Politics XXXVII (The 12th Prime)

[Gromnir]

South Dakota Gov. Noem vows 'we won't be social distancing' at Trump Mount Rushmore event

...

is so many things we could say 'bout this story. won't. instead we ask folks to read story and then look at comments in response to the story.

HA! Good Fun!

ps apologies for double, but different topic.

 

[rjshae]

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

33 minutes ago, Gromnir said:

South Dakota Gov. Noem vows 'we won't be social distancing' at Trump Mount Rushmore event

...

is so many things we could say 'bout this story. won't. instead we ask folks to read story and then look at comments in response to the story.

HA! Good Fun!

ps apologies for double, but different topic.

 

I guess it's time to attack and dethrone God.

[BruceVC]

6 hours ago, ShadySands said:

Yeah, you're correct that it has gone global but your criticisms are pretty much what I was trying to say, it'd be much better if each country or region had their own specific movements to deal with their specific issues. 

So maybe I'm the one not making sense here

You make sense to me, sometimes I wish you got more involved in asking these types of questions because that way I also can see if what I am posting is coming across in a negative way 

And you are one of the many people on this forum who I have learnt certain things from and that in turn has made me a better person. This forum is the first forum  from a non-work perspective I have been an active member on for so many years without getting banned or people ignore you so you leave. It use to happen to me about 2-3 times a year on other forums and I never really understood why I was getting banned or people didnt seem want to talk to me which makes a forum experience boring. I was never really concerned because there are hundreds of places on the Internet to discuss things I enjoy and I never thought I was in the wrong 

I remember 2133 years ago called me " thoroughly, revoltingly condescending " , now of course he was exaggerating because I have never been called that in my life and that includes huge arguments in RL. I have often been called condescending but never  " thoroughly, revoltingly condescending "  

But on  this forum people have sometimes PM in the old days to chat about certain comments I had made which could be offensive ...anyway it allowed me to understand where I was being rude or misunderstood. For example if BLM was only in the USA then it would be very strange and offensive for someone outside the USA to be critical which is why I wanted to clarify what I was saying

And just to be clear. I think BLM is well meaning and most activists I hear about offer constructive comments about societal changes or raise valid issues. Its just the extreme groups or certain outcomes that I object to. For example in the UK vandalizing certain statues like Churchill and the Cenotaph is going to far for many people 

 

[Gorth]

26 minutes ago, BruceVC said:

And just to be clear. I think BLM is well meaning and most activists I hear about offer constructive comments about societal changes or raise valid issues. Its just the extreme groups or certain outcomes that I object to. For example in the UK vandalizing certain statues like Churchill and the Cenotaph is going to far for many people

But Churchill was racist. Yes, he bolstered UK morale during WWII, but he wasn't necessarily a good person.

Quoting CNN:

"He said that he hated people with "slit eyes and pig tails." To him, people from India were "the beastliest people in the world next to the Germans." He admitted that he "did not really think that black people were as capable or as efficient as white people."

Not exactly a humanitarian role model

 

[BruceVC]

22 minutes ago, Gorth said:

But Churchill was racist. Yes, he bolstered UK morale during WWII, but he wasn't necessarily a good person.

Quoting CNN:

"He said that he hated people with "slit eyes and pig tails." To him, people from India were "the beastliest people in the world next to the Germans." He admitted that he "did not really think that black people were as capable or as efficient as white people."

Not exactly a humanitarian role model

 

Gorthfuscious please can we have this debate because I enjoy your debating style and I havent been able to have this debate with anyone in a meaningful way? And you have shared interesting links  that often explain your personal views around things I may not agree with but once I read the link I can see why you feel that way....like the Oz banks and the bad perception that people feel towards them. So I would like your honest opinion around what you dont agree with 

And it is specifically about Churchill and should his statue be taken down. But to understand my point you have to try to be objective and ask 2 very important question about any statue that people want to take down. Because certain statues should go but others represent something greater than the need to take them down 

So the 2 questions about taking any statue down should be 

• What country is the statue in 
• What is the person most famous for and what was there overall contribution towards that country 

