Steemit is indeed an interesting place. We can be in the moment, inspired, and write pieces and illicit some discussion and feedback on the day of its inception. Yet we can also get responses out of the blue sometimes months later. This is actually a very cool thing.
I do not agree with everything people respond with, and none of us should. That doesn't mean I do not appreciate the responses whether I agree or not.
I had quite a number of responses to my FORESIGHT: What happened in the 19th and 20th century? Creating a doomed future post which I wrote four days ago today. I suspect maybe someone resteemed it today due to the sudden cluster of responses.
I appreciate the responses even the one I responded critically to who started their response with "Trust and believe". Critical thinking is my thing. I want more people to learn and use critical thinking. Opening a statement with trust and believe is an appeal to authority fallacy. My immediate thought was "Why should I do that?" It brings up the idea of why someone would think their statement of such a thing would be sufficient to make their position true to someone else. Now, if I were particularly religious and was attending church this is something I might not be surprised to hear in a sermon for the day. I am not particularly religious and I don't tend to like the use of Appeals to Authority, or Appeals to Tradition in sermons either.
So I pointed this out in my response. This exchange was inspiring though. It made me revisit and think some more about what I was thinking about four days ago in the wake of Charlottesville, and the removal of statues across the nation.
It has even gotten more INSANE since I wrote that. People have joked about things like this by saying "Are you going to take down Mount Rushmore too? Are you going to remove statues of George Washington, and rename any places called Washington? Are you going to remove statues of Thomas Jefferson?" These were questions that people were asking to make people hopefully think about how stupid this censoring and outrage over history has become.
The response I don't think was as expected. Many people responded that they thought those were all good ideas. This was a slap my forehead and shake my head moment. The word FOOLS came unbidden to my head.
Why stop there? Why not take down all statues of anyone? Someone can be offended by any statue.
I ask this in seriousness because these statues we are taking down now have been up for a long time. It is not former slaves that are demanding they be taken down, that flags be banned, and that things like Lynch be renamed. It is not the former victims of actual segregation that called for the taking down of such things. These are the people if any that had a right to express offense. They didn't see the need. In fact, they were likely intelligent enough to know that seeing things like statues inspires people to go look and find out what that statue is about. They will THEN and ONLY THEN go look into the history of a thing. They will learn the good, and the bad provided we haven't edited the history so thoroughly that they cannot find such things.
Let's take the ISIS destruction of ancient temples. Can you imagine yourself walking through the desert there some day when you are traveling and you walk over a mound and go on with your business? Are you going to suddenly have this inspiration to open a history book, and research to find out what that mound was? Most likely not.
They obliterated things so thoroughly that even archaeologists cannot reconstruct it. So the inspiration to look into what something was, who built it, what good things they did, what bad things they did is gone... No one will recall or be inspired to recall that information again unless just by chance they are reading old history books. How many people do you know that actually read old history books? Out of those people how many of them only do it when something inspires their curiosity?
People look at the various statues that they are taking down as condoning slavery. The funny thing is the former slaves didn't look at them this way. So today people bask in their emotions, their virtue signaling, and how wonderful they are in protecting the world from evil thoughts. Those statues must be about slavery right?
That is like saying the only thing anyone needs to know about your body is your nose. Nothing else matters, none of the other details about you matter. Just your nose. You are your nose. Forget your eyes, your personality, your hair, your figure, your complexion. All you are now is a nose.
This is how these statues are being treated. They were confederate soldiers, and generals so everything about them is about slavery. This is utter hogwash, but if you don't actually bother to read the history and instead you listen to people that tell you "Trust and believe" I guess it shouldn't surprise me that all you see is the NOSE of history.
Those statues were important to those against slavery just as they were those that supported it. They were a reminder. They were a reminder that there were events that happened. Those people were at the center of those events. Thus, when it comes to researching history they were like knowing the good keywords to find the juicy bits in history. Those statues did not inspire just good and comforting memories. They were not about white supremacist. They were reminders of the history good and bad. Seeing a statue of Robert E. Lee is unlikely to make someone think "Wow! Slavery is bad ass!". They might make them think "Who is Robert E. Lee?" Then when they go look they are likely to find the information from his supporters, his detractors, and the historians who just documented things without picking sides.
Without the statue, why would they bother?
So if you are going to start hiding the blemishes in history that you personally find offensive and you truly think you are protecting people why not remove all art, and all statues? We can have simple plain walls with no embellishments. I mean your attitude and your signs about safe spaces are highly offensive to me. Can we ban those too?
Black Lives Matter is offensive to me because I think All Lives Matter. Can we treat that like white supremacists are being treated? If you don't like All Lives Matter then we can simplify it further. How about "Lives Matter"? For some reason people think removing BLACK defeats the message. If your message is one of racism then you are correct. If it truly is about equality then it shouldn't matter at all. I mean I think you'd understand my point completely if I were walking around with a sign saying White Lives Matter. You'd be outraged and consider me a white supremacist. I wouldn't disagree with you. However, replacing one WORD with another White to Black and suddenly the logic and the issue is lost. You are so attached to the outrage, and the feeling of offense that being told All Lives Matter is lost upon you.
