know of only two slave museums.
The Whitney Plantation in Louisiana is the first slavery museum - opened in 2015. And the other in Savannah, GA, which I've been to but doesn't even show up in a search of top 10 museum there, is the Ralph Mark Gilbert Civil Rights Museum. It's an excellent exhibition and contains at a precisely placed spot a full KKK uniform, just as you turn a corner and come face to face with, which jars the visitor and gave me a chill.
That's what I would call, to use a pun, whitewashing history.
"If I should ever die, God forbid, let this be my epitaph:
THE ONLY PROOF HE NEEDED
FOR THE EXISTENCE OF GOD
WAS MUSIC"
- Kurt Vonnegut
@Mark from Queens I have less of a problem
I have less of a problem taking down Confederate statues and flags than I do with taking down statues of every slaveowner who did something significant in our history.
It's generally customary for the losers in a war not to put up statues and flags commemorating their side. I always thought it was weird that the South did that. Fucking stubborn, like a mean-spirited mule, we are sometimes. It's long, long past time for us to admit that we fucking lost. It would be even better if we admitted that we should have ended slavery ourselves long before it came to a question of war. And before anybody gets mad at me, yes, I know that the North was not, generally speaking, in this for the morality and that it was actually a sordid struggle for power and economic dominance between the regions. Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation, which he gets all kind of credit for, demonstrates this quite well. Dec 1863? FFS. He might as well have asked Congress to add an addendum to the legal language
"It should be understood that we don't actually give a shit about abolition or ending the suffering of slaves, or we would have had an Emancipation Proclamation on April 13, 1861, but we think maybe if we declare them free now, it might cause them to rise up and fight against their white masters and join our side. We need to cause the South additional military problems at home because, fuck me, can you believe the war isn't going as well for us as it should? I know! We have all the industrial base, all the financiers, all the latest weapons and some of the Southerners are fighting with their grandfather's Revolutionary War muskets, but we're floundering around like a bunch of chumps!"
"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha
"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver
Where are the statues
of the Great Loyalist Heroes of the American Revolution?
They say that there's a broken light for every heart on Broadway
They say that life's a game and then they take the board away
They give you masks and costumes and an outline of the story
And leave you all to improvise their vicious cabaret-- A. Moore
Saratoga
The infamous "boot monument".
There is no justice. There can be no peace.
My 2 cents, even tho late...
Slavery is to America what Naziism was to Germany, what Apartheid was to South Africa.
Germany and South Africa actually tried and convicted people for crimes under Naziism and Apartheid. S.A. had a "truth and reconciliation commission" so witnesses could testify what was done to them. To this day, Nazi paraphenalia and literature is banned in Germany. IIRC, some American gave a Nazi salute in Dresden (former East Germany where there are lots of skinheads) and he got the shit beat out of him. Chinese tourists were arrested for doing the same thing. All in the last couple of weeks.
Those countries implemented laws against the outrages, and those laws have been enforced for decades. Even East German skinheads find Nazi salutes offensive.
What did the US do? Well, for 11 years after the Civil War, they tried Reconstruction (which I will stipulate was far from perfect); but it was sabotaged and repealed by die-hard racists. Since then, we had 90 years of Jim Crow, a brief window of hope during the Civil Rights Movement, and 37 years of the New Jim Crow.
In short, the US approach to racism has been to ignore it, condone it, institutionalize it. For 90% of the time since the Civil War, black people have been victimized. Today, we are back to Jim Crow with biased drug crime prosecution and jail sentences that make you unemployable.
What has all that got to do with statues?
The statues are a provocation. They are shouting fire in a crowded theater. They are the continuation of the "Lost Cause" lie about the nobility of Southern soldiers, like Lee.
Contrary to others here, I think its pretty easy to draw a line about what monuments have to go. Monuments to Confederate politicians who advocated secession and fought the war (Jeff Davis, John Calhoun, etc.) and monuments to any traitorous Confederate general or soldier have to go. They legitimize treason, secession, and slavery. They send the wrong message.
