Blog Credo

The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.

H.L. Mencken

Tuesday, August 15, 2017

Durham

I'm not sure how I feel about the people in Durham who tore down the statue commemorating the Confederacy.  The release of catharsis after Charlottesville no doubt played a role in this, but catharsis isn't always helpful a few days down the line.  They broke the law.  They have to be OK with the consequences of that or they aren't really protesting, they're emoting.

Josh Marshall has a very good take on the entire issue of Confederate statuary.  Mobs pulling down statues accomplishes very little; communities deciding to stop honoring traitors and white supremacists by collectively removing those statues says quite a lot more.

You can take down the statue by mob action or you can mobilize as a community to have them removed from public spaces.  One is harder and better than the other.

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