Confederate flag/statue banning thread

[Kamilah Hauptmann]

 

[Argent Stonecutter]

Oh look, it's made a new sock puppet.

 

[Romana]

Oh look, it's made a new sock puppet.

Gave up on pretending we wouldn't know who it was, though.

 

[Roxanne Blue]

I'm all for being less racist but as far as I know there are like a handful of racists in this country now, it's been going in the right direction.

I think you guys all missed this one. Nostrildermatitis has given up residence in the 19th century and moved pretty far into the future if there are "like a handful of racists in the country now...". This is great news and I can only surmise there are only a few dozen "racially pure" racists left in the whole country. Oddly, they remain Republicans. Everyone else is some shade of brown or black... though purple is gaining.

 

[Katheryne Helendale]

Oh look, it's made a new sock puppet.

What's old is new again.

 

[NyteWytch]

What's old is new again.

There's nothing "new" he does with that sock.

 

[Ashiri]

it's politically correct

When it comes to political correctness, I see a lot of it in Cult 45.

 

[Kamilah Hauptmann]

When it comes to political correctness, I see a lot of it in Cult 45.

“Patriotically Correct”, as in “Democrats were the party of slavery so absolutely do not take down those statues of them.”

 

[Innula Zenovka]

Glad to see the spirit of free speech is still alive on these forums, as long as it's politically correct. If you have a library of history books their value has recently gone through the roof, especially ones written before the 70s or 80s when the left started to make major progress in rewriting them. Tearing down the statues, especially the one related to Lincoln paid for by freed slaves, is akin to burning books and you know what they say, where they burn books, they will ultimately burn people.

I'm bored, so I'll play.

First, I do, in fact, have a small library of history books, and I sometimes add to it, as and when new ones are published,

I'm delighted to learn that the value of some of the older titles may recently, as you put it, have "gone through the roof," since I'm planning to pay to have my living room redecorated soon and it's a very pleasant surprise to learn that I may be able to pay for some of this by selling a few of them.

Could you please give me an indication of which titles have recently appreciated in value in the way you describe, and point me to where I can check prices myself, to see what my collection is now worth?

Second, please explain how removing a statue is akin to burning books, particularly if the statue is then displayed somewhere else -- a museum, for example -- rather than destroyed.

After the collapse of the USSR, you will recall, a fair amount of public statuary depicting Lenin, Stalin, and other leading Communists was removed all over the former Warsaw Pact and former USSR.

In what way was that akin to a book-burning, would you say, and what's your view on the controversy about Moscow's Iron Felix statue? Or the one that used to be in middle of Warsaw until it was toppled by a mob during the collapse of the Communist government there in 1989?

(One of my Polish friends had mixed feelings about the Warsaw one -- after all, he said, for all his faults, Dzerzhinsky was nevertheless responsible for the deaths of more Russian communists than any other Pole in history, which probably deserved commemorating somehow. But not in a public square in the middle of Warsaw).

 

[Veritable Quandry]

Friend of mine is retiring as a History prof, and has as near as I can tell about a metric tonne of books to unload before moving back to upstate new York. Hopefully that will pad out her retirement.

 

[Romana]

I'm bored, so I'll play.

First, I do, in fact, have a small library of history books, and I sometimes add to it, as and when new ones are published,

I'm delighted to learn that the value of some of the older titles may recently, as you put it, have "gone through the roof," since I'm planning to pay to have my living room redecorated soon and it's a very pleasant surprise to learn that I may be able to pay for some of this by selling a few of them.

Could you please give me an indication of which titles have recently appreciated in value in the way you describe, and point me to where I can check prices myself, to see what my collection is now worth?

Second, please explain how removing a statue is akin to burning books, particularly if the statue is then displayed somewhere else -- a museum, for example -- rather than destroyed.

After the collapse of the USSR, you will recall, a fair amount of public statuary depicting Lenin, Stalin, and other leading Communists was removed all over the former Warsaw Pact and former USSR.

In what way was that akin to a book-burning, would you say, and what's your view on the controversy about Moscow's Iron Felix statue? Or the one that used to be in middle of Warsaw until it was toppled by a mob during the collapse of the Socialist government there in 1989?

