Let’s not forget that this villainy in Charlottesville found its genesis in protests over the removal of a statue of Robert E. Lee, so it is worth rewatching this amazing speech by the Mayor of New Orleans when they tore down some statues there:
Every god damned one of these statues needs to be torn down and put in a museum somewhere, or just destroyed and forgotten. All they are are monuments to terror, designed to continue to remind black people of their “place” in white society. Nothing more. We should no more see a Robert E. Lee statue at the University of Virginia than we should see a statue of Hitler in front of the Holocaust museum. We should have streets named after Stonewall Jackson any more than we should have Timothy McVeigh Boulevard in fucking Oklahoma City.
If these Klansmen and Nazis love their fucking statues so much, may I suggest they spend less money on swastikas and confederate flags and Gadsden flags, tiki torches, skinny jeans and illfitting khakis, airfare to Charlottesville, and White Lives Matter t-shirts and start building a place to store these monuments to traitors and racists. Maybe in Missouri. But not in polite society.
And don’t fucking even mouth the words “destroying our history.”
Excellent.
SiubhanDuinne
Best. Rant. EVAH.
Thank you, John.
trollhattan
I suggest they be used to encircle the Kentucky Creation Museum. Ken Ham, now is your time to step forward.
Chris
America’s race problems won’t be solved until the Confederacy is as much an object of shame and disgust here as the Third Reich is in Germany.
Jeffro
Amen and amen.
Melt the statues down into chains for those who kill innocent protestors. Like, 500 pounds of chains each.
Roger Moore
I’m voting for destroyed and forgotten. Metal ones should be melted down and re-cast into statues of Frederick Douglass, Harriet Tubman, Martin Luther King, Jr., or Barack Obama.
David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch
Such uncanny predictions.
rikyrah
Oliver Willis
✔
@owillis
What’s not to get? They are his people. We’ve been saying this for 2 years and the media keeps ignoring us.
A Ghost to Not
Ken Ham should buy them all up, and scatter them around his psychotic book-banger water park.
Omnes Omnibus
@David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch: What the fuck is wrong with you?
showmepillbilly
They already got a place for all that confederate shit in Branson! Put in the dumpster out back this place!
https://www.yelp.com/biz/dixie-outfitters-branson
They are for real.
The Confederate flag represents Southern culture, Anna Robb said.
In an interview with the News-Leader on Monday, she said the flag represents faith, family and freedom — not slavery, racism or white supremacy.
On Thursday, the News-Leader was alerted by readers that Robb’s husband Nathan, co-owner of the store, once tried to adopt a highway in Arkansas on behalf of the Ku Klux Klan, and that Nathan Robb’s father is Thomas Robb, the national director of the KKK.
Taney County Assessor’s records show Anna and Nathan Robb own Dixie Outfitters in Branson, a franchise store that sells Confederate flag merchandise located at 1819 W. State Highway 76.
http://www.news-leader.com/story/news/local/ozarks/2015/06/26/branson-store-owner-said-rebel-flag-represent-racism-ties-kkk/29325367/
oatler.
Chuck ToddVerified account @chucktodd 1h1 hour ago
Chuck Todd Retweeted Gov. Mike Huckabee
Yet another conservative leader taking a much different tone than the POTUS
Chuck, you don’t NEED an excuse to load MTP with GOP scumbags…you just like it.
Michael Bersin
“…If these Klansmen and Nazis love their fucking statues so much, may I suggest they spend less money on swastikas and confederate flags and Gadsden flags, tiki torches, skinny jeans and illfitting khakis, airfare to Charlottesville, and White Lives Matter t-shirts and start building a place to store these monuments to traitors and racists. Maybe in Missouri. But not in polite society….”
Uh, not in west central Missouri. I don’t want them here, either.
NotMax
Don’t destroy them, let them stand as concrete (no pun intended) evidence bolstering “lest we forget” in a national Hall of Shame.
