The Confederate Flag Thread

[Blackhawk]

Ugh on "Fort Liberty." Sounds like a MAGA-compound.

I thought it sounded like a GI Joe base...

[dbt1949]

Why couldn't they have named one Fort Dave? Is it too much to ask?

[Unagi]

Why couldn't they have named one Fort Dave? Is it too much to ask?

You get Camp David

[Jaymon]

How about Fort Fort

[El Guapo]

C'mon, the obvious choice is Fort Sensible.

[Unagi]

See, I was thinking more of a Forty McFortface.

[$iljanus]

Or Fort Knight...

[coopasonic]

Or Fort Knight...

[Holman]

This whole thread, going all the way back, is an eye-opener.

It's astonishing what some people will bend over backwards to dismiss or defend.

[RunningMn9]

These changes will be more confusing for some then others. I have to go to Ft. Benning often enough that I’m going to be confoozled the first few times I have to go to Ft. Moore.

There was some grumbling today about it being “stupid”, but it seems like a reasonable time to stop honoring traitors.

[Jaymann]

Fort Ran.

[LawBeefaroni]

Fort Ran.

[Unagi]

Fort Ran.

That took me a minute, but then it compiled.

[Isgrimnur]

Dallas News, Dec 13, 2021

The spot where the city of Dallas removed the Confederate memorial in Pioneer Park played host briefly to a new statue this week before it too was taken down.

On Monday, a passerby spotted a human-like figure standing right where the memorial vanished last year. Closer inspection revealed the new artwork to be a strange one. It had the body of a human and the face of a creature out of a Lovecraft novel. It wore a dress, and through a tear in the sleeve you could see suction cups on its body.

In its hand was a dollar coin. Around its head, a halo. And then there was the platform below its feet, a pedestal made of what looked like animal skulls and bones.
...
The statue looked a whole lot like another unauthorized piece of art that showed up nearby two years ago. In 2019, a sculpture of another Cthulhu-like figure appeared near the Convention Center DART station. The anonymous artist called it a cephalopod, making creatures like squid and octopi its in-laws. The city removed it, saying it was a safety hazard.

[LawBeefaroni]

The plaque is excellent.

[Max Peck]

The plaque is excellent.

A mysterious cephalopod-headed statue appeared in Downtown Dallas park where Confederate War Memorial once stood

The Cockrell statue's plaque included a few additional features -- including a misspelling of Dallas as "D'llas" beneath the city logo in its bottom corner, and a series of Cistercian monk numerals representing a Google Voice phone number that plays a cryptic and vague recording when dialed.

In October of 2019, a similar statue -- also apparently made by the same Solomon artist -- was mysteriously installed along a stretch of road beneath the convention center. That piece, which was removed almost as quickly as it appeared, claimed that City of Dallas founder John Neely Bryan was part cephalopod. (More intrigue followed.)

The 2019 statue depicting Bryan boasted a similarly worded (and often misspelled) plaque about his life, and also claimed Dallas was a "shared delusion." 

Upon its removal, the Bryan statue was taken into storage by the City of Dallas' Office of Arts and Culture.

The Cockrell statue faced a similarly fast removal because, as the security guards who surrounded it in the morning noted, its arrival was "unauthorized." 

By early Monday evening, the statue -- which had been screwed into the concrete beneath it -- had been pulled from the site.

[Isgrimnur]

War is Boring

The Navy operates one ship, a guided-missile cruiser named the USS Chancellorsville, commissioned in 1989 in honor of the Civil War battle that occurred in Virginia. Some historians consider the battle a major Confederate victory, according to an August 2017 Congressional Research Service report on military installations with Confederate names.

CNN

The Navy has renamed a warship in honor of a Black sailor and statesman who had been born into slavery, as part of the US military’s ongoing effort to remove names that commemorate the Confederacy.

The guided missile destroyer USS Chancellorsville, which was named after a Confederate victory in the Civil War, was renamed the USS Robert Smalls, the Navy announced Monday in a news release.

Born in South Carolina in 1839, Smalls was conscripted into the Confederate military during the Civil War, serving on the steamer Planter at Charleston. On May 13, 1862, Smalls piloted the ship out of the Charleston harbor with his family, other slaves, and military cargo, turning the ship over to the US Navy. He ultimately rose to become captain of the Planter.

