ETA: Because of this I tend to roll my eyes so hard I risk ripping my optic nerves whenever a Republican talks about state rights and tyranny of the city voters over rural voters.
Bannon wants the Dems to keep focusing on race and identity politics, which he believes to be a losing approach. He believes (rightly, I think) that economic inequality and opportunity is the large unifying concern of the electorate. So the GOP is completely gleeful that so many people want to see these Confederate statues gone.
Trump must think so, as well, because he argued that it was a slippery slope from statues of Robert E Lee and Stonewall Jackson to George Washington and Thomas Jefferson. - as if the fact that they engaged in the racist practice of chattel slavery would merit their historical denefestration.
They are completely missing the point! Thes statues were erected in the 1920s to celebrate and normalize the generals who led an armed rebellion against the legal government of the United States. When the Southerners couldn’t win through our Constitutional system, they turned to violence and war. They were and remain traitors to the Constitution and the United States.
Confederate generals deserve no place of honor anywhere. If people want to remember them, let them set up a statue in their own yards - not public areas. And no one should care that people will get upset because this is “their heritage” and “these men fought bravely for what they believed in.” What they believed in was treason!
It is way past time for the Democrats to label the cause for these statues’ removal “the Treason Reason.” Democrats haven’t resorted to armed rebellion in spite of hideous GOP obstruction from the very first days of the Obama Administration - not even when McConnell illegally blocked a vote on a Supreme Court nominee. It’s time to call these NeCons what they are: traitors to the Republic.
There was a risk of a KKK march downtown this afternoon to support their statuary, but I guess they couldn’t pull together enough Bed Bath & Beyond coupons to get outfitted. There was a counter protest, though. They had a dance-off, but it was pretty one-sided since the Klan didn’t show.
That is not good at all, the fact that the perpetrators have been identified and the police won’t do anything only encourages vigilante acts. At the very least the suspects should be taken into protective custody while the crime is investigated.
Older than the Civil Rights era, as I’m sure you know:
The Australian Federal Police may still have a copy somewhere of a statement I signed fifteen years ago, in which I confessed to aiding and abetting a fugitive from Federal custody.
The more I learn of history and legalese the less likely I am to conflate legality with legitimacy but you raise a good point that’s worth some serious thought.
“Unjust laws exist; shall we be content to obey them, or shall we endeavour to amend them and obey them until we have succeeded, or shall we transgress them at once?” -Henry David Thoreau
“Unsurprisingly, the Chief Magistrate failed to see the bigger picture and sentenced them to community service, fines and almost $18,000 reparation costs.”
This is why “it’s bad out there in the red states, but I’m safe in a blue city” does not work. The fascists are not willing to tolerate enclaves of resistance.
The Mississippi cops refused to investigate. The FBI only agreed to do it after LBJ threatened Hoover with reprisals if he continued to refuse. Even then, an all-white jury refused to punish most of the perpetrators.
Even now it’s getting far less media attention than the destruction of a mass-produced piece of racist propaganda in Durham. Many major news outlets haven’t even mentioned the DeAndre Harris beating, let alone published the names or faces of his attackers.
Trying to show a Southern cop evidence of a violent hate crime against a black person is like trying to show one of those Westworld robots a photograph of the outside world. It’s just beyond their ability to to process.