Villago Delenda Est
The entire story of the South, from Brown v. Board of Education on, is hate, not heritage.
The symbols of the Confederacy were deliberately adopted as the signifiers of white supremacy and segregation.
Hate, not heritage.
Mike in NC
The oldest city in the country is Saint Augustine, Florida, founded in 1565. But the Lost Cause shitbirds only care about their “Southern Heritage” between the years 1861-1865. Some coincidence! Best thing to do with all those statues would be to load them onto a barge and sail them a mile offshore and weight test them.
FlipYrWhig
@NotMax:
Or, as Neighborhood Texture Jam once said, “Want to see the rebel flags? / Wanna go see ’em? / They’re next to the swastikas / In a museum!”
Ruckus
@Chris:
Not only shame in Germany, outlawed. We may have a small problem with that first amendment thing in outlawing but we do have restrictions on speech in this country. We just don’t do it when hate is involved.
trollhattan
@NotMax:
Maybe makeovers for them all in preparation for appearances on RuPaul’s “Drag Race.”
“Let’s have a big welcome for Roberta E Lee!”
Baud
David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch
@Omnes Omnibus: blow me, snowflake. the fucking alt-left played a big role creating this disaster presidency and culture of hate and every time an atrocity occurs their original sin needs to hammered.
Hungry Joe
Ah, yes, Robert E. Lee, that fine Southern gentleman who, when his army invaded the North — a.k.a. the United Sates of America — ordered all the free African-American citizens his soldiers captured be sent south and sold into slavery. Before his fucking statue is melted down I’d pay for the opportunity to spit on it.
trollhattan
@Baud:
Love it!
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
Confederate monuments are participation trophies, mostly put up in the period 1890-1910 by the Confederate widows and daughters using some of the zombie capital gained through several generations of stolen labor, rape, murder and sharecropping in the postbellum years. They gained so much that they felt comfortable wasting money to honor traitors and losers.
They’re obscenities, and not “history”.
NotMax
Clearing Confederates – particularly those in uniform – from Congress’ statuary Hall would be a huge step forward.
jimmiraybob
Sometimes there’s a bit of good news in Missouri like when Frank Ancona, imperial wizard of the Traditionalist American Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, was found shot to death and floating in the Big River in southeast MO. I’d like to think that there was some kind of cosmic justice afoot guiding his cracked out wife who shot him and then got her son to help dump the body.
Seriously though, it’s not safe in rural south Missouri to be black, brown or Muslim after dark.
Shana
@Jeffro: I see someone knows their Dickens.
I hadn’t watched that speech before although many had recommended it. It’s truly wonderful, and a badly needed bit of uplift we all need today.
BTW, daughter’s safely on her way home from being a legal observer in Charlottesville. Taking her out for a nice dinner tonight.
Baud
@Shana: Good news.
dmsilev
@Hungry Joe:
Lets not forget “oath-breaker”, since I’m given to understand that fine Southern gentlemen are men of their word.
Hkedi [Kang T. Q.]
Read this yesterday as a sub-link to a post. I found it really clarifying. Tolerance is a peace treaty, not a moral absolute. Link to article here
? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?
@dmsilev:
He was so loyal to his state that he had to fight for the Confederacy and against the United States. Lee was a real asshole after the war too.
Schlemazel
@Omnes Omnibus: @David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch:
I must have missed something. What is it with you two? As nasty as people can be here I have never seen them act the way you guys are over so little.
Villago Delenda Est
@oatler.: Chuckles the Toddler is an utter waste of skin.
NotMax
@dmsilev
By present day Republican ‘logic’ Lee’s offenses were “youthful indiscretions.”
Schlemazel
@Hungry Joe:
When an escaped slave was returned to him he was angry that the local guy was not whipping her hard enough so he paid one of the bounty hunters to whip her harder. The man was scum
rikyrah
@Shana:
Good to hear
Villago Delenda Est
@NotMax: If I could upfist this comment, I would.
