https://www-m.cnn.com/2019/07/13/pol...www.cnn.com%2F
In before "bUt teH KKK wAs fOuNdeD by DeMoCrAtS LMAO dUmB liBruLs"
https://www-m.cnn.com/2019/07/13/pol...www.cnn.com%2F
In before "bUt teH KKK wAs fOuNdeD by DeMoCrAtS LMAO dUmB liBruLs"
Forever Fredi
is the president going for the dedication?
"For there is always light, if only we are brave enough to see it. If only we are brave enough to be it." Amanda Gorman
"When Fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross"
The best way to stop a bad guy with a gun is to make sure he doesn’t get a gun.
Whenever this kind of stuff happens I'm always amused by how people get selectively outraged. Some historical figures are treated with disgust and contempt, while others with similar flaws are venerated.
Abraham Lincoln was a racist who in the fourth Lincoln-Douglas debate stated he was against equality, believed in physical differences between whites and blacks, and advocated for white superiority. He also did one of the most evil acts of any President when he suspended the writ of habeus corpus. There's a massive memorial to him in the middle of DC.
George Washington owned slaves from the age of 11. Jefferson owned hundreds of slaves over his life and tried to rationalize the practice at points. Both are deified.
Andrew Jackson, apart from being a slave owner, committed terrible atrocities against Native Americans. His face is on money.
FDR rounded up Japanese Americans and put them into camps. Actual American citizens. He was also fairly antisemitic. He's also on money and regarded by many as one of our greatest presidents.
The list could go on and on.
I'm not saying venerating these people is right or wrong. And I'm not saying honoring Forrest was right. I'm just constantly amused by societal hypocrisy.
50PoundHead (07-18-2019), The Chosen One (07-18-2019)
This is not the 18th,19th or mid 20th century.
Jim Crow was outlawed over 50 years ago
Slavery was abolished over 250 years ago -Japanese internment was a blotch on our history. And, noted by law and officially and rightly apologized for
Using history as a guide, " societal hypocrisy " is lazy and misleading
The KKK was/ is a terrorist organization whose sole purpose was to intimidate people of color and yes, Jews , Catholics and ...
This is comparable to a Muslim country erecting statues of bin Laden
According to the Tuskegee Institute, 4,743 people were lynched between 1882 and 1968 in the United States, including 3,446 African Americans
an overview
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lynchi..._United_States
The best way to stop a bad guy with a gun is to make sure he doesn’t get a gun.
I actually agree with your overall sentiment.
There have been many flawed leaders, but winners get to write the history books. Hence also why I'm always hesitant to simply make every modern decision based on "what would the founders do".
I think it's very important to educate people on their flaws, and treat them just as vital as their accomplishments.
I think the problem with the Modern GOP is the party is shrinking so much that party leadership is stuck having to hold on to the people who gravitate to that subtle racist stuff. Trumpism is a disease and represents the absolute worst of America. And it brings us back momentarily in time to a lot of those same sentiments you brought up from past leaders (you forgot to include Woodrow Wilson as well).
The GOP has sacrificed future growth of their party by investing in this Trumpism stuff. It is the hill the current establishment has chosen to die on for the next 10-15 years.
Forever Fredi
I wouldn't ascribe it to the shrinking of the party. I'd ascribe it to the growth of the fringes primarying the establishment.
Primary elections are low voter turnout elections. As such, they tend to get dominated by the frothing at the mouth extremist fringes of the parties as these people tend to go vote. If you express anything resembling a moderate viewpoint, you could end up facing off against an ideologue in your next primary.
You see the same thing happening on the left. You could ask one of the Democrat presidential candidates if they think it should be legal for a mother in the middle of labor to have the baby sacrificed in a demonic ritual to summon Beelzebub himself and they'd almost all tell you that it should be perfectly legal. Any deviation from the extreme to more moderate, reasonable thinking will get the fringes of your party attacking you and leaving you no chance to win a primary.
The fringes are driving the party buses right now and that's who is being catered to. It's less damaging to do something crazy that appeases your party's fringe than to do something reasonable that benefits everyone.
50PoundHead (07-19-2019)
There's a big reason why Nathan Bedford FOrrest and his ilk shouldn't be venerated, and my first and foremost content, is anyone who seceded from the USA is a traitor and should not be venerated. I'm not of course talking about the normal joes who had not real stake in the game, but that wasn't him. He wasn't a simple footsoldier conscripted to war on a lie. He was a slaver who financed the war.
Stockholm, more densely populated than NYC - sturg
I agree Forrest shouldn't be venerated. At the same time, I grew up near the ruins of a textile mill that employed women, children,and elderly men during the civil war. Sherman ordered the workers be charged with treason, put them in a prison camp where the women were assaulted, and had the workers involuntarily deported to Indiana. Few ever returned.
That man has a statue on the national mall.
My point is not that Forrest should be venerated. My point is we're stupid about who we venerate.
50PoundHead (07-19-2019)
Not much would make me feel sorry for anyone involved in the confederacy. Overall the South got a sweet deal out of the whole thing. Now the South governs the whole whole country.
As for anyone who was a foot soldier. They are as much to blame as anyone. Do not forgive people who pick up guns to fight wars of aggression. We are all human beings with minds of our own. Those who are lemmings to those in power enable genocides and wars.
Last edited by cajunrevenge; 07-18-2019 at 11:38 PM.
"Donald Trump will serve a second term as president of the United States.
It’s over."
Little Thethe Nov 19, 2020.
