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Post by Stammerhead on Jun 8, 2020 18:29:21 GMT
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Post by MCDemuth on Jun 8, 2020 18:52:57 GMT
When you look at them, they are just carved stone...
DON'T BLINK...
Or the Weeping Angels may just kill you...
Seriously though...
Statues are just carved stone..
It's the people who look at them who have the problem... because they are the ones filled with fear & hate, who are looking for monsters everywhere.
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Post by Stammerhead on Jun 8, 2020 19:02:44 GMT
When you look at them, they are just carved stone... DON'T BLINK... Or the Weeping Angels may just kill you... Seriously though... Statues are just carved stone.. It's the people who look at them who have the problem... because they are the ones filled with fear & hate, who are looking for monsters everywhere. I wonder if statues know that people hate them.
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Post by amyghost on Jun 8, 2020 19:06:00 GMT
I'm not in favor of trying to tear down history, sweep it under the rug, or move it to some inconspicuous location. The Germans don't try to re-locate the evidences of their recent history, such as the site of the Nuremberg Rallies, the Reichstag, death camps, or other concrete proofs of misguided policies, to some backwater where no one has to see or think about them. They preserve the edifices and make them openly available as teaching tools to the public, so that public can learn from the errors of the past. We should be adult enough to do likewise with the physical evidences of our historical mistakes, but I'm starting to wonder if we have the national maturity to level to handle that.
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Post by Stammerhead on Jun 8, 2020 19:15:57 GMT
I'm not in favor of trying to tear down history, sweep it under the rug, or move it to some inconspicuous location. The Germans don't try to re-locate the evidences of their recent history, such as the site of the Nuremberg Rallies, the Reichstag, death camps, or other concrete proofs of misguided policies, to some backwater where no one has to see or think about them. They preserve the edifices and make them openly available as teaching tools to the public, so that public can learn from the errors of the past. We should be adult enough to do likewise with the physical evidences of our historical mistakes, but I'm starting to wonder if we have the national maturity to level to handle that. I few hundred years ago angry mobs would tear down statues, burn people alive and slaughter the innocent so I suppose we’ve matured a bit since then.
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Post by Stammerhead on Jun 8, 2020 19:21:58 GMT
Anyway, I blame The Redskins...
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Post by amyghost on Jun 8, 2020 19:22:20 GMT
I'm not in favor of trying to tear down history, sweep it under the rug, or move it to some inconspicuous location. The Germans don't try to re-locate the evidences of their recent history, such as the site of the Nuremberg Rallies, the Reichstag, death camps, or other concrete proofs of misguided policies, to some backwater where no one has to see or think about them. They preserve the edifices and make them openly available as teaching tools to the public, so that public can learn from the errors of the past. We should be adult enough to do likewise with the physical evidences of our historical mistakes, but I'm starting to wonder if we have the national maturity to level to handle that. I few hundred years ago angry mobs would tear down statues, burn people alive and slaughter the innocent so I suppose we’ve matured a bit since then. I'd like to think that we've at least abandoned the latter two of those practices, but the way things are going I'm not certain about even that. It is a certainty that if we can't or won't learn from our collective past, we will be likely enough to repeat it. And we can't learn from it if we insist on hiding it from view or pretending, for reasons of protecting some members of society from potential offense, that it never happened in the first place.
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Post by Doghouse6 on Jun 8, 2020 19:30:56 GMT
I'm not in favor of trying to tear down history, sweep it under the rug, or move it to some inconspicuous location. The Germans don't try to re-locate the evidences of their recent history, such as the site of the Nuremberg Rallies, the Reichstag, death camps, or other concrete proofs of misguided policies, to some backwater where no one has to see or think about them. They preserve the edifices and make them openly available as teaching tools to the public, so that public can learn from the errors of the past. We should be adult enough to do likewise with the physical evidences of our historical mistakes, but I'm starting to wonder if we have the national maturity to level to handle that. The memorials you cite are the literal preservation of history. They aren't monuments to those who committed the atrocities they represent. I've never heard of any statues of those people, erected decades after the fact, placed prominently in town squares. That, I think, is the difference between honest acknowledgement of history and celebratory expressions of its worst periods.
