(If I don’t make my points well, it’s because I’m intentionally (and it will take considerable effort) to moderate my language inthe hopes that this diary will be more widely read. I grew up in a small Midwestern town, playing sports where coaches used any and all language when displeased and I later served in the Marines and can deliver a profane tongue lashing worthy of any Drill Instructor, Company “Gunny” or even Sgt. Major. So for those who get what I’m saying, please feel free to imagine my inner jarhead version of these remarks. Or an especially profane version of the Key & Peele sketches where Luther serves as Obama’s anger translator.)
The unfolding events in Charlottesville are a horrible reminder of feelings and divisions that have been part of our nation from the beginning. If progress has been made, it has often come at an appallingly high cost including a Civil War. And progress has been uneven, with major steps forward being followed by steps (sometimes large ones) backwards. If the election of our first non-white President appeared to represent a giant step forward, many believed then & have been proven correct since (and especially today) that while a step forward was taken, it was not a giant one & not even a long one. Our current President was sorely inadequate in his remarks this afternoon. No surprise there, nor was it the least bit surprising he tried to spread out blame for the violence on everyone instead of squarely where it belonged – on the alt-right White Power deplorables who instigated the whole thing. What he SHOULD have said (after doing it) was that he’d fired every member of his administration that has had a connection to these groups (including and especially Bannon) and had their stuff boxed up and dumped on the street outside the fence. At least Virginia Governor Terry McCauliffe got it right when he told those groups to “Go home and don’t come back”, and “There is NO place for you in America.”
I can’t help but note at this point that a key & significant segment people who smugly tell the majority of the country to “get over it” when it comes to the election of our current President happen to be the groups behind the protests of the removal of the Lee statue in Charlottesville, VA. These are people who literally over 150years later refuse to get over the fact that the south/Confederacy lost the Civil War and that slavery (the “state’s right” those who led the secession most wanted to “protect’) was outlawed. Ever since they have fought tooth and nail via force & outright violence including murder, willful disobedience of the law of the land, coercion & propaganda to perpetuate their antebellum vision of what America should be and who is entitled to the benefits of citizenship and full participation in the American Dream. And non-whites aren’t worthy in their eyes. In fact, as far as traditional hard core Klan is concerned anyone who isn’t White Anglo Saxon Protestant (WASP) is unworthy of consideration as an actual human being. The vast majority of the so-called “alt-right” feels the same way.
So when such people tell me or anyone else to “get over it” when talking about the elevation of their champion Donald Trump to the Presidency I feel (and say too) they can go screw themselves. I’ll “get over it” when they get over losing the Civil War. And get over their worship of Gen. Robert E. Lee.
Today isn’t the first trouble we’ve seen in Charlottesville over that damned statue. And we’ve seen other clashes in other places over different statues during the past year. But this weekend was planned and advertised as a big event for various elements of the alt-right White Supremacy movement to make a big splash. And for such people Virginia, and that statue in Charlottesville appears to be their big symbol. I’ve always been mystified by the veneration of Lee by folks in the south, and people from elsewhere seduced by the whole “state’s rights” b.s.
Yes, Lee was an accomplished soldier. ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_E._Lee ). He was also something else.
Robert E. Lee was a TRAITOR!
Take a look at the actual definition of Treason: https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/2381
“Whoever, owing allegiance to the United States, levies war against them or adheres to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort within the United States or elsewhere, is guilty of treason and shall suffer death, or shall be imprisoned not less than five years and fined under this title but not less than $10,000; and shall be incapable of holding any office under the United States.”
For those who might point out the U.S. Code I’ve cited is from almost a hundred years after the Civil War I offer this from uslegal.com: A person commits the crime of treason if he levies war against his state or country or sides to its enemies, giving them aid and comfort. Treason is a crime under federal and some state laws. Treason is made a high crime, punishable by death, under federal law by Article III, section 3 of the U.S. Constitution: "Treason against the United States shall consist only in levying war against them, or in adhering to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort."
As far as I’m concerned, Lee not only committed treason to the letter of the Constitution & the law, his treason was unique. Winfield Scott advised Lincoln that Lee should have a significant command, and Lee initially accepted a promotion to Col. initially while turning down an offered Commission in the fledgling Confederacy. However, when it became apparent his precious Virginia would secede Lee turned down a promotion & command of the defense of DC - and a couple of days later was headed to Richmond where he’d accept a Commission from ole Jeff Davis and served as his senior military advisor prior to taking over what would eventually be the best known of the Confederate’s forces – the Army of Northern Virginia. All his eloquent talk about being willing to trade millions of slaves (had he owned that many) to preserved the UNION was b.s. – because he couldn’t bring himself to “draw my sword upon Virginia, my native state.” Lee’s leadership led the war to last as long as it did, and the eventual “butcher’s bill” to being as appallingly high as it turned out to be.
He was a TRAITOR all right, and not just any traitor but in a class by himself. Yet he is revered by many tens of millions. Ask a bunch of bible thumping, hard core southern Baptists who they personally admire more – god or Robert E. Lee (they almost always refer to him that way) – a lot of them would hesitate and think about it. I know from personal experience having put the question to many of his admirers over the years. In any case, for all of them if Jesus sits “on the right hand of God, the father almighty” then Robert E. Lee sits on the other. And even for Confederate sympathizers and other alt-right White Power dirtbags Lee holds iconic status & is on their short list of top “heroes.” The choice of this despicable collection of groups to use Lee’s statue in Charlottesville (again!) proves my point.
