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Thursday, August 31, 2017

The cause du jour

The most recent cause among the Left is to demand that statues of Confederate heroes come down. They evidently feel very passionate about this, and have even staged mass protests abut it. Many seem moved to the point of hysteria.

But it leaves one wondering: if they find these statues of Robert E. Lee and Nathan Bedford Forrest and Jefferson Davis so incredibly offensive, why did they not object to them last year?

If, as the Left claims, the mere existence of these statues is the equivalent of violence, why did they not feel violated as they walked past these statues ten years ago? Or five years ago? Did those statues not rip at their souls then?

It certainly seems that this particular crowd thinks whatever it's told to think, whenever they're told to think something. Which basically means its members are unable to think for themselves. They're essentially automatons, who go in whichever direction they're pointed.

(Politburo members in the old Soviet Union used to refer to the American Left as "useful idiots.")

Most people walk by statues barely aware of whom the statues represent. I've walked past plenty of statues in public squares without bothering to see who was being commemorated. I'm sure that most of the people memorialized were admirable, but there were probably a few whom, had I known more about them, I might have disapproved of.

Either way, I never felt violated as I walked past one. Had I bothered to read the inscription at the base of the statue, and had I seen that the statue was of, say, Jack the Ripper, I think my reaction would have been astonishment. I might even have found it funny. But I doubt I would have felt violated and trembled with rage.

Frankly, it would never even have occurred to me to react that way.

This is an issue where it's a lot easier to sympathize with blacks than with their white allies on the Left. As I've said before, I've always seen Confederate flags as sort of an upraised middle finger to blacks. And if I were black, walking past a statue of Jefferson Davis might give me pause. (Though I suspect that most blacks, like me, are usually blithely unaware of the identity of most statues they happen to pass by.) But still, why did they not object before?

As for the whites who are now demanding such statues be torn down? For them, it's just the latest trendy way to virtue signal.

In fact, it's the same kind of whites who now demand Confederate statues be toppled who, had they been around in, say, Georgia, in 1810, would have believed whatever they were told to believe in back then, too.

Like slavery.

A certain type of personality will always subscribe to whatever mode of thinking is fashionable.

10 comments:

Mark Caplan said...

The Left is following the tried and true strategy of death by a thousand cuts. A couple of years ago, the focus was on gay marriage. Once they got that squared away, the Left turned to transgender rights. Today it's demolishing racially offensive statues and monuments, and renaming public and academic buildings that sport triggering names. In each case, traditionalists put up a limp opposition that quickly collapses.

After the nation has been cleansed of the aforementioned insensitive items, my guess is the Left will try to institute Sharia as a parallel legal system.

John Craig said...

Mark --
True about the thousand cuts. But Sharia law? That would reverse all the gains that feminism has achieved in the last forty years. Or maybe hundred years. (Women's suffrage went into effect in 1920.)

At least the opposition to all of this seems to be getting a little more passionate. Every time the Antifa crowd acts up, the alt-right gains more converts.

Mark Caplan said...

Logical contradictions don't seem to trouble the post-modern Left.

Ramzpaul and others detected a sudden sea-change in the Left's attitude toward their masked, Antifa goon-squads. Just as Hitler unexpectedly turned on his SA (Sturmabteilung) militia in the Night of the Long Knives, the Left appears to have just as unexpectedly cut its ties to its Antifa enforcers.

How else to explain the Washington Post's headline of Aug. 28: "Black-clad antifa members attack peaceful right-wing demonstrators in Berkeley"?

Overnight flip-flop: Left starts condemning Antifa (Ramzpaul)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_nwn6lnw6bA

John Craig said...

Mark --
I think that the establishment left is waking up to the fact that the antifa forces are driving people away from the Democrats. This isn't dissimilar to how young white guys wearing Nazi eagles and swastikas or people who identify as KKK are just driving away those who might otherwise be receptive to alt-right logic.

Anonymous said...

I read this morning in the Daily Mail that according to a new court ruling, the Cherokee Nation (the second largest Indian tribe in the USA) now has to offer tribal citizenship to descendants of black slaves that were owned by Indians. Slaves have existed since ancient times. Why is that only one race seems to sue everyone and everything over their rights. It's to the point where it's ridiculous.

- birdie

John Craig said...

Birdie --
The really amazing thing is that there is still slavery, to this day, in Africa and elsewhere, yet no one mentions it. Mauritania didn't even ban slavery until 1981, and they didn't criminalize it until 2007. Since then, there has been only one prosecution for the crime, though slavery still exists there. Yet all we get from the MSM about that is....dead silence.

Anonymous said...

Many of the comments are good, basically, stating that the only reason why this group of people want to be included in the tribe is for the freebies (e.g., Casino money, health care, etc.) that can be gained through their association with the Indians. That's the true motive behind the lawsuit.

- birdie

John Craig said...

Birdie --
Money is the motive behind most lawsuits.

Shaun F said...

John - Good read and thought provoking. Why "now" all these statues suddenly became offensive and had to come down hadn't dawned on me. "Useful idiots" indeed.

John Craig said...

Thank you Shaun.