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Post by amyghost on Jun 8, 2020 19:50:04 GMT
I'm not in favor of trying to tear down history, sweep it under the rug, or move it to some inconspicuous location. The Germans don't try to re-locate the evidences of their recent history, such as the site of the Nuremberg Rallies, the Reichstag, death camps, or other concrete proofs of misguided policies, to some backwater where no one has to see or think about them. They preserve the edifices and make them openly available as teaching tools to the public, so that public can learn from the errors of the past. We should be adult enough to do likewise with the physical evidences of our historical mistakes, but I'm starting to wonder if we have the national maturity to level to handle that. The memorials you cite are the literal preservation of history. They aren't monuments to those who committed the atrocities they represent. I've never heard of any statues of those people, erected decades after the fact, placed prominently in town squares. That, I think, is the difference between honest acknowledgement of history and celebratory expressions of its worst periods. We pretty much lack those types of memorials on our soil, in any appreciable numbers; and Germans weren't all that much into putting up statues to Hitler, Goebbels, Heydrich and the like as public monuments (though they glorified them enough in tons of kitschy artworks). Given that, I feel that the structures I named are probably pretty analogous to monuments to those who committed those atrocities, but the revised context is now aimed at pointing up the horrendous errors associated with them. I don't think they're much viewed as 'celebratory' these days, except by the lunatic fringe, who are going to always find some tangible expression of wrongheadedness to rally 'round; and I can't help but feel that far more could be accomplished by use of these statues as guideposts to understanding and drawing lessons from that history than by trying to consign them to some type of '1984'-esque memory hole. And once you start this, where does it end? Who determines which monuments are 'acceptable' to remain, and which should be abolished? Some of the same protesters who are trying to remove these statues also rallied for removing the statue of Thomas Jefferson from the UVA campus, based on the same rationales. Perhaps we should simply ban all memorial statuary altogether--and I'm not being facetious; if problems of this nature are destined to dog any piece of imagery that might carry the taint of after-the-fact recrimination based on outmoded policies associated with that imagery, then it might be better if we simply dispensed with it altogether.
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Post by amyghost on Jun 8, 2020 20:11:22 GMT
I'm not in favor of trying to tear down history, sweep it under the rug, or move it to some inconspicuous location. The Germans don't try to re-locate the evidences of their recent history, such as the site of the Nuremberg Rallies, the Reichstag, death camps, or other concrete proofs of misguided policies, to some backwater where no one has to see or think about them. They preserve the edifices and make them openly available as teaching tools to the public, so that public can learn from the errors of the past. We should be adult enough to do likewise with the physical evidences of our historical mistakes, but I'm starting to wonder if we have the national maturity to level to handle that. Nobody is going to plow over Civil War battlefields or burn down Tara. These statues, for the most part, were not erected until the Daughters of the Confederacy began promoting the “Lost Cause” (and good fucking riddance.) From Wikipedia If you want to visit this era’s history, go to a former slave plantation and notice how the docents gloss over how slaves were treated...if it’s mentioned at all. I live in Virginia, a hotbed of 'Lost Cause' mentality. It's because of that that I feel it's especially important to use the monuments as teaching tools. They're readily accessible throughout Richmond, and can be visited by thousands of tourists and natives per year. With that sort of prevalent accessibility to information about the true nature of slavery and the Confederacy, it would make it much harder for those docents to put the pretty gloss on the ugly truth that they now do. As potential vehicles for conveying that information to large numbers of people, the statues could prove pretty invaluable.
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Post by Prime etc. on Jun 8, 2020 20:21:02 GMT
You basically have a tribe of one group tearing down the culture of a tribe of another group. That's all it is. Happens when a new population moves into a location and the numbers reach the point where they can throw around their influence. The only thing is that this was a slow invasion--it wasn't a military conquest. And there was a lot of propaganda by those who wanted the invasion to tell the public: "oh don't worry about it, it's good for you."
Give an inch take a foot. The situation in England is a great example since those BLM protestors did not come into England as descendants of slaves but they still hate the host society. It's reality check time.