Churchill played a critical role in leading  the UK in WW2 and wast just about morale, his  equanimity and fortitude ended up  representing what Britain stood for in a true battle of "good and evil ". This cannot be ignored in the same way Stalin was for USSR and Roosevelt for USA 

In history and generally how people are judged its about there overall contribution, they shouldn't been vilified for certain comments or views unless there comments and views are more significant than there actions. Zora was actually the first person to suggest Churchill was racist due to his actions in India, I hadnt heard of that until he mentioned it. I did some research and it had some truth to it but that is not is overall contribution towards the world we all live in

In other words its difficult to look back at most historical figures and not find something wrong with them if you only consider certain offensive comments they made as what defines them ....dont you feel its unfair ?

And then another point which is more for people in the UK proud of there history or rather respectful of the sacrifice millions made in WW1 and WW2 is statue of Churchill is in London because of what he did basically in WW2.....I can honestly say I dont know one person  who thinks of Churchill firstly as a racist because WW2 was literally an existential war between Democracies and the final evolution of what would represent White Supremacy or the flawed belief that certain white ethnic groups were superior to other races

So I would assume anyone serious about BLM would recognize that Churchill fought against true racism and a world where if the Nazis had won the future of any black person would be beyond terrible 

So in closing, you right Churchill should not be seen as a humanitarian role model. That was not what he did to make a the world a better place 

 

•  

 

 

[Gorth]

@BruceVC

 

I agree that the whole statue thing is indeed an odd thing, because any single person is likely to be many things to many people. One mans villain is another mans hero and vice versa.

Which is also why old things sometimes gets torn down to make room for new things (that's my inner anarchist speaking).

What does people remember Churchill for? As you sort of hinted at, it depends on who you are. Would a 50%+ approval rate among all people being exposed to the actions of some figure justify a statue? A threshold of 25% if they are all locals (i.e. live in the UK)? And so on. There is no easy answer. I'm sure the Romans tore down a number of statues too when previous historical leaders fell out of favour with the current rulers. Maybe the Brits see him representing something they like to remember. Living in Australia, i think I can say he is more than anything associated with failed WWI campaigns, Gallipoli and tens of thousands of dead Aussies and Kiwis. To the people in India, I'm sure he is perceived in a different way to both the UK and the people down here.

Was General Lee (US civil war) a particular bad and evil person? No idea. Did his exploits on the battlefield warrant a statue? Probably. But... his side lost and the climate has changed. As said above, sometimes what was once considered great falls out of favour. As long as history books keeps the deeds of people for posterity, does the world really need statues anyway? Other than to make pigeons happy that is.

 

Edit: Another way of looking at is, the values of society keeps changing. Some day, a the values people attribute to the positive and the negative parts of a historical person changes enough to change the net sum?

[Guard Dog]

3 minutes ago, Gorth said:

 

Was General Lee (US civil war) a particular bad and evil person? No idea. Did his exploits on the battlefield warrant a statue? Probably. But... his side lost and the climate has changed. As said above, sometimes what was once considered great falls out of favour. As long as history books keeps the deeds of people for posterity, does the world really need statues anyway? Other than to make pigeons happy that is.

 

I know you were speaking to Bruce.... but here I go butting in!

No, he wasn't. He was a man of the times he lived in. No better or worse than most. Does he warrant commemoration? Yes and no. Few commanders in history have done so much with so little.  But at the same time he made two colossal blunders at Gettysburg and Petersburg.  He is certainly worthy of study and understanding. But I don't know that he was ever deserving of the lionization his name has undergone 40 years after his death. Knowing what I do of him I think he'd be mortified. 

I think statues are appropriate where they are appropriate. The dedicated memorial, cemetery, battlefield sites, historically significant locations, or museums are certainly appropriate. But plunking a statue of Lee in the middle of downtown New Orleans made no sense because he had no connection at all to New Orleans. Other than to piss people off. Which actually was the point. 

