Donald Trump vs Joe Biden

[Vehicle]

Your opinion on monuments doesn't mean anything first off, all civil war soldiers including the confederates were granted full US citizenship posthumously and said monuments deserve to stay where they are. Your revisionist history cult is sickening, terrible things happened and it's better to have a constant reminder of such. Not to mention. Slavery being only one small issue among many for the civil war, many of those men died not to keep slaves but to protect their states sovereign rights and ability to make a living.

Oh yeah because the people holding torches and marching around those monuments are definitely doing it to remember the sickening history of slavery and Jim Crow. Those monuments definitely don't venerate the people who were fighting to preserve slavery, they totally put things into perspective and don't lionize or idolize people who literally fought to tear the country in two so that they could continue treating people as chattel. Definitely not.

[kthx]

You realize you can buy che and mao tshirts at Walmart right?
it doesn't matter if the KKK goes there and burns crosses it doesn't change anything. Thinking with your level of emotion tends to make for shitty arguments meant to cause a reaction. It won't work here.

[Vehicle]

It's not at all emotion. It's pointing out that you're gaslighting everyone by trying to make the monuments into something they're not. No one looks at a statue of Robert E. Lee and says "thank god we freed the slaves." False equivalencies won't work here either.

[kthx]

It's not at all emotion. It's pointing out that you're gaslighting everyone by trying to make the monuments into something they're not. No one looks at a statue of Robert E. Lee and says "thank god we freed the slaves." False equivalencies won't work here either.

Other people being ignorant doesn't change anything either. It happened and our countrymen died fighting each other. The monuments are a part of our history and culture. What other parts of history would you want to whitewash over with good feelings and useless platitudes?

Maybe destroy NASA because they hired Nazi's for their space program? Destroy the autobahn? Perhaps destroy the Coliseum because Romans fought slaves there? The pyramids should be taken down due to slave labor as well probably. Why do you have such a hard on for destroying history by applying todays standards and morals for a time where they were different.

Oh and make sure you don't buy anything that was shipped via railroad, probably better you don't research chinese, irish, and black slave labor used to build those.

[qan]

I think an issue with the "left" is that it's too quick to just try and tear things down without coming up with a reasonable replacement/alternative (and more generally, not just with the issue of statues). An issue with the "right" is wanting to hold on a bit too tightly to tradition for tradition's sake, regardless of what comes of it. Both of these positions are naive and idealistic, valuing intention over effect.

A compromise might be to include some updated explanation of who the person was, what their role was in history, and what that means today, acknowledging the best and worst parts of humanity. Leaving them as they stand with only a mention of the armies led and battles won or lost is a tacit endorsement, and that's a valid criticism to be made by those who are trying to tear these statues down. Recontextualizing them—and not as a monster or hero, but as a human like the rest of us, set in the prison of their time and place—would give us the opportunity to talk about this sort of thing maturely and with consideration and respect for those who disagree with us.

I'd like it if a descendant of slaves could walk up to the statue, read a bit about the person and come away feeling like they understand more about the country and also that the suffering of their ancestors isn't being ignored or elided just because it makes people uncomfortable. And the same for a descendant of those who fought on the side of the south, who could read it and feel that their validity as a human being isn't negated because the culture of their ancestors was caught up in certain kind of very profitable madness.

The lack of willingness to make any kind of concession whatsoever necessitates fireworks displays of human arrogance and self-worship from both extremes. It's embarrassing.

[kthx]

Jesus Qan who let you into the Hegel writings.

[qan]

I haven't read Hegel, but, sure, I do of know the importance of synthesis. This constant thesis/antithesis, back and forth, pointing fingers and making of devils, and never a step forward ... is very tiresome and needs to stop.

It's no accident.

[kthx]

I haven't read Hegel, but, sure, I do of know the importance of synthesis. This constant thesis/antithesis, back and forth, pointing fingers and making of devils, and never a step forward ... is very tiresome and needs to stop.

It's no accident.

I agree with you but it's hard to take the issue seriously to me honestly. The kids of slaveowners should thank their parents and grandparents for doing what they did to make their lives so much better. Destroying and looting is the antithesis of what black civil rights leaders did to give them better lives. By not knowing their own history they are destroying their own future and possibly leading us down the same path. But toppling a statue is easier than reading a book and appreciating what you don't have to live through.

[kthx]

I just realized that our entire discussion is going to end up as the msss effect 3 ending and I've decided maybe the writers were geniuses.

Vehicles definitely going blue.

[Exalt]

I'd like it if a descendant of slaves could walk up to the statue, read a bit about the person and come away feeling like they understand more about the country and also that the suffering of their ancestors isn't being ignored or elided just because it makes people uncomfortable. And the same for a descendant of those who fought on the side of the south, who could read it and feel that their validity as a human being isn't negated because the culture of their ancestors was caught up in certain kind of very profitable madness.