I also get offended by the White Privilege statements. The United States is a pretty large place. I haven't actually lived anywhere that it is beneficial for me to be white. I know there are places in the U.S. where this is not true, but they are not the entire United States and I'd appreciate it if people quit using Generalization Fallacies and assuming I have white privilege.
In fact, I've been told recently that anytime I have the option to NOT put my race on any form of application that these days it is a good idea to never admit you are white. Why? Times have flipped. Perceived racial bias is now being fought by people being racially biased. It's okay to be racist these days as long as the race that you don't like is white.
It gets even crazier when many of the people calling for white genocide, or telling people to abort white babies are actually white people. Is this another insane form of virtue signalling? "See, I'm a good guy, I bash the white crackers too... It's okay if I say white cracker right?"
I am not white supremacist. I despise bigotry. I despise racism. I will stand against ANY racial supremacy regardless of the race. So if people are pushing white supremacy I'll challenge them. I have actually done so. Yet, I won't call them white supremacists simply due to protecting a statue and because there happened to be some white supremacists with them in a public gathering. Likewise if there are black supremacists I will challenge them. I also won't treat anyone that happens to be in a crowd they are in at a public gathering as also being black supremacists. People protest for different reasons.
I mentioned this with regards to Charlottesville to someone in a SLACK I frequent and I was asked "Why didn't people distance themselves from Richard Spencer and his people then?" First of all it was a public protest about that statue. That is where people went to protest it. What are they supposed to do leave, and not protest what they feel needs to be protested because Richard Spencer and his neo-nazi ilk happen to be there? If you think that is the case then were ALL the counter protestors Antifa? If not then why didn't they distance themselves from the urine, feces, and chemical filled bottle and balloon throwing Antifa members? If the logic that not distancing from Richard Spencer meant people made someone a white supremacist, then the logic must also extend to the counter-protestors and all of those people must have been Antifa.
Yet logically we know this is not true. This is called a generalization and it is a logical fallacy.
I have posted about Charlottesville and I several times have posted images of black men that were there protesting AGAINST the removal of the statues. If those black guys were white supremacists then isn't that considered suicide?
There were also other people with various shades of brown skin. Yet they were white supremacists, or perhaps they were "uncle Toms" which likely went through some people's head when I mentioned the black gentlemen (they were gentlemen) above.
As far as Charlottesville, we had the one tragic death from the nutbag that crashed the car into people. Sure they were pounding on his car first. Sure some point in the day he may or may not have been hit by shit or piss balloons... Who knows? It still doesn't justify it. Yet, when people are bombarded by things for an hour or more non-stop with no police intervention it doesn't surprise me that someone snapped.
In fact, I am very surprised there were not a lot more deaths. It seems like they were intentionally trying to shove oil and fire together and wait for the explosion. Yet, it didn't happen.
Considering what actually happened there I am truly astonished it didn't end up much worse.
So why do I have a problem with the "Trust and believe"?
Let's see. Right after I watched 2 hours uninterrupted, no pauses, of Charlottesville and was thinking "Man that was a mess" I happened to go see the news. I saw them talking about the violent white supremacists, the nazis, etc. Yet in watching it I'd say easily 95% of all the violence (even including the car) came from Antifa. The rest seemed to be responses in ALL cases to direct provocation (generally of a physical nature) by Antifa. They were prepared. Antifa arrived with water coolers full of bottles and balloons full of urine, feces, paint, and chemicals. I watched the confusion of people asking "What is that?" to people talking about their skin burning in some cases. Then what it was began to be widely known. It went on in excess of an hour.
So let's see how calm you are if people are throwing shit, piss, paint, and chemicals on you for an hour or more and the police are doing nothing. Let's see how calm, collected, and non-violent you can remain. Yet that doesn't include the tear gas, smoke bombs, mace, and tasers that were also involved.
Then let's see... how about some more "Trust and believe". Yesterday the left leaning news (thanks @newsagg) and the mainstream media were both pretty fixated on the mother of the car victim saying she wouldn't speak to Trump after what he said about her daughter.
So did she "Trust and believe" the wrong person? Trump only had positive things to say about both the mother and the daughter. So exactly what were these horrible things he supposedly said? Who told her that he did and LIED to her yet she chose to "trust and believe" them?
History is important. The good and the bad. Censoring, Editing, and changing history especially when you are not an aggrieved party related to that history is not a good thing.
I acknowledge that I may be a bit more emotional, a bit more intense, and a bit more harsh on this subject. It is one I am very passionate about. I am not ANY RACE Supremacist, but I am a huge hater of people who destroy, conceal, and rewrite history. It has given me much pause this week when considering the NAP. If it were not for my strong belief in that then such actions could sway me to go on the offense. Most people don't know about or follow the NAP so I suspect such activities are increasing the opposition on both sides of this situation.
I am very disappointed these days. I see most of it as a failure of what I believe most of us think education was supposed to be, yet it is the success of what I believe the education was actually intended to be.
Oh. A final thing. @ladyrebecca wrote a great piece on her own experience in a formerly Communist Country and growing up there and how some of these attitudes we are now seeing in the U.S. played out there. Learn from history people!
You cannot rewrite history! Ask the Communists. - by @ladyrebecca
And Antifa... this one was written for you: What is establishment?
