Said Donald Trump, in a written statement at his website, here.
1. I had some trouble finding the original statement. News sites quote without linking, and Trump's website is rather hard to find by casual Googling. They don't want you to see it. So, when I finally found it, I made a bookmark, and now I intend to make a point of checking it every day. These efforts to hide things can backfire.
2. I notice that Trump is far more grounded in aesthetics than your run-of-the-mill politician. The first thing he talks about is the magnificence and beauty of the statue. That's my first reaction to this issue: Richmond, you have had a beautiful statue in your midst! Regardless of the extent to which you want to honor or dishonor the man it depicts, it is a work of art. To tear it down because of the ideas you think it represents is like the Taliban blowing up the Bamiyan Buddhas.
3. Trump has a visual mind: The "magnificent statue" is attacked by the "massive crane." He's especially drawn to the huge. That's his word — yooge. And here you have 2 huge things in confrontation. It's epic, the crane vs. the statue, like Godzilla v. Rodan. For that link, I Googled "Godzilla vs." and Google wanted to autocomplete that as... let's just say another large movie monster that it would be distracting to name.
4. But I will sidetrack you into this crucial piece of the Trump-and-art puzzle: To prepare the site for Trump Tower, his yooge monument to himself, Trump famously destroyed prominent Art Deco bas-relief sculpture that had been a focal point of 5th Avenue in New York City. In his new statement, Trump observes that the statue of Lee will be cut in 3 pieces, but Trump completely destroyed that stone artwork.
5. More visuals: The cut-up sculpture is "thrown" into storage. It will be stored, not completely destroyed. On first glance, you might think you read "complete destruction," but Trump writes "complete desecration."
6. To say "desecration" is to say that the statue of Robert E. Lee contained sacredness.
7. But the rest of the statement is not about holiness but military aptitude. Trump vaunts Lee as a great military strategist. Like a moviemaker pitching an alternative history script, he visualizes Lee in command of the Union Army: "the war would have been over in one day." And Lee in command in Afghanistan: There would have been "a complete and total victory many years ago."
8. It's not enough to end wars. You need to end them well, something we didn't do with Afghanistan, but which Lee — in Trump's telling — did: "He should be remembered as perhaps the greatest unifying force after the war was over, ardent in his resolve to bring the North and South together through many means of reconciliation and imploring his soldiers to do their duty in becoming good citizens of this Country."
9. That makes me think of Trump's January 6th speech. After losing (or ostensibly losing) the 2020 election, Trump could have been more of a "unifying force," "ardent in his resolve" to bridge the partisan divide. He could have pursued "many means of reconciliation and implor[ed his supporters] to do their duty in becoming good citizens."
10. Trump enlarges the picture — I think of the crane shot in "Gone With The Wind" — and we see the entire culture. The Radical Left is destroying not just this one sculpture, but everything. This is Trump's cinematic visual mind operating again. The filmmaker has us concentrating on Scarlett looking for one man then pulls back and exposes hundreds of wounded men.
पोस्ट्स
१०२ टिप्पण्या:
This post is Ann Althouse at her finest.
Ironic that Trump - the person who the elites consider a barbarian - has so much appreciation for art.
"except for Gettysburg, would have won the war." Nope. Grant's amazing victory at Vicksburg was what really doomed the South. From that moment on, the North controlled the entire Mississippi and the South lost all access to supplies. They just ran out of everything.
Removing history - good or bad - is a frighting look at how stupid, ignorant and Orwellian our culture has become.
Shame on the collective left.
Ann said..
"To tear it down because of the ideas you think it represents is like the Taliban blowing up the Bamiyan Buddhas.The corrupt modern left are Antifa Nazis now."
Nancy Pelosi's Antifa Nazis are anarchists and misfits who seek to destroy everything they label "bad". Your business will burn, and your history books will burn, too.
This is the modern democrat party.
Much like the Taliban &/or Islamic supremacists.
Ann- your #2 is spot on.
"a beautiful piece of bronze sculpture. To add insult to injury, those who support this 'taking' now plan to cut it into three pieces, and throw this work of art into storage prior to its complete desecration. "
Well, come on people!
It was a Graven Image, of a Person! We at the taliban can NOT have images of people!
No one complained when we destroyed those statues of the "Buddha"; why complain now?
Destroying sculpture culture... It's What we taliban DO!
Death to the Infidels! Allah Akbar!!!
'He who forgets history is doomed (or condemned) to repeat it', George Santayana
Trump gives a more accurate description of General Lee's importance after the war as a figure of national reconciliation. But his view that the South under Lee would have won the war but for Gettysburg is absurd.
The North had something superior to Lee's strategery and generalship -- the obstinate will of Abraham Lincoln. Will enough to do what the North under Grant did (Grant had that same will) -- to degrade and starve the Confederate Armies until they could no longer resist. Grant in particular did not care how many Union soldiers were killed. Unlike McClellan et al, he refused to withdraw after an engagement, much less conduct a Biden-like run-away.
In any event, this statement by Trump is an indication that he will NOT run for president again or, if he does, he will NOT get far and NOT get the nomination. The nation does not need this drama of Trump voicing support for any Confederates (as honorable as General Lee actually was) and the resulting 24/7 outrage.
Joe was supposed to be the unifying moderate. WHERE oh where is THAT Joe?? Instead we got a walking, talking goof ball that is so scripted, he actually comes out and says things like “Now, I’m supposed to stop and walk out of the room.” A potato head.
Trump wouldn't have left Americans behind.
Trump is a salesman, and he understands how imagery and theater play on people.
The Radical Left is destroying not just this one sculpture, but everything. This is Trump's cinematic visual mind operating again. The filmmaker has us concentrating on Scarlett looking for one man then pulls back and exposes hundreds of wounded men.
