Another Day Another Uneducated Angry White Trumpanzee

More global reaction... these from Great Britain...

Theresa May:


British MPs:

 

More global reaction from Great Britain:

 

'There is no racial bigotry here...'

 

A these reactions validate that Trump is the most persecuted person in the world.

 

If you want to read the WH Talking Point to Republican members of Congress --->
'The President Was Entirely Correct'

 

Trump voters and racism go hand in hand.

 

Reading comprehension.

ICE made a press release, but this is said in the first two paragraphs of the press release:

ICE was providing assistance, not the agency doing most of the work.

 

Another poll where Trump voters think there's a lot of discrimination against white people...not even surprised.

 

Brows furrowed! Disappointment abounds!

 

"McConnell Worried That Synapses Misfiring in Trump's Brain Would Prevent His Hand from Signing Legislation Congress Can't Pass"

 

I'd like to offer something I've thought about for quite some time now, in regards to the recent uptick of unrest around Civil War “monuments”, Nook.

I personally believe that there is a significant difference between a "monument" and a "relic" (particularly in society), and the difference is as much about perspective (to your overall point) as it is about clarity.

I have said, often, that worthwhile people generally tend to follow worthwhile causes. The message, almost always, is the tell in what idea a man is willing to follow or believe or commit to or sacrifice himself for. We tend, as human beings, to rely on the messenger to motivate and/or guide us, because the responsibility and consequence of our individual action in larger endeavors gives people of less-than-adequate moral fiber a reason to be unaccountable for their own fates and the fates of others.

Time and perspective, to “free moral agents” such as us, are at once both subjective and eternal. In and of themselves, these “…vagaries of perception…” exist in any appreciable fashion at our individual and collective sufferance. Hence, the need for objects and symbols and writings and the like to make a concept something (in our three-dimensional space) that can be manipulated for individual and/or collective gain.

In an American context, and with recent history as a barometer, what the distinction is in these recent arguments, for me, is VIEWS as opposed to VIEWPOINTS.

Time would be analogous to views, and perspective would be analogous to viewpoints.

Time requires from us, at certain intervals of human progression, a “monument” to mark the occurrence…a signpost, in essence, to define a moment of human enlightenment or callousness. And as time passes, and human beings move (or do not move) beyond that signpost, the “monument" becomes a “relic”.

Neither “monument” nor “relic”, of themselves, are unimportant or insignificant, per se. But they are what they are in the moment in time they are consecrated. And as human beings, on the mortal track to which we are all bound, time and perspective become very real in relation to us, whatever our wishes might otherwise demand.

I’m not sure if I’ve mentioned this before, Nook, but I’m a black man (a stupid, liberal-parrot, reverse-racist black man, but that’s neither here nor there at the moment)…and if I take up the mantle of perspective to review moments in time…then I must review the totality of those moments, not simply the familiarities of them.

If you and I, Nook, were both looking down into a valley from a high mountaintop, standing side by side…we would in many respects be looking at the same thing—we would have the same view, basically. But you could see something in that valley that I might not, and vice versa—our viewpoints are different. And you’ve said as much yourself, already.

It would be stupid and wrong of me to say that you are blind just because you see something from the vantage point that we currently share that I do not…but only if we agree that we share the same vantage point. It’s not about what we see…it’s about what we’re looking at.

A “relic” is a prisoner of the moment it is created in, while a “monument” endures beyond that moment, to me. A “relic” had its place and had its time, and can be no more and no less than what it was created to be in its moment in time. It can only be a signpost.

A “monument” stands regardless of place or time or decree or definition. A “monument” is proxy for an idea or an ideal. And no idea can descend into manifestation without an imperfection. And that very imperfection defines what that idea ultimately is or was or can be to us, and whether that idea can ever be a monument (synonymous with immortality—eternal and enduring).

I have personally chosen to measure not the merits of the individual, who without fail are human and suffer all that imperfection entails, but the cause or the ideal or the vision they would champion, or facilitate, or even unencumber.

George Washington and Thomas Jefferson are in many respects, from our perspective now, relics in and of themselves. Prisoners of their moments in time, and they can in nearly every estimation not be seen as anything more than that. And for whatever their own failings, when the time came that the moment was larger than themselves, at the very least (in terms of championing individual freedom, however shallow at the time) they did not seek to impede it. If all they could do was get out of the way, that is ultimately what they did through both time and perspective: the United States Constitution, and specifically, the ability to amend it to shape the nation’s potential growth.

Abraham Lincoln, for all of his personal conflict and tortured rhapsodizing, did not, when the moment was brought to him, choose to do anything ultimately except allow the moment to define itself. His self-doubt, wishes for politically expedient solutions, or coarse or abrasive suppositions, did not mark his direction or sully his commitment.

Where Robert E. Lee failed, for all of his individual compassion and decency and loyalty, was not to extend those qualities beyond those he cared for directly or even through proxy (loving Virginia more than anything else). The moment for his personal character to align with a greater wisdom passed him by, because he chose for it to pass him by, and his personal character does not absolve him from that greater failing, just as Washington’s and Jefferson’s failings have not crippled their status in the greater whole of our society. Lee’s personal honor, as history suggests he had considered and ultimately understood, could not be preserved if he defended a cause he knew was untenable simply for love of his own kin. He is, perhaps, the least deserving of the label of “relic”, but it is no less or no more applicable.

No one should ever say “any” or “all” in regards to human beings. We have our complexities, undeniably. And our viewpoints are bound by that humanity as well.

But we cannot, in good conscience or vigorous deliberation, assign truth to a lie, and presage a mistake without consequence.

We cannot give a “relic” of the past (of any kind) the same deference we are inclined, as a society, to give a monument that endures (and rightly, as an idea, existed even before individual or collective acknowledgement or materialization), because ultimately there is a difference between a sign along the side of the road and a light on the pathway to a destination.

Perspective, truthfully (as are a great many things with free moral agents) is dangerous if applied scurrilously or wantonly, I agree, Nook.

Which is why we must all resolve to tell and defend the truth in its entire context, and from the order in which we arrive at any moment in time we wish to review.

Facts devoid of the context from which they were gleaned are simply sophisticated lies, Nook.

And relics of the past have their importance as monuments…but only as signs of caution.

 

cultural revolutions are great and always work out. more tearing down statues and public shaming by the red guard pls

 

Guess people should have kept those Saddam statues in place. Eastern European countries should have left their Lenin and Stalin statues alone, too.

 

The lady who was arrested for the toppling the statue in Durham displayed great balance and deceptive athleticism. She brought her lunch pail that day.

 

isn't there a Lenin Statue in seattle

 

The attitudes of Trump voters towards white nationalists is extremely troubling.

48% of them thinking that white nationalists have a valid political position/idea is inexcusably terrible.

 

Also, both former President Bushs put out a combined statement: