I Tried

Once again the focus is on D. Trump. Too bad. His public pronouncement of moral equivalency between neo-Nazis, et al, and those protesting against them says less about his ethics and more about his profound ignorance and Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD).  He really thinks, I believe, the real issue regarding Charlottesville was about violence, which was the core of his statement after the incident on Saturday. Perhaps he thinks the only problem with cancer is the weight loss.

His unassisted “press conference” on Tuesday (8/15) was a narcissistic defense of his Saturday statement, where he felt violated by reading his scripted pronouncement on Monday. For someone with NPD his capitulation on Monday, probably at the direction of John Kelly, had to be intolerable.

I truly doubt Trump is a racist or bigot on any kind of cerebral level. That would assume he believes there is a right or wrong. I think it likely his discrimination years ago against non-whites in his real estate holdings was nothing more than projected figures on a ledger. To his mind, they were simply rational choices.  Bigotry and racism to everyone else…but to him: the business of being Trump.

That he is the leader of this country is basically the convergence of Shakespearian comedy and tragedy on a grand world stage.

Even though Trump’s candidacy and Presidency has emboldened extreme Conservatism (lovingly expressed as the Alt-Right) to become more visible and seek avenues of power, the elements that seduce these white, gun-toting, under educated males to congregate can be found floating about like ether among the general conservative/Christian  community.  It is rhetoric of exclusivity.  It can be heard every day on talk radio, alluded to on Fox & Friends (which I watch nearly every weekday), and (between requests for money and injections of fear) on pulpits around the Country.

It is the reason, as Trump proclaimed, that individuals would continue to support the Donald if he pulled out a gun and shot someone on 7^th Avenue (provided he shot the right kind of person).

Now the conversation (or lack thereof) is centered on symbolism, in the existence of monuments, often old enough to rightly deserve the adjective historic.  Trump is making it his tweet-du-jour.

These monuments, mostly to Civil War Confederate military leaders or Confederate military in general, are the focus of the confrontation.  No doubt Richmond will become a major center of the controversy.

They are monuments that predate my life, many predating my father’s.  I have always looked upon them with…well, respect. My first reaction to any monument is that it was placed there by people who felt it had meaning for them, in their time.  For me it is simply education.

The exceptions to the rule are those statues erected in between 1920 and 1970 as a racist reaction to improving civil rights.  Their fate needs no debate and should have been gone years ago.

I also grew up learning of the Civil War as it related to military engagements, like most American Wars. Even now I can quote military facts on the War of 1812, the Spanish-American War, and the Mexican-American War, e.g. but would need to refresh on the causes behind them.  A New Yorker by birth, I remember playing soldiers with a Civil War theme and favoring the Southerners as they were the eternal underdogs. I didn’t absorb the greater conflict until much later in life.

I have felt these post Civil War monuments in the South (there are also countless Civil War monuments in Northern States) were granite and marble testimonials to the dedication and sacrifice of people in the military and their loved ones.  Doubtless there are dedications sprinkled about the Country to those Soldiers who fought and died in the many godless “Indian Wars” that took place over a hundred years. 20 Congressional Medals of Honor were awarded to soldiers who participated in the massacre of Sioux families at Wounded Knee in 1890. As a nation we revere our military without much worry about the reasons for their sacrifice.

I tried.  I tried to grab a hold of this view of military monuments knowing that once war begins it has its own momentum, the origins sometimes lost altogether (think WWI). Soldiers rarely consider the politics of what put them in harm’s way. It would be salt into the wounds they endure.

As the rage over these historic dedications placed amid the public has reached a level of intolerable conflict, I find I can no longer rationalize. The monuments have to go. There are plenty of Civil War battlefields where every one of them can find an appropriate home. There is at least one good reason why I feel this should happen and it is not for the reasons that caused the great American schism and bloody conflagration (which I understand is reason enough for some).

I have lived in the South for three-quarters of my adult life. In all that time I have never lost the wish that native Southerners would stop fighting the Civil War. There are roots of that conflict that are still in Southern ground. For some it might be rooted in racism and bigotry, as we saw congregating in Charlottesville last week, but for many more it has to do with their identification with a fanciful culture that no longer exists. More importantly they view this “culture” as forever in some kind of chivalrous opposition to the rest of the nation.

In most of the South this identification has stunted its moral growth, restricted its education, and undermined its welfare.  It has created an environment in which a cesspool of human constraints finds ground to fester (constraining voting rights, woman’s rights, African-American rights, Education, Environmental protection, religious and secular diversity, medical care, e.g.). It has harmed the Nation as a whole.

Frankly, I’m tired of the fookin’ Civil War and I’d like it to end. If moving all Civil War statues (South and North) out of public spaces would help…then it’s just fine with me, indeed.