And that's exactly it. Trump is far better than pretty much any other politician at reading the mood of the public and at seeing through the bullshit. He said years ago that it wasn't simply about Confederate statues, and we've already seen attacks on Lincoln, Union officers, the Founding Fathers, etc.
What's wrong with extinguishing the bad?! And isn't the demand for more teaching about slavery and racism the opposite of extinguishing the bad?
I read it as a contrast between seeing the "good and bad" together as a whole, versus seeing only the bad. Seeing both the good and bad in events and people, seeing them as complicated figures who were the products of large historical forces and often beset by conflicting ideals, is different than seeing them as either solely good or solely bad. Teaching that the US is somehow irredeemably racist and that slavery is a sin that can never be expunged is just as dishonest as somehow trying to hide it and pretend that slavery wasn't a major factor in the early history of the US. And like many of Trump's pronouncements, the larger truth is that the left is trying to erase our history and replace it with one of their own, one which many, if not most Americans, fundamentally disagree with.
Now do the statue of Exalted Cyclops Robert Byrd that stands in the US capital.
Shameful to have a statue to a KKK leader there. Not as shameful as having the actual kkk leader there in person for so long. Glorified as his party's senate leader even.
The kkk leader is gone. Time for his statue to be as well.
John Henry
What a great blog post, Althouse. Brava. One of your very best, in a very long time.
Going back to the Charlottesville Hoax Hoax kefuffle, I just wanted to remind you and your readers about the Bulwark writer -- Robert J. Tracinski -- who wrote the definitive deconstruction of the Scott Adams/Steve Cortes narrative of a simplistic "Charlottesville Hoax."
Tracinski is like me; we both are culturally opposed to bringing down these monuments. We both think that they are important, historically significant, and must be understood within a nuanced and multilayered context.
The legality of removing the monuments is harder to argue, of course. So many of them were privately funded (an important part of understanding them in the first place) and privately placed, in trust with public entities. A somewhat fragile legal foundation, which makes removing monuments easier than amending constitutions. The monument haters can do it, but I think it's wrong, and so does Tracinski.
🎶 There goes Robert E. Lee...🎶
I'm finally starting to get angry. Took a long time but now my dander is up.
Next comes the "destined to repeat it" part.
After saying how hard it is to find our president emeritus' website there is no link?
Some of us might like to read what he actually said instead of extracts of what people (including you) say he said.
We've had 6 years now of people (not you) lying about what he said and taking him out of context.
Some of us reflexively ask, "what did he really say?"
John Henry
Trump: "...If only we had Robert E. Lee to command our troops in Afghanistan, that disaster would have ended in a complete and total victory many years ago. What an embarrassment we are suffering because we don’t have the genius of a Robert E. Lee!"
The obscenity of that notion will no doubt be lost on the Trump Cult. Trump had his four years to revamp Afghanistan policy. Trump's policy -- documented in an agreement that his administration singly negotiated with the Taliban -- was to giddyup out a.s.a.p.
Meanwhile Trump claimed -- his own weird, stupid blustery way -- about how he could win the war in Afghanistan easily and quickly by destroying much of the country. He said he could win the war in a week, and wipe Afghanistan off the face of the earth, but he didn't want to do it because he didn't want to kill 10 million people.
https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1153352075016835072
‘…and Trump's website is rather hard to find by casual Googling.’
https://duckduckgo.com
First result for ‘Donald Trump website.’ It is my default search engine. You’re welcome.
‘To prepare the site for Trump Tower, his yooge monument to himself, Trump famously destroyed prominent Art Deco bas-relief sculpture that had been a focal point of 5th Avenue in New York City.’
I wish the Art Deco panels had been saved, but he bought them, he owned them, he could destroy them. The Lee statue was public property.
‘Robert E. Lee instead chose the other side because of his great love of Virginia, and except for Gettysburg, would have won the war.’
Maybe we’d all be better off if The South had won...race relations (stirred up by Obama and the left) couldn’t be much worse.
‘After losing (or ostensibly losing) the 2020 election...’
You make Trump’s point...no sane person thinks Biden got more votes. He has the right to be pissed off.
‘The Radical Left is destroying not just this one sculpture, but everything.’
Bingo.
For all the talk by the left of Trump being a buffoon, he is a very good communicator. I don’t think he tries...it is effortless. Scott Adams thinks very highly of his persuasion skills.
As for the broader issue of destroying statues, it's ultimately about destroying history. And frankly, everyone should give a damn.
Democrats want to erase history.
The statue reminds everyone that the Confederates were Democrats. For some reason some of us know what will happen when these people take over and what will happen when they impose their policies.
I know it is shocking and mysterious to some people that we have such miraculous predictive powers.
In order for their agenda to move forward they have to erase examples of what happens when they are in control. They rely in ignorance. Willful ignorance in many cases.
AA suggested: " Trump could have been more of a "unifying force," "ardent in his resolve" to bridge the partisan divide."
Really? Have you noticed the resolve of the left to hate us? They want us dead!
If only Rush Limbaugh was still alive. I can hear him reading this post on his radio show.
"This is from Ann Althouse. She's from Wisconsin. She has blog."
I had some trouble finding the original statement. News sites quote without linking, and Trump's website is rather hard to find by casual Googling.
Really!? I googled "Donald Trump" and his website was the second hit (first one was the Wikipedia page on him). Such dishonesty hardly helps with his credibility. Now of course, when you do go to the site it is a little difficult to find the statement since the website seems primarily concerned with raising money.
he visualizes Lee in command of the Union Army: "the war would have been over in one day.”