The line to draw is based on who fought in the Civil War, who ran the political entity of the CSA. Those people are traitors. Some of them are war criminals, like Nathan Forest.
Other than the war, calling out slavery or support of it gets murky really fast.
Before the Civil War, slavery was legal. Hell, slavery was legal throughout the British Empire. Even at the time of the Civil War, the British exiled common criminals to Australia and held them there as legal slaves (euphemistically called indentured or convict labor). Conditions on British Navy ships was horrific, with floggings and keel-haulings regularly administered. (Side note: Captain Bligh (of Mutiny on the Bounty infamy) had actually been Governor or Viceroy or whatever of all of Australia. He was a rotten bastard, but the system said what he did was legal. That will give you some idea of the standards of the time.)
In short, 150+ years ago was a different world in terms of the punishments meeted out to convicts, to sailors and soldiers, etc. The only clear standard for monument removal is participation in the Confederate government or Army.
Bligh wasn't as physically brutal as legend has it
He was, however, obnoxious, unlikable, and able to flay people to the quick with nothing more than his tongue.
There is no justice. There can be no peace.
All that you want to remark on is Captain Bligh?
First, Captain Bligh was quite representative of the flogging-happy British Empire of his time. Australian history is full of horror stories about imprisonment, punishment, flogging, and sadism: MacQuarie Harbor, Port Arthur, Norfolk Island. Go read "The Fatal Shore" if you doubt me. You offer no evidence for your statement that Bligh was "less brutal", but given the context of Australia as penal colony, even if true, "less brutal" was still pretty damned brutal by our standards.
Second, Bligh was a mere personalized example in a list of systemic cruelties and segregations perpetrated by countries contemporaneous with the CSA. My point was that cruelty then was much more endemic than now. Your point dodges the system and tries to rehabilitate the one personal anecdote I gave.
Was it your intention to blow off my entire thesis, or did you just not care about anything but Bligh?
*You* brought up Bligh,
and as a side note, besides. Those were brutal times, but it is on record that Bligh used corporal punishment less and invective much more than others of his rank(s). "Verbally abusive" is a real thing and does cause pain and harm.
There is no justice. There can be no peace.
He also died in 1817.
and the British had already outlawed slavery thirty years before Lincoln freed the slaves.
Also, no greater a war criminal that Tecumseh Sherman investigated Bedford Forrest for war crimes and exonerated him.
Finally, secession was not actual considered unconstitutional until the Supreme Court ruled it so in 1869, so accusing the leaders of treason is actually just a case of post hoc victor's justice.
But hey, why spoil a good one-sided polemic with factual accuracy?
The current working assumption appears to be that our Shroedinger's Cat system is still alive. But what if we all suspect it's not, and the real problem is we just can't bring ourselves to open the box?
Let me get this straight, you are fine with the CSA?
And you are going to quibble about dates to hide your minimization of CSA slavery?
This is a point in your favor how? It makes the CSA look like the cruel and backward people we know them to be.
As for Australia, the British may have outlawed outright slavery; but the transport of new convicts to Australia went on until around 1845. After that, transported convict labor (i.e., exiled prisoners with no rights, who were shackeled with ball and chains, and flogged for trivial offences) was still in use; and the most hideous of prison commandants, John Price, carried out his reign of unmitigated sadism on Norfolk Island as late as 1854. There were convicts transported with life sentences still in Australian penal colonies or jails up until the 1870s.
But, these Jesuitical quibbles aside, my comparison was about the standards of the period, the tone of the times. Social standards changes on the scale of generations. 1854 (Australia) and 1860 (CSA) are the same generation.