Hey, I just did!
rikyrah
Good rant Cole.
Baud
I hate that the media is going to make Marco Rubio a hero for saying the right things on Twitter today.
J R in WV
@Omnes Omnibus:
@David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch:
Onmes,
I have to agree with David Canadian Anchor Baby here, Ms Sarandon is even a local person here in Charleston, but she is totally off her rocker about Secretary Clinton and Senator Sanders.
seejanerun
Robert E. Lee was a slaver and if he was on Game of Thrones Dany’s dragons would torch him. I’d sign up for HBO to watch that.
Mnemosyne
Co-signed. All of it. And Robert E. Lee was a traitorous asshole.
Elizabelle
@Shana: Wonderful that your daughter observed; what an interesting dinner is in store for you both.
Elizabelle
Maybe this is a chance for a redo, the opportunity to put the Civil War in context, and stop with the celebrating of the fake-ass Lost Cause.
Teach the truth, and how that revisionist history came to be popular, even while not accurate. Yes, most white Confederates did not own slaves. But their whole society was built on race laws and unfree labor.
Today, their descendants (actual and cultural) are strutting their ignorance and trying to deny the rest of us first world healthcare/medical insurance. Along with depriving too many of their rights as citizens. (Voting; responsive government.) Fuck ’em.
Make that confederate flag as unwelcome and recognized as swastikas. The Germans got it right. We did not.
Baud
@Elizabelle: I apologized to you in the prior thread.
Davey C
@Baud:
Well, what Rubio said is a helluva lot better than what my useless representative (Lee Zeldin) said, so I think he deserves some credit, if only for this one particular thing.
SiubhanDuinne
@Shana:
Very good news. Must have been a long day for you. Hope you both enjoy dinner :-)
debbie
@Elizabelle:
All that is needed is to make the Articles of Secession required reading.
Chris
@seejanerun:
Not that I’m really trying to push you towards the Star Wars prequels, but I really appreciate the behind the scenes nugget that Count Dooku was based on Robert E. Lee.
CarolDuhart2
“He opposed slavery!” That’s what I’m getting on Twitter from the alt-right apologists. He opposed slavery so much that he dedicated 4 years and killed half-a million Americans to preserve it. If he really opposed slavery, he didn’t need to war against his beloved “Virginia”. He could have resigned his commission and sat the war out, and let less competent leadership run the Confederacy to the ground.
“There were other reasons!”. Then why didn’t the secessionists name them? If there were other causes, it would have helped in getting more favorable world opinion and taken the pressure off other nations to honor the blockades or even come in on their sides.
And it says something about these people’s sense of entitlement that they are protesting the removal of statues from other people’s public property. Even though it’s clear the town no longer wants them around or doesn’t care much for them anymore.
Major Major Major Major
@Baud: classic sociopathic behavior.
bupalos
@David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch: Truly impressive. Nominating this for a grammy in the category of Best Achievement in Self-Defeating Tone-deafness.
Elizabelle
@debbie: And Confederacy VP Alexander Stephens’ Cornerstone speech.
Pretty damn clear, too. How inconvenient for the “heritage” yahoos.
Elizabelle
@Baud: You’ve got me curious. Checking your misdeed now. LOL.
Villago Delenda Est
@debbie: Exactly. They state precisely why the slave states were acting as they did. White supremacy and slavery.
Baud
@Major Major Major Major: This isn’t real life.
donnah
David Duke was thrilled with the white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, calling for a reclaiming of America for the whites. He acknowledged that he voted for Trump because he promised to do that. When he saw Trumps’s weak non-apology, he replied to Trump in a tweet:
“I would recommend you take a good look in the mirror & remember it was White Americans who put you in the presidency, not radical leftists.”
We are skating on very thin ice. Please let cooler heads prevail.
Dave
@Elizabelle: Amazing how similar the reasoning is to that applied to different settings. Like the fired googlebro’s manifesto. Pseudoscience used to defend bigotry.
