Removing Confederate Monuments and Renaming Confederate-Named Military Bases

[lpetrich]

Protesters topple Jefferson Davis statue in Virginia capital - POLITICO

Protesters pulled down a century-old statue of Confederate President Jefferson Davis in the former capital of the Confederacy, adding it to the list of Old South monuments removed or damaged around the U.S. in the wake of George Floyd's death.

The bronze statue on Richmond’s Monument Avenue had been all but marked for removal by city leaders in a matter of weeks, but demonstrators took matters into their own hands Wednesday night, tying ropes around its legs and toppling it onto the pavement.

A crowd cheered and police looked on as the monument — installed by a Confederate heritage group in 1907 during the Jim Crow era — was towed away.

Several other Confederate-leader statues have also been targeted, like one of General Robert E. Lee in Richmond VA, and similar sorts of statues have been targeted elsewhere in the world, like Christopher Columbus, Cecil Rhodes and Belgium's King Leopold II.

I like this response:
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on Twitter: "People really need to ask themselves why their communities chose to erect statues to slaveholders instead of abolitionists." / Twitter

 

[lpetrich]

Trump Rejects Renaming Military Bases Named After Confederate Generals - The New York Times - "By dismissing an idea under consideration by the Pentagon, the president positioned himself firmly against the movement to remove racist symbols and combat racism touched off by George Floyd’s death."

Is he that desperate to get the neo-Confederate vote?

AFP news agency on Twitter: "AFP graphic showing the states where America's confederate statues and monuments are found, and a timeline of when they were established, according to research by the Southern Poverty Law Center @AFPgraphics https://t.co/OFeOGDef4e" / Twitter

The picture is interesting. It is slow and steady at first, and it has a big spike in 1910, 45 years after the end of the Civil War. It trails off into the 1930's, and it restarts a little bit in the 1960's. It continues to the present.


NASCAR bans Confederate flags at all races, events - CNN

 

[repoman]

What is your opinion on Churchill statues?

 

[blastula]

If the full Senate votes for this, it could break his tweeting record.

Senate panel votes to require Pentagon to rename bases named after Confederates | TheHill

 

[Jarhyn]

What is your opinion on Churchill statues?

How about you submit your opinion on this before asking for opinions on unrelated things?

 

[Keith&Co.]

Statues don't teach history.
My aunt moved from Idaho to Atlanta, and always thought one of the figures on Stone Mountain was Sherman. "I dunno," she said. "I always just associate his name with Atlanta."

Ships do not teach history. I knew at least two sailors who thought the USS Kamehameha was named after a famous Indian, confusing him with the USS Tecumseh.
Half the people i served with on the USS Hunley had no idea who Hunley was, or what side of the War he fought on, or what war he fought in.

I don't know about bases. Most Navy bases i was on were named for their geographical location. Kings Bay Submaine Base, Sub Base New London, Norfolk Naval Shipyard... but i really, really doubt that very many soldiers getting orders to Fort Bragg go to look up the history of General Braxton Bragg. If they're anything like sailors, they wanna know about housing, on and off base, and the state's legal leanings, like how hard is it to get a stripper permit AND a liquor license for the same establishment.

If it's officially changed to 'Fayetteville Army Base,' it'll still have the same number of jobs, bringing the same money into the area.
Soldiers will call it Bragg for the next 30 years, even when no one in uniform was alive when it was Fort Bragg.
And they still won't know who Bragg was...

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

Clearly the statues don't teach history, people in South revere these traitors.

 

[Jarhyn]

Statues don't teach history.
My aunt moved from Idaho to Atlanta, and always thought one of the figures on Stone Mountain was Sherman. "I dunno," she said. "I always just associate his name with Atlanta."

Ships do not teach history. I knew at least two sailors who thought the USS Kamehameha was named after a famous Indian, confusing him with the USS Tecumseh.
Half the people i served with on the USS Hunley had no idea who Hunley was, or what side of the War he fought on, or what war he fought in.

I don't know about bases. Most Navy bases i was on were named for their geographical location. Kings Bay Submaine Base, Sub Base New London, Norfolk Naval Shipyard... but i really, really doubt that very many soldiers getting orders to Fort Bragg go to look up the history of General Braxton Bragg. If they're anything like sailors, they wanna know about housing, on and off base, and the state's legal leanings, like how hard is it to get a stripper permit AND a liquor license for the same establishment.

If it's officially changed to 'Fayetteville Army Base,' it'll still have the same number of jobs, bringing the same money into the area.
Soldiers will call it Bragg for the next 30 years, even when no one in uniform was alive when it was Fort Bragg.
And they still won't know who Bragg was...

I reject this, insofar as my experience in the army is such that knowing the history and names of the base, unit, and notable battles in which it fought are a fundamental part of the board review process.

Although admittedly perhaps they gloss over the fact that certain names are notably the names of traitors.

 

[Keith&Co.]

What is your opinion on Churchill statues?

How about you submit your opinion on this before asking for opinions on unrelated things?

That one's easy, though.
There are and have been, good leaders, in all nations, some appreciated in their time, some not appreciated until much later.
There are and have been, bad leaders, in all nations, some vilified in their time, some not vilified until much later.
And then there are those who willfully chose to go out of their way to become enemies of the state. This is a thread about the memorials to declared enemies of the state. Not just those that some people today may consider malevolent, incompetent, fat, racist, sexist, or whatever caused repo to bring him up.