As an advocate for African Americans, Smalls led one of the first public boycotts of segregated transportation. After the Civil War, Smalls was appointed a brigadier general of the South Carolina militia and served in the South Carolina Legislature. He went on to serve five terms as a member of the US House of Representatives.

[Holman]

Robert Smalls was an absolute badass who deserves a big-budget film treatment.

[Isgrimnur]

https://join.legionm.com/captain-smalls-movie/

[Holman]

Cool!

[waitingtoconnect]

The answer is simple.

For all totally offensive place names demand that they can be renamed with trump in the name. Eg fort trump, castle trump, trump base 1 etc.

Ego will demand he backs the change.

[Grifman]

https://twitter.com/ashtonpittman/statu ... NcXCfN8s1g

Mississippi never changes.

[Isgrimnur]

Thank God for Mississippi

[Kraken]

Thank God for Mississippi

Interesting. I know MS is the worst state by most objective measures, but I've never heard that refrain.

[Apollo]

Thank God for Mississippi

Interesting. I know MS is the worst state by most objective measures, but I've never heard that refrain.

I haven't heard it in a few years, but I used to hear this regularly, especially from my Mother. We always assumed (usually correctly) that Mississippi was the only state that consistently scored lower than Alabama in, well, just about everything.

[Smoove_B]

Not a flag, but I think it's appropriate to post here:

SOMEWHERE IN THE U.S. SOUTH — It was a choice to melt down Robert E. Lee. But it would have been a choice to keep him intact, too.

So the statue of the Confederate general that once stood in Charlottesville — the one that prompted the deadly “Unite the Right” rally in 2017 — was now being cut into fragments and dropped into a furnace, dissolving into a sludge of glowing bronze.

Six years ago, groups with ties to the Confederacy had sued to stop the monument from being taken down. Torch-bearing white nationalists descended on the Virginia college town to protest its removal, and one man drove his car through a crowd of counterprotesters, killing 32-year-old Heather Heyer and injuring 35 others.

The statue’s defenders more recently sought to block the city from handing Lee over to Charlottesville’s Black history museum, which proposed a plan to repurpose the metal. In a lawsuit, those plaintiffs suggested the century-old monument should remain intact or be turned into Civil War-style cannons.

But on Saturday the museum went ahead with its plan in secret at this small Southern foundry outside Virginia, in a town and state The Washington Post agreed not to name because of participants’ fears of violence.

The embedded videos are great, but in closing:

The foundry workers poured the crucible into custom-made iron molds, which are meant to leave the Swords Into Plowshares logo etched onto the ingots.

The furnace was hot enough that it should have easily turned the bronze into liquid. But the molten metal got thick and clumpy unusually fast, and the workers wondered whether there was something else — maybe some tin or lead? — corrupting the century-old material.

The metal had been cast while Charlottesville and the South were ruled by segregation and dedicated days after the Ku Klux Klan marched through town. Philanthropist Paul G. McIntire, whose prosperous enslaver father had been financially crippled by the Civil War, commissioned and donated the monument to the city.

“This metal has a lot of bad juju stuck in it,” the foundry owner said, studying the lumpy bronze. “It’s cursed.”

After the molds cooled, the foundry workers flipped them onto a pool of sand and banged on them so the ingots would fall out. They were streaked in different shades of brown, some of the engravings a little hard to see.

To Schmidt, it did not seem to particularly matter. The ingots were something to work with — something that took up a different kind of space in the world — and could allow them to imagine what form the metal might take on next.

This was merely the “end of the middle.” They had already faced lawsuits and protests, fought neo-Nazis and monument defenders, fended off attacks and worked in secret to get the bronze to this state. Now came the very public process of taking something ugly and making something beautiful: picking an artist, meeting with residents and imagining what might happen next.

“This is a relief,” she sighed. “This feels good to have material created. … It’s got to go forward.”

[hepcat]

[Blackhawk]

In general I'd be against melting it down (dark periods of our own history shouldn't be venerated, but they shouldn't be hidden, either.) But this particular statue, given the events surrounding it? Melt away.

