I suppose maybe it’s time to get started bulldozing every Confederate-related monument and cemetery in the country and try to pretend like our Civil War never happened. Apparently that project is now underway, and the people pushing it appear to be naive enough to believe this approach might do some good. So, consider what just happened in Charlottesville, VA last weekend and try to imagine a positive outcome. Now we are obliged to talk about it, with the POTUS leading the chorus.
Despite actually knowing very little about the man himself, I hate the fuck out of Donald Trump – thought he might be a useful idiot in his current role, and the right idiot for the job, at this time in history, given the binary choice. From a politician or political perspective, at least he has the cojones to not always attempt being politically correct. Political correctness, whether it is being done to assuage special interests, coddle foreign despots or mollify the general social stratum is not now, nor has it ever been a “good” idea. It only serves to exacerbate and prolong the controversy it purports to address. Perhaps PC indifference even was/is a big contributor to getting us here in the 1st place.
The social issues subsequently engendered by slavery (and all forms of bigotry and discrimination, for that matter) will not be helped by attempting to block out history. Currently fashionable attitudes and responses to this state of affairs fundamentally constitute censorship from the left meeting hate on the right. There is nothing wrong with a historical monument or statue, whether you like or agree with what it stands for or not. There are some very popular monuments and historical sites in Germany and eastern Europe that represent dark periods of evil just as bad or worse than what our Confederacy and it’s heritage stand for here.
Statues, memorials and history itself set the stage. Those things are useful remembrances to bygone days. Painful as they may be, they’d be better served in a museum, pointing the way forward in law and and justice. The principles of social equality have been firmly established through our courts and legislatures. Attempting to influence the status quo by taking down statues or beating up skinheads is woefully self-delusional and a direct incite to violence. The reformers and haters have equal enmity for the other. That problem really only exists on a personal level. It becomes a completely different problem when institutionalized or combined in like-minded mobs. We solved the institutional part a long time ago.
The only way this gets better is after the individuals harboring it grow old and die. I say “Death to the Haters!” Preferably due to natural causes. Time heals all wounds.