Major Major Major Major
@Baud: how so?
Bob Collins
Where I am in Virginia, we hear all the time that we have to preserve our Southern heritage. Heritage? It’s a heritage of slavery, racism, treason, and defeat. The real Confederate battle flag is the white surrender flag.
The hate and envy of much Southern trash knows no bounds.
Baud
@Major Major Major Major: Y’all treat me decent here.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Good lord, I didn’t watch the Ape’s remarks. They were even worse than “many sides”
John Harwood, whom I’ve always liked, is not amused
sad to say, I don’t find that president too difficult to imagine
Major Major Major Major
@Baud: that might be more a statement about the people around you than about you.
Mnemosyne
@Elizabelle:
I have long suspected that those numbers are deliberately cooked. If you had a slaveholding family of a husband, wife, and six kids (not uncommon for that time), technically only one of those 8 people was the slaveowner: the husband. That doesn’t mean that the rest of the family didn’t benefit from the slaves that they themselves were not the legal owners of.
Brachiator
@Chris:
America’s race problems did not begin with the Confederacy. Racism and American Apartheid has been at the heart of the United States since it’s founding. Rejecting the fetish objects of the Confederacy is at best a small, but very welcome gesture.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Mnemosyne: good point, adult sons who would’ve fought might well have grown up in a slave-holding family
Elizabelle
@Dave: Ooooh. Good point.
@Baud: Just looked. Meh. Saw your comment not long after it went up, and recognized it as snark.
You can do something worse you have to apologize for!
Hkedi [Kang T. Q.]
@Elizabelle: I’m reflexively resistant to anyone saying that we should do something because it’s a “moral truth” If they can’t explain why, that person is “selling” something. It’s pretty easy to see who the mark is.
schrodingers_cat
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:Credit where credit is due, Harwood has been telling it like it is ever since T announced as a candidate.
Baud
@Major Major Major Major: The people around me have changed over time. It’s no one’s fault. Just the way it has to be.
@Elizabelle:
Whew. I’m sure I’ll take you up on that offer.
Amaranthine RBG
I wonder if any of this is true:
http://gotnews.com/breaking-charlottesville-car-terrorist-is-anti-trump-open-borders-druggie/
Link presents “evidence” that the Charger’s driver was not one of the White Supremacists/ Nazis.
Elizabelle
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: I was highly impressed by Cory Gardner’s tweet; he being a Republican from the purple state of Colorado. Adam put it up on previous thread.
CarolDuhart2
@Mnemosyne: And of course, those who rented or borrowed or leased slaves don’t really count, do they?
Chris
@Elizabelle:
What’s fascinating is how hard he works to promote Confederate exceptionalism – not just “obviously, white supremacy is a great truth” but “OUR government is the FIRST founded on white supremacy!” It’s a very sharp contrast to his descendants’ mealy-mouthed “but you guys! EVERYBODY was racist back then!” and “blacks sold other blacks!”
Brachiator
@Elizabelle:
Yes!
sukabi
@Baud: well, they are looking to make some republican viable for a 2020 run against Drumpf…and Rubio is malleable.
Another Scott
@David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch: OO isn’t the only one who thought your comment was shockingly out of place in this thread.
Bernie and Susan aren’t the enemy.
Trump and his minions are the enemy. Keep a little perspective.
Eyes on the prize.
Cheers,
Scott.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Elizabelle: that is a surprise, as he has not been a profile in courage, and he’s a close McConnell ally from what I’ve read.
Chris
@Brachiator:
And Germany’s race problems didn’t begin with the Third Reich. Rejecting them isn’t a sufficient step, but it is a necessary step.
Betty Cracker
@Shana: Thank dog she’s okay! I’m sure you’re very proud of her. ?
Schlemazel
@Elizabelle:
A pretty good video from Salon Was the Civil War FOught Over Slavery?