So a Lee statue is a BIG deal to these folks, and the one in Charlottesville, VA, home of one Thomas Jefferson and his University of Virginia is bound to be a flash-point in the alt-right White Power movement. That’s all the more reason to de-emphasize it and all those other freaking Confederate statues & consign them to museums. I for one wouldn’t shed any tears if they were all destroyed (would love to take some of my Marine Corps training and blow one to smithereens with C-4) but I can live with them being part of a museum collection surrounded by context of what those people represent – a defense of the subjugation of other human beings.
Lee hailed from a well-off & prominent family in northern Virginia. He served with distinction in the Mexican American War, and being a West Point grad he stayed in the Army afterwards. If as I believe his Civil War legend is overrated due to the incompetence of various Union Generals he faced in the early years of the Civil War he was clearly a talented soldier & a gifted, even charismatic leader. There is debate on his views towards slavery but the fact remains he/his family owned them, so if he had issues with slavery they couldn’t have been serious as far as I’m concerned. But what matters most is that Lee chose to abandon his duties to the Union and his Commission in the Union Army and instead not only “raise his sword” to the Union but to lead the effort to destroy the very Union he once chose to serve.
I’d like to compare Lee to another man of his time who hailed from southern Illinois. From my hometown in fact. I have to point out that southern Illinois came close to seceding, being populated by plenty of people from nearby &slave owning states. By southern Illinois, I’m talking about the real southern Illinois and not the “anything south of Cook & DuPage Counties” version that folks from Chicago seem to believe in. No, I’m talking about the part that starts near I-64, and where the flat, boring plains turn into a land of steep hills and wondrous natural beauty. The man I’m talking about also came from a well-off family (they donated part of their land to form my hometown when Brownsville burned down) who though not a West Point grad also served with distinction in the Mexican American War. He too was a talented Officer and a charismatic leader. He settled back in southern Illinois, and was a Douglas Democrat who prior to the Civil War was supportive of slavery. However he was more supportive of the Union. If he straddled the fence for a while on slavery in the run-up to the war when push came to shove & a serious attempt was made to precipitate southern Illinois seceding, by force of his personality and in two different interventions he stopped it. He also turned opinion enough to generate enlistments in the Union Army from the region.
Gen. John A. Logan ( http://www.lib.niu.edu/2007/iht14020736.html ) bore many similarities to Lee including (before the war at least) being accepting of the institution of slavery. But when it counted most, he made a very different choice than Lee. Logan didn’t turn traitor. He is considered among the best of the non-West Point trained Generals in the Union forces & arguably the best. He is also credited as the founder of what we now know as Memorial Day, and after the war was sent to Congress not as a Democrat but as a member of the nascent Republican Party where he strove to provide equality for the former slaves that he’d once denied them both in his personal beliefs and his political actions. To put it more bluntly, he grew up privileged like Lee, and with many of the same beliefs including those regarding slavery. However, when the issue of slavery reached the point where it was tearing our young nation apart Lee chose to defend the indefensible, couching his decision in “states rights” and placing his loyalty to his home above his loyalty to his country. Logan confronted his beliefs, and realized two things. The first was that the preservation of his country was more important than both his home and preserving slavery. The second was that his earlier views on slavery were wrong, and that he could not and would not defend the indefensible.
Both Lee and Logan had not only wealth and their lives, but theirs and their family’s reputations at stake as the two similar men made their choices about what to dowhen war broke out between the States. Lee turned traitor. Logan remained loyal, and became a statesman. Lee and his followers can go straight to Dante’s inferno as far as I’m concerned, and take that freaking statue in Charlottesville (and the others)with them.
I’ll say it again. Robert E. Lee was a @#$*& TRAITOR.
Bin Laden was buried at sea to deny his followers a rallying place. Let’s do the same for spots like that statue in Charlottesville and remove them all from open public spaces. If we can’t destroy them all, let’s at least put them in a museum complex and surround them with the required context — the despicable cause for which they fought.
(P.S. For most of my soon to be sixty years, my biggest fantasy was to see the Cubs win the World Series. Even after I grew old enough to have hopes beyond being a professional baseball player. I got to the point a few decades back that I’d settle for just seeing them in the World Series, hoping that not being greedy might at least let me witness World Series baseball being played at Wrigley Field. Even though my ultimate fantasy came true last fall (like so many I’d despaired it would ever happen in my lifetime), but even if it hadn’t I’d still now harbor a new ultimate fantasy:
I’d be given access to all I needed to rig up that Lee statue in Charlottesville, VA with C-4 and “det-cord” (basically explosive rope with amazing cutting potential if wrapped around something – say the neck of a statue of a person who although an icon to some was in fact a traitor…..), all the flags (and poles) I’d need to surround the statue with Rebel, Nazi and other alt-right White Power flags. And a tank. And a serious sound system. Once the statue was rigged to decapitate Lee’s head & cut the legs off his “noble steed” he’s sitting on and plenty of C-4 to blow it all including the base into pieces I’d plant all those racist flags around the whole thing & rig them with something special too. Then I’d crank up the sound system, and as Stars & Striped forever blasted out I’d walk trigger a separate rig that would set every one of those racist, UN-American flags on fire. As the last note of Stars & Stripes forever sounded I’d push the button to blow that statue to bits, then climb on the tank as it rolled onto what’s left. Then as Stars & Stripes Forever played again I’d have the driver put one tack of the tank in “forward” & the other in “reverse” and wave the AMERICAN flag as the tank ground what’s left of the gomer’s precious Lee statue into dust!)