This guy makes a series of smart points about fascists. I found it amusing.
I am fine with statues being torn down and military bases being renamed. This is not the destruction of history, it is the correction of distortions of history, a process that historians do all the time. Some people seem to think history is fixed and absolute, but then it would be done — and historians are well aware that our understanding of the past requires constant sifting of new evidence and reassessment of past interpretations in the light of new knowledge. US history, in particular, has been the victim of political attacks to change people’s perception of the Civil War, and to erase the struggles of black communities. It’s about time we rose up and rejected these weird ideas that Robert E. Lee was heroic, that the Civil War was about state’s rights, that the American Revolution was led by noble idealists who cared about liberty most of all, that colonialism brought enlightenment to barbarous parts of the world. Every generation lies about its virtues, and it’s the role of subsequent generations to correct the record.
“It’s about time we rose up and rejected these weird ideas that Robert E. Lee was heroic, that the Civil War was about state’s rights, that the American Revolution was led by noble idealists…”
Also time to put someone else on the $20 bill. Seriously, Andrew “Only good Indian is a dead Indian” Jackson deserves no honers.
Sources say the statue slipped and fell on its own.
@2 and the statue was black and brandishing a sword.
@2 well actually, for Churchill a cane…but whowouldanode?
Ray Ceeya @ # 1 … Andrew “Only good Indian is a dead Indian” Jackson
A new face on the $20 bill seems like an excellent idea (so long as it’s not another baddie), but that racist slogan (in a bit more wordy form) comes from General Philip Sheridan.
As a reminder, Harriet Tubman was supposed to be the new main portrait on the USD 20 note starting this year (2020), but hair furor’s delakocrazy EXTERMINATE! EXTERMINATE! that plan for transparently weak reasons, a celebration of racists Steven Mnuchin reconfirmed this very week.
@5 I stand corrected, but I wouldn’t be surprised if Jackson quoted it at least once.
Also, anyone else want to hear what Biden’s opinion is on this?
@6 Do you think Biden is really willing to make that happen?
Honest question, no sarcasm or rhetorical BS, I want to know if he would follow through. It doesn’t effect my vote and it’s pretty trivial, but still it’s another way for one old white guy to differentiate himself from another old white guy. “Change the $20 in 2020”? too wordy, but this could become a thing.
Ray Ceeya @ # 7: … I wouldn’t be surprised if Jackson quoted it at least once.
I would. Sheridan reportedly said it in 1869; Jackson died in 1845.
Ray Ceeya@7, Pedantically, not in 2020, because, if elected, he won’t take office until Jan 2021. Putting that pedantic point aside, two answers (both are “I have no idea”, but for different reasons):
● I myself have no clear idea what his attitude is towards racism. I know he’s said stoopid things, and has apologised for at least some of them, but how he previously saw, or now sees, the systematic racism is unknown-to-me. (Contrast with hair furor, who is all in favour of racism and shooting people.)
● I am unawares of any plan or goal or similar to undo / reverse hair furor’s numerous atrocities. I don’t trust Biden or teh dummies at all, but that is categorically different from teh thugs, hair furor, and hair furor’s dalekocrazy, all of whom I am confident will never do the “right” thing. (Unless Putin suffers a stroke and orders it.)
There is a GIGANTIC “laundry list” of filthy hair furorian rags for Biden & teh dummies to clean up — mostly incinerate — but I’ve no idea as to their announced intentions, and can only speculate (based mostly on past behaviour) of their actual intentions. (Plus the current not-at-all-minor problem of Moscow mitch’s Senate and their appointed federal judges stormtroopering in the way.)
I presume the portrait on the USD 20 could be rectified easily, and as such, would seem to be a powerful symbolic gesture. But this is teh dummies we are talking about here, who are fully capable of, and prone to, treating the issue as a jester.
@#9, blf:
• He has definitely been on the side of systemic racism in the past; despite the lies he has been telling like crazy this election cycle, he was explicitly pro-segregation, and the Biden Crime Bill passed under Clinton (which also led to the protests and riots now ongoing, which most people in places like this suddenly profess themselves aligned with, despite having supported Biden) reinforced many instances of systemic racism by specifically making punishments worse for crimes associated with black people, while being more lenient on crimes associated with white people
• He has said within the last week or so that he is actively against defunding the police, which means he is in favor of system racism in at least some forms.