If it were up to me I'd say no statues other than the places I mentioned. Besides, some of them are kind of creepy anyway.

As an aside, you guys all know this "erasing history" nonsense, while it does have some points, will not stop right? They will be coming for the ones in dedicated memorial, cemetery, battlefield sites, historically significant locations, or museums later. Everything always goes too far.

[Raithe]

CNN - Senate strips provision from intelligence bill requiring campaigns to report foreign election help

Well. Here we go...

[Hurlshort]

2 hours ago, Guard Dog said:

As an aside, you guys all know this "erasing history" nonsense, while it does have some points, will not stop right? They will be coming for the ones in dedicated memorial, cemetery, battlefield sites, historically significant locations, or museums later. Everything always goes too far.

None of that really erases history though. At least, not any more than has happened with every civilization that has come before us. We've gone through some pretty serious purges and cultural upheavals over the centuries. This stuff is super tame in comparison.

[Gorth]

12 minutes ago, Raithe said:

CNN - Senate strips provision from intelligence bill requiring campaigns to report foreign election help

Well. Here we go...

 

[Amentep]

1 hour ago, Guard Dog said:

I know you were speaking to Bruce.... but here I go butting in!

No, he wasn't. He was a man of the times he lived in. No better or worse than most. Does he warrant commemoration? Yes and no. Few commanders in history have done so much with so little.  But at the same time he made two colossal blunders at Gettysburg and Petersburg.  He is certainly worthy of study and understanding. But I don't know that he was ever deserving of the lionization his name has undergone 40 years after his death. Knowing what I do of him I think he'd be mortified. 

Lee himself didn't want to be lionized.  He encouraged his fellow southerners to accept their defeat when they bristled at perceived slights from the north post war.  That said Grant felt he was “setting an example of forced acquiescence so grudging and pernicious in its effects as to be hardly realized.”

Lee's success as a General is debatable from what I've read (of his 15 major engagements, he only won 5) and much of his success seems to me to be mitigated by the number of times those who lionize him have to blame others for his losses to preserve his reputation. 

That said, I'm not sure I agree with "no better or worse" than his time.  Certainly his opinion that slavery was a divine institution put on blacks so the "white man" could teach the race how to live properly was the prevailing justification for slavery in his time.  But by all accounts I've seen, he was a harsher slave owner than his father-in-law George Washington Parke Custiss, breaking the Washington (yes that Washington) and Custiss family traditions of keeping slave families together; firmly believing in the use of the whip (and having the backs of whipped slaves rubbed with brine) as part of 'teaching' slaves their place.  He waited the whole five years his father-in-law's will allowed (as the maximum time to do so) to free the slaves on the plantation which almost led to a revolt on the plantation against him. Former slaves typically referred to him as the worst man they'd known.  Much is made of Lee calling slavery a "moral and political evil", but as I recall the reference is to an evil for white people, as blacks he felt were better off in slavery in America than to be free in Africa as he explained further in that letter.  AKA "White Man's Burden". 

His acceptance of his men capturing freemen in Pennsylvania and enslaving them or accepting his men in murdering black soldiers when they surrendered at Crater can't really be defended, and as far as I have read he never spoke out against these actions of his men.  Certainly when he refused to trade black soldiers prisoners for southern white prisoners of the North, he insisted they were the property of his men, and couldn't be traded.  You can argue he had to do it (as to accept competent, trained, brave black soldiers as equal to other soldiers was to put the lie to the whole God-protected institution that the south had built around slavery as necessary to guide blacks into not being lazy, cowardly, stupid non-people), but its never going to put him in a positive light.

He did work to help blacks go to Liberia when that was a thing, but based on his belief that blacks in the south should be removed from there.  He reportedly expelled kids from Washington College  when they attacked blacks in town, but also allowed the students to form a KKK chapter at Washington which from what I've read harassed black school girls (including attempts to abduct and rape them).  He actively encouraged friends in his private letters to not hire freedmen and argued the unsuitablity of blacks based on the fact that God's will for them hadn't been allowed to complete, holding onto the idea that slavery was a divine providence unto the last.

