HuffPo: UNC Students Topple Confederate Monument

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(whataboutism deleted)

Neither the campus nor the local government want the monument to slavery there, but NC’s autocratic government has banned local governments from removing statues. When you shut down democracy, you get extralegal violence.

This. While I'm not supportive of mob vandalism, on the other Hand LITERALLY  the ONLY other way the student body could've gotten rid of the statute was to somehow undo the excruciating level of GOP gerrymandering the entire state is subject to, win a majority (if not a supermajority) of the state leg, keep the governors office, in order to legislatively allow home rule on such matters.

Or, they could've, and did, eventually say "we've petitioned, we've asked, we protested, and a bunch of elderly "reformed" white supremacists hundreds of miles from here continually said "screw you".

It just dawned on me how snowflakey these right wingers are. They have to have immediate near unrestrained access to assault rifles in order to take "direct action" (i.e. killing feds) against even the THEORY of the government taking away our local rule. But in any actual case of completely ignoring local rule for ages an they get turned inside out over a statue specifically erected by white supremacists being toppled as "the beginning of mob rule.

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(whataboutism deleted)

Neither the campus nor the local government want the monument to slavery there, but NC’s autocratic government has banned local governments from removing statues. When you shut down democracy, you get extralegal violence.

What are you famed tough guys going to do?

Once again, you apparently can't wait to break out the doc martins and put those red laces back on to "fight back" against the army of antifa you see waiting for you around every corner.

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(whataboutism deleted)

Neither the campus nor the local government want the monument to slavery there, but NC’s autocratic government has banned local governments from removing statues. When you shut down democracy, you get extralegal violence.

What are you famed tough guys going to do?

Neither one of us lives in NC but I imagine putting independent redistricting on the ballot so they never get a 50/50 state drawn to have an artificial supermajority of one party that refuses to work with a governor of a different party whom they stripped of powers ever again would be a good place to start

This x 100

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Also don't want to hear anybody supporting this about Republicans or right-wingers or Trump supposedly breaking the law. And the right is better at this game.

If you truly conflate the widespread, nay, endemic corruption, self-dealing, for inclusion, and gutter sleaziness of a presidential Administration from top to bottom, with a bunch of college kids pulling down a Monument to the Confederacy, you are even more clueless than previously thought, and that's saying a lot.

Again, that's not even taking into account that Trump and the Republicans have literally all the power, Prestige, and money and that any of them should ever need in one lifetime, yet these college students are denied by a bunch of old white neo-confederates hundreds of miles away from deciding what statues and monuments are allowed on their campus. But even regardless of that, it's a horrible horrible stupid comparison

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You cannot compare the soldiers of the Confederacy, to soldiers of the Vietnam War or WWII.
Soldiers of Vietnam or WWII represented the United States of America.
Soldiers of the Confederate States of America were rebels and traitors to our nation. They represented a thuggish State that wanted to continue the inhumane and Deplorable practice of enslaving other human beings.

Per US Code, Confederate veterans are US Veterans.
Sorry buddy, better luck next time.

Did I say anything about "code" or "US Veterans?"
No, I did not.
I said that they did not represent The United States of America.
So, sorry, but try a little harder next time.

US Code is all that matters in this context. Your precious feelings (or the feelings of anyone else, for that matter) on whether or not they should be compared to veterans of any other war are irrelevant. They're US Veterans, just like those who fought in every other war we have been involved in.

You mean the USC written by a post-reconstruction Congress chock-full of, and for a number of decades dominated by, those same white supremacists traitors and their families / supporters?

The fact of the lost cause adherents had enough political clout to get veteran benefits for Confederate soldiers makes it absolutely no more moral or correct in the fact it's adherents today have enough political clout to Force monuments to stand in communities drastically opposed to its racist and traitorous memory.

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FYI, the base is still there, but the statue is gone.

In terms of comparing Malcolm X to Silent Sam. Malcolm X statue was put up despite his hatred of Jews, not because of it. Silent Sam was put up in 1913 at the height of white supremacy to send that message. If it was done to honor Confederate dead, it would have been erected soon after the end of the Civil War.

That logic is ridiculous. Since when is there be a requirement on how long after a war memorials can be erected?

For example, the World War II Memorial wasn't opened until 2004, which is a much longer time frame than it was for Silent Sam to be erected following the end of the Civil War.

Yes, but America *won* World War II.

We didn't win the Vietnam War but we still have a memorial for fallen soldiers and those who went missing in action.