Not true! It would have taken at least a month. Okay, seriously, assuming he wins the first Battle of Manassas for the Union, he would have swept south, taken Richmond, and knocked Virginia out of the war. That still left a lot of states to to be forced to surrender. Without Richmond’s Tredegar Iron Works fewer cannon and muskets for Southern armies, so defeating the Confederacy might not have been a large an issue. Some consequences would be (probably) no state of West Virginia. No battles at Antietam Creek or Gettysburg. Definitely no national cemetery at Arlington — Arlington had been Lee’s home and the first soldiers buried there were explicitly buried close to the house at the order of spiteful Union General Montgomery Meigs so it would never be usable as a residence again.
OK, I will take this as factual if AA says so : "To prepare the site for Trump Tower, his yooge monument to himself, Trump famously destroyed prominent Art Deco bas-relief sculpture that had been a focal point of 5th Avenue in New York City."
But, are these two acts of destruction/desecration equivalent? In the Lee case, we're talking about a major figure in U.S. history -- which, unless history is rewritten à la 1984, will forever be with us. And the Art Deco sculpture? Not so much. I'm sure Trump didn't remove the sculpture without government due process, whereas in the Lee case, was there any due process, or simply a bowing to the Woke Mob?
Chuck's obsessive Trump hate ignores recent history. Chuck's Potemkin crook just bungled the Afghanistan withdrawl.
Trump never started a war - and he wanted to get us out of Afghanistan, and said so.
That he didn't make the move and Biden did and is fell so quickly - proves Trump's reluctance was correct.
Yes, go further and you have sculpt, from which you can remove the 's' and 'p' to get cult. What?
Anyway...much here. I've been reading about and looking at the removal and destruction of the Robert E. Lee statue and what came to my mind was something else. I note that in many countries there are old and great statues- works of art. Some magnificent, but others a matter of taste, yet they all hold meaning to those countries. I think of European countries, such as Poland, Hungary, Germany (yes, even Germany), England, Spain, Austria, and on and on into Greece, Bulgaria, Montenegro and on across the world.
Many cultures revere their history and understand that their heroes were human. Imperfect and in some cases, had major flaws, but...their historic impact and/or bravery, courage, leadership are what got them bronzed for the generations. Their impact on their country- even if only a moment in time.
What cultures destroy their statues, their history, their culture? The Taliban. The Communists/Socialists. The Totalitarians. Oh yes, and the US Woke, which is to say our totalitarians.
It is irreversible when you rip down a statue of a great person, such as Robert E. Lee. What he stood for- the good of him and the bad of him- was great in size and impact. His decision to fight for his Virginia is something that should also be understood. The power of States rights, loyalty to a state as opposed to the Federal State was once how we lived. It was our character. And yes, had Virginia moved with the North, he would have led the US forces against the Confederacy, such was his devotion to honor his state.
That said, we destroy the statue and lose, not only more of our history, but a great artwork, never to be seen live again. Nice job, folks.
No- Trump should not have destroyed those beautiful Art-Deco sculptures. Destroyed art is lost forever to all of us. But, perhaps he's learned a bit about things since the 80s. I know I have.
Robert E. Lee IS sacred to many in the South, not because they long for slavery, but because they long for honor and the love of the local land and people. Many historians don't view him as sacred, but do view him as the greatest General we've ever produced. So he holds a huge amount of interest with them. He is not just Another White Man.
This is a loss for all of us. What's next? We stop teaching about Confederate Generals at West Point? I see that Pres. Biden is trying to remove the current board overseeing West Point. Are they in his way? Is Biden more like Haqqani than Roosevelt?
Re "culture" and "sculpture": Is a case where two related words start from opposite meaning in Latin. Culture, to increase in an agricultural sense (cultivate), vs. sculpture, to remove (carve).
Grant in particular did not care how many Union soldiers were killed.
This statement is extremely unfair. After the disaster at Cold Harbor he was much more careful with his soldiers' lives, and the war dragged on for nine months of trench warfare at Petersburg.
https://www.city-journal.org/html/what-we-have-lose-12199.html?wallit_nosession=1
11. Those people aren’t “extinguishing the bad.” They are creating a permanent untouchable class with demonstrations of power such as this one. Break their rules and you will be made untouchable — unemployable, barred from educational opportunities, silenced and disappeared. All these lies about how nobody learned about slavery and civil war in classrooms until BLM made them do it. It was ordinary to learn unvarnished truths about subjects such as slavery (though nothing bad about the Sixties thugs and the world they broke) in public school forty years ago.
This isn’t education; it is re-education. And re-education isn’t about educating: it is merely politically inflicted sado-masochism.
I have little respect for the suddenly threatened-feeling tenured professors such as Peter Boghossian who pretend they just noticed the cultural revolution that has been burning like a forest fire all around them for three-plus decades. You didn’t notice until recent years that effing Portland State University is a Maoist propaganda factory? Until they came for you? I’d love to read just one honest Substack piece explaining the mental arithmetic such highly intelligent people used to justify standing by doing nothing for decades, rather than another impotent and belated me ain’t culpable. Boghossian has done more than most, but if he didn’t see the writing on the wall by, say, 2000 at the latest, when we still had a chance to do something about it, he is lying to himself and everyone else. Then again, Boghossian’s life work is trying to get violent felons sprung early from prison. So he’s quite used to lying, and I suppose he believed his efforts to unleash murderers and rapists back onto society would shield him from the mob.
such as Poland, Hungary, Germany (yes, even Germany),
Yeah, Germany is full of statues to leading Nazis. Sheesh, after the war we (the occupying forces) blew up or sand blasted every Nazi symbol we could find.
I'm sorry, Ann, but someone needs to push back on your claim that "they" don't want people to find the former president's website.