This is where I think you and Kthx have both gone off the rails. Find me a single monument in Germany celebrating Nazi history. You'll be looking for a long time, because they don't exist. The only memorials you'll find about the Nazis are concentration camps, because it memorializes the victims of Nazi Germany. Nazis were German citizens too, so that invalidates Kthx's argument about how Confederate soldiers were Americans. It doesn't matter. They were the losing side. The losers don't get to put up monuments celebrating it. They should be putting up monuments memorializing the slaves and their suffering, but that doesn't happen for an obvious reason that neither of you seem to be willing to admit. Until I see all those southern states put up statues memorializing the victims of slavery and the deaths of Union soldiers right next to the Confederate statues, then there should not be Confederate statues whatsoever. You don't need statues to remember the past.

The ultimate problem lies with those same southern states teaching history incorrectly. They teach that the civil war was primarily about state's rights instead of slavery, which is a crock of shit that any historian worth their salt will immediately call out as garbage revisionist history. States rights simply formed the convenient rhetorical justification for secession, and literally everyone with two brain cells to rub together knew better even at the time period. There were likely no Confederate soldiers from the south who ever viewed it as anything other than a war for slavery. The entire build up of the civil war was 100% about slavery as well, because the slave states saw the writing on the wall with each new state added to the Union.

I'd like you both to read the Declarations of the Causes of Secession from South Carolina and try to justify it as not being about slavery. Go ahead and try:

But an increasing hostility on the part of the non-slaveholding States to the institution of slavery, has led to a disregard of their obligations, and the laws of the General Government have ceased to effect the objects of the Constitution. The States of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New York, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Wisconsin and Iowa, have enacted laws which either nullify the Acts of Congress or render useless any attempt to execute them. In many of these States the fugitive is discharged from service or labor claimed, and in none of them has the State Government complied with the stipulation made in the Constitution. The State of New Jersey, at an early day, passed a law in conformity with her constitutional obligation; but the current of anti-slavery feeling has led her more recently to enact laws which render inoperative the remedies provided by her own law and by the laws of Congress. In the State of New York even the right of transit for a slave has been denied by her tribunals; and the States of Ohio and Iowa have refused to surrender to justice fugitives charged with murder, and with inciting servile insurrection in the State of Virginia. Thus the constituted compact has been deliberately broken and disregarded by the non-slaveholding States, and the consequence follows that South Carolina is released from her obligation.

Now, notice something in there that pertains to 'state's rights'? There is one thing. An act by a state that nullified federal law was seen as just grievance for South Carolina to quit the Union. So state's rights were directly written about, just not in the way Confederate apologists claim as a defense. It helps to read historical documents to learn about history, rather than propaganda pieces pushed by those same states a hundred years later to save face. Who are the historical revisionists in reality?

That's just South Carolina's declaration for succession, so what about other states? Well, take a look:

Mississippi: Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery-- the greatest material interest of the world. Its labor supplies the product which constitutes by far the largest and most important portions of commerce of the earth.

Georgia: For the last ten years we have had numerous and serious causes of complaint against our non-slave-holding confederate States with reference to the subject of African slavery.

Texas: She was received as a commonwealth holding, maintaining and protecting the institution known as negro slavery-- the servitude of the African to the white race within her limits-- a relation that had existed from the first settlement of her wilderness by the white race, and which her people intended should exist in all future time. Her institutions and geographical position established the strongest ties between her and other slave-holding States of the confederacy. Those ties have been strengthened by association. But what has been the course of the government of the United States, and of the people and authorities of the non-slave-holding States, since our connection with them?

The controlling majority of the Federal Government, under various pretences and disguises, has so administered the same as to exclude the citizens of the Southern States, unless under odious and unconstitutional restrictions, from all the immense territory owned in common by all the States on the Pacific Ocean, for the avowed purpose of acquiring sufficient power in the common government to use it as a means of destroying the institutions of Texas and her sister slaveholding States.

I'm guessing those states don't have students read these documents when they teach about the civil war in highschool. America has an education problem that desperately needs to be fixed, because the vast majority of domestic issues within America revolve around uneducated people doing stupid things out of ignorance.

State's rights... yeah, state's rights to own slaves. Nothing else. Slavery doesn't deserve a statue. Men who died to protect it do not deserve memorials. We don't put up statues for Nazis for a reason. Traitors do not deserve accolades, and frankly, the south putting up those statues shows that perhaps Sherman should have burned it all to the ground like he wanted. The South never learned their lesson.

