Across the land, symbols of white supremacy are being gotten rid of. Mississippi just removed the symbol of the Confederacy from its state flag - the last state to do so. Richmond VA, the capital of the Confederacy during the Civil War, removed statues of Robert E Lee and Stonewall Jackson. Statues commemorating the Confederacy are coming down. Should they? Absolutely.
The argument against the removal of the statues is that to do so is somehow to eliminate history. Well, if you want to depict the history of the Confederate Generals, the best way would be to place another statue next to the statue of the general - only this one would be a statue of the whipping and raping of slaves. That is the actual history of what the Confederate generals were fighting to save - slavery.
There are no statues in Germany honoring the history of noble Nazi soldiers and generals who fought in WWII. Why? Because enough of the Germans had the decency of being deeply ashamed of the inhumanity of the Nazis to tear down all symbols of that ideology of hatred - the ideology of white supremacy. It didn't happen overnight and the process is never done, but nobody is erecting statues to Goering or Hitler, and they never will.
I know that the South has been on a 150 year propaganda campaign to convince themselves and the rest of us that they seceded from the United States of America for some kind of noble reason to do with taxation, or agricultural policy, or some ridiculous abstraction about State's Rights, but is was just to save their economic way of life, slavery, and to preserve their most intensely held belief - the supremacy or the white race.
This 4th of July weekend has been a tough one for me. I usually enthusiastically celebrate the ideals of America on the 4th, but this 4th has a U.S. president openly praising and encouraging racism and hatred. America has become a place to be ashamed of because of its president, and because of too much of the Republican Party who are racist themselves or at least still supporting this appalling and racist "man".
It is a dark time in America. It is time for a renewal of the decency and integrity of this once great country. We can become great again, but it will have to be by loudly saying "NO" of the cruelty, stupidity, and racism of this president and far too many of his Republican Party.
Vote.