(One of my Polish friends had mixed feelings about the Warsaw one -- after all, he said, for all his faults, Dzerzhinsky was nevertheless responsible for the deaths of more Russian communists than any other Pole in history, which probably deserved commemorating somehow. But not in a public square in the middle of Warsaw).

I love the way people think that if something’s old and out of print or rare that it automatically becomes a collectors item.
I was told the same thing about my dad’s record collection (classical and opera), When I went to inquire I was told there was no call for them,

 

[Grandma Bates]

Why stop at statues? We should be doing everything to expose and vilify all the racist Democrats. In fact we should start with some of the worst of the bunch such as Jesse Helms, Strom Thurmond, Trent Lott, and Ronald Reagan. That last one is especially bad when you consider that when the Democratic party started treating people with the smallest modicum of decency he proclaimed, "I did not leave the Democratic party, the Democratic party left me."

 

[Dakota Tebaldi]

I think all the Confederate statues that are being torn down should be replaced by statues of Bubba's new avatar.

 

[Innula Zenovka]

Interesting and thoughtful piece about some of the problematic portraits and sculptures in the British parliament

We must confront racist history of UK parliament's art, says curator

Exclusive: Officials looking again at collection of 9,000 pieces in light of BLM protests

www.theguardian.com

 

[danielravennest]

I love the way people think that if something’s old and out of print or rare that it automatically becomes a collectors item.
I was told the same thing about my dad’s record collection (classical and opera), When I went to inquire I was told there was no call for them,

I accumulate old tools, but then I use them, or make toolboxes to loan out to people who don't have any. But I have no misconceptions that they are worth more than a buck or two each if I tried to sell them.

 

[Bubba Balbozar]

Now they're desecrating the monuments of U.S. Grant and Lincoln, the people who freed the slaves. This requires a monumental level of ignorance and I think is a very bad sign. George Washington is probably the greatest man in American history and they treat his monuments this way? That people are doing this to Grant and Lincoln means that if enough of society has forgotten the lessons of the Civil war we'll have to learn them all over again the hard way. At the time of the civil war 99.99% of the world was racist by today's standards, its the people who fought on the right side and contributed to what we have now. Tearing down monuments is no better or even worse than burning books and where they burn books they soon burn people.

 

[Innula Zenovka]

I posted this over in the Official SL forum, but it's relevant here, too

In Britain, because of our long imperial and colonial history, and our key role in the transatlantic slave trade, we have a huge collection of problematic statues, many of which were erected during the heyday of the Empire under Queen Victoria.

There's a long and very thoughtful article here about the current campaign to remove some of our public statues, rename buildings and so on. The examples are all British, but the themes are common, I think, to the US and to other European countries.

The history wars

He makes a very helpful distinction, I think, between, on the one hand, the academic discipline of history and, on the other, memory, which is choosing which pieces of history to remember, and how.


He also reminds us of something that I think is very important -- history is complex, and so are most important historical figures:

History is an academic discipline, with its own rules and procedures. Teaching it in schools means getting pupils to read historical documents critically, assess interpretations of past events and processes intelligently, and make up their own minds about key historical topics so that, at the very least, they will emerge as independently thinking citizens when they leave school.

It is not the same as memory – not individual memory, that is, but national, or collective, or cultural memory. Nor is history a matter of awarding ticks and crosses to the people of the past, canonising some as heroes and damning others as villains. Arguing about whether the British empire was a Good Thing or a Bad Thing is puerile and has nothing to do with the serious study of the past: such crude moralising should have been disposed of forever by WC Sellar and RJ Yeatman’s withering satire on the school history textbooks of their own day, 1066 and All That (1930).

 

[danielravennest]

Made up shit.

Nobody's statue who is on US currency is being desecrated. Pics or it didn't happen.

 

[Innula Zenovka]

Lenin statue to be unveiled in Germany despite legal fight

Gelsenkirchen bucks global trends with new monument as other cities confront relics of colonial past

www.theguardian.com

 

[Kamilah Hauptmann]

I’ll put it here.