On a sunny Saturday morning, August 12th 2017, a group of hate-filled Klansmen, Neo-Nazis, and other forms of white supremacists that have been scorned and disavowed by every political figure and 90% of US citizens gathered in an obscure Virginia city to protest the removal of of a statue of Robert E. Lee that was legally petitioned for removal. After a violent clash with a group later identified to be Antifa, the entire nation became wrapped up in a single argument about whether or not we should allow these statues to exist anymore, and to a lesser extent, what to do with them once they're torn down. And all of this must be decided on a Federal level.
One of the things that interests me is that while the Confederacy was formed almost entirely of Southern Democrats, it seems to be fringe groups of the same party that are pushing the hardest to make a Federal case of what to do with the statues. I remember as soon as 15 years ago, living in small town Northern Wisconsin, seeing pickup trucks all over the place proudly waving the Stars and Bars. I know this because I was one of them, and I continued to do so until I was in my early 20s, living in Massachusetts. What most people don't know is that up until 2008 I was a down the ticket Democrat Voter, with very little to no questioning. I abstained from the vote in 2008 because there was no Presidential Candidate that I could align with, and I had been living outside of Wisconsin for so long that I couldn't make an educated vote on any of the down ticket offices. It was only in the cycle between 2008 and 2010 that I started to recognize a hard move toward Imperial Socialism coming from the people on the left, and began to vote Republican. I can quickly remember, and recognize this cycle, as well as explain individual points that I used in my decision. What I didn't pick up on; until this new story in the news came to national attention; was that as I moved further to the right, I passively stopped displaying the Confederate Battle Flag. It wasn't a conscious decision, it just stopped being important to me.
It's important to note, on the subject of rebel flags, that I don't really believe that the majority of people who fly them actually display them in racism. I know that growing up in the north, it was generally seen as a symbol of country pride or being a redneck. Now, I can't sit here and pretend that we had a lot of experience with minorities in the farming region of Wisconsin, because we really didn't. But I can tell you that moving to the city and beginning to experience other races with my rural, rebel flag upbringing, I never had any trouble interacting with the black and Hispanic people immediately from the get-go. In spite of the fact that I had been waving the stars and bars from age 15 on, I never saw a person of a different race as anything other than a person. I was 19 before I had ever heard anyone refer to the rebel flag as "Racist". Don't get me wrong, after the glass ceiling was broken, no one had to explain to me why the connotation was there. But it took someone outrightly telling me that there was racism associated with that flag before I had ever begun to conflate the two concepts.
Going back to the monuments, I can honestly say that I bear a level of indifference to the monuments. I can see both sides of the argument, and both are rightly valid. There is a lot of history that goes along with these statues, and having them around leads conversations to start as people are touring and visiting places. Relegating these statues to a museum restricts access to them to people who are actively and deliberately looking for Civil War history, and the lay person may never have the opportunity to have a discussion and learn from them. Destroying them takes the entire concept of education away from anyone. It's also a stab at the artists who created them. They are beautiful and well detailed works of art that are worth a lot of money and have a lot of man hours tied up in their creation. On the other side of the coin, while I'm against people who swear that the crime of being white makes you guilty of the sins of slave owners past, I can see; especially with the events of these past weeks; how seeing statues of men who unapologetically fought to keep slavery in force can stir some powerful emotions. Even though no one who is alive today has ever been held in slavery, I understand that people like Lee would have insisted on seeing all of the people of color today in bondage just as he did back in his time.
One of the major points of this entire argument is the fact that it's all or nothing. The people who want the statues removed want them all removed by the will of the federal government. This is not a Federal issue, though. At best, this is a State level issue. However, in most instances, the statues are in municipal parks, so they are governed by local law. If there are problems with the statues, they should be handled the way that the Lee statue in Charlottesville was handled. The removal was petitioned by a concerned citizen, added to a referendum, voted on, and passed. After the vote, the opposition exercised it's right to assemble, and was given the proper permits to do so, and the removal was delayed while another referendum began. Statue removal by any other means by governing bodies is tyranny, and removal by activist groups is vandalism, punishable by fine and imprisonment. As much of a controversy as Charlottesville was, they issue was handled correctly and went through all of the proper avenues.
Even though the news cycle has made this all about statues, there is still a sneaking feeling inside of me that says that there was something else going on with the protest and counterprotest. Everything seemed to happen too conveniently, and as I learn more and more about the protest, there is a feeling deep down inside of me that there was a slide of hand in play, and something was either intended to happen and come out of this, or something else was happening elsewhere while the news cycle was focused on a small southern city. I will close this article at that, and I intend to expand on the slide of hand as I research more. Like, comment, and share this article with your friends, and feel free to link it in your social media. Let's get a good comment discussion going and try to get our ideas out without name calling.
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