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Houston Nomad....this post # 38 was in response to Post #1 in this thread.
thank you.
I agree, people are not perfect and we have different standards today than we did in the past. I think it's important to assess the sum of someone's accomplishments before putting up any kind of a decontextualized monument to them. By decontextualized, I am referring to the difference between including people in history books, vs. putting their name on a school or putting up a statue. Or, in the example you give, Mt. Rushmore.
I am not in favor of the destruction of monuments (Mr. Rushmore or confederate statues). I am decidedly opposed to their destruction. I am in favor of the re-contextualization of such monuments. For example, what Houston is doing (look, I brought the thread back to Houston!) with the two confederate monuments we are taking down. They are being moved to museums, where they can be displayed with a discussion of who the person is, good and bad, and why the statue was put up, and why it was taken down. That all makes for a very good story, and a much more complete one, than a plaque with a name on it.
So NO, I wouldn't be in favor of dynamiting Mt. Rushmore. I've never been there so I don't know what the presentation is. But if there's nothing there that tells the full story of who those men were, then it should be added.
There are points of view, like Naziism, that need to be suppressed and deplatformed because debate only allows people to spread odious views. When one engages in debate, one finds that not everybody is out there to have a reasoned conversation, but is instead trying to brute-force or suppress their opposition.
Words are everything in debate, and sometimes you have to accept that certain words will mean "this person is not to be reasoned with", so avoid those words to show your good faith. Enough people trying to spread odious ideologies have used "politically correct Snowflake type" so that vocab is now poisoned.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Ivory Lee Spurlock
You say you are the "farthest thing ftom a Snowflake" but what you are failing to realize is you are very much "engaging" in "politically correct Snowflake type" behavior by choosing NOT to "engage in discussion" because I used the term "politically correct snowflake types" a few posts back.
I agree, people are not perfect and we have different standards today than we did in the past. I think it's important to assess the sum of someone's accomplishments before putting up any kind of a decontextualized monument to them. By decontextualized, I am referring to the difference between including people in history books, vs. putting their name on a school or putting up a statue. Or, in the example you give, Mt. Rushmore.
I am not in favor of the destruction of monuments (Mr. Rushmore or confederate statues). I am decidedly opposed to their destruction. I am in favor of the re-contextualization of such monuments. For example, what Houston is doing (look, I brought the thread back to Houston!) with the two confederate monuments we are taking down. They are being moved to museums, where they can be displayed with a discussion of who the person is, good and bad, and why the statue was put up, and why it was taken down. That all makes for a very good story, and a much more complete one, than a plaque with a name on it.
So NO, I wouldn't be in favor of dynamiting Mt. Rushmore. I've never been there so I don't know what the presentation is. But if there's nothing there that tells the full story of who those men were, then it should be added.
Ok. I'm just a big believer in consistency in outrage over selective or convenient outrage.
This is more of a political thread now, but while it is still here, I will ask... why stop at slave owners?
If there were any people who were wronged, it is the indigenous Americans, or Native Americans as they are sometimes also called.
Slavery was bad, but genocide was worse. White people. White people, whether mobs, or military, killed almost defenseless people, they had no guns, initially at least. Yes, some committed savage acts against whites, but why wouldn't they when they saw their people being slaughtered because they were not "civilized", according to whites? Again, they had no guns, they had knives, axes, things like that. I don't know how any act of defense would not end up looking savage using those instruments. White people raping and pillaging and taking their land, their way of life. I'd say they had every right to defend their way of life, and people.
I'm not bashing whites, I'm considered "white" myself, but if people are offended at slave owners now, then people should be far more offended and ashamed of what "white" people did to the indigenous Americans who were already here; not imported, not immigrants, not slaves, they were here for thousands of years! Period. They were also willing to share the land as they did not believe anyone owned it, but white men seized it all, forced them to live on reservations where they live to this day, and all promises made to them, broken.
Go and read history books about the Spanish Explorers... read the wonderful descriptions they write about when they document how they "discovered" the Grand Canyon... and the people living in it. So stupid.
If you don't know this history, then you should probably study it. What happened to the indigenous Americans was far worse than being a slave owner, so go erase every name of every white person in the US, on every place, or thing, else it is just selective outrage, as is being mentioned.
Our own President calls terrorists "very fine people" but 40% of the country supports him with enthusiasm. Selective outrage.
No, that's you believing fake news.
He was talking about people who opposed removing Confederate statues, which, at the time, was the belief of over half the population (think the figure was over 60%). He wasn't talking about the KKKers and other troublemakers.
There are points of view, like Naziism, that need to be suppressed and deplatformed because debate only allows people to spread odious views. When one engages in debate, one finds that not everybody is out there to have a reasoned conversation, but is instead trying to brute-force or suppress their opposition.
Words are everything in debate, and sometimes you have to accept that certain words will mean "this person is not to be reasoned with", so avoid those words to show your good faith. Enough people trying to spread odious ideologies have used "politically correct Snowflake type" so that vocab is now poisoned.
