Mirror, Mirror, land in American politics.

[Farm Boy]

Only the last, only the last. The amusing part is where everybody decides to pretend they didn't happen. So righteous!

 

[Sommerswerd]

Only the last, only the last. The amusing part is where everybody decides to pretend they didn't happen. So righteous!

There is a difference between saying.... "I was wrong and I am sorry for what I did/said, and I will work to fix the wrong I've done/said, so please forgive me" and saying "What I did/said was a long time ago, just let it go" and/or "I've changed my mind about what I did/said so don't hold me accountable for it"

Anyway.... putting that aside... It seems like your point is that the two men share a particular characteristic and for that they should be judged as equivalent, which of course ignores the fact that one essentially founded the Klan and the other did not. I'm pretty skeptical that Forrest bore some affection towards Native Americans that Sherman did not. Are you implying that if only the South had won, the whole Western US would still be "Indian Country"?

 

[Farm Boy]

No, what they embodied was bloodthirsty righteousness. However you package it, however you sell it, it's the why of their being remembered. It is their echo. But, if you want to champion bloodthirsty righteousness one must remember that raping one's way across Georgia in the service of freedom is also deliberate indiscriminate slaughter of men, women, and children in the west. Is the deliberate starvation of entire peoples through species obliteration. This is what bloodthirsty righteousness is. The other side is equally blind, yea, if not moreso. In order to maintain their bloodthirsty righteousness they overlook their hero recanting and changing his mind when bearing down on his inevitable end. A stance that puts them at odds with all things, possibly least of which their righteous hero's god itsself.

 

[Lexicus]

I'm not an American, so perhaps I am wrong about this, but I always thought there was more to the US civil war than just slavery. As I remember it, slavery was one of the issues but not the only one.

Wow, a European white supremacist claiming the US Civil War was not about slavery, will wonders never cease?

And the whole 'State's rights" is a lie, as well. The southern states had spent the years leading up to the war trying to force a federal law on the northern states to make them capture and repatriate escaped slaves.

Yes, this is exactly correct. Arguments against federal intervention have always been inseparable from the politics of the ruling class and of white racial reaction. The slaveholding conservatives, of the antebellum period, much like the Republicans today, simply pragmatically seek to elevate the power of whatever part of the government they can most easily control. When the Slave Power controlled the federal government they were fine with federal power. Once they felt that slipping away they valorized states' rights (while using the state governments to trample all over local autonomy where this was used to challenge their power) because the state governments were the easiest for them to control. A good example of this today is of course Jeff "states' rights" Sessions ignoring states' rights in order to crack down on marijuana laws, or the Republican attempts to usurp the powers of the PA Supreme Court as it's preventing them from establishing minority rule in Pennsylvania. When Republicans lose control of the legislative and executive branches, they thunder on about the sanctity of the courts. When they can't control the courts, they talk about "judicial activism" and "legislating from the bench." There is no principle involved in any of these arguments, only pragmatism in the service of their only real principle, which is the domination of society by an aristocracy.

No, what they embodied was bloodthirsty righteousness.

Sherman wasn't particularly bloodthirsty in the South. The idea that he was is a nice bit of Lost Cause propaganda. Sherman was mainly concerned with destroying property that the South could use to prosecute the war, not with killing people. The conduct of his forces as he marched to the sea in Georgia is really not at all comparable with the prosecution of the Indian Wars.

 

[Farm Boy]

The first modern general is the first modern general.

Certainly, he was not the first warleader to target civilians as the means and goal of war. But we called them other things. Raiders. Vikings. Beasts. In Sherman, it becomes righteous and appropriate alltogether.

 

[Sommerswerd]

No, what they embodied was bloodthirsty righteousness. However you package it, however you sell it, it's the why of their being remembered. It is their echo. But, if you want to champion bloodthirsty righteousness one must remember that raping one's way across Georgia in the service of freedom is also deliberate indiscriminate slaughter of men, women, and children in the west. Is the deliberate starvation of entire peoples through species obliteration. This is what bloodthirsty righteousness is. The other side is equally blind, yea, if not moreso. In order to maintain their bloodthirsty righteousness they overlook their hero recanting and changing his mind when bearing down on his inevitable end. A stance that puts them at odds with all things, possibly least of which their righteous hero's god itsself.

Nah, you're still glossing over the fact that one guy did his dirty deeds in furtherance of the Klan while the other did not. "Marching through Georgia" and "Dixie" are objectively different, morally different. "Hurrah, Hurrah we bring the Jubilee! Hurrah, Hurrah, the flag that sets you free!" is a morally superior cause than "Oh I wish I were in the land of cotton. Old times there are not forgotten!" I sing the former tune to my children, the latter I do not. I'm sure you can see why.

I reject the moral equivalence argument based on characterizing both as pursuing "bloodthirsty righteousness" because Sherman's cause actually was righteous, while Forrest's was not.

In any case... this is an old debate between us...

 

[Farm Boy]

The Indians were too. Oh buddy, but they were too. And it echos down to Dresden, it echos to Hiroshima, it echos to North Vietnam. It never stopped.

Why is it problematic we forget Forrest's last chapter? We want the villian there. We can't focus on his repentence. Because then we lose the villian right before he dies when he attempts to move on. He repudiates himself, his theory, his entire rationale for monstrousness. We don't want reconciliation, because that steals our thunder. So we leave him as pure hate, as a cudgel.

