American Politics thread: No Nazis Allowed
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i dont even know why some of these people even have statues. The Dred Scott guy? Really? Who gives a shit about that guy
People who suffered from economic anxiety during the 1890s and 1950s/1960s.
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i dont even know why some of these people even have statues. The Dred Scott guy? Really? Who gives a shit about that guy
That one in particular really belongs in a museum dedicated to the history of American slavery and its defenders.
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Taney didn't need to obliterate the Missouri Compromise to rule that black people weren't American citizens in v. Dred Scott, but by god he did it anyway.
Meanwhile, to the shock of almost no one, Wikileaks refused to publish a trove of internal Russian government documents during the campaign.
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Well gosh, I'm glad Trump was much quicker to leap on the Barcelona terror attack than the Charlottesville stuff.
As you can guess he had wise calming words in this sad time.–- Update From New Post Merge ---
Holy shit lol at that chart
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-sheer-number-of-democrats-running-for-congress-is-a-good-sign-for-the-party/
That is legit goddamn spit-take information. -
Dan Harmon on nazis.
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How are the polls made exactly ? Considering roughly half of americans don't even vote and will never vote in their life. Wouldn't that mean that he needs less than 25% (/30% maybe) of approval to really be in bad position ?
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Even the Rasmussen poll has stopped pretending that Trump's numbers aren't cratering.
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The Steve Bannon-Scott Pruitt wing of the Trump Administration are discreetly hard at work attempting to dismantle environmental regulation. I suppose we Americans should admire the commitment our current government has to killing most of us.
Next week Fearless Leader wants to hold a rally in Phoenix, Arizona. The Mayor Phoenix, Greg Stanton, issued a public statement saying the sitting President of the United States isn't welcome there.
I should go if he comes. Any witty ideas for signs?
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People who suffered from economic anxiety during the 1890s and 1950s/1960s.
oh well let me pour one out for those poor guys
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So this is what Trump was referring to? Looking very closely at? Gathering facts about?
Photo of ‘Antifa’ man assaulting officer was doctored, analysis shows
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/photo-antifa-man-assaulting-officer-doctored-analysis-shows/
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i dont even know why some of these people even have statues. The Dred Scott guy? Really? Who gives a shit about that guy
It's about racism. The exact people who had statues erected of them wasn’t too terribly important, they just had to be prominent members of the confederacy who could be elevated to "Hero" status by the people with this agenda.
Almost none of the monuments were put up right after the Civil War. Some were erected during the civil rights era in the early 1960s, which coincided with the war’s centennial, but the vast majority of monuments date to between 1895 and World War I. They were part of a campaign to paint the Southern cause in the Civil War as just and slavery as a benevolent institution, and their installation came against a backdrop of Jim Crow violence and oppression of African Americans. The monuments were put up as explicit symbols of white supremacy.
The group responsible for the majority of these memorials was the United Daughters of the Confederacy (UDC), the most influential white women’s organization in the South in the late 1800s and early 1900s. Honoring Confederate heroes, generals and soldiers alike, was one of the group’s primary objectives, and the hundreds of monuments throughout the South — and beyond — serve as testimony to the Daughters’ aggressive agenda to vindicate the Confederacy. That lasting power of the mythology they made is still evident today in the raging battles over the fate of the memorials.
It was a rebranding effort. Trying to call it the “Lost Cause of the Confederacy”.
They took the basic notion of what the War was fought over, that being because “The North took away the Southern States’ Rights of slave ownership” and trimmed it up to “The North took away the Southern States’ rights”. Part of the re-branding effort was to paint the south in a more heroic light as a result. If they could make it seem the South was NOT fighting about slavery, they could paint them as heroes… and heroes typically get statues made of them right?
Gotta make all those statues to back up this new “heroic” image right?This despite the fact that if you actually ask any of the Confederates who were around shortly after the Civil War happened, they will not only admit it actually was about Slavery but seemed offended that anyone would say it was about anything else.
@”Southern:‘The people of the South,’ says a contemporary, ‘are not fighting for slavery but for independence.’ Let us look into this matter. It is an easy task, we think, to show up this new-fangled heresy — a heresy calculated to do us no good, for it cannot deceive foreign statesmen nor peoples, nor mislead any one here nor in Yankeeland. . . Our doctrine is this: WE ARE FIGHTING FOR INDEPENDENCE THAT OUR GREAT AND NECESSARY DOMESTIC INSTITUTION OF SLAVERY SHALL BE PRESERVED, and for the preservation of other institutions of which slavery is the groundwork.