What you are proposing is what Nazis do.
There's nothing that makes extremists like KKKers and Nazis look worse than letting them speak. And there is nothing that helps them recruit more than the protests against them. The behavior of people who protest against them make them look reasonable by comparison. The best thing is to ignore them. If you try to shut them up, you reinforce paranoid beliefs and trigger them to do worse things than say stupid things.
What you propose is FAR more dangerous than the dozen or so Nazis or KKKers at a rally. As the saying goes, first they came for the trade unionists, but I was not a trade unionist,...
This is more of a political thread now, but while it is still here, I will ask... why stop at slave owners?
If there were any people who were wronged, it is the indigenous Americans, or Native Americans as they are sometimes also called.
Slavery was bad, but genocide was worse. White people. White people, whether mobs, or military, killed almost defenseless people, they had no guns, initially at least. Yes, some committed savage acts against whites, but why wouldn't they when they saw their people being slaughtered because they were not "civilized", according to whites? Again, they had no guns, they had knives, axes, things like that. I don't know how any act of defense would not end up looking savage using those instruments. White people raping and pillaging and taking their land, their way of life. I'd say they had every right to defend their way of life, and people.
I'm not bashing whites, I'm considered "white" myself, but if people are offended at slave owners now, then people should be far more offended and ashamed of what "white" people did to the indigenous Americans who were already here; not imported, not immigrants, not slaves, they were here for thousands of years! Period. They were also willing to share the land as they did not believe anyone owned it, but white men seized it all, forced them to live on reservations where they live to this day, and all promises made to them, broken.
Go and read history books about the Spanish Explorers... read the wonderful descriptions they write about when they document how they "discovered" the Grand Canyon... and the people living in it. So stupid.
If you don't know this history, then you should probably study it. What happened to the indigenous Americans was far worse than being a slave owner, so go erase every name of every white person in the US, on every place, or thing, else it is just selective outrage, as is being mentioned.
It kind of amazes me, the selective outrage. I see kid's history books with page after page of discrimination in the west against African Americans, Hispanics and Chinese and hardly a word about the genocide against the Indians. One even blamed the decline of the buffalo on environmental changes instead of a deliberate act to starve the Indians that it was.
No, what I am proposing is the way to stop authoritarians who use populism to get into power and then pull the ladder up - as in, Nazis.
For insignificant groups, yes you can and should ignore them. But once they start gaining currency and power they can't be ignored anymore. Anti-vaxxers for example are significant enough to harm the public, so they can't be ignored.
My suggestion: Study how Nazis got into power. Hitler did this by telling people convenient ideas that they wanted to hear rather than the truth. Once he got the plurality share in the German parliament he convinced Hindenburg to give him the chancellor position.
Quote:
Originally Posted by bu2
What you are proposing is what Nazis do.
There's nothing that makes extremists like KKKers and Nazis look worse than letting them speak. And there is nothing that helps them recruit more than the protests against them. The behavior of people who protest against them make them look reasonable by comparison. The best thing is to ignore them. If you try to shut them up, you reinforce paranoid beliefs and trigger them to do worse things than say stupid things.
What you propose is FAR more dangerous than the dozen or so Nazis or KKKers at a rally. As the saying goes, first they came for the trade unionists, but I was not a trade unionist,...
This is more of a political thread now, but while it is still here, I will ask... why stop at slave owners?
If there were any people who were wronged, it is the indigenous Americans, or Native Americans as they are sometimes also called.
Slavery was bad, but genocide was worse. White people. White people, whether mobs, or military, killed almost defenseless people, they had no guns, initially at least. Yes, some committed savage acts against whites, but why wouldn't they when they saw their people being slaughtered because they were not "civilized", according to whites? Again, they had no guns, they had knives, axes, things like that. I don't know how any act of defense would not end up looking savage using those instruments. White people raping and pillaging and taking their land, their way of life. I'd say they had every right to defend their way of life, and people.
I'm not bashing whites, I'm considered "white" myself, but if people are offended at slave owners now, then people should be far more offended and ashamed of what "white" people did to the indigenous Americans who were already here; not imported, not immigrants, not slaves, they were here for thousands of years! Period. They were also willing to share the land as they did not believe anyone owned it, but white men seized it all, forced them to live on reservations where they live to this day, and all promises made to them, broken.
Go and read history books about the Spanish Explorers... read the wonderful descriptions they write about when they document how they "discovered" the Grand Canyon... and the people living in it. So stupid.
If you don't know this history, then you should probably study it. What happened to the indigenous Americans was far worse than being a slave owner, so go erase every name of every white person in the US, on every place, or thing, else it is just selective outrage, as is being mentioned.
You are 100% right. And that goes for Mt. Rushmore-- it is on stolen land and that should be acknowledged, and amended, if possible.
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Not about Houston, but...
