The de-Putin-Nazification of America

[mentalgongfu2]

Okay, first off, I think lots of us kids with Southern blood were told that. I don't really believe he's my relation. The point I was trying to make was that many no-name farmers died because they were called to defend their home places. They weren't fighting for slave ownership. They were following Lee to keep the INVADERS out.

I really don't want to get into a Civil War argument. I have no problem moving statues to museums or wherever.

Why would London have a statue of Hitler, um, ever?

Fair enough. The relationship to family and history is more complicated than some people want to believe. As I've said elsewhere, the removal of confederate statues is something reasonable people can debate. Perhaps there were such people in Charlottesville, but they were far over-shadowed by the "Blood and Soil" chanting modern-day nazis. A lot of context has been lost as a result amongst the left/liberal side of the discussion (not that there's not much actual discussion going on at the moment). There is equally a lack of nuance on the side of "They want to erase history" crowd, unfortunately. Actual Civil War history, and the current movement to remove its monuments, is not summed up so neatly, as morally comfortable as it may be.

In the case of Charlottesville, city officials voted to remove the statue, and I'm fine with that, just as I am fine with a demonstration of non-violent people in opposition to their decision, futile as that particular cause might have been. And I'm fine if other cities want to keep their monuments standing, move them to museums, or add context to them where appropriate. I say this even though I think most such monuments do not deserve a place in the public square - I am OK with letting Little Rock, Baltimore, and every other city and its residents decide on their own what to do. Not only am I OK with it, I would be hypocritical if I opposed it here considering I support that kind of local control in many instances. Unfortunately, peaceful demonstration is not what we got in Charlottesville. I don't know who threw the first blows, but I am forced to question the peacefulness of militants bearing firearms and clamoring publicly and privately for race war who now present themselves as victims of the state and "antifa" militants.

I would prefer it if the issues of Confederate statues were separated from Neo-nazis marching with tiki torches and screaming about Jews, but I fear that moment has been lost, perhaps deliberately,

I know you weren't necessarily referencing all of this in your comments, Blue, but so goes my stream of conciousness.

[Iamwhomiam]

I see, Blue. But I still disagree with this bit, "The point I was trying to make was that many no-name farmers died because they were called to defend their home places. They weren't fighting for slave ownership. They were following Lee to keep the INVADERS out."

The confederate states declared war on the Union. Please get your invaders and defenders in their proper associations.

They were conscripted, drafted and had no choice but to go and fight for the Confederacy. Many southern draft evaders and army deserters were rounded-up and executed. If I recall the movie the Free State of Jones and our history correctly, Jones was also evading arrest for desertion from the Army of the Confederacy. Other so-called freemen who fought were indentured servants and share-croppers. Rare it was to see a wealthy landowner or his sons fighting. They paid to have others serve in their place, usually a hired hand who worked for the plantation owner, who had little choice in the matter, considering his home and livelihood depended upon him remaining within the good graces of his employer.

Still, I get the sentiment expressed. I just don't believe it's valid and do believe it is myth-based rather than factual.

About that non-existent London Hitler statue - They wouldn't and for the same reason we shouldn't celebrate one of Lee or any other one-time enemy of the US. It would be antithetical to what we've written into our Declaration of Independence and our Constitutional guarantees. Thank you, Blue. History classes and museums are fine places to learn.

Please tell those who think their history is being wiped-out whenever a statue comes down that we do have books with words wherein their history has been preserved.

[Elvis]

Y'all like irony?

"My own opinion is that, at this time, they [black Southerners] cannot vote intelligently, and that giving them the vote would lead to a great deal of demagogism, and lead to embarrassments in various ways."

— Robert E. Lee

[Sounder]

People are products of their time. You all will be happy to know that our verbiage will be just as embarrassing to folk in a hundred years time as Lee's is to us.

Who are the racists?

If CNN prints a map of all confederate monuments are they fighting the good fight against racism, or they simply inciting racial tension for profit or a larger agenda?

When CNN has POC commentators calling for the removal of statues of Washington and Jefferson do ya think that might be counter productive to race relations?

What if CNN has a current class action from 176 POC employees? Is CNN really anti-racist or are they more likely rich white fucks stirring up divisiveness for distraction and profit?

mentalgongfu2, local control is great and the synchronized nature of these events indicates a more global force at work.