That doesn't support your case at all. Sherman was looking over his shoulder, the same way Curtis LeMay said of his firebombings (paraphrase) "if we lose this war, they will prosecute me for war crimes". Besides, Sherman was no legal scholar. He was a general, and a brutal one at that. Hardly likely to call out Forrest for brutality. Oh, and you are defending Nathan Bedford Forrest, one of the early organziers of the KKK? This is going down hill rapidly.
it so in 1869, so accusing the leaders of treason is actually just a case of post hoc victor's justice.
Wow. Victor's Justice. Spoken like a true son of the South. Tell me, did the Nazis not commit genocide because there was no law against it before they did it? Just asking. Lots of Jewish people will be interested in your answer.
All I see here is yet another defense of the CSA. And, by defending the CSA, you defend the statues, which was supposed to be the focus of this thread. Great job of indirection. My hat is off to you.
Perhaps you would care to state your position on the CSA? Because it is as big a flash point as the whole black/white issue. Defenders of the CSA have had 150 years to invent reasons why the "Yankees" "aggressed" against them. I'm not saying you are one of those, but it would be nice to hear that you think its a good thing the CSA lost and slavery was, at least for 11 years, ended.
Calm down.
Just because i call out your playing fast and loose with the facts doesn't make me a closet secessionist, nazi sympathizer, or any other 'them' you'd like to paint me as.
I'm neither a confederacy sympathizer nor a northern sympathizer. I'm an American who thinks the Civil War was a monstrous tragedy caused by hot heads on both sides. I do not share your reductionist view that ignores/excuses the evils of northern leaders in fomenting the conflict and places all the responsibility on the South in order to promote your rather hackneyed portrayal of the losers to the conflict.
Finally, as far as comparing Seccession to the Holocaust goes, your comparison of industrial mass murder to a legitimate question of Federalism that had been debated since before the Articles of Confederation is just more proof that your understanding of history is, shall we say, fuzzy at best.
The current working assumption appears to be that our Shroedinger's Cat system is still alive. But what if we all suspect it's not, and the real problem is we just can't bring ourselves to open the box?
Discipline on ships of the 18th C. Royal Navy
depended very much on the character of the captain (essentially 'king' of his ship). Some were notorious, and well known for it. Others, like Horatio Nelson were sympathetic when it came to discipline and won the confidence of their crews. Nelson's famous victories were founded partly on the support of the average seaman under his command. The Duke of Clarence (later William IV) served with Nelson, but his much more stringent attitude, with regard to discipline, didn't do much for his active naval career.
Also, keel haulings were very infrequent.
Gëzuar!!
from a reasonably stable genius.
Fine thesis, arendt.
You pretty much nailed it.
"If I should ever die, God forbid, let this be my epitaph:
THE ONLY PROOF HE NEEDED
FOR THE EXISTENCE OF GOD
WAS MUSIC"
- Kurt Vonnegut
@arendt "The statues are a
"The statues are a provocation?"
I'm having a hard time not laughing, though it's not in a happy way.
The statues are a provocation?
In a country where this happens regularly?
"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha
"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver
Can't do anything about the cops, but
those statues are utterly defenseless! When they are gone, what will we vent our spleen on next?
(During the week following the declaration of war on Nazi Germany, the townspeople went out into rural Texas and shot all of the German shepherds they could find. That showed 'em, by golly!)
@strollingone What the hell. You're
What the hell. You're kidding about the dogs, right?
"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha
"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver
Nope. For some folks it's dogs, for others it's statues.
In the case of the US it's pretty clear what the "tradition of all dead generations" means. It's slavery, and Jim Crow.
That is, of course, true of every single person who fought in the Revolutionary War, the Alamo, the wars in Europe and the South Pacific as well as all those who opposed those wars because, after all, they are all members of a dead generation. Since motives are being assigned to folks who cannot answer (because they are dead), I will assign a few to those who can answer:
* This statue brouhaha is not about slavery or black Americans at all, but about a powerless generation seeking to define their reaction to a monolithic power structure that is sucking the life out of their society, their culture, their civilization.