Omnes Omnibus
@Schlemazel: I am sorry. Nazis are marching with torches and people are driving cars into crowds of anti-fascist marchers, so I am a little bit on edge. David Koch’s reflexive (and, imo, irrelevant*) Sarandon bashing rubbed me the wrong way.
*Others’ mileage may vary.
Immanentize
@Mnemosyne:
At least Lee surrendered. Assholes.
ETA. I’m listening to Iggy, ” Now I wanna be your dog.”
Elizabelle
@Chris: I liked that Stephens thought the abolitionists were the whackadoodles.
Projection. A major part of white supremacism and revanchist politics, since
186117611661 … um ….Schlemazel
@Omnes Omnibus:
I get that but you two have been at each other in other threads & in ways that makes me think there is a long battle going on.
OTOH, I do not think we should ever let Stein or Saranwrap or the others every forget until the fully apologize and admit they were wrong (ala Mike Moore)
Bad timing & considered, all your reaction seemed harsh. He could have done better
Another Scott
@CarolDuhart2: I’m sure you’ll be [surprised]
that there are a bunch of lies told about Kindly General Lee.
Or maybe not! :-)
Keep fighting the good fight!
Cheers,
Scott.
Betty Cracker
The Confederate statue drama is playing out here locally too. In June the county commission voted to let it stay. In July (after intense pressure led by many groups, including the Democratic Party), they reversed course and now plan to remove it as soon as they find a suitable spot. Dumpster sounds good enough to me. Or the bottom of the bay — let it become a reef.
Like Mayor Landrieu, I grew up walking past these monuments without seeing them. In fact, I never gave them the thought they deserved until a few years ago. I’m ashamed to have been so oblivious.
Brachiator
@Mnemosyne:
The numbers are probably accurate, but that’s not really the issue. The South was a slaveholding society, and free whites were enlisted in various ways to help protect and perpetuate it.
Jay S
Can we have a Lee Statue pull down like they did to Sadam’s statue in Iraq?
Sentient AI from the Future
Re: the south
Sherman was insufficiently ambitious.
Major Major Major Major
@Jay S: you mean deceptively?
Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism
@Mnemosyne: Lots of small farms had a slave or two. It wasn’t an exclusive practice of the big landowners.
Elizabelle
@Schlemazel: Thank you. Will watch that later, and might put it up on Facebook.
Incidentally, my rebel yell brother in law unfriended me on FB about a month ago. He of the “the Civil War was all about states’ rights” cult. Laughable, but he is causing real problems for me with my sister and the family.
Love that your video is by a West Point(!) prof, and found it poignant that post was by the late great Scott Kaufman.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
McAuliffe 2020.
NMgal
Funny, the lead-in and link in this comment:
@Amaranthine RBG
Is *exactly* the same as a comment left at LGM just now by someone drive-by trolling (different nym).
Just a strange coincidence, I’m sure.
Sentient AI from the Future
@Amaranthine RBG: I’ve seen slabs of Himalayan salt used as furniture that were smaller than the grain I’d need to take with anything reputed floor-shitter Chuckles Johnson emits.
hitchhiker
Tan khakis and white short-sleeved shirts seem to be the uniform of these flaming shitbags. I wonder where they got that look?
Mike in NC
Interesting parallel between defeated Confederates of 1865 and defeated Nazi Germans of 1945. In both cases hardcore true believers wanted to take to the hills and wage guerilla warfare rather than give up the fight. Eisenhower and his senior leadership were very concerned about this as there was some hard intelligence that SS units were stockpiling weapons and supplies in the months after the surrender.
Jay S
@Major Major Major Major: I mean publicly, with cheering crowds. Deception would be fine if necessary. The image would be cathartic.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Mnemosyne: some stats on confederate soldiers and slavery.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@Brachiator:
There was a vanishingly small middle class that were beholden to the slavers for everything, and the nonwealthy southern populationnwas also beholden. Every pastor, governor, publisher, lawyer, judge, legislator, mayor, doctor, storeowner was heavily propagandize by and in thrall to the slave labor system.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Mnemosyne: some stats on Confederate soldiers and slavery.
