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As a father, a husband, a former soldier and an American, this brings a tear to my eye. “We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passio
by myrandomcomment 6y ago
As a father, a husband, a former soldier and an American, this brings a tear to my eye.
“We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory will swell when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.” - Lincoln
As an American I feel we are bound not by our failures of past morality, but are need to fix the. I wish everyone understood this.
- ed25519FUUU 6y agoSeeing a statue of Lincoln defaced made me more sad than almost any of the other. If we can’t look to people like Lincoln as our heroes, then what type of hero do we really want?
- skybrian 6y agoI'm not sure we should necessarily read all that much into what gets graffiti. There are trolls everywhere, and it can be cleaned up.
- ihsw 6y agoThose trolls are running the Democratic party now.
- radley 6y agoThe defaced statue was a conservative media misunderstanding: We traced the photo back to the conservative website the Daily Wire, where “The Michael Knowles Show”... - https://www.factcheck.org/2020/06/statue-in-lincoln-memorial-was-not-defaced-by-protesters/ https://www.factcheck.org/2020/06/statue-in-lincoln-memorial...
- nwienert 6y agoThat specific one was, but there are others being called to take down, and this: https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-factcheck-memorial-steps-vandalized/fact-check-lincoln-memorial-steps-vandalized-during-george-floyd-protests-idUSKBN23G25O https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-factcheck-memorial-steps-...
- cactus2093 6y agoHow about the statue of Ulysses S Grant in San Francisco? Same level of absurdity as Lincoln. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/jun/20/san-francisco-statues-ulysses-s-grant-junipero-serra-francis-scott-key https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/jun/20/san-francisc...
- epistasis 6y agoGrant also sent Custer to South Dakota to wage war and steal land. Once gold had been discovered it was a foregone conclusion that white settlers would therefore get the land, no matter what treaties had been signed. Which lead to a white supremacist eventually carving four presidents visages into Mount Rushmore, in violation of treaties made between the Lakota and the US, and today's arrest of Lakota who were protesting this theft. I doubt the people who tore down the statue of Grant knew any of this, any more than they know the rest of Grant's history. But it's pretty fucking hard for me to get upset about a statue like that being torn down. It's not like it's a one of a kind piece of art, it's just another monument of little significance or interest as an object, only as a symbol of our conquest and unjust killing. When the American revolutionaries tore down statues that were symbols of the the English empire, they were working towards a slightly more just and free society. Tearing down Grant's statues continues in this rich tradition. In a hundred years, it's likely that the majority of people that know about the early 2000s will look back at Obama's drone strikes that killed innocent families with similar dismay to what we (or is it just me?) see in Grant and his contemporaries. With running an imperialist nation, it's going to be awfully difficult to avoid doing some really awful things. That doesn't make the evils they perform in our name acceptable.
- vulcan01 6y agoAll the things you said about Grant are correct. But it can be argued that the good things he did outweighed the bad. In that case, is it ok to tear down a statue?
- epistasis 6y agoWhy not? It's not like statues are some sacred principle. And in the Fourth of July, as the US celebrates declaring independence from its past status as a colony, of rebelling against an imperial monarch that no doubt did lots of good, but also taxed them without representation, let's also celebrate our current revolutions against injustice. We should not idolize people, not even if they did good things. And if in the revolutionary throes of fighting for justice, the wrong statue gets taken down, that is so unbelievably tame and minor compared to what we celebrate on Independence Day.
- pjungwir 6y agoI don't know any Lincoln examples but here in Portland they have pulled down statues of Washington and Jefferson: - https://twitter.com/hungrybowtie/status/1273859657447006208 https://twitter.com/hungrybowtie/status/1273859657447006208 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4V29opdHt-M https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4V29opdHt-M
- indigo945 6y agoWell, Jefferson owned hundreds of slaves and Washington raped his daughters, so there's that.
- rayiner 6y agoLots of Lincoln statues have been defaced. Obviously not the Lincoln memorial, because federal police are protecting major monuments in DC.
- zeckalpha 6y agohttps://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dakota_War_of_1862#Execution https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dakota_War_of_1862#Execution
- baybal2 6y agoAmericans! People cannot "transcend" past wrongs, so don't do them. The ones correcting historical wrongs, and undoing mess ups of previous generations don't do that for the "good" memory of people who did them.
- revnode 6y ago> People cannot "transcend" past wrongs, so don't do them. Semantics? I don't care what word you use, but you can absolutely always do better and the beautiful thing about America's founding is that in every respect, it is aspirational and we have aspired to do better. And we have. And we can do better still.
- weiming 6y agoWhat me and my family talked about today is that, as immigrants, we are so sad how much the "native born" people of the US hate their own country. They seem to never waste an opportunity to remind others of their disdain and it is more and more visible these days e.g. in big news media or on Twitter. Makes me sad and I hope this can change.
- refurb 6y agoAs an immigrant the US I feel the exact same way. American don't know how good they have it compared to a lot of the world.
- bradhoffman 6y agoMe too.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- bJGVygG7MQVF8c 6y agoIndeed. Colin Kaepernick, on Twitter: > "Black ppl have been dehumanized, brutalized, criminalized + terrorized by America for centuries, & are expected to join your commemoration of “independence”, while you enslaved our ancestors. We reject your celebration of white supremacy & look forward to liberation for all. " Point of clarification: by "our ancestors" he's referring exclusively to his African-descended ancestors, not his European-descended ones.
- acdha 6y agoYou’re upset that he focused on the ones who were oppressed rather than the ones who were oppressing? Many Black people have white ancestors but ask how much of that was really consensual and how those children were treated.
- throwvid19 6y agoAre you suggesting that Colin Kaepernick's mother was raped?
- myrandomcomment 6y agoSorry for bad typing. ...but our need to fix them.
- hintymad 6y agoThe main stream media and the elites are supporting the cancel culture. In fact, they fuel it -- both WaPo and NYT published articles about why 7/4 should be canceled. That's okay, as a country needs different voice and people have different political spectrum by nature. What's disappointing, though, is that the conservatives do not have a big enough platform to publish well-argued counter points, even though "conservatives" today is really moderate, even moderate left per the standard 10 years ago. We don't have a problem of being far-left. We have a problem of imbalanced influence.
- ciarannolan 6y agoPlease consider that you are in an extreme social media and/or real life filter bubble. "The elites" aren't some secret Soros/Clinton/HerEmails force out to destroy America. I've found that taking a long-ish break (2-3 weeks) from reading the news and social media can be extremely eye opening.
- xkcd-sucks 6y agoTrue, but on the other hand the components of this filter bubble are mostly people that have benifited from the current state of affairs
- ciarannolan 6y agoWhat do you mean?
- hef19898 6y agoEver heard of Fox News and OAN?
- hintymad 6y agoEven the moderate automatically label them as far right, and tune them out. I was expecting a platform that can reach out to people with different political views. You know how federalists and anti-federalists debated? Some of them probably hated the opposite group, but they nonetheless share the same platforms to debate.