* Since they cannot define their reaction positively, they do it negatively by defining what they are NOT: they are NOT reacting in the way that the German people did to the conditions following WWI, they are NOT reacting in the way that "white power" advocates are to the situation at hand even though the "white power" folks are reacting to EXACTLY the same thing that the statue killers are, they are NOT reacting the way that Southerners did just prior to the War Between the States. The end result of such a process usually ends in exhaustion which leads to lethargy, which brings on another decade of sleep. Ten years later there will be those who sit rocking on the porch saying "Welp, we didn't stop racism or fight the establishment, but we sure kicked the shit out of them statues."
Tell the truth, now, don't y'all see yourselves in those two motives even a little bit?
The real danger is, of course, that the monolith will give you the statues and then look you in the eye and say"Welp, that takes care of that. This fight is over. We have, once again, adequately addressed racism in the USA. Now get out of the street."
The problem with fighting symbols is that the most you can get is a symbolic victory.
@strollingone You are
You are frighteningly right. It comes out of a perceived, but unacknowledged, powerlessness. On both sides.
We can't accomplish anything real, so let's kick the shit out of each other. Or, at least out of each other's cultural artifacts.
"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha
"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver
I realize now that my response to you went
far beyond your question. Nothing in it was directed at you alone. With your understanding, I will readdress this post to the person whose words I quoted. I will leave this response here for the sake of continuity.
@strollingone I wouldn't call being
I wouldn't call being angry at racism "venting spleen," but the focus on removing statues is plain ridiculous from where I stand. But, not my movement. If they want 'em down, let's take 'em down.
I think the tactic, if successful, will produce either nothing, or fights between right-wing Confederate flag-wavers and Black statue opponents that will no doubt be widely televised, but it's not my problem. None of these factions represents me.
"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha
"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver
I also wonder about
Germany, South Africa, Rwanda, Cambodia. Of the steps they took to heal themselves, and ultimately forgive themselves. Of course, in the US we have to reach the point of not deliberately doing harm to our citizens before we can even begin to heal, much less forgive.
Are there any places in the US that are now blameless, that consistently do the right thing in regards to all it's inhabitants? Should they carry blame for sins of the past? In Germany, they are into the 3rd/4th generation who can say now "I had nothing to do with this, why must I be made to carry this guilt?".
Should we pay reparation money to everyone not white, or at this stage judge the percentage of whiteness they have, and reduce the sum accordingly?
Of statues, should we tear them down, or place a statue of freed slaves, chains broken, next to it, or in place of it? Will that help?
Right now we can't guarantee all citizens right to vote, or equal protection under the law.
If tearing down a statue will help with that, I'm all for it.
No.
No. Merely to the descendants of the victims of slavery and of Jim Crow, for their stolen legacy.
Japanese-Americans received reparations for being interned in prison camps during World War II. Why not African-Americans who meet the qualification given above?
"The war on Gaza, backed by the West, is a demonstration that the West is willing to cross all lines. That it will discard any nuance of humanity. That it is willing to commit genocide" -- Moon of Alabama
It's always a can of worms
When it comes to who deserves what. The war ended, the Japanese who were wronged were able to use the justice system to recoup some of their losses (and not all Japanese) in their lifetime. The Jews faced this problem under the Nazis, how much Jewish blood made you a Jew. As time goes on the and the ones who were there die off, the harder it will be to prove the need for reparation. As abhorrent as that is, the Rabbis in Israel are making the same determination to be a citizen, of heredity, amount of Jewish blood. If there is serious talk of money in the US as to reparations, I am sure the profiled POC will need to prove they are 100% African. If they have one drop of non African blood...well, they'll have to be considered white as the driven snow, at least for reparation consideration.
Of course, the republicans could bring this up, fight the amount down to a pittance, cut the budget elsewhere and say "see, we have to cut your Social Security to pay for this" and drive as much resentment as they could out of it? Or pay it out as a tax cut for a hundred years?
