The Maelstrom of Violence

[Bob Butler 54]

(08-18-2017, 10:44 AM)David Horn Wrote: Nonsense.  There is little to no historical value in these monuments, and I live in Monuments Central.  If you look around the South, there are no monuments (or very few) to any other war or its veterans.  It's all about the Lost Cause.  Sorry, but I have no sympathy on this issue.  The argument that Washington and Jefferson are next (and, presumably, Madison and Monroe as well) just doesn't hold up.

I'd add that the 'States Rights' justification for the Civil War is out of period.  If you look at the succession documents you will find lots of direct references to slavery, no attempts at a degree of indirection through states rights.  As far as I know, the States Rights arguments did not exist until after it became clear that the south had lost the war.

This isn't to say that the old agricultural elites were trying to prevent westward growth that would add new states and change the balance of power in Congress, while the soon to be robber barons wanted growth and industrialization.  The war wasn't entirely about slavery.  The elites were jockeying for power.

The statues are symbols that mean different things to different people.  At a deep values level, you are not going to find meaning on what a statue or its removal means.  The battle flag and other old symbols are much the same.  To a great degree, folks are speaking to each other in different symbolic languages, resulting in poor communication to say the least.

I'm still thinking it takes two to spiral.  Each side must come to believe that the next indecent has to be larger so the other side will back down.  I think that's why Harper's Ferry is so often nominated for trigger.  After that, it had become fairly clear that neither faction was going to back down.  Escalating to full scale open conflict will be hard to do with arguments over symbols while counting on lone nuts to execute the violence.  Still very much worth watching.  I'm waiting for violence to become more organized.  

I'm still seeing the flags cartoon moment as key.  For a long time the coasts had suppressed the old racism, then too much started to happen too fast.  The blue victories were too big and too annoying.  Suddenly it was possible to take that which had been hidden and flash it in the open again.  Racism and hatred run in waves.  You shift from overt slavery, to the reconstruction, to the Jim Crow era, to Martin Luther King's time, to today's alt right.  In the long term equality is winning, but this is not equality's finest hour.  At least they aren't trying to revisit lynchings, plumbing white only water fountains or refusing to serve certain people.  I think that after the alt right has its time in the sun racism will become something to be ashamed of again.  It seems to be starting.  There is a ways to go.