(corrupting the locals)

[mentalgongfu2]

Sounder, I'm not sure why you mentioned me specifically, but is someone on CNN, PoC commentator or otherwise, actually calling for the removal of statues of Washington and Jefferson? Where and when?
Are they printing out maps of confederate monuments?
So what if they are? Is a proposal to remove a statue some consider racist and inflammatory in its very existence more counter-productive to race relations than people carrying torches and wearing white supremacist/nationalist regalia and chanting a known Nazi slogan in a march to preserve said monument?
Wouldn't the existence of such a march in support of said monument's preservation be, in itself, an argument against keeping it?
Didn't the USA fight Nazi's in WWII?
What if Steve Bannon is in the crowd of marchers?
Is he just an opportunist trying to make money of divisiveness, or does he really want to kill all the Jews?
Does it matter, when people believe him?
Has any governing body or elected official actually in a position to make such a decision actually considered removing statues of Washington or Jefferson in any verifiable public communication?
Is Fox News really anti-racists (lol) or are they more likely rich white fucks stirring up divisiveness for distraction and profit?
Has Sean Hannity, Bill O Reilly, Glenn Beck, (or whoever the Fox News clean white face of the day is) EVER characterized as racist someone who was not also described as a person of color?
Could that inversion of the paradigm be just a wedge to promote a distorted version of reality that makes white racists feel good by believing the only real racists are non-whites?
Is this getting tiresome yet?


See, asking questions is easy. Answers are hard, if one is honest with oneself.

I can't tell if you are serious with your questions, but several of them seem to be based on horseshit molded around a (sometimes very very tiny) seed of truth. That dissuades me from a more serious response. If you wish a serious dialogue, and not just rhetorical questions, you know where to find me.

[Sounder]

http://www.cnn.com/2017/08/17/politics/ ... index.html


http://insider.foxnews.com/2017/08/17/w ... -says-take


one minute on google.

by the by, I have no problem having folk challenge me on what I say, I like it as it's better than being no-platformed, I just do not think most folk are identifying the correct source for these events.

mentalgongfu2 wrote...

Not only am I OK with it, I would be hypocritical if I opposed it here considering I support that kind of local control in many instances.

sorry i should have included your writing for reference. (The current quote is not included because of edit limitations.)

So yes, we want local control, but the similar timing indicates larger (non local) forces involved.

So, we have racists posing as anti-racists and global control posing as local control.

And yes, of course Fox is also a great shitstorm contributer, but that does not mean that CNN is not.

[mentalgongfu2]

OK.

I see that CNN ran an infographic of Confederate monument sites. Alright.
As far as I know, it is factual.
What about that image, or the brief article alongside it, is promoting racism or inciting racial tension?
Since there is nothing in either but factual information, what framing do you think is present that leads to these conclusions?

As to the second link, from the venerable Tucker Carlson, known only for his unflinching fealty to the truth and not to ratings bolstered by promoting the same sort of racial divisions you decry, it includes about 10 seconds from some unnamed woman who says, in response to a question we do not hear that seems to be about slave owners, that she does indeed state that statues of slave-owners, whether of Lee, Washington, or Jefferson should come down, followed by a clip of Al Sharpton saying that public funds shouldn't go toward (subsidize) "upholding someone with that kind of background." Then Tucker goes on a rant about how this is comparable to the French revolution, and who knows where it will end?

Come on Sounder, you're smarter than this. Can you not find any better example for your case than a quick edit of some no-name lady and Al Sharpton on Tucker Carlson to prove your point? And I'm giving a lot of benefit of the doubt here, as everything past the closely edited clips is nothing but Tucker Carlson hyperbole about south side Chicago blacks and the "left" burning Lincoln's likeness leading to a literal shedding of the Constitution itself.

There is very little framing in the CNN infographic; whereas, the framing of Tucker Carlson's horseshit is quite in-your-face and clear where he is going, and why he has picked 10 seconds each from 2 people to fit into his 3-minute diatribe.

Please spare me the "one minute on google" bit.
One minute on google will also show how full of crap these examples are.

What you have just posted is akin to me saying, "Republicans want to kill the Jews. See - here's a Republican who wants to kill Jews:" and then posting a link to Christopher Cantwell and his cohorts. I have not done so, because that would be hyperbolic bullshit. But if that's the best you have, we're done here. I will only spend my precious time on honest engagement on mutual honest terms, not with this crap.

[Sounder]

Can you not find any better example for your case than a quick edit of some no-name lady and Al Sharpton on Tucker Carlson to prove your point?

I was not using Tucker to 'prove' my point other than that CNN did indeed broadcast such an exchange. (I did not even watch the Tucker vid, but still gathered that CNN did do the deed.)

The issue at hand is not Tucker, it is POC being opportunistically used to call for the removal of Washington and Jefferson monuments, and thereby adding to racial tension. you asked for evidence of CNN commentators saying such things, and unfortunately the info comes from Fox, yes from people with their own creepy agenda. But still those things were said on CNN, despite our disdain for Fox.

[mentalgongfu2]

I was not using Tucker to 'prove' my point other than that CNN did indeed broadcast such an exchange. (I did not even watch the Tucker vid, but still gathered that CNN did do the deed.)

