Baltimore Takes Down Confederate Monuments In Single Night, Like A Boss
Baltimore Mayor Catherine Pugh Gets It Done
You know how Confederate participation trophies should be removed? Tempting and appropriate though it might feel, dynamite would be messy and somebody might get hurt. Those things are sturdy. Barring a big kaboom, unceremoniously hauling them away like garbage is pretty good, even if it hurts the sensitive fee-fees of some Lost Cause glorifiers of the War to Preserve Slavery. Baltimore did exactly that last night, taking away four Confederate monuments in one quick move, leaving behind their lying pedestals, which can be dealt with later:
Apart from the purely military-tactics meaning of "great generals," that whole thing is a bright and shining lie, if you don't mind us mixing our wars up. Christian Soldiers? Sure, they prayed, and rightwing homeschool textbooks make much of that, but it was in the cause of enslaving human beings, which seems an afterthought for many Good Christians. Ah, but they "waged war like gentlemen," which is so surreal as to bugger belief. Anyway, here's some video of a crew hauling away the horses' asses:
Footage of Baltimore's Robert E. Lee & Stonewall Jackson monument being taken down, driven away on a flatbed. MORE: https: //t.co/L8FhRBUJI2 pic.twitter.com/S4DYdFkDC0
— WJZ | CBS Baltimore (@cbsbaltimore) August 16, 2017
The sense of history is thick in those places. We can look back easily and say war is bad. Armchair quarterbacking is my specialty, too. Washing your hands of the whole messy business is easy, and maybe even satisfying to some extent, but "those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it". If not for the bravery and commitment and sacrifice of hundreds of thousands of men and women, there, on those fields, the world would be a very different place. If you can't appreciate that I can't help you.
I do appreciate it. Both my parents fought in WWII, and they fought for good reasons. But the whole thing could have been avoided if diplomats and statesmen and businessmen and citizens had stood against it before the war began. It didn't have to happen, and that is disturbing to me. We are in a not dissimilar situation today, and war is not inevitable, but some people seem to want it. That is also disturbing to me. One thing I got from my visit to Gettysburg is that war is something people should do everything possible to avoid.
I know it's a bit superficial to talk about Star Trek, but my favorite episode of TOS is "A Taste of Armageddon" in which Captain Kirk says ""Death, destruction, disease, horror. That's what war is all about, Anan. That's what makes it a thing to be avoided."