[Volourn]

"I think BLM is well meaning"

 

No, they aren't. They (and Antifa) are responsible for more murders, assaults, rapes, and robberies of black people than the police have been for a decade. While there are people who support BLM are good people and actually believe wholeheartedly the pretend claims of BLM, BLM itself is evil to the core. Only explaination for when we see videos of white BLMers  shouting nasty things at black people, BLMers destroying black owned businesses, and murdering  fellow BLM supporters after they start to leave  a peaceful protest that's about to get violent. BLM is tainted to the core. EVIL. EVIL TO THE CORE.

[Gromnir]

am not gonna get into the lee stuff... again. doesn't matter regardless, 'cause for better And worse, we got democracy. a bunch o folks in the 1890s and 1920s thought lee statues were a swell idea and they built 'em all over the south. am not sure why statues is such a sticking point for folks 'cause most o' us have little difficulty accepting the notion that the democratic process gets it wrong from time to time. should be no biggie. folks in 1895 got it wrong or their reasons were based on bad info or perhaps reasons for lionizing no longer outweigh reasons for removing. whatever.

democracy, in many ways, is a horrible way to make decisions. the majority is not especial wise or generous and is no foresight granted by a majority. democracy is better than alternatives, and regardless, it is what we got. democratic process puts lee up and for better And worse, democratic process should be available to take down. no vandalism or mobs. choice.

most o' us shudder at the sight o' book burnings. at the same time, am doubting most o' us thinks textbooks, once created, cannot be changed, altered or altogether removed. got a school textbook from 1910 south carolina teaching how miscegenation is immoral and leads to birth defects and "mongloidism." such stoopid doesn't need be taught into perpetuity 'cause such were the history and heritage o' 1910 south carolina. we take the book off the shelf and the act o' removal may itself be a teachable moment. nevertheless, try and remove a statue which were erected same time the textbook were written, and were at least partial meant to communicate a similar message, and we nevertheless get heavy resistance to removal. weird.

vandalism is wrong way, but is nothing special 'bout statues other than fact people believe they is special.... 'course this observation comes from a guy who purposeful uses aaron burr board image as a less than subtle backhand directed at the veneration o' the founding fathers. 

HA! Good Fun!

[Malcador]

5 hours ago, Volourn said:

No, they aren't. They (and Antifa) are responsible for more murders, assaults, rapes, and robberies of black people than the police have been for a decade.

How many black people has BLM or Antifa killed in the last 10 years, well or people in general ?  Looking around, US cops have killed maybe ~2000 blacks, so I am somewhat skeptical of that claim.

[Maedhros]

Has antifa even killed a single person?

[ShadySands]

I don't know but BLM = Antifa = Nazi and that automatically means the people on the other side are the good guys or something

Edited July 1, 2020 by ShadySands

[HoonDing]

[Zoraptor]

9 hours ago, Amentep said:

Lee's success as a General is debatable from what I've read (of his 15 major engagements, he only won 5) and much of his success seems to me to be mitigated by the number of times those who lionize him have to blame others for his losses to preserve his reputation.

Lee certainly is difficult to judge fairly as a general.

Fundamentally he was fighting for the side that ought to lose- and it's doubtful even a Subotai/ Hannibal/ Marlborough tier general would have 'won' in the end. He was pretty much always outnumbered significantly, and always outresourced. The war should have been lost for the confed early in the east, but was actually lost in the west where Lee wasn't. The Union generals he fought were mostly rubbish but still should have won against him multiple times when they had, at times, around double the troops Lee had available for a campaign.

The main trouble Lee had was ultimately he had to win the war, which meant eventually he would have to take risks with an underresourced and smaller army while fighting on the enemy's territory rather than his own. He's mostly criticised for Pickett's Charge at Gettysburg but that was pretty much what Napoleon tried at Waterloo when he was in a similar strategic situation. That is also one of the situations where you have the reverse of the 'blame the subordinates' (blaming Stuart for disappearing for days at Gettysburg is perfectly fair though, the initial blunders were thanks to having almost zero scouting from Stuart) with people saying that Lee should have followed Longstreet's plan instead.

