>First of all, don't talk to the furry about fetishizing inanimate objects, because now all the nightmares are returning. Now the argument you didn't want has to happen because I really need to get back at you for reminding me of the fucking things you have.
I'm not really sure what you're talking about, but ok lmao. Anyway...
Half of your post is continuing to fethisize the statue, and the other half is trying to convince me that Robert E Lee was a good person. Thus your arguments don't really change my mind at all, because I don't believe in magic, and I also don't believe that a general on the Confederates side could ever be a good person regardless if he personally was one. Allow me to explain...
You're falling into the same trap people always do when describing (for example) police officers. They always tend to exaggerate or make a point of saying something like "not all cops are bad people!" -- When the reality is, whether or not cops are personally good or bad people doesn't matter at all, in the same way whether or not Robert was a personally good person doesn't matter at all. Describing people like that is a spook, and what really matters is what they do or did -- police are class traitors and subjugate members of their ex-class, so to me they're collectively "bad" people no matter what else they personally do. Robert fought a war to keep others in bondage*, so to me he's a "bad" person no matter what else he did, especially because he never did anything during his life to reconcile his fighting for the Confederates. (it's worth mentioning Robert played the role of a modern policeman during the events of John Brown's siege, another point of contention I have with him... #restinpowerjohnbrown...).
>Firstly, yes, it was as Mizal said, a historical monument made by historical people. It's an artifact that's a part of our history and what was once our culture, as well as something that CANNOT be ignored.
Yay good job continuing your fucking fetishizing. I can't tell if this was written in 2017 CE or 2017 BCE. Just like this rock here can magically control the powers of history and culture, my other rock can cause famines if I don't pray to it hard enough!
As I said earlier, the only effects that will occur from taking down the statue is that we simply stop publicly glorifying someone we don't need to. Our culture will continue to evolve and change as culture does, and history will remain largely unaffected. Don't worry, people will still remember the Civil War occurred and shit, and will talk about it, just like Russians remember the USSR happened despite the lack of Lenin statutes there.
I don't live near the statue. Am I ignoring "it" (at this point I can't tell if "it" is in reference to the war / Robert himself / the statue itself) because I'm not gazing upon it 24/7? Is my knowledge of history and my culture constantly at attack because I'm not constantly bombarding myself with the image of nineteenth century slavers striking dignified and regal poses? Do you think I should plaster pictures of the statue around my house so that I don't accidentally forget the war occurred? Because if I ignore the statue, the statue will use it's vile magic to make me forget the war ever occurred! Maybe I should also start sacrificing lambs to the statue too... y'know just in case...
But really though: when you place a statue of someone in a dignified posture on a city corner, the primary purpose isn't to memorialize history. This is how a statue of Lee will differ from a book or article about Lee. Unlike all those other things, the statue of Lee on the street corner is primarly to publicly glorify him, and that there are other, much more better ways to preserve the memory and history of Robert E Lee. For some reason, you attribute extended powers to the statue, the powers of controlling history and controlling people's memories and such. I don't understand why...
>I'd consider Malcolm to be almost as morally gray a figure to memorialize as Lee tbh
That's just fucking disgusting and gross, and now I'm actually triggered. Malcolm didn't die so that his legacy could be equated to that of the people he fought against his whole life by future ignorant people...
Can't have my negroes be uppity about the brutal racism they face everyday or anything! They've gotta be nice and calm, otherwise they're just as bad as a man who fought a war to protect the institution of slavery!
*So to clear something up: Did Robert fight on the Confederates because he hated Africans? Maybe not 100%, and there are surely more important factors that he considered when joining the Confederates like his southern nationalism, but a part of him was definitely racist and reactionary. Source
A desire to maintain racial control figured most prominently in Lee’s Southern identity. Often portrayed as opposed to slavery, he in fact accepted the peculiar institution as the best means for ordering relations between the races and resented Northerners who attacked the motives and character of slaveholders and seemed willing, or even eager, to disrupt racial stability in the Southern states. In late December 1856, he ruminated at considerable length to his wife on the topic. “[S]lavery as an institution,” he wrote, “is a moral and political evil in any country. It is useless to expiate on its disadvantages.” But he also believed slavery was “a greater evil to the white than to the black race, & while my feelings are strongly enlisted in behalf of the latter, my sympathies are more strongly for the former.” The fate of enslaved millions should be left in God’s hands: “Their emancipation will sooner result from the mild & melting influence of Christianity, than the storms & tempests of fiery controversy.”
[...]
Yet Lee certainly resented Northerners who would tamper with the South’s racial order, an attitude that continued during the war. Although it is seldom quoted by historians, his response to Lincoln’s final proclamation of emancipation leaves no doubt about the depth of his feeling. On January 10, 1863, he wrote to Confederate Secretary of War James A. Seddon, calling for greater mobilization of human and material resources in the face of U.S. military power that threatened complete social disruption in the Confederacy. Lincoln’s proclamation laid out “a savage and brutal policy,” stated Lee with simmering anger, “which leaves us no alternative but success or degradation worse than death, if we would save the honor of our families from pollution, our social system from destruction….” Lee’s use of “degredation,” “pollution” and “social system”—words often deployed by white Southerners in antebellum discussions about the possible consequences of abolitionism—highlight the degree to which Lincoln’s policy menaced more than the integrity of the Confederate political state.
[...]
Lee’s devotion to a slaveholding republic’s “social institutions”—he had used the phrase “social system” in his letter to Secretary of War Seddon regarding the Emancipation Proclamation—does much to explain his fierce loyalty to the Confederacy. When Lee observed that Union victory would end slavery in a “manner most pernicious to the welfare of our people” and with “evil consequences to both races,” it is reasonable to infer he meant without a guarantee of white supremacy and with massive economic dislocation. During the debate over arming slaves, he reiterated the opinion expressed to his wife in 1856: namely, that he considered “the relation of master and slave, controlled by humane laws and influenced by Christianity and an enlightened public sentiment, as the best that can exist between the white and black races while intermingled as at present in this country.” That relation, which was most desirable in Lee’s judgment because it afforded white people control over a huge black population, might be maintained indefinitely if Confederate armies established Southern nationality.
Huh... really fries up those almonds doesn't it? I wonder what he meant by by this.
>you shouldn't try to rewrite even the small details of history because, y'know, that's what Pol Pot was trying to do.
>The reason statues can and should exist is to remind people of the person and the importance of that person
>You can discuss things like statues and pieces of art, you can be a responsible human being rather than a triggered snowflake and explain why it's there, who it is, and talk about the morals of the person.
Here are several examples of you fetishizing the statue. Reminder: the statue does not hold the powers of history.
And in response to the last one, I like the 'triggered snowflake' -- because if you don't want to publicly glorify a racist person from the eighteenth century, you're a snowflake.