Elizabelle
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: Terry McAuliffe has been a GREAT governor. Very proud of him, especially not having expected much of him going in. (I thought he was doing it for the resume. No. He has been serious, and as effective as he can be, with a nutjob gerrymandered GOP legislature.)
He’s very approachable too. I have had more out of towners show off their pics with the governor, when they were roaming around Richmond. Very good guy.
Elizabelle
Also, FWIW, sad to report that Terry McAuliffe’s one year old Golden Lab, Guinness, died this week. I still don’t know what happened to the pup, whether it was an accident or what …
Mnemosyne
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Aha! I’d bet that it was Coates’s column where I first read that and couldn’t remember where I’d seen it. He has a good point that he’s specifically talking about Confederate soldiers since non-slaveholders in the South were, it seems, less likely to put their lives on the line to protect slavery.
A representative statistic:
frosty fred
We never talked about it growing up, but my great-great-grandfather and his brothers were in Lee’s army at Gettysburg, and as I’ve gotten interested in family history I’ve found far more of my ancestors and connections on that side than the other. My mother did tell me once that all our family were “poor people who never owned slaves.” I don’t know whether she believed that, or it was just the standard line; I’ve seen almost exactly the same words elsewhere.
As it turns out I descend from slave holders in every line; it’s true none of my antebellum ancestors was a large plantation owner, but every one of them owned at least a few slaves or had a parent who did. Since I’ve started working with DNA testing I’ve regularly been connected to distant cousins of predominantly African ancestry.
I was somewhat cheered to find a fifth-great-uncle whose household included four slaves in 1830, but eight “free colored persons” in 1840; I like to think that means the slaves had been freed and stayed with the household as employes.
I’ve had people ask me why I find this history shameful; I’ve never known how to answer them.
Mnemosyne
@frosty fred:
My brother has managed to lose the paperwork, but apparently we have ancestors going back to at least Jamestown on my mother’s side. I now know enough about American history to know that that means that we have slaveholders in our ancestry, even though our family mostly lived in the north. I’ve haven’t dug far back enough on Ancestry.com to see which ones, but I know they’re there.
sharl
@Another Scott: Yep. Anyone who claimed that Trump would be better than Clinton – even if that ridiculous claim was made over a year ago, as in that link – deserves to have their faces rubbed it in now and again. Having said that, timing matters, and this isn’t the time.
DSA youngsters (and most of them are youngsters) – many of them probably Sanders supporters – marched with BLM people today, and some were injured by the vehicular homicidal racist. They are worried and sad and angry, but early indications are that this will make them more determined than ever.
Criticizing them on this day smacks of the worst and most cynical kind of opportunism, and would be entered as evidence by lefties in support of the harshest accusations they make against centrist liberals.
Mnemosyne
Also, too, since Cole is proud of his West Virginia roots, let’s mention again that the reason it exists as a separate state at all is because they didn’t want to join the Confederacy and broke off.
Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism
@Mnemosyne: We have a young man in the family tree who simply vanishes between 1861-1865. Lots of speculation that he moved into the Smokey Mountains for the duration; a lot of pro-Union folk did.
@frosty fred: I really, really want to track down the ancestor who gave me one particular length of DNA. Two of my black cousins triangulate on it. It’s so hard for black family historians to track down the slave owners that I’m kind of hoping that this will turn into the clue they need.
Another Scott
@frosty fred: One can’t pick one’s parents. :-)
Thanks for the story. It’s important to realize that we’re all human and we’re all tied together whether we like it or not.
Cheers,
Scott.
Betty Cracker
@Elizabelle: I didn’t expect much either — I held a mild grudge against him because I thought he was kind of an ass during the Clinton-Obama primary. All is forgiven, guvnah! :)
Elizabelle
@frosty fred: Interesting story, and thanks for sharing it. As you investigate further, please update us.