That’s why the very idea of confederate statues are so appalling to a lot of non-racist people. History books and museums are for preserving history. Statues are for celebrating it. Statues of people are supposed to signify they are some kind of heroes who should be revered.
But the Confederacy were not heroes. They were the bad guys. They fought a war to preserve an evil institution meant to pick cotton on the backs of enslaved human beings.
We.
Should.
Not.
Be.
Celebrating.
This. -
It's sad all of that even has to be said, Demon Rin.
I've also been reading up a lot on the history of these statues and they were pretty much all put up for white supremacist reasons. It's disgusting, absolutely disgusting. And it's very sad that a lot of the public are buying into the removal of these statues being a matter of "erasing history". I hate to say it, but I see that all over my FB. So many FB friends are posting that nonsense. They're playing right into the alt-right's hands - The group of people who truthfully want to actually misrepresent history, by changing text books, saying that slavery of the South was "nice", and that the Confederacy was just misunderstood.
I don't want history erased. I want these statues preserved in museums, and I want a thorough description next to them when and WHY they were put up.
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@Monkey:
The Republicans will lose the House in 18, and Trump will lose the election in 20.
So this is what Trump was referring to? Looking very closely at? Gathering facts about?
Photo of ‘Antifa’ man assaulting officer was doctored, analysis shows
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/photo-antifa-man-assaulting-officer-doctored-analysis-shows/
sooo Not only did they make a fake pic, but they used a pic that was from Athens, Greece? Excuse me… I'm torn between laughing at their lameness and crying over how far these idiots will go to try to defend their idiotic stand and/or create division.
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How are the polls made exactly ? Considering roughly half of americans don't even vote and will never vote in their life. Wouldn't that mean that he needs less than 25% (/30% maybe) of approval to really be in bad position ?
Polls tend to also ask if someone thinks they will vote, and categorizes these as "Likely Voters".
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It's sad all of that even has to be said, Demon Rin.
I've also been reading up a lot on the history of these statues and they were pretty much all put up for white supremacist reasons. It's disgusting, absolutely disgusting. And it's very sad that a lot of the public are buying into the removal of these statues being a matter of "erasing history". I hate to say it, but I see that all over my FB. So many FB friends are posting that nonsense. They're playing right into the alt-right's hands - The group of people who truthfully want to actually misrepresent history, by changing text books, saying that slavery of the South was "nice", and that the Confederacy was just misunderstood.
I don't want history erased. I want these statues preserved in museums, and I want a thorough description next to them when and WHY they were put up.
The whole history thing is so damn bizarre, like statues in park are somehow the only way that both…
A: History is preserved.
B: History is learned about.I mean...well shit just think about that for two seconds and realize what a laugh riot the claim is. How much of an obvious dodge it is.
Monuments of people are explicitly about one thing, honoring those people.
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The closest comparisons I can think of around where I am is a town named after Oliver Cromwell, which really ought to piss off Irish-Americans, of which there are shitloads about. But well, unlike Robert E Lee pretty much no one but history buffs around here understands or cares about any of that.
Still feels really awkward knowing it though, though more funny awkward. -
Take a lesson: How Germany handles monuments from Nazi and communist eras
Interesting read about dishonored monuments and their removal and further use -
Tampa Bay sports teams to foot the bill to relocate Confederate statue.
http://deadspin.com/tampa-sports-teams-offer-to-provide-funds-for-removal-o-1797945826
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Just make a Museum of National Shame. Stow all the horrid statues there. Profit.
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Just make a Museum of National Shame. Stow all the horrid statues there. Profit.
My idea was sell the statues to the White supremacists. They want the things so badly let them have them, that'll get it to shut up and the government takes their money.
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The supremacists definitely want them kept in public squares though.
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The following traitors and enablers of traitors have statues in the National Statuary Hall Collection:
Jefferson Davis
Alexander Stephens
Edmund Smith
Joseph Wheeler
James George
John C. Calhoun
Robert E. LeeLet's fuck them up next.
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@Monkey:
The supremacists definitely want them kept in public squares though.
That'll just by too bad for them
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Booker and Pelosi are on the Hall statuary.
Note that each state gets two statues and Virginia has Lee there over Jefferson, Madison, or Monroe.
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Melt the statues and use the material to make replacement statues of people worthy. Take slave owners off the money too.
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Yeah I don't see Washington coming off the dollar bill or quarters as while he did own slaves they were let go after his death….also while he did rebel against the government his reasons were "different" from what the Confederacy rebelled over.
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Also unlike Lee, Washington and Jefferson have given positive contributions to this country.
Jackson's getting the boot already.
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Take with a grain of salt, since as a chubby white guy, but to be it seems excessive to hold slavery against any major figures from before the abolitionist movement really set in.