When I googled "Donald Trump" on a desktop browser, his website was the first hit after the row of news stories across the top. On a mobile app, it was the second, after the wikipedia entry. Perhaps you had problems finding his quasi-blog, which has the post you're discussing, but that seems like a problem with the design of his website, not some sort of Big Tech conspiracy.
I referenced Scott Adams in an earlier comment.
About 18 minutes or so into his livestream today (YouTube), Scott Adams talks about Trump, Lee, and Afghanistan. Very funny.
Re: Lee's decision
If his detractors would stop for a moment to bother thinking about the matter, it was pretty clear and completely understandable that then-Colonel Lee was never going to war against his neighbors. He was never going to war against his friends and family and associates in Virginia. And he was appalled that the United States Army would ever turn against the citizenry of the nation.
Lee was never a supporter of slavery or of secession. But he could not abide the federal government sending its military to kill and burn and pillage the nation. His was a decision of defense.
It was not an easy decision.
Temujin's words of wisdom:
"What cultures destroy their statues, their history, their culture? The Taliban. The Communists/Socialists. The Totalitarians. Oh yes, and the US Woke, which is to say our totalitarians."
is = it
Robert Byrd(D) is All over West Virginia. Highways, statues, public buildings are named after him. A KKKer!
Where is his historical cancellation by the woke mafia? oh riiiiiight - he's democrat. ooopsie.
Grant in particular did not care how many Union soldiers were killed
This statement is extremely unfair
Let me clarify. I did not mean that Grant did not care about his men. He did. The the enormity of it all weighed on him. But he was willing to fight to the last man in order to destroy the Confederate armies. It did not matter how many men were killed, he was not going to withdraw. He was not going to say "no mas, this has gone on too long" and leave.
There are two stories about Lee that, to me, confirm his greatness, one certifiably true and the other apocryphal.
The certainly true story is that when the remnants of his army was trapped near Appomattox Court House, some of his subordinates argued that he could disburse his army and continue the fight via guerrilla tactics. Lee shut that idea right down. He and his army had fought honorably, and would not degenerate into lawless bodies of armed marauders.
The apocryphal story involves Lee attending church services in Richmond after his surrender. The minister asked the congregation to come forward and accept communion, but the first person to come up was an elderly black man. The shocked white congregation sat still; who would kneel next to a black man? Then Robert E. Lee rose from his pew, came forward, and knelt next to the man, viewing the two of them as equal in the eyes of the Lord and implicitly instructing other white Southerners to do likewise.
True story? I wasn’t there, obviously, but it appears to have been passed along by word of mouth and, critically, believed by many in the postwar South who knew the character of Robert E. Lee.
The Taliban Left quakes in terror at the sound of Chuck's tsk, tsking their literal destruction of America. He and his fellow "True Conservatives" are a veritable bulwark against the assaults of the Progressives on our traditions.
'Joe was supposed to be the unifying moderate.'
And he was supposed to eradicate Covid via Science!®
How's that working out?
Why doesn't some other town take the statue and put it up? There's no small town in the South that wouldn't want a free beautiful statue of our Greatest General?
And Trump is right. Robert E. Lee was a great man, and our greatest General (Next to winfield Scott). Eisenhower thought the same, and did MacArthur father who fought against the Confederates.
Notice that other than Trump, none of the DC Republicans have said a peep about this. They never do. They only say what the Big Donors give them permission to say.
In my world, I look upon statues in wonder. I imagine context as best I can. The Robert E Lee in Richmond is, to me, a tremendous testament to the man, not racism. Byrd is the Figurehead of racism, as a "mentor" to Beijing Biden. Who were the democrats even up till the 1960s?
https://neveryetmelted.com/2021/09/08/left-wing-haters-pulled-down-lees-monument-in-richmond-today/
Now do Robert Byrd!
https://www.change.org/p/donald-trump-tear-down-the-statue-of-robert-byrd-in-the-us-capitol
"Really!? I googled "Donald Trump" and his website was the second hit (first one was the Wikipedia page on him). Such dishonesty hardly helps with his credibility."
Are you calling ME dishonest?
I didn't google "Donald Trump." I googled the text of the statement that I had found quoted in news reports. I was looking for the statement in its original context.
Here is what you get when you google the text — links to all sorts of places that quote him.
I got 5 pages in, where I was amused to see a link to this blog post of mine and I still didn't find a link to Trump's own website.
I don't like the implied equivalence of the Bonwit Teller pieces with the statue of Lee. The lee assholes are trying to cherry pick and erase history as part of a larger plan of destroying America and reshaping it into something more horrible and sinister history has seen before.
Trump has bad taste.
To draw an equivalence is another example of the shit thinking we can't afford at the moment.
Thanks to Ann for generously providing a safe space for racists to feel uninhibited to freely speak their degenerate and evil thoughts unfiltered by normal human moral peer pressure.
The Confederates would have been defeated early in the war had it not been for the genius of Lee and this would have entrenched slavery in the US. Early in the war Lincoln and the Congress continually asserted that their purpose was not emancipation even though as Republicans they had run on an abolitionist platform. The US was an example of democratic government in a sea of king-ruled states. The Unionists wanted to prove such governments could sustain themselves. By prolonging and deepening the war Lee and his lieutenants created a situation in which Lincoln began to assert the ending of slavery as the purpose of the US in the war as shown by the Emancipation Proclmation. I always see this deep irony in the consequences of Lee's victories when I read about him - his genius is, almost one might say, used in providential way.
The statues of him do not reflect this outlook of mine. They tend to have been raised by embittered Confederate survivors and placed on the main roads at main intersection points with the intention of signifying an enduring attachment to Confederate goals. So downstream from culture was sculpture. Removing the statues from their central locations would achieve the goal of showing that the South has moved on. Downstream from culture was relocated sculpture The wish to disregard the changes in the South and instead grind the present-day southerners down and insult them as much as possible as shown by the iconoclasm is understandable in the descendants of the slaves. Others see it differently. Capture-the-statue won't stop the abortion of a single black child or help create effective schools in the black communities in the big Dem cities or create jobs that can be done without a high school degree or keep grocery prices down. In short, it makes the present-day oppression easier to hold in place. CRT should say: "then, that is its goal" but it never does. So, who is real CRT working for? Bring the question of statue shows v. reform in the big Dem cities up at your next CRt seminar and see.
Trump indeed eradicated the statuary on the Bonwit Teller building which he promised he would preserve. The next day they were gone. Those goddamn contractors. True story.
I haven't been this outraged since I saw videos of tearing down statues of Saddam and Communist dictators behind the iron curtain.
I dig culture and appreciate historical sculptures, but once the rest of the Monument Avenue statues came down in 2020 the Lee removal was a foregone conclusion.
I think many present-day Americans fail to recognize what a blessing the reconciliation between North and South after the Civil War was. It was nowhere near perfect. After Lincoln's assassination, the North occupied, mismanaged, and reviled the South. For its part, the South retreated into a fantasy of 'The Lost Cause,' and reduced the freed slaves to an underclass. But the result was a reunified nation and was far, far better than in most other nations that underwent civil wars. Now the modern Left wants to undo that accommodation in the name of racial justice and ideological purity. If they succeed, the results will be very, very ugly.
'I got 5 pages in, where I was amused to see a link to this blog post of mine and I still didn't find a link to Trump's own website.'
I think that's just the way the algorithm works...for whatever reason it is not looking for the first place the text shows up.
You could ask Google but I'm sure it's all proprietary...
What's amazing about Trump is he cares enough to comment on it. Do you really think Biden, Pelosi, McCarthy, McConnell, Schumer, etc. Give a damn about anything except $$ and power? They didn't even care about the 2,300 Americans killed in 20 year no-win war. Or the hundreds of thousands killed in the Iraq war.
But here's Trump weighing in on it, and taking the "Wrong" side. I won't even say its political because its 50-50 he'll never run for office again, and even if he did, no one will remember this in 2024.
Its one reason why the Left hates him so much. He's the only person with a big media footprint pushing back (even if moderately) against their culture war. Look at the comments here and on other sites - leftists foaming at the mouth, picking his statement apart, explicitly or implicitly calling Trump a racist/bigot/homophobe, etc. When do we get the CNN/WaPo "fact" check? All because he doesn't want a Statue of a Civil War general taken down!
Finally, as someone who's studied military history, being a Great General doesn't mean you're pefect. Napoleon made mistakes, big ones. And so did every top General in history. Pointing out that Lee made errors doesn't make him NOT great.
Even more annoyng is reading some mid-wit blathering about how Lee "wasn't a great strategist" or "only was good on a tactical level". It makes me want to get out my sabre and run them through. Everyone knows what to do AFTER the battle. Everyone knows the correct battlefield manuever when you're sitting in a comfy chair with detailed map showing the positions of all the units and their numbers.
Everyone knows Amazon is great stock, so why didn't everyone buy it in 1999? Everyone knew the banks were in bad shape in 2007, why didn't everyone sell their bank stocks?
Temujin @9:11 -- thanks. Well said.
Now that Gen. Robert E. Lee is down and in mothballs, what will fill the empty space on the pedestal? I think a LARGE statue of a very LARGE and important historical figure should be erected in its place,…George Floyd (also a son of the South).
@Howard
Would you care to point out the evil and degenerate remarks. Mostly its discussion of the Civil War and whether taking down statues is totalitarian.
Nancy Pelosi's Antifa Nazis are anarchists and misfits who seek to destroy everything they label "bad". Your business will burn, and your history books will burn, too
It's not a "book burning", it's a "flame purification ceremony", according to Canada.
As for the Lee statue and other Confederate statues, those were put up when there were still people alive who had suffered and lost family members and friends on both sides of the war. The ones on the Union side realized that part of healing the nation was allowing the losing side to have their monuments. As enjoyable as it is to say, "we won, get over it", that does not help anyone get over anything.
If tearing down the statues made people feel united as one nation, it would be worth it, but it seems like it is used to create more division.
Althouse, I see some of your commenters criticizing you for the equivalence with the bas relief parts of the Bonwit Teller building that Trump destroyed.
You are so right to have mentioned it; one of my favorite parts of this brilliant blog post.
And for those who have read about that destruction, it is even worse for Trump. I've seen about a dozen well-documented stories about it; here's just one:
https://medium.com/@nevaer1/when-donald-trump-destroyed-monumental-art-4140bfae17e6
wildswan said...
The Confederates would have been defeated early in the war had it not been for the genius of Lee and this would have entrenched slavery in the US.
I'd agree except that it wasn't the 'genius of Lee' it was the idiocy (treason?) of McClellan
If McClellan had not intentionally held back at Antietam Creek....
The Army of Northern Virginia would have been destroyed
The South would have come back into the Union, slaves and all
AND!McClellan would have been the Next President of the United States
In his own way (by being either f*cking incompetent, or being a Traitor) McClellan did more to end slavery than just about Anyone (I'll try hard, not to mention John Bell Hood)
If Lee wanted a statue, he shouldn't have rebelled against his country. But he did. I'm not aware of any country as generous to those in rebellion as the US was after the Civil War. Lee's statue should, perhaps, be in a museum somewhere, not in a place of honor as so many Southern soldiers are/were in Richmond.