Your usual lie. I don’t think any of the regular commenters here wanted Biden to win the primary – which would have been supporting him. Where they disagree with you, as you well know, is in thinking him, and the Democrats, preferable to Trump, and the Republicans. But I know you will carry on telling this lie, because, like Trump – who you prefer to win in november rather than Biden, you are a completely shameless liar.
He’s not just against it. He said they should get more money. From his op-ed in USA Today:
The problem is (if you ask him) that they simply don’t have the money to recruit “more diverse police officers.” (Presumably, that means more cops who happen to be of a diverse persuasion, rather than a more diverse set of the same number of cops as there are now. If black or brown cops were paid more, rather than less or the same amount, then there would be additional expenses to talk about. So it probably means more cops.)
And of course they also can’t afford to buy body cameras, institute a use of force standard, or to get cops out of their cruisers to build relationships. Of course not. How are they going to buy more guns and gently-used military equipment, as well as hire more cops, if they have to do all of that too? Don’t you know how hard it is to leave your cruiser and build relationships when you’re threatening random people with your guns whenever they look at you funny?
But sure, once police budgets have been embiggened a little more with an additional $300 million in federal funding, then they might think about it. Maybe. No promises. It’s meant to be more aspirational than anything, but it’s just a modest little article in USA Today, so don’t take it too seriously. Compromises will still need to be made as we work through the details in Congress. In the end, it will probably mean we’re going to bomb a few small countries for no particular reason.
@#11, KG:
If, after Sanders dropped out, you wanted the Democrats to win, then you supported Biden. But whatever, Biden’s as massive a liar as Trump, his supporters are, too, no surprise there.
Vicar #13
Substantial and quantitative third party evidence is required to susustain this inane claim. Otherwise, you are just a lying concern troll to be told to “fuck off”. Compare only the last few years so we can see the real rate of lying.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veracity_of_statements_by_Donald_Trump
That’s a pretty narrow concept of “support” you have there. If you said something supportive of Trump (for example), carrying water for him when he said or did something, defending how he looks or talks, or whatever it may be, then that doesn’t entail that you want him to win an election. It would still be the case that you had “supported” him in some way or other. People use the word in this way quite often, and it doesn’t indicate that they’re lying when they do so.
There are a lot of reasons to be less than thrilled with Biden’s history but the consequences of not Biden are far worse.
When his state was pretty racist, he went with segregation, when Clinton went semi-Republican with the crime bill so did he. Coming from Delaware he also did the bidding of the banks on student loans and bankruptcy.
He did do a good job with the H1N1 epidemic. He appeared to be ready for gay marriage before Obama.
He has been pulled gradually towards more progressive policies – the makeup of the Democratic party, House and Senate will have a big influence on how progressive he will be.
Statues are about adoration, and not history.
https://twitter.com/michaeljswalker/status/1269666068999569408?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1269666068999569408&ref_url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.dcscience.net%2F2020%2F06%2F08%2Fthe-toppling-of-edward-colston%2F
Trump isn’t really a liar as much as a bullshitter. In order to lie you must know and care about the truth.
I would note one thing about the snide and funny screed: Churchill did not defeat Nazi Germany. The Red Army did. And the American entry into the European theater was after Germany had already lost, and was more of an effort to stop Russia from continuing onto Madrid. The Russians took Berlin, the Russians liberated Auschwitz, the Russians had broken the Germans well before D-Day. Oh, also, they lost 20 million in the effort, the American lost about 50,000 (virtually no civilians), and the Brits about 450,000. So let’s be clear about who beat Germany. It was the Soviet Union, and anyone not realizing that has been brainwashed by 70 years of capitalist propaganda.
I would note one thing about the snide and funny screed: Churchill did not defeat Nazi Germany. The Red Army did. And the American entry into the European theater was after Germany had already lost, and was more of an effort to stop Russia from continuing onto Madrid. The Russians took Berlin, the Russians liberated Auschwitz, the Russians had broken the Germans well before D-Day. They liberated far more countries than the Americans and Brits did. Oh, also, they lost 20 million in the effort, the American lost about 50,000 (virtually no civilians), and the Brits about 450,000. So let’s be clear about who beat Germany. It was the Soviet Union, and anyone not realizing that has been brainwashed by 70 years of capitalist propaganda.