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Take with a grain of salt, since as a chubby white guy, but to be it seems excessive to hold slavery against any major figures from before the abolitionist movement really set in.
Please tell me you're not doing the "They were just a product of their time" thing.
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Washington at least memed on his wife's family to get all their slaves freed when he died
and they hated him for it -
Please tell me you're not doing the "They were just a product of their time" thing.
I kinda am, yeah, hence my prefacing statement. At the very least I'm not going to hold them to the same level of distaste as the Confederates who actively fought a war for slavery.
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I kinda am, yeah, hence my prefacing statement. At the very least I'm not going to hold them to the same level of distaste as the Confederates who actively fought a war for slavery.
Slavery was and still is an evil institution and the people involved were wrong, no matter whether it was trendy or not.
It really is not excessive to hold someone responsible for their actions when they're churning away as a cog in the systematic enslavement of an entire race of people.
Ignorance is only a temporary excuse.
And even giving people that defense is extremely generous because they surely weren't ignorant to the suffering and afflictions they put upon their slaves.
No, there's nothing excessive about it.
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Slavery was and still is an evil institution and the people involved were wrong, no matter whether it was trendy or not.
It really is not excessive to hold someone responsible for their actions when they're churning away as a cog in the systematic enslavement of an entire race of people.
Ignorance is only a temporary excuse.
And even giving people that defense is extremely generous because they surely weren't ignorant to the suffering and afflictions they put upon their slaves.
No, there's nothing excessive about it.
Okay (I have no interest in arguing the topic so I won't say anything more on it)
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@CCC:
Trump's been a massive, documented racist/anti-semite for decades.
I never knew that about him. But sheesh, he is one messed up man >.<
(I knew he also scammed all the people at helped build his casinos that failed, which is very sad indeed.)
Trump further tweeted this morning about how removing the statues of confederates is removing "beauty". Because god knows nothing like a park, tree, or actual piece of shit is more beautiful than statues of racists men from two centuries ago who wanted to own other people.
With each day, Trump shows the United States how big of a racist he really is.
The Steve Bannon-Scott Pruitt wing of the Trump Administration are discreetly hard at work attempting to dismantle environmental regulation. I suppose we Americans should admire the commitment our current government has to killing most of us.
That is just terrible. The Trump Administration is trying to make all these cuts, but for what? Every day, they destroy the United States little by little. Hopefully, some action will be done against this administration.
Next week Fearless Leader wants to hold a rally in Phoenix, Arizona. The Mayor Phoenix, Greg Stanton, issued a public statement saying the sitting President of the United States isn't welcome there.
Oh, wow. That's interesting that the mayor is telling Trump not to hold his rally. I bet Trump has his "poor ego" broken with this o:
Also, I don't know anything about Joe Arpaio, but what did he do exactly? -curious-
@Monkey:
Holy shit lol at that chart
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-sheer-number-of-democrats-running-for-congress-is-a-good-sign-for-the-party/
That is legit goddamn spit-take information.That is one huge number, quite indeed o.o (In regards to the number of Democrat challengers versus Republican ones.)
Regardless, it is nice to hear some good news that Democrats will take over Congress in 2018. It does make sense with what was said in the article, plus with how bad things are going with Trump and his administration.
A little amusement:
From
That is awesome! :3
Anyways, with all the wrong that Trump has been doing since he started being president, as he done anything right? -doubts it, but sees if anyone can come up with anything- -this is just me being curious XD-
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Booker and Pelosi are on the Hall statuary.
Note that each state gets two statues and Virginia has Lee there over Jefferson, Madison, or Monroe.
I love too that Mississippi would cry crocodile tears over losing Jefferson goddamn Davis.
It's like, damn, just kick his ass out and make a goddamn Elvis statue. Everyone is gonna want to see Elvis in a hall full of old dudes in cloaks with powdered fuckin' wigs."Ah hm yes, I see that George H Edmunson Scott Wigglesworth III wrote the cherished documents of Liberty and ahaha fuck that lol, im gonna go over to the friggin' Elvis statue."
-everyone–- Update From New Post Merge ---
Current winner of the hall is Hawaii with King Kamehameha.
–- Update From New Post Merge ---
lol at Georgia having Alexander Stephens and not MLK.
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@S.C.:
I should go if he comes. Any witty ideas for signs?
Hmm, how about… "Everything's all white for the alt-right! President approved!"