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Post by amyghost on Jun 8, 2020 20:32:27 GMT
I live in Virginia, a hotbed of 'Lost Cause' mentality. It's because of that that I feel it's especially important to use the monuments as teaching tools. They're readily accessible throughout Richmond, and can be visited by thousands of tourists and natives per year. With that sort of prevalent accessibility to information about the true nature of slavery and the Confederacy, it would make it much harder for those docents to put the pretty gloss on the ugly truth that they now do. As potential vehicles for conveying that information to large numbers of people, the statues could prove pretty invaluable. The problem here is that’s not going to happen. I do not want a statue erected and given a place of honor to a man who fought to keep black people in chains and treated less than an animal because he believed slavery was God ordained. I say build a park of shame for them and let’s see how many white people come to learn that lesson. Actually, I think it may be pretty close to happening. The city is becoming far more open to the establishment of monuments to the realities of slavery and the slave trade than anyone living here could have possibly imagined even as little as a decade ago. To see the Confederate monuments follow suit as being re-purposed to show the wrongheadedness of the very cause they were initially designed to eulogize would not only be appropriate irony, but quite possibly inevitable. I don't want to sound overly optimistic, but I don't see this as being all that unlikely to occur, given the current climate.
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Post by amyghost on Jun 8, 2020 20:47:08 GMT
Actually, I think it may be pretty close to happening. The city is becoming far more open to the establishment of monuments to the realities of slavery and the slave trade than anyone living here could have possibly imagined even as little as a decade ago. To see the Confederate monuments follow suit as being re-purposed to show the wrongheadedness of the very cause they were initially designed to eulogize would not only be appropriate irony, but quite possibly inevitable. I don't want to sound overly optimistic, but I don't see this as being all that unlikely to occur, given the current climate. If that happens, great. I’m not holding my breath. Oh, I never hold my breath where issues of positive change are concerned. I'm too old to have enough breaths left over for that endeavor .
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Post by amyghost on Jun 8, 2020 20:59:41 GMT
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Post by msdemos on Jun 8, 2020 21:04:08 GMT
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Post by Stammerhead on Jun 8, 2020 21:04:37 GMT
You basically have a tribe of one group tearing down the culture of a tribe of another group. That's all it is. Happens when a new population moves into a location and the numbers reach the point where they can throw around their influence. The only thing is that this was a slow invasion--it wasn't a military conquest. And there was a lot of propaganda by those who wanted the invasion to tell the public: "oh don't worry about it, it's good for you." Give an inch take a foot. The situation in England is a great example since those BLM protestors did not come into England as descendants of slaves but they still hate the host society. It's reality check time. Although if they’re of West Indian descent there’s a possibility that their ancestors passed through Bristol or were transported in ships owned by a Bristol based company.
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Post by Prime etc. on Jun 8, 2020 21:25:32 GMT
Although if they’re of West Indian descent there’s a possibility that their ancestors passed through Bristol or were transported in ships owned by a Bristol based company. So they would be carrying a grudge for their ancestors' travel route.
Speaking of statues, in movies set in Victorian times, one would sometimes see statues of black servants holding up lamps etc.
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Post by Stammerhead on Jun 8, 2020 21:29:55 GMT
Although if they’re of West Indian descent there’s a possibility that their ancestors passed through Bristol or were transported in ships owned by a Bristol based company. So they would be carrying a grudge for their ancestors' travel route.
Speaking of statues, in movies set in Victorian times, one would sometimes see statues of black servants holding up lamps etc.
Yeah I suppose they all whined about being rounded up and sold as slaves the whole time instead of being happy about going on a boat trip.
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Post by Prime etc. on Jun 8, 2020 21:39:01 GMT
Yeah I suppose they all whined about being rounded up and sold as slaves the whole time instead of being happy about going on a boat trip. But it was like 400 years ago. For the descendants to be in a rage about that stopover is not healthy for long term social stability.
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Post by Stammerhead on Jun 8, 2020 23:00:21 GMT
Yeah I suppose they all whined about being rounded up and sold as slaves the whole time instead of being happy about going on a boat trip. But it was like 400 years ago. For the descendants to be in a rage about that stopover is not healthy for long term social stability.
Oh well, they lynch mobbed a statue. Could have been worse.
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