Cotton thinks he’s funny, but he’s just a lame dipshit. A brilliant lame dipshit, mind you.
I don’t agree. For years I’ve thought we should rename those suckers. And not (just) because Washington and Jefferson were slaveholders. Rename them because giant temples devoted to turning flawed, limited humans into marble gods is antithetical to a proper democracy: once you start worshiping your ancestors as supreme you start to abandon your responsibilities as people devoted to the here and now.
If we must have temples, make them monuments to our achievements or markers of our failures as a nation as a whole - I think Washington, Lincoln, and (especially) Jefferson would agree on that. So rename the Washington Monument to the Constitution Monument. Rename the Jefferson Memorial the Independence Memorial. And make the Lincoln Memorial the Emancipation Memorial.
(I’m not suggesting tearing them down or taking out the statues, mind you, just changing the name and the focus of what they’re meant to represent. But if we must have more statues in the future, make them of men, not gods or titans - more like the FDR or Einstein statues, less like the MLK statue - although then you get into the tricky situation of “If a white guy like Lincoln got the ginormous marble statue in the past, why doesn’t the black guy now?”)
Bonus trivia for reading this far: The Washington Monument was originally privately funded, but ran out of money in the 1850s and sat there unfinished for 20 years, when the Feds finished what the private sector couldn’t. That much is common knowledge. Less-known is why the private funding for the Monument dried up: the foundation running the project was taken over by the Know Nothings - think mid-19th-century anti-immigration Trumpists - and people refused to give money to a hate group.
I think Slainte overstates the case, but this probably won’t fly either. I think the point of preserving the monuments is to not be seen attacking on the very idea of the united nation itself, and you can’t make monuments to past injustices until everyone actually agrees that an injustice needs accounting for.
If everything in the past is monstrous, if every leader is a villain, if America is built on the bones of slavery and oppression and nothing else… than there’s really no point in staying as America, from that point of view. And more than a few people will see attacking these monuments as an attack on the very idea of America itself.
Attacking these monuments is a kind of call for a revolutionary reckoning and remaking of the country. Which, again, fine! But you’ve got to sell that, not compel it. If only 30% of the nation buys into it, all you’re doing is setting a fire that you can’t control and that won’t burn out when you want it, and don’t expect everyone to applaud it when you do.
If there’s a case to be made about rejecting these monuments in the past, go ahead an make it - but tearing it down without asking is an act of ideological force and compulsion and a challenge that may not turn out how you want. For example, in a “let’s remake America” moment, you might well find large parts of the country happy to reduce diversity and freedom in their areas untethered by a greater whole. A rejection wholesale of America of the past may not lead to a happier, healthier nation today but an ordinary, drab nation scrabbling over every inch with itself to take what it wants from the rest.
Dejin
5203
I really liked this tweet I saw this morning. I think this is the key point.
This isn’t the thread for it, so I don’t want to derail, but all I will say further on the subject is that it is important to remember that the Washington Monument, the Lincoln Memorial and the Jefferson Memorial, despite their names, are less about worshiping these three specific men and more about immortalizing the ideals and the courage it took to do the things they, and others along with them, did at the time. When you stand in each of these places and think about each man, you quickly start thinking beyond just the individual, and instead about the situation they were in, the time and circumstances in which they achieved their greatness. Each monument is awe inspiring, as they should be, because the words, deeds and actions they commemorate are awe inspiring. Two of these men literally birthed a nation that would grow to become one of the greatest republics in history, the third literally saved that same republic from division that would have destroyed it before it reached it’s full potential and freed a people from slavery at the same time. Think about how different World history would be without an America (or with a divided America circa 1865) and you begin to fully understand the impact these people had not just on America, but the world. So again, not perfect men by any stretch, but men who, by their actions and words, changed the course of world history for the better. THAT is monument worthy.
Velegon
5205
Another piece of trivia: the capstone of the Washington Monument is made of aluminum - at the time of the completion of the monument as valuable as silver - but currently the 100 ounces of the capstone (though it is slightly less weight than that now due to damage from lightning strikes and other things) - would be worth a total of $5.00…
Just want to agree with this unreservedly. I went to high school in northern Virginia and have been to these monuments more times than I can recall, and have repeatedly returned as an adult, and reading the words of e.g. the Gettysburg Address carved on the wall still makes me cry 40 years later.
ShivaX
5207
Wanna see a man shoot himself in the face?
SlainteMhath is right that this is not the right place for this so I’ll just say three things: 1) my proposal was to rename the monuments: I’m not sure why Enidigm thought I wanted to nuke them from orbit and then piss on the ruins, 2) to reiterate, the men these monuments memorialize would not actually have wanted the monuments in their current form,* 3) if we could stop thinking of our past presidents as superheroes or characters in a novel and instead thought of them as real people, people who did great things but also as lived, breathed, and farted, it would improve our ability to run our democracy. And we would get way fewer “OMG Joe Biden is so lame, he’s nowhere as cool as he needs to be, we’re doomed” threads.
*Except Washington, a little. Though he would have claimed not to. FDR is an interesting case: he fought for the Jefferson Memorial - a Democrat to counterbalance the Republican Lincoln Memorial - but specifically stipulated that he did not want a monument of his own other than a desk-sized piece of stone. We ignored him, 'cause man do we need our graven images. But at least his statues are on a more human-scale, and this one is adorbs.
I daresay humans are well wired for ancestor worship. It may be hard to sauter together a nation without larger than life hero-figures in its creation myth. Still, I suppose it would be a noble experiment. If you gotta hero-worship someone, I’m OK with Lincoln, at any rate.
Thrag
5210
News straight from the horse’s, err, cow’s mouth.
The underlying article doesn’t seem to render here but the headline is:
Devin Nunes’ attorney says he’s at ‘dead end’ in quest to reveal identity of Twitter cow
On the upside he’s now got an entire twitter menagerie making fun of him and a bunch more people following them.
So I’m all for Devin continuing these fights and humiliating himself, next up the goat, or his grandma.
Thrag
5212
Sick burn there Ted. You really zinged them Democrats.
Teddy lurves getting owned on social media. He must, he does it all the time.
KevinC
5214
Things like this never fail to amuse me. They are so hypocritical and partisan that they can’t even begin to grok people who hold certain beliefs regardless of what "team"the individual was on. I’m sure he thought that was such a great “gotcha!” moment and instead it just said a lot about himself.
When people want to tear down monuments to racists, they mean it. Republicans these days just can’t understand how this isn’t fake outrage to attack their team’s statues because that is precisely what they would do.
Timex
5215
I wonder if Ted thought Democrats were going to say, “OH NO! WE CAN’T REMOVE THE STATUES OF DEMOCRATS!”
KevinC
5216
That’s exactly what he thought they would say, because he literally cannot comprehend people that actually believe the things they say.
Thrag
5217
Another protest movement with my wholehearted support. They need to organize more of these.
100% this.
I’m all for history books teaching that our Founding Fathers weren’t saints, or demigods, and TJ had child with a slave. But these men were exceptional. I’m in awed that Madison, and Jefferson crafted such beautifully written documents, and they did with an ink pin, and no spell check. Ben Franklin, like Winston Churchill, accomplished enough for 10 men, in such a wide variety of fields, it really boggles your mind. They deserve statutes and monuments
But these Confederate guys,hell most weren’t even that good of generals or particular impressive leaders. Rommel, Rundstedt, Yamamoto, Cornwallis and Bin Laden, are all more impressive than most of them.