The Resistance began pre-election in 2016, with fictional dossiers paid for Hillary and Vindemanns burrowing in the woodwork, two joke impeachment, fake news that runs to the current day, and you have the gall to chide Trump for divisiveness after 2020?
Maybe slitting his own throat on national TV would have appeased his enemies, but only if they each got to pose with his severed head for a commemorative photo a la Ms. Griffin. Trump isn't the problem. The problem is the will to power of Trump's opponents, who engaged in lawless divisive actions from 2016 onward to regain what they believe is theirs and theirs alone.
The Forrest statue here, by one of the foremost American sculptors of the day, was removed several years ago, and his and the mrs's remains a few months ago.
The statue is being moved, as I understand it, to the Sons of Confederate Veterans museum in middle Tennessee. It's not as grand or as prominent as the Lee in Richmond, but it was a very fine equestrian centerpiece for an up to date modern urban park as well as a political and cultural poke in the eyes of the recently freed. These things were designed and scaled for certain settings anyway, and usually don't look right in other spots.
I don't have time to go down the ACWABAWS rabbit holes opened up by this post. Maybe later.
I can say that Europe is full of statuary to Great Men/Murderous Assholes. I've got pictures. Nazis still off limits, and that's a good thing.
I googled "Donald Trump" and donaldjtrump.com was the last entry on page 1. 1st was wikipedia, 2nd was Don Jr's twitter feed, then a bunch of news sites. That doesn't seem too out of line.
Donald Trump website brings him up 1st, but Donald Trump blog drops him off altogether (I stopped looking after 5 pages).
Wildswan’s smart interpretation is pretty much what has unfolded in both Atlanta and Turkmenistan — Atlanta relocated the Confederate-themed Cyclorama (an indoor display) from a central city park to the history center, where it can still be viewed, with context. Turkmenistan moved some of the more impressive statues their crazy dictator Niyazov had erected to himself to the edge of the city after he died. They certainly recognized the tourism value of the rotating Arch of Neutrality. Unfortunately, or fortunately for the tourism industry, the next crazy dictator has put up even crazier statues of himself. I can’t decide which is most emblematic of what happens when you start replacing monuments: the giant golden dictator on a horse on a mountain, or the giant golden statue of his own dog, or the deserted and looted Tupac Shakur Cultural Center, but both Atlanta and Turkmenistan also continue to prove the second part of wildswan’s hypothesis quite well.
The fondness for Robt E. Lee in the South is very much based on respect for competent military leadership not the defense of slavery.
I have cousins on both sides of my family who have been career military officers in IL and SC (Air Force and Marines). Their respect for Robt. E. Lee has to do with his exceptional military abilities and his record at West Point. He was an exceptional human being who chose the losing side in our Civil War.
BTW, I agree with Freder about Grant. He was not careless with the lives of his men any more than Lee was, especially if you consider Pickett's Charge. War was a lot different in those days.
I didn't google "Donald Trump." I googled the text of the statement that I had found quoted in news reports. I was looking for the statement in its original context.
My bad. I apologize. I didn't realize you were so bad at Google searches.
The lee assholes are trying to cherry pick and erase history as part of a larger plan of destroying America and reshaping it into something more horrible and sinister history has seen before.
No, it is the right who is trying to cherry pick and erase history. These monuments were erected after reconstruction when the South was, for all intents and purposes, reconstructing slavery. These monuments were meant to send the message, that Reconstruction was over and any Black folks who didn't like it were going to face the consequences. By the time of the Voting and Civil Rights act at least 5500 would be lynched (and that doesn't even include the mass murders like Tulsa).
The Democrats are the party of the outsiders. Just after the war, white southerners were outsiders. The statue of of Robert E. Lee was put up in 1890, partially to celebrate his post Civil War record. Lee was a transitional figure who helped to re-integrate white southerners back into the Union. It should be remembered that Wilson and FDR represented the interests of white segregationists and helped to bring them back into the fold. At that time, Democrats thought it was more important to integrate white southerners rather than Black Americans into the American nation. There are some positive points to this argument. I believe many white racists served faithfully and bravely during WWI, WWII and other military actions. Our record in these military conflicts would perhaps not have been all that great without their valor. Robert E. Lee was not the only talented military man that the South produced.
I didn't google "Donald Trump." I googled the text of the statement that I had found quoted in news reports. I was looking for the statement in its original context.
If you were looking for the "original context", wouldn't it make more sense to Google the source rather than the quote?
Blogger tim maguire said...
If Lee wanted a statue, he shouldn't have rebelled against his country. But he did. I'm not aware of any country as generous to those in rebellion as the US was after the Civil War. Lee's statue should, perhaps, be in a museum somewhere, not in a place of honor as so many Southern soldiers are/were in Richmond.
9/9/21, 11:23 AM
Well, since you asked...
“If Lee wanted a statue...”
In fact, we know from the historical record that Lee did NOT want any memorials; not to the Southern cause and certainly not to his own civil war service.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.pbs.org/newshour/amp/nation/robert-e-lee-opposed-confederate-monuments
I say that, even as I say again that I have always thought that these civil war memorials from the late nineteenth century are quite beautiful works of art, and have a certain historical place. I am opposed to their removal. And just because a given historical figure didn’t want a monument does not mean that there should be no monument. I expect that General Sherman wanted no personal memorials and yer one of the grandest of them all is the gilded Sherman victory statue in Manhattan at the south end of Central Park. “Grand Army Plaza.” Hence the Plaza Hotel.