And if 8t weren’t for the American Lend-Lease Program, the Eastern Front would have been a lot worse for Russia. Beating Germany was a team effort, there isn’t any single country that won on its own.
@21, certainly not the British. Even with a few boats we rented to them. The Greeks, on the other hand? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zvl9N9GdraQ&t=195s
True, “supported” can mean different things. So let’s look at how The Vicar used it – which I already quoted at #11, but since you apparently missed it (I’m being generous here), here it is again;
So, the clear (and utterly dishonest) implication is that it is inconsistent for people to “profess themselves aligned with” BLM while “having supported” Biden. That would certainly be a reasonable claim if by “supported”, The Vicar meant “wanted to win the Democratic nomination”. But it’s clear he didn’t, both because you know, I know, The vicar knows, every-fucking-body who follows this blog knows, support for Biden in that sense was pretty much non-existent here, and also, because The Vicar tells us so @13:
So the claim is absolutely and utterly clear, and absolutely and utterly dishonest: that you cannot honestly “align yourself” with BLM, and want the Democrats to win in November. This is the claim that The Vicar consistently makes: that anyone who disagrees with him is, not just wrong, but acting in bad faith. And to be quite clear, I do not say the same about everyone who has decided to vote third party, or not vote, in the presidential election. I think they are badly mistaken – at least if they live in a state where the outcome is in any doubt – but I don’t call them self-deluding, let alone dishonest. The Vicar is the bad faith actor here – and we know from his previous comments that he wants Trump to win, and that he wants that in order to bring forward the collapse of the USA into chaos, which he thinks he can know is inevitable. And if you keep defending his bad faith, that will make you a bad faith actor too.
Churchill was anti-enemies of the UK.
He only spoke out against fascism once fascist countries became enemies of the UK.
Maybe we should start dropping the statues out of helicopters
John Crace, writing in the Grauniad, relied a suggestion he’d heard, Could the Colston statue be recast as social reformer Frederick Douglass?:
And — cross-posted from poopyhead’s current [Pandemic and] Political Madness all the Time thread — This interview with the Mayor of Bristol (UK), Marvin Rees, “the first directly elected black mayor in Europe”, is worth reading in full, Bristol mayor: Colston statue removal was act of ‘historical poetry’. One point he made particularly struck me. The police commanders on-the-ground at the time teh slaver’s statue was toppled and sent for a swim decided to not interfere, a decision which has sent teh rabid nutcases into frothing spittle-flecked spams. The Mayor’s rather more considered take (my added emboldening):
@7 Biden would follow through…once the rest of us win that fight again. That’s how centrist Dems operate, they believe in Good Things…just not enough to spill their own blood and toil for it. They’ll hem and haw in the middle till it looks safe to take a position. They’re tools, in multiples senses of the word
vicar @13 Well actually, you said in both 10 and 13 “supported” but that’s past tense; the general election is hasn’t happened yet so that should be “supporting”. By saying “supported” you imply an event that has already happened, which would mean in this context that you were talking about the primary election, which means that #11 was actually correct in what they said.
There is absolutely a conversation to be had about what to do with statues of people who did both good stuff and horrible stuff. It’s not at all clear to me that such a conversation can be had with respect to the statues of Confederate ‘war heroes’, because what else did they do that might serve as justification for not toppling their statues?
Anyone?
Indeed there is. And reflecting on the current brouhaha about Churchill’s statue in Parliament Square in London (for anyone who doesn’t know, someone wrote on it, beneath his name, “was a racist”, which is certainly true, and a few people have called for its removal), just about the only good thing he did was to help defeat the Axis in WW2, so it should in all fairness be paired with a statue of Stalin – and possibly the latter should be several times the size. (Of course The Vicar would say that anyone who joined the struggle against the Axis, since doing so was undoubtedly “supporting Churchill” and also “supporting Stalin”, could not possibly disapprove of Churchill’s advocacy of the use of poison gas against “primitive tribes”, crushing of the General Strike, determination to retain the Empire, etc., or of Stalin’s purges, liquidation of the kulaks, the gulag, etc.)