Omnes Omnibus
@sharl: Thank you. This was the point I should have made.
frosty fred
@Another Scott: I quite liked my parents in the event. In fact, my father refused to have anything to do with the only family reunion that side ever had, because it was organized around honoring “the old reprobate” and putting a stone on his previously-unmarked grave. (Even with that, though, he never specified in what way his great-grandfather had been reprehensible.)
I suppose it adds a dimension to the story to mention that I would not have been available to be ashamed without the Gettysburg chapter, since GGGF was wounded, taken prisoner, and married his nurse.
Central Planning
I was flipping between MSNBC and CNN this afternoon, around 4pm, when they put up Pence’s tweet.
The name on the account said “Nice President Pence”. I’m sure that was their typo, not actually someone ratfucking his account.
Keith P.
Jack Kingston is actually ticked off that Trump is catching shit for not using the term “white supremacist”. There is so much irony here….and the anchor JUST nailed him on “This is the same guy who went after people for not using ‘radical Islamic terror'”. Am I a bad person for wishing Jeffrey Lord was up here instead of Kingston?
Mnemosyne
Is it too early to be wondering why the cops in Charlottesville seemed to be so drastically underprepared for a series of rallies that were so well-publicized, AirBnB was refusing rooms to the Nazis?
Elizabelle
@Mnemosyne: Could it be they were working a bit too gingerly, so as not to offend the easily offended White Power creeps? Perhaps more cognizant of First Amendment protections, and then events overtook them?
David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch
@Schlemazel: I havent said anything to him in over 2 years. and to our credit, during that time, our infrequent comments have been polite. but a couple of weeks ago he tried smear me with mccarthyite innuendo implying I’m a plant because i detest sanders, which is ridiculous because I’ve been posting here since 2007 in support of obama and democrats; long before the alt-left emerged. But, I let it go, and didn’t say anything. We all have bad days. Yet, there’s only so many times one can ignore unprovoked personal attacks.
ArchTeryx
@Elizabelle: At this point I’m inclined to give the cops zero credit for much of anything. They’re totally hands on when it comes to peaceful leftist protests and lawful gatherings of black folks, but nowhere to be found when the armed right shows up. Shoot a black kid to death for having a toy gun in hand, ignore white people with fully automatic assault rifles brandishing them at the public. Their hypocrisy knows few bounds.
cain
@Baud:
I responded to the tweet with “Now we know why they are called the Greatest Generation!”
sharl
Virginia governor is now saying three dead, but it’s possible that includes the two who died in the crash of the helicopter that was supporting law enforcement people on the scene, which had already been reported.
It’s breaking news, so usual precautions apply regarding what to believe.
Cheryl Rofer
Thanks for reposting MItch Landrieu’s speech, John.
cain
@Elizabelle:
Sorry to pry, what kind of troubles? Is it a matter of him bad mouthing you? Or are you all going after him?
Lurking Canadian
@Baud: Dingell is a national treasure.
fuckwit
@Hungry Joe: I’d rather piss on it
Elizabelle
@cain: Him badmouthing me, and alienating me from his family. He is a very good father; his sons adore him, and I can feel the wedge that he’s introduced. Sadly, my two oldest nephews have gone full Southern white boy. Although they are really good guys, too. They are young. I hope they can turn around.
My sister is a conflict avoider. She’s mentioned husband is playing “Devil’s Advocate” over Trump. Quite honestly, he sees that Trump has bad qualities, but is attracted, too. Same deal as his Southern heritage with the Confederacy. He explains away the Civil War with “it was all about state’s rights,” which is the historical equivalent of being a flat earther. Fun times.
I decided to give them all a time out, but am sad because the sons are college age and older, and it’s the time they become scarce for a few years. I miss them, and my sister, and that I used to love my BIL, before he turned full hard head.
Trump the shit midas is helping to tear families apart, and not just those with undocumented parents.
