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  • Spot on.



    "So this week it's Robert E. Lee. I noticed that Stonewall Jackson's coming down. I wonder, is it George Washington next week? And is it Thomas Jefferson the week after? You know, you really do have to ask yourself, where does it stop? ... [Jefferson] was a major slave owner. Are we going to take down his statue?" — President Trump, Aug. 15, 2017

    The president made this statement Tuesday while jabbing at reporters over a white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Va., where white nationalists protested the removal of a statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee.

    And he used one of his standard rhetorical techniques, "whataboutism."

    While defending the protesters and claiming that they weren't all white supremacists, he changed the subject to attack others. "What about the alt-left?" he said, when asked about the white nationalist alt-right. ("Alt-left" is a term seemingly invented for whataboutism, making liberals seem like the moral equivalents of the "alt-right," whose members coined that term themselves.)

    Another Reversal: Trump Now Says Counterprotesters Also To Blame For Charlottesville
    POLITICS
    Another Reversal: Trump Now Says Counterprotesters Also To Blame For Charlottesville
    The president's whataboutism on history is the focus here.

    "Are we going to take down statues of George Washington? How about Thomas Jefferson?" Trump asked, given Washington's and Jefferson's slave ownership. He added, "You know, you really do have to ask yourself, where does it stop?"

    Well, let's take on those questions. The president is not the first person to ask.

    Washington did own slaves — and does not get a pass for freeing them at the end of his life. Jefferson was a "major slave owner," too — and is even more to be criticized, because he understood that slavery was wrong, calling it a "moral depravity" and a "hideous blot."

    Nor were they alone among our Founding Fathers: James Madison was a slave owner; even Benjamin Franklin owned two slaves before the practice was banned in Pennsylvania. Slavery was so deeply entrenched in the economy that it touched nearly everyone who lived before the Civil War, even those who did not own a slave.

    Trump Embraces One Of Russia's Favorite Propaganda Tactics — Whataboutism
    POLITICS
    Trump Embraces One Of Russia's Favorite Propaganda Tactics — Whataboutism
    This is an awkward reality for the keepers of memorials and historic sites. Keepers of the Hermitage, Andrew Jackson's home, have been forced to wrestle with the reality that he took Indian land, used enslaved laborers on multiple plantations and even personally chased escaped slaves. The Hermitage has responded by expanding displays showing the dark side of this historic figure, but it is not planning to tear down the house.

    So "whatabout" them? Must they all go if Robert E. Lee goes?

    Not necessarily, because they are not all the same.

    Some figures stood for something larger. Washington guided the foundation of a country that eventually preserved freedom for all. Jefferson authored the Declaration of Independence, in which a single phrase — "that all men are created equal" — became a hammer that later generations would use to help smash the chains of slavery.

    It's possible to make a case for honoring such men, so long as we are also honest about their flaws. They were participants in a great experiment in self-government, which has expanded over time to embrace more and more people of all races, not to mention women, too.

    So "whatabout" Lee? What did he stand for?

    Lee, who is connected by marriage to the family of Washington, resigned from the Army to fight against his country, on the Confederate side in the Civil War.

    Then and later, Confederate apologists dismissed the idea that they were fighting to defend slavery. They said they were fighting for "states' rights" or against Northern oppression. But conflict over slavery was what drove the fight for states' rights and divided the country for years before the war. The election of Abraham Lincoln, a president who was critical of slavery, triggered the rebellion.

    And the Confederate vice president, Alexander H. Stephens, was more frank than others in stating the rebels' aims. In an 1861 speech, he declared that the "cornerstone" of the Confederacy was "that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery subordination to the superior race is his natural and normal condition."

    Other Confederates may have fought for different reasons; it is said that Lee went over to the rebel side because he could not bear to fight against his native Virginia. But Stephens' "cornerstone" speech accurately describes the larger cause that Lee willingly served and generally accepted: a drive to overturn the idea of equality, which Stephens called an "error." This cause was the reason that many Confederate statues were built in the era of Jim Crow segregation, from after Reconstruction to the civil rights movement starting in the 1950s. Aside from Southern "heritage" or "pride," many explicitly represented white supremacy.

    There is still a case to be made for Lee as a brilliant general, who won battle after battle and kept his army together for years, even though it was massively outnumbered and undersupplied. He is a significant figure in the American story.

    Ulysses S. Grant, the general who defeated him, gave the best epitaph of Lee, saying the Confederate general "had fought so long and valiantly, and had suffered so much for a cause, though that cause was, I believe, one of the worst for which a people ever fought."

    But let's be honest. In Charlottesville over the weekend, the "Unite the Right" protesters chanted "blood and soil"; others listened to Richard Spencer, who has called for an all-white homeland. Members of one group, Identity Evropa, "seem to revel in goading counter-protesters into violent clashes," according to a profile of a member on KQED. Counterprotesters were indeed goaded into clashes — and a car, allegedly driven by an Ohio man on the white-nationalist side, drove into them, killing a woman.

    Is it remotely possible that Spencer and Identity Evropa and the driver of a Dodge Challenger came to defend the statue of Lee because of his skill in military tactics and strategy?