Also, I don't know anything about Joe Arpaio, but what did he do exactly? -curious-
Joe Arpaio was the former sheriff of Maricopa County, Arizona. He was convicted last month for criminal contempt, he is accused of violating federal court orders that prohibited the illegal detention of Latinos. The reason Trump likes him enough to consider pardoning him, is because Joe has been a vocal advocate for Trump, who shares a similar stance on illegal immigrants. You can read about it in greater detail here if you like.
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Also, I don't know anything about Joe Arpaio, but what did he do exactly? -curious-
He is charged with contempt of court as he continued to illegally harass Mexican-Americans on the basis they might be illegal immigrants even when they said to stop.
Basically, he's a tremendous asshole, a racist shitbag and for years, he acted like he was his own little feudal overlord in Maricopa County.
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Take with a grain of salt, since as a chubby white guy, but to be it seems excessive to hold slavery against any major figures from before the abolitionist movement really set in.
Hey, man, we're making progress and Trump has already compared removing statues of Confederates to removing them of Washington and other Founding Fathers. Why wouldn't we want to blow up that progress by alienating a bunch of people and buy into his narrative in the interests of purity?
It's not like the Confederacy was built by people who drew a drastic difference between themselves and people like Jefferson.
@totally:
The new Constitution has put at rest forever all the agitating questions relating to our peculiar institutions—African slavery as it exists among us—the proper status of the negro in our form of civilization. This was the immediate cause of the late rupture and present revolution. Jefferson, in his forecast, had anticipated this, as the "rock upon which the old Union would split." He was right. What was conjecture with him, is now a realized fact. But whether he fully comprehended the great truth upon which that rock stood and stands, may be doubted. The prevailing ideas entertained by him and most of the leading statesmen at the time of the formation of the old Constitution were, that the enslavement of the African was in violation of the laws of nature; that it was wrong in principle, socially, morally and politically. It was an evil they knew not well how to deal with; but the general opinion of the men of that day was, that, somehow or other, in the order of Providence, the institution would be evanescent and pass away… Those ideas, however, were fundamentally wrong. They rested upon the assumption of the equality of races. This was an error. It was a sandy foundation, and the idea of a Government built upon it—when the "storm came and the wind blew, it fell."
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Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite ideas; its foundations are laid, its cornerstone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery, subordination to the superior race, is his natural and normal condition. This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth. This truth has been slow in the process of its development, like all other truths in the various departments of science.
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Hey, man, we're making progress and Trump has already compared removing statues of Confederates to removing them of Washington and other Founding Fathers. Why wouldn't we want to blow up that progress by alienating a bunch of people and buy into his narrative in the interests of purity?
It's not like the Confederacy was built by people who drew a drastic difference between themselves and people like Jefferson.
I am sincerely uncertain how I'm supposed to take that. It's obviously sarcastic but I can't work out what it's being sarcastic about.
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@Cyan:
The following traitors and enablers of traitors have statues in the National Statuary Hall Collection:
Jefferson Davis
Alexander Stephens
Edmund Smith
Joseph Wheeler
James George
John C. Calhoun
Robert E. LeeLet's fuck them up next.
Um… please don't advocate vandalism here.
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All of the Confederate Statues should be melted down into fucking slag.
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Um… please don't advocate vandalism here.
Yes Robo, Cyan D Funk is advocating the virtually impossible task of successfully vandalizing statues in the literal goddamn capital building of the United States.
Like seriously, you've never listened to this advice so I'm not sure why you'll start now, but before starting yet another "everyone banging their head against you" session, make sure you're reading words before you make words. Oh so many words.
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Please tell me you're not doing the "They were just a product of their time" thing.
For the record, Jesus was a racist who fully accepted slavery as a normal part of life. However, he did realize that racism was wrong and renounced it (although he never renounced slavery). Buddha also condemned slavery.
It is possible for people to realize these things are morally wrong and stand against them, even living in a society that completely endorses them and accepts them. …We do need to take into account that even if historical figures realized that these things were wrong, openly condemning these facts of colonial life may not have been possible for obvious social reasons (clearly this doesn't apply to people who owned slaves).
I guess my point is that actions speak louder than words, but if you're going to condemn historical figures using the lens of modern morality, you'll be condemning quite a few religious figures. Muhammed owned slaves and personally participated in the enslavement process.
@Monkey:
Yes Robo, Cyan D Funk is advocating the virtually impossible task of successfully vandalizing statues in the literal goddamn capital building of the United States.
Like seriously, you've never listened to this advice so I'm not sure why you'll start now, but before starting yet another "everyone banging their head against you" session, make sure you're reading words before you make words. Oh so many words.
Let me remind you that this just happened:
The statement was made within the greater context of protesters smashing stuff up. The destruction of that one statue hasn't caused outrage, but we need to take down as many as possible legally for obvious reasons.