[the_paul]

To be fair, isn't Trump pushing an agenda to force schools to teach American history in a more positive light, less about slavery and shit like that? We may need to leave these monuments up to give future generations any chance of learning about actual history if this shit goes through. Maybe he's playing 4d chess to ensure the Confederate monuments stay up

[qan]

I don't think the comparison to Nazi Germany is all that apt. Barbarous genocide in a very short amount of time vs institutionalized slavery over centuries. I agree that the civil war was largely centered around slavery and not "state's rights" but it was also, like all things, complicated. For the south to give up slavery it was required to give up a large part of its identity, corrupt though much of that identity may have been.

It's important to understand why these statues were erected to begin with. You can say that there's no way for them to exist without their very existence simply glorifying racist ideals. I think recontextualization would accomplish that, however. At the very least, why not move them to a museum where this can be done? Or creating micro-museums around them? Just simply tearing them down doesn't move things forward. It further radicalizes. "You're with us or against us" is the message there. Either you agree to tear down the statues or you're a racist. How do you think that makes normal people respond? They know that tearing down the statues doesn't feel right to them, even if they're not really sure why. So they're forced to say, well, I guess I'm a racist. And some embrace that identity and radicalize. But racism isn't stative. You can't "be" a racist. (The belief that a person is or isn't racist is itself racist, and reproduces racist thought.) It's performative. You are being or not being racist in the context of an action, statement, etc.

The kids of slaveowners should thank their parents and grandparents for doing what they did to make their lives so much better.

I think you mean descendents of slaves, not kids of slaveowners?

Just about the only slaveowners who exist in the US now are those who own sex slaves. (Slaves are generally smuggled in from other countries, or they are kidnapped and raped repeatedly until they stop resisting. Modern day slave owners prefer girls around age 12 or 13 for this purpose, because they can be more readily dominated and crushed. This is not a capital crime, because it's mere "human trafficking.") The children of modern-day slave owners don't see any of this money.

[kthx]

I don't think the comparison to Nazi Germany is all that apt. Barbarous genocide in a very short amount of time vs institutionalized slavery over centuries. I agree that the civil war was largely centered around slavery and not "state's rights" but it was also, like all things, complicated. For the south to give up slavery it was required to give up a large part of its identity, corrupt though much of that identity may have been.

It's important to understand why these statues were erected to begin with. You can say that there's no way for them to exist without their very existence simply glorifying racist ideals. I think recontextualization would accomplish that, however. At the very least, why not move them to a museum where this can be done? Or creating micro-museums around them? Just simply tearing them down doesn't move things forward. It further radicalizes. "You're with us or against us" is the message there. Either you agree to tear down the statues or you're a racist. How do you think that makes normal people respond? They know that tearing down the statues doesn't feel right to them, even if they're not really sure why. So they're forced to say, well, I guess I'm a racist. And some embrace that identity and radicalize. But racism isn't stative. You can't "be" a racist. (The belief that a person is or isn't racist is itself racist, and reproduces racist thought.) It's performative. You are being or not being racist in the context of an action, statement, etc.




I think you mean descendents of slaves, not kids of slaveowners?

Just about the only slaveowners who exist in the US now are those who own sex slaves. (Slaves are generally smuggled in from other countries, or they are kidnapped and raped repeatedly until they stop resisting. Modern day slave owners prefer girls around age 12 or 13 for this purpose, because they can be more readily dominated and crushed. This is not a capital crime, because it's mere "human trafficking.") The children of modern-day slave owners don't see any of this money.

Yeah it was as mistype.

I wonder if Exalt or TPs posts are posted from a device made with child slave labor.

[the_paul]

Yeah it was as mistype.

I wonder if Exalt or TPs posts are posted from a device made with child slave labor.

Textbook GOP whataboutism, but I'll bite. How does Asian labor laws relate to whether the USA should continue to honor monuments of traitors?

[kthx]

Textbook GOP whataboutism, but I'll bite. How does Asian labor laws relate to whether the USA should continue to honor monuments of traitors?

Confederate soldiers were granted full citizenship after the war, they aren't traitors. And the whataboutism is relevant here. You are perfectly okay with exploiting slave labor as long as it wasn't here in the US? You are cool with other monuments that were built using slave labor not just a reminder of our countries sacrifices such as the pyramids etc. You are white knighting the issue erroneously. Only black people and jews constantly remind everyone of their history of pain and bloodshed while the rest of the world moves on and lives their lives. Black people want to tear down monuments to Confederate soldiers and generals while killing each other and abandoning their responsibilities to their kids at very high rates. History is something to learn and appreciate not to live in. I never hear Americans of Chinese or Irish descent complaining about their mistreatment. Do Europeans still demand reparations from Islamic or black cultures that enslaved their ancestors? It doesn't happen and frankly it's time to get the fuck over it.