Lee was clearly a decent general, in a war where most generals didn't even achieve that. Definitely not top tier though. I'd tend to compare him to Rommel in some ways, people tend to hold Rommel up as (relatively) honourable etc and play up his victories (like Lee mostly won with a large dollop of help from enemy incompetence but against larger and better resourced armies) yet he was a committed- though not extremist- nazi, lost every battle he had to win and for the last 30 months of his career won only one fairly minor battle full stop. Both are lionised beyond their objective abilities and achievements.

[Guard Dog]

10 hours ago, Hurlshot said:

None of that really erases history though. At least, not any more than has happened with every civilization that has come before us. We've gone through some pretty serious purges and cultural upheavals over the centuries. This stuff is super tame in comparison.

Right now they have not started erasing history yet. But that is coming. 

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

5 hours ago, Maedhros said:

Has antifa even killed a single person?

Well the problem with this is that antifa isn't an organization, but the closest was in Greece where a guy shot some members of the Golden Dawn in retaliation for Golden Dawn killing a rapper who had ties to anarchist groups. In the US we've had hooliganism (assaults, fights, vandalism, looting), but no rapes or murders to my knowledge. Comparatively off the top of my head we've got George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and Rayshard Brooks murdered by the police from the last six months.

5 hours ago, ShadySands said:

I don't know but BLM = Antifa = Nazi and that automatically means the people on the other side are the good guys or something

Everyone is a sjw nazi except for sjw nazis, who are fine.

3 hours ago, Guard Dog said:

Right now they have not started erasing history yet. But that is coming. 

History has already been erased, for instance Thomas Jefferson started...his relationship with Sally Hemmings when she was 14 and he was 44. This is something I was never taught in public school or college and had to be told and research on my own, we can probably find similar things with every figure immortalized in statues. To tie it to something similar, if Gromnir had not mentioned that Colby Bryant likely raped someone on this board I would probably not remember that, I doubt if I asked a hundred basketball fans if they knew about it that they would answer in the affirmative. I doubt that taking down some stone is going to result in (in)famous historical figures being erased.

[pmp10]

16 hours ago, Amentep said:

That said, I'm not sure I agree with "no better or worse" than his time.  Certainly his opinion that slavery was a divine institution put on blacks so the "white man" could teach the race how to live properly was the prevailing justification for slavery in his time.  But by all accounts I've seen, he was a harsher slave owner than his father-in-law George Washington Parke Custiss, breaking the Washington (yes that Washington) and Custiss family traditions of keeping slave families together; firmly believing in the use of the whip (and having the backs of whipped slaves rubbed with brine) as part of 'teaching' slaves their place.  He waited the whole five years his father-in-law's will allowed (as the maximum time to do so) to free the slaves on the plantation which almost led to a revolt on the plantation against him. Former slaves typically referred to him as the worst man they'd known.  Much is made of Lee calling slavery a "moral and political evil", but as I recall the reference is to an evil for white people, as blacks he felt were better off in slavery in America than to be free in Africa as he explained further in that letter.  AKA "White Man's Burden". 

But that's exactly what you'd expect from military man coming to own slaves in those days, he would think the plantation slaves had a problem with discipline.
And he might have been right as Custiss drove the whole thing heavily into debt and would still free the slaves in his will.
IIRC Lee tried to stop the manumission outright - he just lost the legal case and had to go through with it.

16 hours ago, Amentep said:

His acceptance of his men capturing freemen in Pennsylvania and enslaving them or accepting his men in murdering black soldiers when they surrendered at Crater can't really be defended, and as far as I have read he never spoke out against these actions of his men.  Certainly when he refused to trade black soldiers prisoners for southern white prisoners of the North, he insisted they were the property of his men, and couldn't be traded.  You can argue he had to do it (as to accept competent, trained, brave black soldiers as equal to other soldiers was to put the lie to the whole God-protected institution that the south had built around slavery as necessary to guide blacks into not being lazy, cowardly, stupid non-people), but its never going to put him in a positive light.

