People keep assuming that the destruction of the monuments to Cervantes or Ulysses S. Grant or the AIDS Memorial are “a mistake” on the protesters’ part.
A forthcoming post on this blog will explain how it’s not a mistake. It’s not a bug, it’s a feature.
Stay tuned.
I cannot read the entire article, but the title is promising by itself. Does it tell of teachers participating in bullying students deemed ‘unwoke’ and encouraging bullying among teens, or something else? Will you send Klara to such a school?
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I thought the point was to erase history, so that there’s nothing earlier than five minutes ago to compare things to?
I mean, treatment of minorities in this country is terrible… unless you compare it to how it was in the 80s, the 60s, the 40s, or (heaven help us!) the 19th century.
It’s also, of course, about attacking everything your parents valued. If you hate your parents.
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Statues and monuments are markers of collective values in public spaces. The artistic value or the historical value is mostly ancillary. What collective values do we have, really?
It’s interesting we have this collective freakout when the very notion of public space is so diminutized, so restricted in scope and purpose. Even public space with a price of some sort attached to it is so…curtailed.
What purpose can a monument or statue serve with people who have no collective values and almost non existent public spaces?
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“will explain how it’s not a mistake”
I think I have an inkling but will wait for your explanation.
I’m waiting for them to go after Lincoln (lots there to use as an excuse )
And then I’d expect them to go after Rev. Martin Luther King Jr…..
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Oh yeah. King and Lincoln are toast. Both actually did something remarkable. No, the real hero is George Floyd who never did anything admirable. That’s the whole point. He’s not a competition.
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If it weren’t for people on this blog, I’d honestly lose my mind. So thank you.
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The simplest explanation is that those people are not political activists in the traditional sense of the word. They want to vent their feelings, express their frustrations and wants, indulge their emotions rather than engage their intellect.
Other than that most obvious explanation…
Disorient the (unknown to destroyers?) enemy by being unpredictable?
Deciding which monuments to preserve sounds too much like tedious work of planning instead of a jovial carnival.
Besides, differentiating is one step closer to offering a serious constructive social program or, at least, drafting a list of realistic political demands which most protesters aren’t interested in developing. Too hard, no fun.
Peter Pan phenomenon? May be, some young people have a subconscious feeling of being (like) children playing a game of “CHOP”, while the statues represent adulthood and its responsibilities.
Also, we live in the age of theatre performance instead of old politics. See: Trump and his Tweeter. So those people decided to stage their own show and star in it, instead of being the faceless crowd in Trump’s. One thing one cannot argue with is their success at making the whole country glued to its screens.
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I don’t know how anyone could think it was a mistake. They openly crowed about pulling down the Grant statue because he had been a slaveowner at one point. Impure! Cast him out! These people hate America.
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Song for this era:
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