“Subway Tiles That Look Like Confederate Flags to Be Altered” (nytimes) and “Confederate Monuments Are Coming Down Across the United States. Here’s a List.” (nytimes) suggest that there will soon be a lot of used statutes available.
Plainly we don’t want cities to sell them to private citizens to put up in front yards (also need a law to make possession and display of replicas illegal?).
We don’t want to destroy statues due to the effort put in by the artists and, in the case of equestrian statutes, the fact that the horses depicted were not guilty of secessionist or pro-slavery sympathies.
What about an export market? This would help cities with their pension deficits and also ensure that the hated statues are eliminated from the U.S.
The British were fond of pointing out American hypocrisy back in the 18th century, e.g., “How is it that we hear the loudest yelps for liberty among the drivers of negroes?” (Samuel Johnson) Soviets took over this task in the 20th century.
How about a theme park at the end of one of the Moscow subway lines? Visitors would be assured of trains running to the park every minute on weekdays and every two minutes on weekends. Moscow tends to be rather spread out so there should be plenty of space for all of the statues and monuments that we are discarding.
Within the park, a Museum of Empty Words:
- Room 1: Public school classroom. Animatronic schoolteacher explains to mannequin children (eyes glazed; staring into space) that seceding from Britain was noble while seceding from the Union was traitorous. Countdown clock shows days, hours, and minutes remaining before teacher can retire. Countup clock shows taxpayer pension obligation for the teacher growing (calculated using cost of TIPS).
- Room 2: Silicon Valley. 1/3-scale three-bedroom house with $3 million pricetag next to the front door. Living room contains pussy hat knitting tools. Sign in front yard advocating for the suburb to be made a sanctuary city for undocumented immigrants. Tableau of childless worker-slave couple turning away immigrant family seeking sanctuary in their spare bedrooms.
- Room 3: Sundar Pichai declaring Google’s commitment to hearing diverse points of view while simultaneously shoving James Damore into the parking lot.
- Room 4: FBO. Al Gore and Hillary Clinton on the stairs of their respective chartered Gulfstreams talking about how Americans need to trim CO2 emissions.
Readers: Ideas for additional rooms of the Museum of Empty Words?
Many relics in Syria and Iraq reduced to rubble were representative
and celebratory of appalling Assyrian tyrants. They were regarded as offensive and abhorrent by ISIS for religious reasons so should we expect to see less criticism of ISIS’ activities in this respect (should it recur, heaven forbid) from the crowd celebrating the toppling of confederate statues. On the other hand, as with the apologies addressed to dead people for actions executed by other dead people, isn’t it a case of “The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there.” (L P Hartley)
http://faculty.uml.edu/ethan_spanier/Teaching/documents/CP6.0AssyrianTorture.pdf
I’d like to buy some. They’re really beautiful pieces of art and will be very valuable one day in a different political climate
Stone Mountain is gonna be tough to move. Ironically the surrounding community is African-American.
We should also export the statues of Columbus, the Pilgrims, Washington, etc. After all, they are responsible for taking lands and destroying the lives of the Native Indians.
We should also export the status of Truman for using atomic bomb, Johnson for Vietnam war, and Obama for not saving Syria, to name some.
We should also export the status of any president who was not faithful for his wife and the office, such as Kennedy and Clinton to name some.
While we are at it, we need to really, really think hard and triple check before we commission new statues of current presidents or leaders. After all, what we see good in them today, maybe offensive and hurtful 50 or 100 years from today for some group.
And why stop with exporting statues? We need to also revise our history text book to remove references to offensive and hurtful leaders. After all, if we let our youngsters learn about them, they may themselves, one day, become the wrong revolutionaries that this country does not want.
It’s time to purify the U.S.A.
“seceding from Britain was noble while seceding from the Union was traitorous”
Somewhat related: if US didn’t secede from Britain, the slavery would be abolished 30 years earlier:
Britain: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_Abolition_Act_1833
US: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emancipation_Proclamation (1863)
Inventor of email — nice once
After the fall of Communism, quite a few Lenin and Marx statues got exported to the West. Manchester just snagged an Engels statue from a dump in the Ukraine. It had been cut in half but they reassembled it:
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/jul/19/manchester-soviet-statue-engels-ukrainians
We should also export the status of any president who was not faithful for his wife and the office, such as Kennedy and Clinton to name some.
While we are at it, we need to really, really think hard and triple check before we commission new statues of current presidents or leaders. After all, what we see good in them today, maybe offensive and hurtful 50 or 100 years from today for some group.
And why stop with exporting statues? We need to also revise our history text book to remove references to offensive and hurtful leaders. After all, if we let our youngsters learn about them, they may themselves, one day, become the wrong revolutionaries that this country does not want.
http://www.reliancejiomobilephone.com/booking-pre-registration-online/
Don’t know about a museum of empty words but what about taking all these statues, planting them in a circle in a field thus making a “Rebel-henge” and charging admission?
The City of Encinitas, California built a statue of a young surfer which was not received well by the local surfing community which objected to the statue on aesthetic grounds. Rather than tearing the statue down, the community renamed the statue, “The Cardiff Kook” and redresses the statue regularly. The Kook has been dressed a a fireman, eaten by a shark, delivered Pizza – the list goes on. Google images of the Cardiff Kook to see what has been done over the years.
Perhaps the problem with all statues is how seriously we take them. I am very proud of my community for their solution to this problem. Its impossible to grow up around here passing the Kook on your way to the beach and take any of this brouhaha about the confederacy seriously.