I wonder how many of them ever paused to realize that the enslaved people who Lee fought to keep in bondage were ALSO Virginians worthy of being honored and remembered.
11 Likes
And now I can’t help but think of this:
I’m sure it usually doesn’t even occur to them. They’re “others.” Conservatives still frequently express the idea that black people aren’t “real” Americans, after all…
10 Likes
while i totally agree with the sentiment – that bar is still quite low.
we’re the only “industrialized” country without paid holidays. and our ten federal holidays pale in comparison with places like japan with sixteen national holidays ( plus something like ten guaranteed personal paid holidays )
4 Likes
Make it a paid national holiday.
10 Likes
Awesome! Now if we can just get Election Day to be a holiday in every state this year, we’ll only be 231 years late in doing the blindingly obvious. Maybe we’ll even have universal healthcare before the year 3000!
5 Likes
New York Times Bestseller • The startling true history of how one extraordinary man from a remote cornerof the world created an empire that led the world into the modern age.
The Mongol army led by Genghis Khan subjugated more lands and people in twenty-five years than the Romans did in four hundred. In nearly every country the Mongols conquered, they brought an unprecedented rise in cultural communication, expanded trade, and a blossoming of civilization. Vastly more progressive than his European or Asian counterparts, Genghis Khan abolished torture, granted universal religious freedom, and smashed feudal systems of aristocratic privilege.”
7 Likes
He meant the General Lee…
https://thumbs.gfycat.com/ElectricDeliriousFlea-size_restricted.gif
7 Likes
And this is why West Virginia is inviting Virginia counties to secede. Around the big cities like Richmond and Charlottesville, and all around DC, it’s pretty solidly blue, but everywhere else in the commonwealth, it’s redder than red, and they’re all losing their shit over the stuff that’s happening in Richmond this session. Sort of a taste of their own fucking medicine for the last 30 years or more.
5 Likes
Also opposed succession. And in theory opposed slavery. Basically a guy who hedged his way into the wrong end of history. The sort of person who might have been a great man if he hadn’t spent so much of his life making excuses for oppression, and fighting for causes he claimed to oppose.
Robert E Lee was a fucking weird guy.
It’s less than obvious. The people most likely to have trouble getting to the polls due to work are the very same people least likely to get off for official holidays. And there are serious concerns that making election day a formal holiday will paradoxically make it harder for them to get to the polls.
I know as a bartender it wasn’t too difficult to duck out and vote, if that shit turned into the sort of federal holiday where bars and restaurants were busy no way in fuck was that going to happen.
And election day not being a holiday apparently doesn’t seem to be much of an impediment to most other groups. I think the only demographic that will undebatably see an increase in turnout is white college students.
So there’s a bit of a split among actual electoral reform activists and academics over whether this would be good or bad for enfranchisement. So I guess we’re about to find out.
4 Likes
The South shot first.
4 Likes
Vote by mail or GTFO!
7 Likes
Election day was already a holiday in West Virginia and Kentucky, so it isn’t by itself an indicator of progress. The confederate holiday thing is a huge step forward, but – honestly – Virginia, where a huge contingent of the people who run the government that fought the confederacy go home to sleep, should have done that sooner.
2 Likes
i’m as happy as when MLK finally got his own holiday in VA, and it was no longer “King/Lee/Jackson Day.”
2 Likes
This is a step a very small step. One day they may even realize these men were traitors to the republic and the South lost the war.
1 Like
That’s news to me, a former Kentuckian. When did that happen?
3 Likes
Don’t know. It surprised me a little when I saw it on the wikipedia, since last year Midnight Mitch quite nastily blocked a house-passed proposal for this at the Federal level.
1 Like
This topic was automatically closed after 5 days. New replies are no longer allowed.