We also "lost" Korea considering the war ended in an ongoing stalemate.

Nah. We save South Korea. 98% of their Nation would disagree that the war was a loss. MacArthur screwed up by not stopping a bit north of Pyongyang and triggering the Chinese Counterattack, but still a victory.

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FYI, the base is still there, but the statue is gone.

In terms of comparing Malcolm X to Silent Sam. Malcolm X statue was put up despite his hatred of Jews, not because of it. Silent Sam was put up in 1913 at the height of white supremacy to send that message. If it was done to honor Confederate dead, it would have been erected soon after the end of the Civil War.

That logic is ridiculous. Since when is there be a requirement on how long after a war memorials can be erected?

For example, the World War II Memorial wasn't opened until 2004, which is a much longer time frame than it was for Silent Sam to be erected following the end of the Civil War.

Yes, but America *won* World War II.

We didn't win the Vietnam War but we still have a memorial for fallen soldiers and those who went missing in action.

We also "lost" Korea considering the war ended in an ongoing stalemate.

Nah. We save South Korea. 98% of their Nation would disagree that the war was a loss. MacArthur screwed up by not stopping a bit north of Pyongyang and triggering the Chinese Counterattack, but still a victory.

To be fair, we don't really know what Korea would look like if it had been unified. Its politics may have ended up very differently, and it could be more like Vietnam today - an authoritarian market state under one government, with a median income similar to China's, and no nuclear crisis - which some South Koreans would find preferable to the status quo. You can't really say what the alternative would be after so long.

There is absolutely zero indication under the sun that the entire Korean Peninsula United under the Kim's would be any different then North Korea is today, let alone and at least minutely evolving or authoritarian regime like Vietnam. Literally none. That's Abraham Lincoln Vampire killer level fantasy.

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FYI, the base is still there, but the statue is gone.

In terms of comparing Malcolm X to Silent Sam. Malcolm X statue was put up despite his hatred of Jews, not because of it. Silent Sam was put up in 1913 at the height of white supremacy to send that message. If it was done to honor Confederate dead, it would have been erected soon after the end of the Civil War.

That logic is ridiculous. Since when is there be a requirement on how long after a war memorials can be erected?

For example, the World War II Memorial wasn't opened until 2004, which is a much longer time frame than it was for Silent Sam to be erected following the end of the Civil War.

Yes, but America *won* World War II.

We didn't win the Vietnam War but we still have a memorial for fallen soldiers and those who went missing in action.

We also "lost" Korea considering the war ended in an ongoing stalemate.

Nah. We save South Korea. 98% of their Nation would disagree that the war was a loss. MacArthur screwed up by not stopping a bit north of Pyongyang and triggering the Chinese Counterattack, but still a victory.

To be fair, we don't really know what Korea would look like if it had been unified. Its politics may have ended up very differently, and it could be more like Vietnam today - an authoritarian market state under one government, with a median income similar to China's, and no nuclear crisis - which some South Koreans would find preferable to the status quo. You can't really say what the alternative would be after so long.

There is absolutely zero indication under the sun that the entire Korean Peninsula United under the Kim's would be any different then North Korea is today, let alone and at least minutely evolving or authoritarian regime like Vietnam. Literally none. That's Abraham Lincoln Vampire killer level fantasy.

What's the meaning of an "indication" for something extrapolated from the birth of a country forward by 70 years? The point is you can't say with any certainty that a united Korean Peninsula would be what it is today, with Kim Jong Un in power, and the exact same policies in place. Everything about it would be different. Korea's entire strategic calculus would have been different. The entire siege mentality that North Korea has where it needs nuclear weapons in the first place wouldn't exist.

You think the Sea of Japan would change the massive paranoia endemic to the Kim regime for over half a century? Its strategic calculus as you call it, trying to Gussy up your horsesh**t baseless random ass speculation in a pantea of faux intellectualism, would still be the hermit Kingdom of the world supported by China. You can't point out one reason why absorption of the entire Korean Peninsula would change the most doctrinaire rigid ideology of the second half of the 20th century 1iota.

But why do I even waste the bandwidth? You've made it crystal clear that you've long jumped the shark as a poster and a person.

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The "erasing history" zombies don't seem to realize that we're much more likely to "repeat history" in this specific context by literally honoring the same white supremacists that this country defeated and denounced. It's laughably backward.

Honoring fallen soldiers that were alumni of the university does not make it more likely to "repeat history".

It's quite clear that statue had a much greater and broader point by those that erected it.