Like all big news stories, throngs of Americans want so badly to insert themselves into the narrative, as if they were integral to the reality. Last week a racist nut bag killed nine people in a church in South Carolina. Within days, the nine were forgotten. Real follow-up about the nut bag is forgotten.
The story has undergone mitosis and spawned deformed meanings at the hands of uninvited participants. We now here that racism still exists in this country. To that one can only say, well, no shit! But Hilary, the most obnoxious of interlopers says that institutionalized racism is still a problem, and says it in context of the nut bag killing people.
This is, of course, total bullshit. In a country where the largest and most racist employer (the federal government) has strict quotas and point rigging in favor of minority hiring, where private companies no longer care who you are so long as you enhance their bottom line, where public figures are easily ruined for the least missteps on the subject of race, you can no longer honestly say that racism is institutionalized. You are free to lie about it in order to inspire hatred between races for your own political gain. That's what Bill Clinton's sex partner from the early 1970s was trying to do in order to take advantage of the nine dead people.
But there is also another malformed message. We are trying to un-write history. Historical events that offend our fragile sensibilities are now to be expunged from visibility. Flags, we are told, must be eliminated. And it is being done by people who know almost nothing of the "history" they are trying to erase.* We want to tear down monuments that represent our past, good and bad, that are a part of our national conversation, and de-memorialize historical figures. Where there is a statue of a historical figure that doesn't represent everyone (little secret: no memorial does or ever will) tear it down. Only keep memorials to people who never offended anyone. This will accomplish what?…forgetting that bad stuff? Well, what better way to see that very history repeated?
Hell, if you want to un-write the positive contributions of slave-holders, why not just un-write slavery? No one in this country can say they experienced it. So why should we ever acknowledge its existence. It's bad, so let's just get rid of it.
FDR was a four-term president. He was popular at the time. More so than even Robert E. Lee. He also exacerbated and prolonged the Great Depression much the same way our present wing nut has done. Save your breath, I won't say the two are equal. FDR was a much better president.
But FDR was also a fan of eugenics, not unusual at the time, but still a dangerous and ethically corrupt concept. He was incredibly arrogant and as much a dictator as he could get away with being. If you don't believe me, read The Forgotten Man by Amity Shlaes. He was the king of dividing and subdividing the population for political exploitation. He was also in the top tier of the hated 1%. We should definitely put him on the list of people to un-remember.
And JFK; total whore monger. The name of that airport has got to change.
You see where I am going with this. No one alive has experienced slavery so to say you are traumatized by its mention, you're lying. You are just trying to make a splash; maybe stroke your own ego. But we are a nation with a history. This attempt to make some of it go away sets an insane precedent that no thinking person would want to see. Read 1984 by the great prophet, himself.
What's more, we are once again becoming that which we say we reject. Who doesn't remember our reaction when the mouth-breathing sons of pigs (Taliban and ISIS) blew up ancient statues and destroyed countless artifacts because they didn't represent their stupid religion? Why, dear reader, isn't that justification to destroy images of the past? I mean, this is religion we are talking about. That's supposed to be the most important of all things in this life. Now, I grant you, the muslim religion is a concoction lifted from several earlier man-made constructs, as all religions are. But we are told that there is nothing more sacrosanct than the way one worships and the precepts they keep. Shouldn't we celebrate the way the sons of pigs proudly showed their devotion to allah with this childish vandalism writ large? This is spirit world stuff here! Waaaay more important than the worldly tribulations endured by people 150 years ago. C'mon! Get some perspective!
Or should we say that the world would do better to clean up its modern day act by taking the lessons of history rather than trying to make history go away.
*
For the benefit of the ignorant: This is the flag of the Army of Northern Virginia. Thousands fought and died honorably under it. Less than 1% of those people were slave owners. They fought valiantly in a losing cause.
This is the flag of the Confederate States of America as of 1863. This is the emblem of a society that among other things wanted to preserve slavery. Coincidentally, it was also in 1863 that ending slavery became an official part of the Union Army's pursuits. Before that the war was being fought to prevent the destruction of the established political system. In the long view of history (there's that word again) I would contend that the war probably didn't need to be fought. But the politicians at the time were pretty darn serious about keeping the lion's share of trade in the north. Can't have those dirt scratchin' southerners setting up foreign trade and competing with the North now. …And, oh yeah, that slavery thing is bad too.
So if you want to hate a part of our history so badly that you want the symbols un-remembered by all the other proles, at least get it straight what the hell it is you hate.
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