Slavery could have been made permanent in America?

[_EAllusion]

In a perfect world they'd be replaced with statues of unarmed black men shot by cops.

Like Rodney King and other drug dealing thugs unlawfully resisting arrest repeatedly. I'm sure the devolved and weak version of the US will do just that.

Rodney King wasn't shot.

Literal traitor to the United States who murdered his fellow citizens to preserve his right to keep people in slavery - Hero. Build a statue.

Unarmed murder victim of police - Probably a drug dealing thug who deserved it.

[_canpakes]

In a perfect world they'd be replaced with statues of unarmed black men shot by cops.

Like Rodney King and other drug dealing thugs unlawfully resisting arrest repeatedly. I'm sure the devolved and weak version of the US will do just that.

I’m thinking that the devolved and weak version of the US is the one where we’ve split the country into two so that one half of it could fawn over and memorialize the previous set of traitorous losers who needed slavery to get their work done.

[_Gunnar]

In a perfect world they'd be replaced with statues of unarmed black men shot by cops.

Like Rodney King and other drug dealing thugs unlawfully resisting arrest repeatedly. I'm sure the devolved and weak version of the US will do just that.

Tell us, ajax, do you actually approve of slavery? Do you wish that it were still legal to own slaves, particularly negro slaves?
Would you aspire to be a slaveholder yourself if it were legal and you were wealthy enough to afford them?

[_EAllusion]

So a mob in Madison just tore down a statue of a abolitionist civil war hero at our state capitol. I'm pretty sure they just want to tear down statues.

ETA: Here's some video of it:

https://Twitter.com/ehamer7/status/1275638679441154049

So god damn dumb.

[_EAllusion]

They also took down our Lady Forward statue outside the capitol. That's a progressive symbol. It celebrates women's suffrage.

[_EAllusion]

Here's some attempts to justify it from the Twitter feed of a local candidate for State Senate:

https://Twitter.com/nada4wisconsin

“F” your statues.

Lady forward is the symbolic gatekeeper of an almost all white capitol that legislates in racism. Knocking it down made so many allies uncomfortable tonight, it showed the extent of white fragility. That is effective protest.

The statues at the state Capitol represent the hypocrisy of the state of Wisconsin.

Hey, white allies if you felt a strong sense of sadness at two statues being knocked down, you need to go back two weeks and relearn what you thought you did.

Friends, I know some of you have felt more sadness about the statues than the actual black boy who’s in the hospital rn. Take a deep look inside yourself; that is the white fragility we have been talking about. Let the material go and value the pain of your black friends more.

 

Ah, Madison.

[_EAllusion]

It's probably worth mentioning the comments I linked are from the Bernie Sanders endorsed candidate who has a good shot at winning. You can really go down a rabbit hole of leftists congratulating one other on this one with the idea that the statues were symbols of an oppressive state and anyone critical of taking them down probably doesn't care about black people enough.

Heg sheltered freed slaves and was the head of an anti-slave catcher militia. He even was a humanitarian prison reformer. He died fighting to free slaves. In response to this, one particular blood-boiling comment said "we don't need your white saviors." That's not what the "white savior" idea refers to, but I'm reasonably certain there's no way to get that across without being accused of racist whitesplaining.

[_EAllusion]

It turns out the mob also beat up a Democratic state senator who tried to take a photo of what they were doing.

[_EAllusion]

The impetus for the gathering to take down the statues seems to be a retaliatory mood becuase of an arrest of a protester. That protester showed up in a tavern with a bullhorn and a baseball bat causing a ruckus, which caused the cops to be called and forcibly arrest him. It sure seems like that was what he was hoping would happen. That or he's an idiot.

The post hoc justification seems to center heavily on the idea that the statues either represent an oppressive state or the hypocrisy of an oppressive state that pretends to have noble causes with a heavy dose of criticism of this meaning you care less about black lives than you do statues. When on the defensive, they seem to emphasize that these are just meaningless hunks of metal that you shouldn't concern yourself with, but when on the offensive, they have great symbolic importance.

Beating up the state Senator happened because he tried to take a photo of them. The justification for that is that by capturing their image, he was aiding in identifying people for an oppressive state to unjustly harm them for their righteous acts.

[_EAllusion]

criticism of this meaning you care less about black lives than you do statues

This feels very much like the leftwing version of a right-winger going, "What about all the murders in Chicago?!? Why aren't you talking about that?" when you try to express disgust at an unjust murder of a black person. You can be concerned about multiple things. This kind of argument invariably reduces into unless you are talking about issues like global warming, malaria, the threat of runaway A.I.... exclusively all the time, you have bad priorities and should shut up.

Police misconduct, especially as it relates to disproportionate mistreatment and oppression of racial minorities, is a serious issue in my mind and one I've paid a lot of attention to for a long time. I'm thrilled there's a national movement with a lot of attention focused on it right now. But I know, in the back of my head, that it's not as serious as the threat of nuclear destabilization caused by rapid climate change. Only ever focusing on the the most important thing rather than having a diverse array of concerns and a division of labor of addressing them is a recipe for social decay.