Cyan's not being punished, but as far as the statement goes, my hands are tied. I have to make it clear that AP doesn't condone vandalism because it's a crime.
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For the record, Jesus was a racist who fully accepted slavery as a normal part of life.
Are you equating ancient slavery to trans-atlantic african slavery, because no.
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Slavery was and still is an evil institution and the people involved were wrong, no matter whether it was trendy or not.
It really is not excessive to hold someone responsible for their actions when they're churning away as a cog in the systematic enslavement of an entire race of people.
Ignorance is only a temporary excuse.
And even giving people that defense is extremely generous because they surely weren't ignorant to the suffering and afflictions they put upon their slaves.
No, there's nothing excessive about it.
But they're dead now. They've been dead for a long time. There's no way to make them atone for what they participated in. But this comes back to the same argument for why removing confederate statues doesn't "Erase History".
Books and museums still exist. Documentaries and academic institutions still exist. Statues in-and-of themselves aren't there to teach, they are there to stand as a symbol and represent something.
None* of the founding fathers really evoke slavery at first thought. The iconography of them is "George Washington, Revolution War General and First president!" "Benjamin Franklin,
President, inventor and statesman!", "John Hancock, first to sign the Declaration of Independence", "Thomas Jefferson*, Writer of the Declaration of Independence" etc etc.Their iconography doesn't evoke slavery as the first thought to the vast majority of the people and indeed, none of the monuments or statues erected of them were put up for that reason at all.
The confederacy was entirely about slavery. The statues and monuments were put up specifically to evoke slavery. The first thing pretty much anybody thinks when looking at anything confederate is "Slavery".
If it weren't, pop culture jokes like this wouldn't work:
If you want to argue that this doesn't matter, and that they were slave owners and that makes them bad and the public's perception shouldn't be any different then fine. Go on an information campaign and try to get the whole of America to look at monuments of our founders and have Slavery be the first thing that comes to their mind, but at moment that is not what the reality is.
So, this really is a false equivalency, at least from an iconography standpoint.*I would argue that if you asked 1000 people to say the first thing that pops into their head about Thomas Jefferson, the majority would say something not slavery related, like the Declaration of Independence, or being 3rd president etc BUT, you would also get way more mentions of slavery for him than his contemporaries thanks in no small part to the rumors that he slept with, and sired children with one of his slaves. It's fair to say however that with Jefferson' the topic isn't as cut and dry as the rest. This may make him a hypocrite, but when it came to policy, he claimed to be staunchly opposed to slavery and tried several times to ban it. He got a few successes too that slowed the international trade. He had a mountain of excuses for why he only freed a portion of his slaves, some of which seem decent enough like believing they needed to give them proper educations they had been denied as property before freeing them, to…. assuming a Race War would break out if they were all freed at once...
The point is, Jefferson has the biggest ties to slavery out of the bunch, but his is the kind that is still [hotly debated back and forth by historians to this day](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Jefferson_and_slavery#Evaluations_by_histor ians) whereas… pretty much any historian worth their salt will still say the confederacy was 100% bad.
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I am sincerely uncertain how I'm supposed to take that. It's obviously sarcastic but I can't work out what it's being sarcastic about.
It's not only excessive like you said but actively detrimental to the progress recently made.
Anyway, it'll be interesting to see what happens to Fox News when Rupert's last horcrux is shattered.
His sons seem considerably less crazy than he is and even he's tired of Bannon and his ilk.
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@Monkey:
Are you equating ancient slavery to trans-atlantic african slavery, because no.
How are they so different that I can't make a "this person condemned/condoned slavery" comparison?
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Let me remind you that this just happened:
Let me remind you that the statues Cyan D Funk was talking about are literally inside of the US capitol building.
The statement was made within the greater context of protesters smashing stuff up.
No it fucking wasn't.
Cyan's not being punished, but as far as the statement goes, my hands are tied. I have to make it clear that AP doesn't condone vandalism because it's a crime.
You're always fighting some nonexistent legalistic battle against invisible boogiemen, based off literal readings of every damn thing (or not-readings as the case often is).
What you should make clear is that people can make posts without entirely pointless pedantic "WELL YOU KNOW" derailings every other day.
Stop playing the hero no one wants or needs.–- Update From New Post Merge ---
How are they so different that I can't make a "this person condemned/condoned slavery" comparison?
Robo, when someone bolds a section of something, what is their purpose in doing so?
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How are they so different that I can't make a "this person condemned/condoned slavery" comparison?
Ancient Slavery =/= Explicitly based on Race
Trans-Atlantic Slavery = Explicitly based on Race.
This isn't hard.