Just about all military heroes have some dark areas in their careers. Sherman's prosecution of the Indian Wars is not something to celebrate. Better to take his statue down now.....MLK and Frederick Douglas also have some "metoo" incidents in their past that a future generation of feminists will find objectionable. Take them down now before it becomes a divisive issue.....All current statues in America should be replaced with statues of Sojourner Truth. She did not speak out in favor of gay marriage or abortion rights, but she's about as good as we can hope for.
"11. Trump had us looking at one sculpture, then pulls back and urges us to gaze upon the entire culture. The Left is besetting all of "our history and heritage, both good and bad." He's so protective of our culture that he's alarmed about extinguishing "both good and bad." What's wrong with extinguishing the bad?! "
I don't take Trump's statement to say he's opposed to eliminating "the bad". He's saying they use too broad of a brush.
After the defeat of Napoleon, the Czar ordered the building of the Cathedral of Christ the Savior to commemorate the Russian victory. It took forty years to build and dominated Kremlin Square. It was visible from Stalin's office and the view irritated him. Stalin thought that the Orthodox Church was a vehicle of oppression and superstition. In 1931, he ordered the Cathedral torn down. His original plan was to put up a 600 foot statue of Lenin and a colossal Palace of the Soviets in its place. Some problems (like WWII) intervened and the statue was never put up. The Cathedral, instead, became the site of the world's largest outdoor swimming pool. After the fall of the Soviet Union, the Cathedral was rebuilt on the site.....Interesting bit of history. I don't think the Bolsheviks produced any men that posterity wishes to honor. I wonder what statues will go up to members of the Woke Generation.
Trump may be right that Lee would have won but for Gettysburg. If, rather than losing and having to retreat, Lee had defeated Meade's army, he may well have been able to get all the way to DC. Gettysburg to Washington is only about 65 miles. If that had happened, then I don't there's much question that the North would have given up the fight and negotiated a treaty that would have resulted in recognition of the CSA as a separate country -- which obviously would count as a win for the South.
Lincoln could barely maintain Northern support for the war even after WINNING at Gettysburg (and Vicksburg, of course) in mid-'63. The election of 1864 wasn't really in hand for Lincoln until after Sherman captured Atlanta. So, while it's correct to say that Lee and the South could never have won the war had it been fought to the finish, the South's path to victory didn't require all-out conquest of the North. Capturing Washington would have easily done the trick, IMO.
No Dylan tag for "On his horse?" I'm shocked and appalled.
You don't understand how intensely the "liberal" Hive hates the idea of antebellum slavery. Because they're so pro-freedom, dontcha know.
Gilbar said
"it wasn't the 'genius of Lee' it was the idiocy (treason?) of McClellan
If McClellan had not intentionally held back at Antietam Creek...."
McClellan wasn't a traitor, he just wasn't up to being a Commander-in-Chief in tough times. The nice ostrich v. the treacherous fox ratio is about 10,000 to 1 in my opinion at all times. Right now, for every real traitor, we've got tons of people in high places who are similar cowards (though we have traitors too.) I saw this same dynamic in the Catholic church in the Sixties and it's going on again but now it's in my country as well in Europe and the Church.
PS. McLellan's problem: If the Confederates had ever captured Washington DC England would have recognized the Confederacy and used its dominant Navy to lift the Northern blockade. Then the Confederates might have won. So McClellan always wanted an intact Army of the Potomac between DC and the Confederates and would always hesitate to charge in against Lee, fearing he'd lose and thus lose the war. I believe he was caught up in such calculations and Lee knew it and used that against him. Lee made McClellan feel baffled and that made him keep checking to see if DC was protected and freezing in battle.
The Nazis would have been defeated early if it wasn't for the brilliance of Adolph Hitler, Joseph Goebbels, Herman Goring, Erwin Rommel and Erich von Manstein. They should have had great art statues made and put up in Monument Parks in France, Poland, Russia and North Africa to remind the victims of the Nazi greatness and call it history.
Maybe as part of the statue erection, pass artfully crafted laws to make the victims third class residents in their own country and elevate Wehrmacht, SS and Concentration Camp veterans as the enforcers of the oppression.
I wonder how much of the obsession of the left in destroying Confederate history is the attempt to hide the fact that they were all Democrats ?
Mark said...
Re: Lee's decision
If his detractors would stop for a moment to bother thinking about the matter, it was pretty clear and completely understandable that then-Colonel Lee was never going to war against his neighbors. He was never going to war against his friends and family and associates in Virginia. And he was appalled that the United States Army would ever turn against the citizenry of the nation.
Lee was never a supporter of slavery or of secession. But he could not abide the federal government sending its military to kill and burn and pillage the nation. His was a decision of defense.
It was not an easy decision.
-------------
has anyone gamed the War with Lee's first act = surrender instead of his last act?
he could have stopped the war altogether --- yes or no?
... But he could not abide the federal government sending its military to kill and burn and pillage the nation....
are you saying .... so the rebel soldiers never killed burned and pillages under Lee's command?
These monuments were meant to send the message, that Reconstruction was over and any Black folks who didn't like it were going to face the consequences
I see that we are engaging in the task of interpreting 19th Century events as if they happened today.
Readering: "I haven't been this outraged since I saw videos of tearing down statues of Saddam and Communist dictators behind the iron curtain."
The Althouse leftists are once again resetting history to pretend their actual targets aren't the Founding Fathers and anyone else that needs to be "disappeared" from our history.
Statues of Teddy Roosevelt, Washington, Jefferson and even Lincoln have been removed/attacked.
Even Francis Scott Key.
But those were removed/attacked more than 15 minutes ago so Althouse leftists LLR Chuck, readering and Howard have reset to their previous storylines that its only Confederate statues.
All the Confederacy had to do was not lose. They didn't need to win the war. England was neutral between North and South until the Emancipation Proclamation, which switched support to the North in Europe.
