September 10, 2021

American History, According To Wendy Bell

Always on the case, yesterday Jon tweeted:

Transcript:

...in this whole removal of this statue, a time capsule dating back to 1887 containing 60 items from 30 different families and businesses. 

Nope. [Here, she makes a "pffft!" sound]

We're going to, we're going to remove that, that sacred piece of American history and we're gonna put in a new time capsule, he said.

Wow. I can't imagine what got put in that box.

[In an "idiot" accent] "C'mon Earle. Let's see what we can do here. I mean we don't want all that old stuff, that historic, stupid stuff. That doesn't matter. That's all racist anyway.

Here's what we're gonna put in. I'm gonna put in my 'Black Lives Matter' shirt. You can put in your 'Ridin' with Biden' bumper sticker. Couple of masks. How about one of those gender neutral birth certificates? Yea, yea, yea. That's what we're going to do."

You'll note what Wendy values (Confederate memorabilia from the late 19th century) and what she mocks (BLM shirts, Covid-19 masks, symbols of gender equality).

Telling, no?

But let's remember who Robert E Lee was. The one story is that he was a kindly genteel Southern gentlemen who hated slavery and was simply defending Virginia in the Northern War of Aggression. 

Another story is found here:

Lee was a devout Christian, and historians regard him as an accomplished tactician. But despite his ability to win individual battles, his decision to fight a conventional war against the more densely populated and industrialized North is considered by many historians to have been a fatal strategic error.

But even if one conceded Lee’s military prowess, he would still be responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Americans in defense of the South’s authority to own millions of human beings as property because they are black. Lee’s elevation is a key part of a 150-year-old propaganda campaign designed to erase slavery as the cause of the war and whitewash the Confederate cause as a noble one. That ideology is known as the Lost Cause, and as the historian David Blight writes, it provided a “foundation on which Southerners built the Jim Crow system.”

Traitor. That was Robert E. Lee.

And this is what Lee thought of slavery (The man commemorated by that statue enslaved human beings, Wendy. You know that, right?) In same letter where he calls it a moral evil, he writes:

I think it however a greater evil to the white man than to the black race, & while my feelings are strongly enlisted in behalf of the latter, my sympathies are more strong for the former. The blacks are immeasurably better off here than in Africa, morally, socially & physically. The painful discipline they are undergoing, is necessary for their instruction as a race, & I hope will prepare & lead them to better things. How long their subjugation may be necessary is known & ordered by a wise Merciful Providence. Their emancipation will sooner result from the mild & melting influence of Christianity, than the storms & tempests of fiery Controversy.

If you need any help unweaving Lee's prose, Adam Serwer, the author of The Atlantic article above, summarizes: 

The argument here is that slavery is bad for white people, good for black people, and most important, better than abolitionism; emancipation must wait for divine intervention. That black people might not want to be slaves does not enter into the equation; their opinion on the subject of their own bondage is not even an afterthought to Lee.

Enslaver. This was Robert E. Lee, Wendy. The man commemorated on the statue they finally removed. That was the man and, in essence, the system you're defending, Wendy. Face it.

However, I do agree with one point. Lee is a very important part of American history - one that should not be papered over. He fought for the Confederacy, defending those states' right to enslave human beings. Afterwards, his elevation to "genteel Southern gentlemen" was, in itself, a racist attempt to rewrite (and erase) this country's enslaving past.

It all has to be remembered and discussed.

Oops. My bad, Wendy. Did I whip a little Critical Race Theory on you while you weren't watching?

PS: Considering the reason why Wendy got bounced from KDKA Radio, what was she doing even talking about Confederate statues?

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