Thank you for asking. Hope this was not TMI.
Mostly, when I saw this happening with the BIL, I thought to myself “ah well, you’ve had a charmed life; this is an opportunity to toughen up, and you need to learn that.” I did not expect it would cost me time with my sister — who works all the time — and what little time left with the kids. It’s sad.
J R in WV
@Mnemosyne:
And those huge plantation homes weren’t built for husband/wife/kids. They had in-laws, cousins, nephews both resident and moving from mansion to mansion, and all of those shiftless suckers on other peoples’ sweat made their living from slaves.
So don’t tell me most Confederate Traitors didn’t own slaves. They all benefited from the slaves, even the lowly men who were overseers, who whipped the lazy slaves in the hot sun to make them pick cotton faster.
Even the less prosperous farms had 3 story houses with full basements water table permitting. With 4 big rooms downstairs, 8 on the second floor, and more on the top floor, all for the white folk, except for a few closets for the house slaves… so they would be handy when mistress called out. Or master come to see them.
The Lodger
@Central Planning: Nice President? I think that was Granny Clampett’s title. She didn’t want anything to do with vice.
J R in WV
@NMgal:
Exactly why I have pied “Amaranthine RBG” since the day Major^4 and Cleek and Alain installed Cleek’s famous software device into Balloon-Juice!!! But I still often read to see what the trolls are saying. And you comment, too, pied though it was.
Thanks for the update !!
J R in WV
@Mnemosyne:
My paternal grandmother was from a Giles county VA family, I still have distant cousins and such relatives over there. My connection with them came from Giles county VA to Monroe co WV in the late 1800s, then through Greenbrier county and Summers county to the county where I grew up.
She married a child of Swiss immigrants, so I know he had no connection to southern slaveholders.
My maternal grandmother was from eastern Kentucky, along the Big Sandy River. Indeed when she was a girl, everything moved on the riverboats. She was educated, and took a bookkeeping job with a coal company in SW WV, where she met a Pennsylvania Dutch blacksmith working as a hoist engineer. Pretty sure he had no connection to southern slaveholders except perhaps to have had a father or grandfather or uncle who fought them in the 1860s.
I doubt my (maternal) Grandma’s family ever had or were connected to slaveholders. They were too familiar with working for what they needed, going to school to learn about something they could make a living at, etc. Pioneer mountain people, making do and working hard, moving up out of East Tennessee into Kentucky back quite a ways.
The mountain folks of East Tennessee were more likely to fight for the Union than for the Rebels, this is the origin of the U of Tennessee nickname, “Volunteers” because more Tennesseans volunteered for the Union army than would have been drafted if the state had remained in the Union.
I think the “Lost Cause” folks have beaten that fact out of the consciousness of everyone in TN, but it is the truth. I have it from an old time mountain man from NW Georgia who studied in Tennessee when people were alive who remembered that war. He was a professor at Emory back a long time ago.
NotMax
@J R in WV
Also why Andrew Johnson was tapped as v.p. for Lincoln’s second term, to help solidify eastern Tennessee’s bonds with the Union.
Matt
@showmepillbilly:
Let’s go over this again, Confederates: “southern culture” IS white supremacy. You motherfuckers FOUNDED A COUNTRY explicitly based on it – there’s no ambiguity. If you wanna bring “faith” into it, that’s a good sign your “churches” should go into the shredder right after those statues.
Obdurodon
I disagree with the idea that such things should be destroyed. Rather, I believe that they should be put in purpose-built museums, with placards and photographs illustrating their connection to the horrors of slavery and civil war. Let people who are tempted to believe in American exceptionalism visit those museums and learn how such feelings have been used before, luring our own countrymen into the greatest evil and folly. We must continually re-learn those lessons, and to learn we must acknowledge. This was the approach evident in Berlin when I visited last year, regarding the original Nazis, and it seemed much more effective than mere suppression. Destroy the symbol’s appeal, not the symbol itself.