 

[Jarhyn]

What is your opinion on Churchill statues?

How about you submit your opinion on this before asking for opinions on unrelated things?

That one's easy, though.
There are and have been, good leaders, in all nations, some appreciated in their time, some not appreciated until much later.
There are and have been, bad leaders, in all nations, some vilified in their time, some not vilified until much later.
And then there are those who willfully chose to go out of their way to become enemies of the state. This is a thread about the memorials to declared enemies of the state. Not just those that some people today may consider malevolent, incompetent, fat, racist, sexist, or whatever caused repo to bring him up.

Except no. It is specifically titled about Confederates. So I want to know his opinion specifically on the removal of monuments to traitors.

I mean, they struck Nazi symbols off of everything those bastards built. That was history, too. But FUCK them. Put them in "the museum of people who are complete trash" maybe under a coat of protective epoxy, so that people can sit on toilets that empty out onto their heads for all time.

 

[Keith&Co.]

I reject this, insofar as my experience in the army is such that knowing the history and names of the base, unit, and notable battles in which it fought are a fundamental part of the board review process.

What boards, though? Every advancement, or just 'soldier of the year' stuff?

When i was on the Carver, if half my division could associate George Washington Carver with peanut butter, i'd be shocked.

 

[T.G.G. Moogly]

I like this response:
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on Twitter: "People really need to ask themselves why their communities chose to erect statues to slaveholders instead of abolitionists." / Twitter

The racists and white supremacists that erected the statues would say it's because of niggers.

It's true that statues and names do not teach history but they can certainly reinforce history, and they do, much of the time subconsciously conditioning the viewer to accept the statue or the name as something good. That's why the statues should be removed and the names should be changed.

 

[Jarhyn]

I reject this, insofar as my experience in the army is such that knowing the history and names of the base, unit, and notable battles in which it fought are a fundamental part of the board review process.

What boards, though? Every advancement, or just 'soldier of the year' stuff?

When i was on the Carver, if half my division could associate George Washington Carver with peanut butter, i'd be shocked.

In my experience, it was EVERY board. But YMMV. There's an order of magnitude fewer soldiers who advance at every level.

 

[hurtinbuckaroo]

If the full Senate votes for this, it could break his tweeting record.

Senate panel votes to require Pentagon to rename bases named after Confederates | TheHill

"Press secretary" is already saying SCROTUS will veto the defense spending bill if it includes a requirement to rename bases. Yeah, that will build his support. He's completely trapped: he's damned if he approves the name changes, and damned if he doesn't. Priceless.

 

[Keith&Co.]

I reject this, insofar as my experience in the army is such that knowing the history and names of the base, unit, and notable battles in which it fought are a fundamental part of the board review process.

What boards, though? Every advancement, or just 'soldier of the year' stuff?

When i was on the Carver, if half my division could associate George Washington Carver with peanut butter, i'd be shocked.

In my experience, it was EVERY board. But YMMV. There's an order of magnitude fewer soldiers who advance at every level.

Huh. We didn't get boards for advancement until E7.
For us, the 'tradition' component was not unit history as much as how to tie the neckerchief, how many sideboys for a Commodore, proper term for a deadlight, flags, pennants, and the words to the second verse of Anchors Aweigh.

 

[ideologyhunter]

Everything Numbnuts has done recently seems designed to remind his Idiot Third why they love/need/worship him. Doesn't anyone in that WH have his ear? Anyone who can tell him that he needs a strategy to bring in some "independents"? I mean, I'm delighted that he's stuck in this pattern. Tear gas in Lafayette Park so that he can hold up a Bible? WONDERFUL. Schedule mass rallies, to begin in 8 days? You go, Donald. Make fun of mask wearers, as if wearing a mask would make him a wuss or something? That should erase all the votes from those who completed high school. And now, in the wake of the most concentrated run of civil rights demonstrations in all of U.S. history, to stand up for the CSA? There aren't words. Trump is the bountiful gift that just gives & gives & gives. A truly overflowing shithole of a man.

 

[Jarhyn]

In my experience, it was EVERY board. But YMMV. There's an order of magnitude fewer soldiers who advance at every level.

Huh. We didn't get boards for advancement until E7.
For us, the 'tradition' component was not unit history as much as how to tie the neckerchief, how many sideboys for a Commodore, proper term for a deadlight, flags, pennants, and the words to the second verse of Anchors Aweigh.

Yeah, in the navy it's all tests, but in the army it's boards from e4 up

 

[Patooka]

Gotta say, naming forts after traitors who killed a lot of Americans always seemed a little weird. Maybe the Air Force can name airfields after 9/11 hijackers.

 

[Alcoholic Actuary]

bases-named-for-confederates-changed-to-afghan-war-generals-continuing-tradition-of-naming-bases-after-losers/

(for those that don't know, DuffleBlog is the military version of 'the onion'.) But since we're in the habit of naming bases after losers, I'd like to toss 'Fort Detroit Lions' into the hat.

aa

 

[Keith&Co.]

The NASCAR driver who retired this year in protest of the flag ban has a 0-31 record. Fort Ciccarelli?