 

[Lexicus]

Certainly, he was not the first warleader to target civilians as the means and goal of war.

This, again, is simply not true. Sherman did not target civilians. He targeted civilian infrastructure - property - but not people. Which is why these comparisons...

And it echos down to Dresden, it echos to Hiroshima, it echos to North Vietnam. It never stopped.

are kind of silly. The South loves to pretend that it was the victim of atrocities, that the barbarous Northern rabble inflicted unspeakable outrages on it. It is simply a lie. The worst atrocities of the war, by far, were committed by the South, as its armies kidnapped free blacks in the North to be sold into slavery. Troops under the command of Nathan Bedford Forrest, the guy you keep trying to say redeemed himself by making some speeches in favor of racial equality, massacred black union troops as they tried to surrender at Fort Pillow.

I mean, if you're going to talk about Northern atrocities at least go to the prison camps. Those were actually a serious human rights abuse, unlike the destruction of property during the March to the Sea.

 

[Farm Boy]

I have been. Alton is worth a visit. I recommend it. It's close to other cool stuff too. Go see where Lovejoy was martyr. Go see the Piasa, etc. That the thing with righteousness, you get away with the maximum cruelty you can. And Sherman did, throughout his entire career. He didn't change. But we like to pretend he did. It's a lie to make us right.

 

[Lexicus]

I meant, like, rhetorically go to them, not actually visit them, but yeah

 

[Farm Boy]

Redeemed himself?

Repudiated himself.

 

[Sommerswerd]

The Indians were too. Oh buddy, but they were too. And it echos down to Dresden, it echos to Hiroshima, it echos to North Vietnam. It never stopped.

Why is it problematic we forget Forrest's last chapter? We want the villian there. We can't focus on his repentence. Because then we lose the villian right before he dies when he attempts to move on. He repudiates himself, his theory, his entire rationale for monstrousness. We don't want reconciliation, because that steals our thunder. So we leave him as pure hate, as a cudgel.

But he was a villain. Maybe the gods accepted his change of heart and he's riding the merry-go-round in heaven, side-by-side with the victims of Klan lynchings as we speak... but I think its a stretch to expect me to accept statutes in his honor just because he said "My bad". If Forrest went on to marry a black woman and have a bunch of black children and founded schools and hospitals in a black towns and sold his family estate to establish a trust to compensate Klan victims and/or buy out the contracts of indebted sharecroppers... if he did any combination of that, or anything like that, I'm willing to hear his case pled.

On the other hand, if it was more-or-less a simple verbal expression of regret... then what you are basically saying is that he later acknowledged what a monster he was. There's thousands of guys in prison right now for doing exactly that. Plea bargaining murder doesn't mean you're absolved, it just means life imprisonment instead of the death penalty.

Also, again:

There is a difference between saying.... "I was wrong and I am sorry for what I did/said, and I will work to fix the wrong I've done/said, so please forgive me" and saying "What I did/said was a long time ago, just let it go" and/or "I've changed my mind about what I did/said so don't hold me accountable for it"

 

[Farm Boy]

Redemption is not repudiation. You're arguing against concepts I know not how to more expressly reject.

I get that you and Gori have a thing for romaticizing our differences in dialect, but between you and Lex taking my arguments as in favor of Forrest's redemption is really really pissing me off.

 

[Sommerswerd]

I agree, which is why he's not getting a pass.

 

[Lexicus]

But drawing that distinction sort of removes the moral force from your argument, doesn't it? If he didn't redeem himself, he died a villain.

 

[Farm Boy]

He died calling himself a damned villian. Which is why it's really really really stupid to forget about it rather than rub everyone who would lionize him in the wonderful smell of it.

wtf. What thread are we in? Did we warp onto a different topic?

 

[Lexicus]

Which is why it's really really really stupid to forget about it rather than rub everyone who would lionize him in the wonderful smell of it.

I dunno man, what do you think the effect of that would be?

"I think Nathan Bedford Forrest was pretty awesome."
"Did you know he repudiated himself at the end of his life?"
"Oh...I guess he wasn't that awesome."

I'm just sort of confused because I don't see this fact changing the mind of anyone who wants to portray his Klan days as heroic.

 

[Sommerswerd]

We x-posted

I get that you and Gori have a thing for romaticizing our differences in dialect, but between you and Lex taking my arguments as in favor of Forrest's redemption is really really pissing me off.

I don't think this is a dialect thing. I'm not characterizing your position as attempting to redeem Forrest and you also seem to be missing that I acknowledge the repudiation. My point remains... what do you want from me, vis-à-vis Forrest?

 

[Farm Boy]

Hey, this superbad guy with superbad ideas changed his mind. Hey, we have statues of this guy up, why don't we make them about how he realized when he was being a monster he was being wrong?

Wait... some other guys suck, how is this relevant?

If Sessions said something right. Thank goodness. Maybe it'll stick. If Pence tweets Go Go USA! You represent us and we're proud! To gay athletes. Thank goodness. Maybe it'll stick.

Intractibility makes us horrible. Mix it with righteousness and it's worse. It was a metapoint. I'm guessing I missed really hard.

 

[Lexicus]

Hey, this superbad guy with superbad ideas changed his mind. Hey, we have statues of this guy up, why don't we make them about how he realized when he was being a monster he was being wrong?

How do you propose we go about that? Wouldn't it be easier to just demolish those statues and replace them with statues of, like, Nat Turner or John Brown?