Inmates running the asylum.

Many years ago I attended a conference in Raleigh, and did a stately tour of the capitol building and environs. I was amazed to see that there was still a memorial to the CSA soldiers who died in the "war of northern aggression".

Screw that. They lost. It was a stupid war, and they were on the wrong side. Tear the stuff down.

Was that so hard?

Direct actions by women and people of color are so much cooler than the childish mayhem that white dudebros in black masks get up to. Watch and learn, boys.

I once had the unpleasant task of helping a spouse clean up the estate of a dreadful little drunk who would who say things at holidays like 'maybe Hitler wasn't all that dumb', and all the other crap you would expect someone who thought like that might also say. Yuk. I had the pleasure of cleaning out his bedroom closet and dresser drawers. In the back of one the drawers I found a shoebox size box, only nicer, and in it was his personal collection of Nazi memorabilia, some of it quite remarkable. And because my ACLU 'card carrying' parents told me never to forget, I took great pleasure in wrapping it all up with some other trash and throwing it in the garbage. It was a no-brainer. So take the fucking confederate junk down. It's trash, just like the ideas it represents were. It's a no brainer.

Just goes to show, the only thing General Sherman did wrong 150 years ago was in not finishing the job. The national wrong the South did to our country has allowed to continue, and it's high time it ends.

@1:

I'll bet you cheered when this one came down. But when symbols of oppression are torn down in your own country, not so much apparently.

That ain't workin'. That's the way you do it.

@6: except that it was wypipo who actually did the work.

Sometimes we actually do some good; the mission was accomplished without anyone being shot to death.

I was afraid it was going to land on someone and kill them... and the stomping rubs me the wrong way because of the way it. Other than that, I generally approve.

@12 Meant to finish my sentence - the stomping rubs me the wrong way because it feels like mob mentality taking over. People can start stomping on real heads if they feel crowd energy and see others doing it.

I wish I hadn't enjoyed that so much.

why can't they tolerate intolerance?

Just a thought...

Is there value in remembering evil deeds?

The concentration camps of WWII are still kept in place. Not as monuments, no, but as reminders of humanity's capability for evil, so not to forget.

Is there perhaps some use in American Civil War monuments also potentially serving as reminders of humanity's capability for evil?

My question is kinda philosophical... what's better? To tear down these monuments and try to forget? Or leave them there as painful eyesores to the evil we're capable of?

@16 There is value in leaving up memorials that serve as reminders to the horrors man is capable of.

However, this is a memorial to the soldiers who fought to keep slavery legal. Not one that serves as a rejoinder to our racist past, but one that celebrates that racism by honoring the fallen soldiers (heh).

Not only does it serve to celebrate our racist history, this memorial also intimidates African Americans. It's not an apology for being on the wrong side of the fight. It's a lament that they lost that fight and they still want to remind you that they wish the south had won so they could keep the slaves in their proper places. People aren't waving confederate flags to serve as ominous warnings about humanity's capacity for evil; they're waving those flags to celebrate their slave-owning history.

And the Nazi Apologist social media is getting all lit up with: "If you liberals are going to pull down the statues of our heroes, then you have to pull down that Lenin Statue in Seattle"
Pictures of the Freakmont Lenin Statue are fairly ubiquitous tonight, as neanderthal butthurt fascists fail in recognizing absurdity and sarcasm.

Why wasn't the south forced to destroy that shit back during Reconstruction? And why did it take the citizens in Durham until now to tear that shit down?

@19:

Because those statues weren't put up during Reconstruction, you fucking moron. During Reconstruction Federal troops still occupied the South. The KKKrackers had to wait till the Feds were gone to put up that shit, to show the "mud races" who was large and in charge.

@19 Most of these monuments went up between 1900 and 1920, with a second spike in the 50's/60's https://www.splcenter.org/sites/default/…

@18

The goons apparently don't know that we routinely vandalize our local statue of ol' Hanging Order Lenin, painting the hands red and whatnot.

On the other hand, I'm going to have a lot of fun telling people that I came across a guy who tried to pitch the idea that the statue was sarcastically bought for $13,000, cut up, shipped from Czechoslovakia, reassembled, and put on display for sale with a price tag of a quarter million dollars.

Seriously though. All the alt-right needs to do to get rid of that statue is to buy it. Free market solution!

There absolutely is value in preserving confederate monuments, but only as a warning that we can't let it happen again. The abundance of confederate monuments in the South are meant to celebrate Treason, and in the time they were erected, as a reminder to Blacks about *Who was still in Charge* during the post-reconstruction and early Jim Crow years (and until fairly recently, here in Washington State -- the "Jefferson Davis Highway" anyone?).

Now that places like North Carolina have outlawed memorial removals without the Express Consent of the state legislature, I think it is high time that more People Power removals like this (Peacefully) take place. As long as these monuments are in the public space, they will be rallying points for White Nationalist Racists. Move a few into Museums for historical preservation, and destroy the rest.

and what about that fucking troll statue? why should we honor TROLLS? take action, Seattle!

@24

Sounds OK, but I'm not holding my breath for the ribbon-cutting at the Richmond Museum of Bigotry.

I just don't understand how conservatives can be so angry about participation trophies...but they want MASSIVE participation trophies in the form of statues to a war THE CONFEDERACY LOST!

They should build a TRUE Confederate monument: a white flag on a stick in a square somewhere.

If you want a vision of the future, imagine an obese white bulldyke stamping on a human face - forever.

@30:

Can I just imagine a cute puppy - maybe a Shih-Tzu or a widdle Corgy - gnawing on your face while it's locked inside a steel-wire cage instead?