[LordMortis]

dark periods of our own history shouldn't be venerated, but they shouldn't be hidden, either

Not just our history but all of history. I don't know enough about the statue to have an opinion on whether it had history on its side to preserve it.

[Blackhawk]

dark periods of our own history shouldn't be venerated, but they shouldn't be hidden, either

Not just our history but all of history. I don't know enough about the statue to have an opinion on whether it had history on its side to preserve it.

It's the statue whose defenders ran over 35 protestors, permanently disabling 8 and killing 1, in order to protect it.

I don't support erasing history, but the steps taken to keep this statue intact have earned the statue being turned into slag.

[Isgrimnur]

FORT EISENHOWER, Ga. — When this installation’s former namesake [Gordon] invaded Maryland, the U.S. Army shot him five times.

[LawBeefaroni]

FORT EISENHOWER, Ga. — When this installation’s former namesake [Gordon] invaded Maryland, the U.S. Army shot him five times.

How do we even know who he is? He has been erased!

[Blackhawk]

FORT EISENHOWER, Ga. — When this installation’s former namesake [Gordon] invaded Maryland, the U.S. Army shot him five times.

How do we even know who he is? He has been erased!

Given that I'm the only one who's used the word 'erased', I have to wonder if that's referring to me. If so, maybe I should clarify what I'm saying. I said that they shouldn't be venerated, but shouldn't be erased, either. By that I mean that their statues should be removed, their names stricken from public monuments and buildings, and any other such 'honors' should be eliminated. But who they are and what they didn't shouldn't be melted down and hidden from view. It should be remembered in context of the harm that it caused. They should be mentioned in museums, and their exhibits kept public, but they should be presented within that context. Completely getting rid of any reference outside of history books that most people will never read hides our mistakes and prevents people from learning from them.

[Isgrimnur]

Technically, you didn't use the word 'erased'.

[Blackhawk]

Stop with your CTRL-Fing.

[Holman]

In general I'd be against melting it down (dark periods of our own history shouldn't be venerated, but they shouldn't be hidden, either.) But this particular statue, given the events surrounding it? Melt away.

FWIW, most of the Confederate statues dotting the South were put up during early-20thC Jim Crow as a Fuck You to local blacks.

They were generally mass-produced and cheap, which is why there are so many of them (and why they are hollow metal rather than carved stone). Every shitty little Dixie town could have their own racist shrine.

[Isgrimnur]

Stop with your CTRL-Fing.

At 27 pages, I use other tools.

[Blackhawk]

In general I'd be against melting it down (dark periods of our own history shouldn't be venerated, but they shouldn't be hidden, either.) But this particular statue, given the events surrounding it? Melt away.

FWIW, most of the Confederate statues dotting the South were put up during early-20thC Jim Crow as a Fuck You to local blacks.

They were generally mass-produced and cheap, which is why there are so many of them (and why they are hollow metal rather than carved stone). Every shitty little Dixie town could have their own racist shrine.

Oh, I know. And that should be part of the context.

Of course, the problem with how all of it should be treated (look at how Germany teaches WWII, for instance) is that it is critical of white people. And that can't happen. We can't have white people feeling shame over the 12+ million people they enslaved, abused, and who were willing to go to war to maintain that (although most of the time it was the businessmen and politicians that were willing to go to war, while the average soldier getting shot was just a tool in their box.) But in the meantime, I feel that most of the 'memorabilia' (including Civil War-flavored Jim Crow memorabilia, artifacts of slavery, remnants from the genocidal campaigns against Native Americans, etc) that can't be shown in our current culture should be stored, put aside until we're ready to deal with it in the manner it deserves - by teaching what it represented as a cautionary tale.

It could be used to teach the dangers of intolerance, of mob-think, of nationalism, of populism, and so forth - and, in it's place, to teach compassion.

[Holman]

Meanwhile, on Twitter (in response to melting slaver statues):

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/171 ... 93982?s=20

[Blackhawk]

Meanwhile, on Twitter (in response to melting slaver statues):

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/171 ... 93982?s=20

I glanced at the OP's posts. It's full of extremist bullshit. So, for once? Musk is right.