    To have such defenders says a lot about the cause that Lee represented. To have the president of the United States compare Lee to Washington is simply, factually wrong.
    I feel like I am watching the destruction of our democracy while my neighbors and friends cheer it on

    Comment


    • Its fucking sad that news outlets have to spend this much time writing this nonsense, because our stupid fucking president and stupid fucking minions are so ignorant. Amazing.

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      • Can we just replace a lot of these statues with ones of US Grant and Uncle Billy? It would be upgrades and would alleviate the asthetic concerns of Trump.

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        • Trump has plans to replace them all with himself.

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          • It seems the muslims one-upped white supremacists with driving cars into people.
            .
            Heh. Islamicists and white supremacists have a lot in common

            Wolf on CNN called the Barcelona attack a "copycat" of Charlottesville. Trump hatred has no bounds.

            Comment


            • Originally posted by crashcourse View Post
              people getting way to butthurt over this

              same people whining about under god in the pledge of allegiance whining about saying merry Christmas in a store whine about something I think is part of history and not something we have violent mobs tearing down.

              its obvious you don't want Nathan Bedford forest statue on your courthouse steps but robert e lee or stonewall Jackson went to west point fought for and shaped their states history and future. if the city or state wants to tear it down fine but the mob mentality of destruction is a dangerous precedent to be able to get away with.

              what next--all buildings with in god we trust being vandalized? Robert byrd being dug up and placed in an unmarked grave? Jefferson being whited out of the declaration of independence?

              too many people flip out over stupid crap

              flip out of Chicago murders or Illinois almost broke or wiz having y chomosones in his lineage if you want to flip out
              The reverse argument is also true...how is your life adversely affected by Stonewall Jackson no longer glowering down on inner city Baltimore? Yet it bothers you.

              I'd prefer a case by case basis for the statues and remove the artistically significant ones to a battlefield or museum, where they belong. The trashier mass-produced ones can be sold off at auction to private landowners to do with as they please. Pretty much all the ones of government property should go, except for cemeteries/museums/battlefields.

              The idea that these statues are necessary to keep history alive is ridiculous. No one's forgotten who the Nazis were or fails to remember the Soviet Union because they tore their monuments down.

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              • I like the statues. I would prefer that they stay.
                "The problem with quotes on the Internet is that it is sometimes hard to verify their authenticity." -Abraham Lincoln

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                • Originally posted by AlabamAlum View Post
                  I like the statues. I would prefer that they stay.
                  Oh well in that case.

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                  • Infrastructure Council latest advisory board to get axed

                    Advisory council is dead before it was ever fully formed, the administration announced Thursday

                    Comment


                    • I like the statues. I would prefer that they stay.
                      For what reason may I ask?

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                      • One of the monuments removed in New Oreleans was decidated to the men who led the Liberty Place Rebellion who led a whites-only attempt to overthrow the Federal troops that were still occupying the city post-Civil War. The monument contained an inscription that crowed that white supremacy had been restored thanks to the election of 1876 (when Reconstruction is generally considered to have ended).

                        Was that monument, dedicated to racists and declaring the importance of white supremacy, too historically important to ever remove no matter what the current people of New Orleans felt? Yet the argument pushed by crash and many conservatives is that by removing that statue all history is now in jeopardy and soon, very soon, graves will be desecrated, the Lincoln Memorial will be dynamited, and no one white will be allowed to be proud of their 'heritage' ever again.

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                        • too many people flip out over stupid crap


                          EXACTLY. This is just a distraction anyways the left cooked up to obscure the Seth Rich murder investigation.

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                          • Originally posted by hack View Post
                            too many people flip out over stupid crap


                            EXACTLY. This is just a distraction anyways the left cooked up to obscure the Seth Rich murder investigation.
                            Alex Jones has been pushing the idea that Charlottesville was all staged and a bunch of the Nazis looked "Jewish" to him.

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                            • I have read that all the racists were paid to be there and that it looked real because they are paid well. No fuckin joke.

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                              • DSL:

                                How do you think Ken Burns' documentary would be received today? It certainly didn't portray the treasonists as vile racists. Quite the contrary, he treated them with a lot of respect and even some reverence. I mean, can that possibly fly today? Or, for that matter, having Shelby Foote comment at all.

                                I ask that in view of the some preposterous comparisons of Confederate statutes -- "Did Germany erect Nazi statutes????" -- "Did we erect Cornwalis statutes???"

                                Now, I fully get the informed point against -- a lot of these were erected in Jim Crow as an overt racist symbol -- just as many states incorporated the treasonist flag into their own during that era. But, THAT's not the reason given by the masses -- it's literally, they fought for the treasonists are ergo vile.

                                And so I wonder how that view colors the way we would look at other treatments of the War to Suppress Southern Treason. It's a view that is increasingly popular, if not a majority, and it's one that you can't push back against w/o being labeled RACIST! So, I'm actually curious what folks would think of something as brilliant and defining as Ken Burns work if it were put out today.

                                BTW, if elected officials opt to remove the statutes, then I got no qualm. Just as I guess I have no qualm if elected Nevada officials want to rename McCarron Airport b/c McCarron was, apparently, racist (and, incidentally, obviously unassociated with the Civil War -- just a Senator in the 30s and 40s or something).
                                Dan Patrick: What was your reaction to [Urban Meyer being hired]?
                                Brady Hoke: You know.....not....good.

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