Runnin (07-19-2019)
Sherman created some horrifying atrocities, especially during his march to the sea. But there are 2 things to remember. 1. War is hell. 2. History is written by the victors. What Sherman did was break the backbone of the Confederacy, people living in border states had dealt with the most loss, while the deeper south supplied the war and profited from the war and ran the war. Sherman's March to the Sea was to break the backbone of the effective governing body of the Confederacy. Destroying supply lines, factories, etc. As well as lowering morale in the Confederacy. We won't know the effects of Sherman's March, the North would have won the war anyway, but it may have shortened the war by months, or years. And that's what makes war hell. Lives are gonna be ruined and loss, sometimes it comes down to balancing a death ledger.
Stockholm, more densely populated than NYC - sturg
I don't really think there should be anything after "Sherman created some horrifying atrocities." I don't think there really should be any attempt to justify what he did. If anything, he should be used as an example of how not to conduct war.
War is going to cost civilian lives. It's unavoidable. But there's a huge difference between intentional targeting of civilians and civilians being the collateral damage of a legitimate target. The intentional targeting of civilians in war is evil and cannot be justified. That's what Sherman did.
And it's not like he was following the standards of the day. Lincoln issued the Lieber Code not long before Sherman's campaign. Sherman pretty much ignored it. The atrocities Sherman committed were also decried in the North as well as the South.
I'm not for whitewashing history. I think it warps the lessons history can teach us. I find Forrest getting honored to be ridiculous. The guy was a trash person. The same goes for Jefferson Davis. But I find the veneration of people like Lincoln and Sherman to be silly as well. Those guys did some really evil stuff as well which gets ignored. When it is discussed people try to justify it. I find that troubling.
You say you're not for whitewashing history but you are spinning something fierce. Did Sherman target civilians, yup. He did it as a method of total war. But what were the civilian casualties of his march to the sea? THe number I see is that there were 3100 casualties, 2100 of which were union troops. Compare that to Jefferson Davis's order to burn Richmond as the Civil War was coming to an end that lead to many casualties. ANd then he gets a monument or 2 in Richmond itself.
ANyway, I don't want to drone on. You're a southern born and raised dude as I recall. I know from a few friends that how they teach the civil war in the south is very different than how it's teached elsewhere.Why does Lee and other confederate generals often get passes and a lot more monuments and a lot less criticism than Sherman, when during the invasion of Pennsylvania confederates captured free black men and conscripted them to slavery. But they get a free pass it seems.
Again, war is hell. What Sherman did was in his mind deemed necessary by the resilience of the confederacy. Akin to dropping the Nukes in WWII, there is a debate of is what he did that bad? Is destroying swaths of property and resources that bad if it lead to the war coming to a close quicker? These are things that have to be looked at with a critical lens because the world isn't black and white. It has all different kinds of grey in it. And remember looking at the modern world, we see lots of critiques of Sherman, Grant, Sheridan, etc. but rarely see them for Lee, a man who viewed union black soldiers as property not people.
A lot of people did a lot of evil things during the CIvil War, it was an ugly war, one fought hard between people who used to be allies. The reason that Lincoln is venerated is because he preserved the union. ANd did so despite heavy opposition in his own country. What Lincoln did was a damned near miracle. And if the South Won. The south lost and Jefferson Davis is venerated in the South.
Stockholm, more densely populated than NYC - sturg
I believe I called Jefferson Davis a trash person in an earlier post. I have no respect for the guy and don't think he should have been venerated at any point.
There's a difference between war causing collateral damage and the intentional targeting of civilians. WWII is a good example. There were plenty of cases where the Allied's actions caused civilian deaths as a by product of trying to attack legitimate targets. Then there were those times where civilians were either intentionally targeted or no attempt was made to avoid civilian casualties when there could have been. Dresden is probably the most egregious example of the Allied's crossing that line to me.
Sherman crossed that line. It wasn't an accident or even a momentary lapse in judgment. His plan was to intentionally target civilians. Sherman was a trash person as well and should not be venerated.
Ultimately my point is probably that we venerate people incorrectly. We want to take someone who did something great and hold them out as an ideal human. A paragon of perfection. Reality is messier and we ignore the ugly truths of history to our own peril.
Lincoln kept the union together and effectively ended slavery in the US. However, he also was a racist that suspended the writ of habeus corpus. I would like to see the latter taught along side the former. Show him as a man that had his faults.
Sherman's campaign shattered confederate resistance but at what cost to the country's soul?
Lee was a peerless general and had the respect of both sides in the war. People even point to his more progressive (for the time and especially for a Virginia slave owner) writings on slavery and race. However, that can't change the fact that he was a slave owner who fought for the side in favor of slavery and who also in his writings went through mental gymnastics to try to rationalize his owning of slaves as moral.
Every person in history has had flaws. Even the greatest historical heroes. I think acknowledging their flaws alongside their triumphs is important.
FFF - BB, BB, 2B, HR, 2B, HR, 1B, BB, BB, 1B, BB, BB, HR
Under Tennessee law, governors are required to proclaim six dates as "days of special observance" including July 13 as "Nathan Bedford Forrest Day"; June 3 as "Memorial Day" or "Confederate Decoration Day"; and January 19 as "Robert E. Lee Day."
Idiotic law
I appreciate the point striker is making, but there’s no question what this law is about.
And it’s well-nigh bizarre that the same people who support it are nodding along in chorus with Trump about how much some Congressmembers hate America...while honoring men who hated America so much that they caused the death of hundreds of thousands.