That wasn't just the position of Lee on slavery but  that of the entire confederacy. 
Breaking with his government (not to mention regular troops and officers) over such a major policy point would be nigh-impossible. 

[Amentep]

Given that George Washington Parke Custiss' father Jack also got heavily in debt (such that George Washington - a bit of a spendthrift himself - thought he purchased too often and unwisely), I'm not sure you can blame the Custiss' treatment of their slaves as the reason the plantation was failing.

By the accounts I've read, the discipline problem started with Lee's arrival, not anything GWPC did prior.

RE: Confederate policy - I never said breaking the policy was something he could or would do. Thats a bit irrelevant; the fact that it happened will mean that it a will always hang around his neck, albatross style, and I think it is something that he shouldn't get a free pass on. YMMV.

[BruceVC]

13 hours ago, Gromnir said:

 

vandalism is wrong way, but is nothing special 'bout statues other than fact people believe they is special.... 'course this observation comes from a guy who purposeful uses aaron burr board image as a less than subtle backhand directed at the veneration o' the founding fathers. 

HA! Good Fun!

Gromnir I am glad you are asking a valid question around the true importance of statues, they do matter and are important in countries that have had a great loss of lives due to events that I will explain. I am not sure this will apply to Confederate statues but in the case of the UK statues like the Cenotaph and Churchill are important 

And any form of damage like vandalizing or actually trying to destroy the statue will always been seen as unacceptable because of the overall principle 

I will just use the Cenotaph which is one of the most sacred. It was elected after WW1 as a permanent tribute towards the millions of British soldiers and there allies who died fighting. The outcome of WW1 was the entire old  empires of Europe were  destroyed forever and a new better world was suppose to be the future....ironically it took WW2 before this lesson was truly learned 

But the damage done to individual countries after WW1 was the real devastation, in the UK for example the second wave of volunteers were allowed to enlist based on villages, companies and social groups. So you had whole villages being part of the same unit....these units were deployed initially at the Somme which was a real disaster for the British in the first 2 days because the British miscalculated that there massive, unprecedented artillery attack did not destroy much of the German trenches because the Germans had literally designed deep trenches unlike the allies which meant the entire artillery attack actually didnt destroy the German front line at all....the Germans basically went underground

The British then after several days deployed there new regiments expecting to find no enemy but the Germans literally came up from there trenches and used there murderous machine guns units to annihilate and kill thousands of British troops who died in no mans lands. In one day the British lost 60k troops ....the actual outcome back home was whole villagers lost all there men due to this mistake 

Every family basically lost someone in WW1, my own SA family had my great grandfathers brother die at the Somme and our English families lost 2 brothers but there was no such thing as people going unscathed 

So when the war ended the impossible thought of how to remember all this death was summarized in the Cenotaph, this is why many British people still actively support Armistice day. I have many books about WW1 and there are many tragic losses but  I will never forget is a Scottish family who lost 7 out of 8 sons and single crying women at the day of the surrender who was asked " why are you crying ...we won " ..she replied " I lost all my 4 sons in the war and at least I know there deaths werent in vain " 

So when small groups decide to damage statues like this with no understanding of what they represent it will be never be acceptable  for obvious reasons. The irony being many people immigrated to the UK exactly because of the sacrifice this statue means and yet they want to damage it 

And for countries like France they suffered even more losses 

[BruceVC]

7 hours ago, Guard Dog said:

Right now they have not started erasing history yet. But that is coming. 

They cant just erase history, the loss of Confederate soldiers should absolutely matter to people in Southern States. It doesnt mean you support slavery but your ancestors death or commitment is still relevant ....and I cannot believe most people in the South will just accept this

Surly we can separate slavery from the fact many Confederate soldiers didnt even own slaves but believed in the doomed cause ....of course the reality is the South breaking away would definitely have weakened the overall USA immeasurably so the South had to lose to ensure a better world with a united USA we all know about ?