I put that in because it's been mentioned, but haven't found a country that did that, or if it worked to END the wrongs and begin anew.
No.
As time goes on, legacy accumulates, therefore deprivation of legacy becomes more and more important.
Also no. The "one drop" rule specified that the privileged had to have NO African ancestors in order to claim their status.
You may wish to listen to actual advocates of reparations if you don't want to spend your time battling straw men. May I recommend Yvette Carnell?
"The war on Gaza, backed by the West, is a demonstration that the West is willing to cross all lines. That it will discard any nuance of humanity. That it is willing to commit genocide" -- Moon of Alabama
Ok
I am not up on the current thinking on reparations or one drop rule. I first heard about reparations to be made in a long while ago. That after the civil war former slaves in the south should be somehow made whole. That some land and goods and money exchanges were made and those were mostly stolen back, then the 40 acres and a mule payment was proposed. One idea was to go after the surviving corporations that profited from slavery. Another was to force the government to honor it's agreements, as they were being forced to with treaties made with Native Americans. There was a call to tax former slave states to fund reparations. Finally, to tax or confiscate from former slave holding families directly. That the representative of the family of the original freed slave wold receive a lump sum, that they would then distribute as they see fit, or a land grant. There was also questions of whether to include free and runaway slaves. There was talk of funding institutions, foundations churches instead of direct payments. There may have been more. That was in a college course almost 50 years ago. I will try to study up. The link to Yvette Carnell takes me to a site intro page and a search brings up a many stories, and the page of videos. Is there one that you have in mind specifically?
I didn't mean to set up a straw man. Our government has a warehouse of broken promises, of impossible burdens of proof. I guess it was a poor example.
I still stand by "As time goes on the and the ones who were there die off, the harder it will be to prove the need for reparation." but I should have written it better "the harder it will be for individuals to prove the need for reparation." Just the farther in time an event recedes, the more it's meaning changes in relation to the present. It goes to lawyers and courts, and how is the individual harmed today by an action of the past. As group that wrong cannot be denied.
If you mean by "legacy accumulates' to be accumulating owed debt, an inheritance, then yes, I guess that will be the government or the courts to decide.
Taking down statues of George Washington strikes me
as both woefully inadequate as a response to the history of slavery and intellectually pointless; how are we to excise George Washington from our history? He is, after all, the general who won the Revolutionary War. Should we demolish Monticello next? Jefferson is arguably worse than Washington. However, he was also integral to U.S. history. We have, in many ways, a crappy history. Is erasure really the best ethical response?
However, given that this seems to be what Black people want--fine, whatever.
I am just as nonplussed as I was when the response of Black leadership in SC to the Charleston shootings was to force the removal of the Confederate flag.
Don't get me wrong--I've spent my life in work that values the importance of symbolism and image. You can't be an academic in the humanities and not understand that. But it still strikes me as, shall we say, eccentric, to respond to widespread poverty, a diseased and predatory legal justice system, state-sanctioned murder that happens regularly and non-sanctioned murder by white vigilantes that also happens regularly, by taking down statues and flags. Focusing on the symbolism of the racist state generally and the racist South particularly is, to me, a weird choice given the circumstances.
Hell, you'd think at least, if people want to focus on ceasing to lionize slaveholding white men of the past, they'd be aiming for changes in curricula across the country or, if that's not a manageable goal, having teach-ins or making movies or something other than removing a statue or a flag. But, since I mentioned manageable goals--my best guess is that that's what this is: a movement that knows it doesn't have a chance to accomplish anything larger is scrambling to find a way to provide victories to its membership. I sympathize; I know what it's like to be in a movement, or at least a loose collection of like-minded people, millions strong, who never get any victories. After enough decades, it wears thin.
