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.