The issue at hand is not Tucker, it is POC being opportunistically used to call for the removal of Washington and Jefferson monuments, and thereby adding to racial tension. you asked for evidence of CNN commentators saying such things, and unfortunately the info comes from Fox, yes from people with their own creepy agenda. But still those things were said on CNN, despite our disdain for Fox.

So, you didn't even watch the highly-edited video from Tucker Carlson, which is the sole evidence you cite for POC being used to opportunistically call for the removal of Washington and Jefferson monuments?

A 5-second Google search would have yielded this link for Sharpton's comments:

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2017/08/17/al_sharpton_defund_the_jefferson_memorial_asking_me_to_subsidize_the_insult_of_my_family.html

or this link for the other person cited in the slanted Fox News Tucker Carlson video:

http://www.cnn.com/videos/politics/2017/08/18/angela-rye-statues-washington-jefferson-lee-come-down-sot-ath.cnn

After criticizing me for not doing a 1-minute google search, I think you owe better than that shrug over the fact you were apparently unable to do any searching for yourself beyond Tucker Carlson's video, which you say you did not even watch.

Who is being opportunistic, again?
I submit that anyone claiming someone is being "opportunistically used" for any purpose, especially something as inflammatory as inciting racial tension, should take the few moments required to examine their fucking SOURCES and CONTEXT.

[Sounder]

Well excuse me, but I do not choose to use my time to watch either Tucker or CNN feed.

And still CNN did broadcast such a thing and did produce the map, and again, my opinion, nothing to do with Tucker, there will be more people vandalizing monuments (committing felonies) because they know the locations and have the motivation.

But no one here sees the problem with that?

That's OK, my most recent Chinese fortune cookie reads; You discover treasures where others see nothing unusual.

I don't care for war hero monuments either but this is a contrived way to get rid of them.

which is the sole evidence you cite for POC being used to opportunistically call for the removal of Washington and Jefferson monuments?

Yikes, the notion that POC were used opportunistically is my opinion and has nothing to do with Tucker.

[SonicG]

Maybe "POC" (why not say Black Americans?) really really want them down...Yesterday, today or tomorrow. But today is best...

More rabble-rousing from CNN...
There are certain moments in US history when Confederate monuments go up



http://edition.cnn.com/2017/08/16/us/co ... index.html

[Iamwhomiam]

I don't care for war hero monuments either but this is a contrived way to get rid of them.

Ya think maybe the folks with the torches planned it all? Getting those black people after 142 years to finally ask for statues of traitorous racist Confederate Army soldiers, constant symbols of oppression and enduring discrimination, be removed, just to get more white folks riled enough to join their own particular brand of white racial supremacy? Damn! What a deviously contrived plan!

These statues are of traitors and we owe them no honor. They lost the right to be honored when they joined forces in an attempt to destroy the union of the United States of America.

Really, please tell me which country erects statues to honor traitors? Anyone? Please give me one good reason why we should continue to honor men who took up arms against their own country and were ultimately defeated.

Arlington would be the most appropriate place for the UVA Lee statue to remain on display, right on the front lawn of his gigantic slave-run estate, where he can eternally command over the soldiers who now lie buried there, where he led them to their death.

[conniption]

counterpunch

August 18, 2017

A De-Putin-Nazification of America Update

by CJ Hopkins

[JackRiddler]

People are products of their time.

This is the first line in an apologia for Robert E. Lee. I consider this saying to be among the laziest possible dumbshit platitudes on earth. It is almost exclusively used to make excuses for alpha-male assholes and their atrocities, usually by people who have little reason to maintain an emotional stake in some past conflict, and yet do for some irrational reason.

No one who happens to be identifiable as "white" and who lives in the states of the southeast U.S. today has any reason to see Lee or the Confederacy as a past on which they need to build an identity. If they do, it's on them. It's their fucking choice, but obviously a problem for everyone who doesn't want that past representing the place where they live. It needs to be said in addition that the past of Lee and the Confederacy does not belong to the people who identify with it more than it does to anyone else. They don't get to claim it as their "own" or to speak about it with greater authority solely by virtue of happening to be identifiable as "white" and happening to live in states of the southeast or other parts of the U.S.

Every "time" seems to "produce" a lot of different people, and even people of similar stations produced at the same time seem capable of disagreement and conflict. Abolitionists were a product of the same time as Lee. Nat Turner was a product of his time (okay, a bit earlier). A few slaveholders by inheritance who chose to manumit their slaves were a product of this time.

Also a product of 1860-61 were the state governments who voted to secede from the Union, and who then started a war with it -- because they wished to preserve and expand the institution of chattel slavery, because they saw this institution as threatened by the election of the Republicans, and because they wished to continue profiting from this institution for many generations to come. I acknowledge their agency. They made their choices. So did a United States military man, Robert E. Lee. He chose to serve this Slave Power against the U.S.