So whatever, let them take down the statue of George Washington. It's not particularly tactically fruitful, and it's the opposite of my personal intellectual ethics (I have no interest, for example, in taking down the statue of every sexist from the past, nor even of suppressing their writings, and I believe there's no connection, under the current conditions, between improving the plight of the woman working three jobs and raising two kids in a homeless shelter in New York, and taking down statues of sexists--hell, there's no connection between taking down statues of sexists and improving the lives of the middle-class white girls who are harassed into suicide by online bullying). But really, who the fuck cares? The experiment launched by the founders is over anyway, whether you consider it a good idea fucked up a couple of poisonous ideas, or just bad all around. It's done. The only thing left of it is this legacy of racism--if you see this racism as specifically the result of the American political experiment rather than a result of the hemisphere-wide actions of colonizing capitalism.
I'd think that instead of worrying about demolishing statues of the dead, it would be more to the point to try to help the living, and it seems ridiculous to give a shit about national heroes in a nation that, in real terms, doesn't exist anymore but is rather an elaborate propaganda device being used by those elites who blew it up from within. It also seems like somebody might want to consider the fact that, if successful, what you're going to achieve is an empty space that most people will quickly forget ever had a statue in it, which means that the point will be lost. But it ain't my movement--and I'm not going to get involved in an extended wrangle over images of a political project which is clearly long past its sell-by date.
"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha
"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver
Otoh,
Why are people saying that removing a statue is erasing history?
And how many times have we talked about how this country has to come to grips with the illusions that have been created by those that rule over us, which includes how this country was founded and why, the land of the free, home of the brave bullshit. How many times have we talked about how this country was literally built thru native American genocide and African American slavery and how unless we come to grips with that we can never progress as a nation? Just because a statue is taken down doesn't mean history is erased. What about all the rest of history that isn't depicted by a statue? That doesn't mean that history does not exist.
Maybe this is what we need to do before this country can heal, set history straight.
Mind you, I'm not pushing for this, just debating.
Exactly how I feel about it, Big Al
If the US is ready, finally, to start to deal with its own racist, genocidal history and white supremacy, and in some places people chose to start moving, or changing, all these public displays everywhere that prop up our false history of nothing but shining heroic glory, then good, and that will become part of our history. (Maybe noted by future historians as "better late than never".)
People seem to forget that in the current example, Charlottesville, the city council voted to sell and move (not demolish or destroy) the Lee statue. It's their city, so if they want to move a statue that sits on city land, why the hell is that anyone else's business to even complain about? Making it into an emergency to be protested by people from across the country, or a grave act of the deliberate destruction of history itself, seems like a rather Xtreme overreaction.
If our country ever got to a point where we say, let's start dealing with and telling the real history of this country: in our textbooks, in our politics, in our public spaces, then yes, a lot of statues and monuments are going to have to be either moved and replaced or altered to include recognition of things we'd rather forget and not think about.
That's what's so ironic to me about this controversy. History has already been erased, and a lot of these hero-worshipping monuments and statues are part of that erasure.
@CS in AZ Fine, take it down.
Fine, take it down. Take 'em all down. Take down every monument to someone who owned a slave or said a racist thing. As someone else mentioned, you might subsequently have to take down other statues, monuments and buildings because they are associated with someone who said a sexist or homophobic or xenophobic thing. So it might take a while. But after all, what else are we doing?
Like I said, it seems like a paltry tactic with a small psychological gain and no material gain for those who are suffering. Even if what you're looking for is a politics of demolition, it's kind of a lameass one. The same history will be taught in the schools. The media will, however, give people space to talk about how bad racism is, and take a few of those people and give them jobs as pundits at upper-middle-class salaries, and you might even get similar jobs at political organizations and think tanks. That way the media can effectively render the spectacle of Black anti-statue activists and white Confederate-flag-wavers getting angry at each other. But don't worry about the fact that the billionaires seem more than happy to give your issue lots of oxygen, while they give little or no coverage to Black people in Flint or Detroit who are currently being poisoned. I'm sure the billionaire news corporations are deeply concerned about the racist construction of history and how Black people feel.
