*** OFFICIAL BREXIT SUNLIT UPLANDS and #MEGA THREAD ***

[spoonitnow]

To take the statue argument further, statues of Churchill and Nelson are fine, 'cause they led the country in wars where we were the defenders. It's hard to argue fighting Nazis is something to be ashamed of. Was Churchill flawed? Absolutely. He was a complete racist, but that's not what we're celebrating him for. The statues are him in his WWII outfit doing his anti-Hitler thing. If there was a statue where he's bending some Indian guy over and sodomizing him, then yeah take it down.

But, in Bristol thee was a statue of a guy named Colston, who made a fortune as a slave-trader. The statue was there because he helped make the port wealthy in the 1800s. Is the accumulation of wealth through the exploitation of black people something to celebrate? Not really. Take it down, put it in a museum.

All of that is fine.

For clarity, I don't give a shit about statues either way. I've never walked up to a statue and been like oh man this statue is the shit, I'm so glad it's here.

There's some I feel pretty ambivalent about. General Lee would be one. Was he on the wrong side of history? Yeah, but he wasn't going around mistreating black people or saying racist shit afaik. He was just a kickass general. I guess you could say he associated himself with slavery when he could have stayed in the Union Army, so on the balance his statues should probably come down. But imo he's not at the top of the list or anything. IOW, I wouldn't be pissed if I went to Dixie and saw a statue of RE Lee. But Nathaniel Forrest? Fuck that, that guy was basically the KKK in a different uniform.

Lee's choice wasn't about slavery. Lee associated himself with Virginia instead of the United States. Having a primary association with your state over the US was the most common sentiment at the time since the states were seen sort of like countries in the EU are seen now. If Virginia wouldn't have left the Union, he would have stayed and led the Union army.

Forrest is one of those that gets a lot of people tripped up because it's really easy to get just enough information to draw a bad conclusion about him. This gets into a discussion of things like the difference between the first Klan and the second Klan, the difference in goals/tactics/makeup, why Forrest disbanded the Klan (ie: they weren't doing what they were supposed to) and so on that foreigners probably don't give a shit about and that I don't care to type out. The TL;DR version is that the shit he did during the war (ie: Fort Willow) was much worse than anything he did or organized while leading the Klan.

There's a lot of good about Forrest that gets ignored in all of that. Unless I'm mistaken, he's the only man to go from private to general inside of a single war in written history. He also had an intuition about strategy that was one of the greatest to ever be known.

All of that aside, if you haven't seen videos online of these morons maiming and/or killing themselves while pulling down statues and whatever, it's funny as hell.

[Poopadoop]

Lee's choice wasn't about slavery. Lee associated himself with Virginia instead of the United States. Having a primary association with your state over the US was the most common sentiment at the time since the states were seen sort of like countries in the EU are seen now. If Virginia wouldn't have left the Union, he would have stayed and led the Union army.

I understand that about the US in those days, and there were very few generals who were from the South and stayed in the Union Army. So while I'm no expert on Lee, my sense is he was more loyal to Virginia than he was to slavery, if he even cared about slavery at all.

Forrest is one of those that gets a lot of people tripped up because it's really easy to get just enough information to draw a bad conclusion about him. This gets into a discussion of things like the difference between the first Klan and the second Klan, the difference in goals/tactics/makeup, why Forrest disbanded the Klan (ie: they weren't doing what they were supposed to) and so on that foreigners probably don't give a shit about and that I don't care to type out. The TL;DR version is that the shit he did during the war (ie: Fort Willow) was much worse than anything he did or organized while leading the Klan.

There's a lot of good about Forrest that gets ignored in all of that. Unless I'm mistaken, he's the only man to go from private to general inside of a single war in written history. He also had an intuition about strategy that was one of the greatest to ever be known.

Well yeah, I don't know much about him either. He still sounds like a bit of a cunt though, even if he was good at war.

All of that aside, if you haven't seen videos online of these morons maiming and/or killing themselves while pulling down statues and whatever, it's funny as hell.

gonna take a look.