Most of the white people in the seceding states went along with that decision. But many of these whites instead chose to oppose secession, to oppose the war. Some of them refused to serve, evaded the draft, deserted the Slave Power army, even fought guerilla actions against it. They make better figures for me personally to identify with or give a statue to than Lee, but I guess some of you and I disagree, even though we are products of the same time.

Even blue's dirt farmers (who in his fantasy version were somehow magically unaware that they were supposed to fight a war started by and for the Slave Power, but merely reacted to so-called "Northern" "invaders") did things like secede from Virginia, so as to avoid joining the Slave Power secession. Apparently most of the West Virginians didn't see the United States as the invader! Imagine that. They saw the lower Virginian ruling class, the slave-owning planters, as the strangers for whom they would not fight and die. Products of their time!

Thus the time being 1861 is no excuse for Lee, who was a very smart and capable and indeed free man, someone who knew about all of the above and the various choices available to him a lot better than we do. No one made Lee serve in his position. He was not subject to a draft. He could have refused to lead the army of the Slave Power.

The time being 2017 is no excuse for those who choose to build their identity on the symbols of the Slave Power today. It is no excuse for their ignorance, or for the fact that some of them march with the KKK and out-and-out Nazis in a declared movement of white supremacy. It being 2017 is no excuse for the likes of other alt-right and/or nazi-lite and/or just conventional MRA morons who have nested as unbanned trolls here on RI. It is no excuse to deploy sophistry and construct reasons for why the terrorism practiced by the Nazi/KKK marchers against people in Charlotesville was somehow okay, or understandable, or acceptable because it's equivalent to something one fantasizes applies to something one projects as "the left" or to some lie of the "liberal" (corporate) media.

Nazis are marching in the streets of the United States, murdering counter-protestors and publishing justifications for it, beating random black people; and while this is not altogether new, today the President of the United States (a product of his time!) is providing cover fire for them (while simultaneously threatening to start a nuclear war, a separate fact that I consider relevant). I consider this important, strangely enough. And some of you lot think this is a fucking Internet game, something to win here on some board. You want to trivialize the reality by changing the subject, creating false binaries, either I am with the fantasy apologetics for the Nazis or I am with CNN. No. CNN doesn't get to be your fig-leaf in your chosen role as a sophist apologizing for the Nazis. Oh, you are definitely a product of your time. Product more than person, apparently. Product, like a tool.

.

[seemslikeadream]

what no mention of Trump's good buddy Sherif Joe?

CJ Hopkins is so very selective

just another white man opinions ..and I am supposed to give him money for this shit?
https://www.patreon.com/cjhopkins

$48 of $10,000 per month
$10,000/month will just about cover my basic expenses as a professional political satirist, although I can probably make do with a little less than that.

back to the sherif

He ran a jail that he described as a "concentration camp."

Prisoners there died at an alarming rate, often without explanation.


One of his jailers nearly broke the neck of a paraplegic guy who had the temerity to ask for a catheter.

One time, as a publicity stunt, he marched Latino prisoners into a segregated area with electric fencing.

Damon Dreckmeier's blood was coming out both ends of him, and it had been coming out for hours.

Vomited blood ran out of his mouth, down his chin and over his neck; it stained the seat of his pants. A nauseating, numbing feeling began in his stomach and gradually spread through his body. He had lost so much blood his fingers became useless and his eyes lost their focus.

Dreckmeier was dying.
It was obvious to Dreckmeier. And it was obvious to his roommates.
Yet none of them was able to get him medical attention.

He ran an ongoing "mugshot of the day" contest on the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office website.


He arrested New Times reporters for covering him. We won a $3.75 million settlement for that one.

Under him, the MCSO failed to investigate hundreds of sex abuse cases, many of which involved children.


But he somehow found time and money to send a deputy to Hawaii to look for Barack Obama's birth certificate.

Oh, and one time he staged an assassination attempt against himself? That was weird.

In 2013, a federal judge confirmed what literally everyone in Phoenix knew: he'd been racially profiling Latinos.

So naturally, he hired a PI to investigate the judge and his wife.

He also kept on profiling people, which is why he got charged with contempt of court (and was found to be guilty AF)

He also tried to destroy some of the hard drives containing material that was supposed to be turned over the court.

By 2015, his fondness for racial profiling had cost the county more $44 million. On top of, you know, ruining lives.

He also paid millions to settle lawsuits like this one, where deputies stood by as an inmate was brutally beaten.

Because this is the Old West or something, he had a "Sheriff's Posse." One member got arrested on child porn charges

His office was responsible for countless fiascos like this botched SWAT raid, where deputies set a puppy on fire.

'Jail Cam' in Privy Turned Off After Privacy Complaints

So, yeah, that's who Trump just pardoned. You can read all our coverage of Arpaio over the years here:

http://www.phoenixnewtimes.com/news/lat ... io-9629265