"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha
"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver
A brief note - it isn't about purging history.
We have no statues honoring Hirohito, Yamamoto, Hitler, and Mussolini, though they all played a part in our history. Not sure if there are any honoring Benedict Arnold, either. What these people did was wage war against the US. That's what the conedferate heroes did too. They should not be honored for engaging in systematic killing in an attempt to preserve and expand slavery.
That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --
When you equate other Americans...
with foreign enemies, don't be surprised when their descendants treat you as a foreign enemy too.
This was a Civil War within the US. Most at that time lent their primary allegiance to their state government rather than the Federal government. If the Federal government attacked their state, in their minds they would be traitors NOT to resist.
It's simply not helpful to use such rhetoric, both because it's not accurate but more importantly because it just perpetuates a state of war mentality between the regions which continues to divide people into us v them long, long after the war was supposedly over.
The current working assumption appears to be that our Shroedinger's Cat system is still alive. But what if we all suspect it's not, and the real problem is we just can't bring ourselves to open the box?
Um, no.
The "Civil War" was a slaveholder's revolt, and the actual opinions of "most at that time" on whether or not to secede from the Union were and are not available because the votes to secede were rigged.
"The war on Gaza, backed by the West, is a demonstration that the West is willing to cross all lines. That it will discard any nuance of humanity. That it is willing to commit genocide" -- Moon of Alabama
If it was only a slaveholders revolt...
where did all the troops come from?
The current working assumption appears to be that our Shroedinger's Cat system is still alive. But what if we all suspect it's not, and the real problem is we just can't bring ourselves to open the box?
They were drafted.
You don't seriously think that everyone who went to fight in southern Vietnam during the Sixties actually supported the war, do you?
"The war on Gaza, backed by the West, is a demonstration that the West is willing to cross all lines. That it will discard any nuance of humanity. That it is willing to commit genocide" -- Moon of Alabama
No I don't...
So what's your point? You don't think the prospect of a Federal Union army attacking a southern town might lead at least some of the young men in that town to grab their rifles?
And what does any of this have to do with my original comment in the first place about us not making enemies of each other?
The current working assumption appears to be that our Shroedinger's Cat system is still alive. But what if we all suspect it's not, and the real problem is we just can't bring ourselves to open the box?
Statue killing.
In the case of the US it's pretty clear what the "tradition of all dead generations" means. It's slavery, and Jim Crow.
That is, of course, true of every single person who fought in the Revolutionary War, the Alamo, the wars in Europe and the South Pacific as well as all those who opposed those wars because, after all, they are all members of a dead generation. Since motives are being assigned to folks who cannot answer (because they are dead), I will assign a few to those who can answer:
* This statue brouhaha is not about slavery or black Americans at all, but about a powerless generation seeking to define their reaction to a monolithic power structure that is sucking the life out of their society, their culture, their civilization.
* Since they cannot define their reaction positively, they do it negatively by defining what they are NOT: they are NOT reacting in the way that the German people did to the conditions following WWI, they are NOT reacting in the way that "white power" advocates are to the situation at hand even though the "white power" folks are reacting to EXACTLY the same thing that the statue killers are, they are NOT reacting in the way that Southerners did just prior to the War Between the States. The end result of such a process usually is exhaustion which leads to lethargy, which brings on another decade of sleep. Ten years later there will be those who sit rocking on the porch saying "Welp, we didn't stop racism or fight the establishment, but we sure kicked the shit out of them statues."
Tell the truth, now, don't y'all see yourselves in those two motives even a little bit?
The real danger is, of course, that the monolith will give you the statues and then look you in the eye and say "Welp, that takes care of that. This fight is over. We have, once again, adequately addressed racism in the USA. Now get out of the street."
The problem with fighting symbols is that the most you can get is a symbolic victory.