What was your biggest mistake General Lee:
Lee
“We made a sad mistake in the beginning of this campaign, which may yet prove fatal to us. In the beginning all the worst generals were appointed to command our armies and all our best generals to edit the newspapers.
I have given the work all the thought I could, and sometimes when my plans were completed, so far as I could see, they seemed perfect. But when I have fought them through, I have discovered defects and occasionally wondered I did not see some of the faults in advance.
When it was all over I found, just by reading a newspaper, that those ‘best editor’ generals saw all the defects plainly from the start. Unfortunately, they did not communicate their knowledge to me until it was too late.”
Chuck said…
“What a great blog post, Althouse. Brava. One of your very best, in a very long time.
Going back to the Charlottesville Hoax Hoax kefuffle, I…”
You don’t mind if we just call you “Eddie Haskell” do you, Eddie?
The more history I study, the more I become aware of the limitations of my own understanding, but then I come to a place like Althouse and find lots of certainty about might-have-been.
I'm Counterfactualism's biggest fan, but the best alternatives and counterfactuals are closely based on the facts.
That said, Lee was an outstanding general, one of the best the continent has produced. He was not as reluctant a rebel nor as humane a slavemaster as apologists present, and it isn't clear to me that his genius would out everywhere and under different conditions. If I had to choose a commander for an army likely to be outnumbered, I'd pick Lee, though.
OTOH I know from personal connections that the pendulum has swung far away from Lee, including his reputation as a great captain, inside the US Army. The old Southern spread-eagle patriotic subculture has had its day, and no ambitious officer will display any admiration for the CS states or forces, or cultural traditions (true or false) related to them.
Preserving the Bonwit sculptures which were generously appraised by the Met as worth $200,000 would have held up construction for a week and a half. On a project of that size that was easily a $500,000 cost. The value of the tax deduction would have been quite a bit less. Possibly if the Met had offered to pay for the sculptures or to use it's board's clout assist in expediting other aspects of the construction the panels could have reasonably been saved.
I always thought the Bonwit Teller facade was ugly.
tolkein said...
All the Confederacy had to do was not lose. They didn't need to win the war
They didn't even need to not lose; all they needed to do, was hold on until Nov '64
In the Summer of '64, the war had been going on for over 3 years, the North was tired
and the war was hopelessly stagnant, the only thing moving was death notices heading north
Grant was stalled at Petersburg, Sherman was stalled outside of Atlanta,
McClellan and the Democrat Copperheads, were headed to Victory in the '64 election
And THAT would have been the end of the war (armistice, negotiation, and recognition )
Then! John Bell Hood got Joe Johnston Fired! and switched the Army of Tennessee's strategy from successful defense, to pointless suicidal frontal attacks
Suddenly, Thanx to the Efforts of JB Hood, Atlanta was in Union Possession
And Lincoln's reelection was secured
'These monuments were meant to send the message, that Reconstruction was over and any Black folks who didn't like it were going to face the consequences.'
Why were Southern Democrats (who erected those statues) such racist assholes?
The Dems own slavery and the racism that continues even now...
Narr said... "OTOH I know from personal connections that the pendulum has swung far away from Lee, including his reputation as a great captain, inside the US Army. The old Southern spread-eagle patriotic subculture has had its day, and no ambitious officer will display any admiration for the CS states or forces, or cultural traditions (true or false) related to them."
Could this be from Obama culling the military of most high-rank patriots and the rest just keeping their nose down for cover?
Wise up.
Blogger Meade said...
Chuck said…
“What a great blog post, Althouse. Brava. One of your very best, in a very long time.
Going back to the Charlottesville Hoax Hoax kefuffle, I…”
You don’t mind if we just call you “Eddie Haskell” do you, Eddie?
“Comments need to pass through moderation. Comments should respond to material raised in the post. I encourage brevity and substance and discourage personal attacks and repetition.”
Okay, Squirt.
Dave Begley I promise never to tell Meade what you wrote about Althouse. He didn’t like me saying things like this:
Blogger Dave Begley said...
This post is Ann Althouse at her finest.
...
Edward Chuck Haskell, Jr. said…
That’s a lovely dress you’re wearing today, Professor Althouse.
Regarding the prowess of Lee, Speaker Pelosi's father shared a similar view at the commemoration of Baltimore's Lee Jackson monument. Mayor D'Alesandro also said that the monument should be viewed as a symbol of unity. At the time of the Civil War, Baltimoreans were divided in their sympathies and, by the time of the commemoration, I imagine that many Baltimore families had elderly relatives who had vivid second hand knowledge of their family's travails during that war. Heck, there were probably a few drummer boy Civil War veterans still alive in 1948.
https://www.baltimoresun.com/opinion/readers-respond/bs-ed-rr-confederate-baltimore-20170822-story.html
Monuments, as opposed to sculptures, should memorialize virtuous (fortitude, temperance, justice, wisdom for instance) people, and serve as examples to which we can aspire. But unfortunately those who we would emulate are people, and all people have flaws.
This thread is so nostalgically intimidating and delightful to me. I used to work for two famous Civil War historians, one of whom needed physical assistance, so I went to a lot of Civil War History conferences, St George Tucker type things, and lived in dread fear of being outed as ignorant about the Civil War (my odd areas of study being post-WWII literature, American poetry, the history of medicine, and the effects of social movements on criminal justice).
I would actually compose a crib sheet of important dates and battles and keep the paper in my pocket. I read some of the women’s diaries of the war to have something useful to say, and there is much to be learned by Mary Chestnut, etc. I put a lot of work into studying how different newspapers, black and white, distributed information about lynchings. Such direct study is already a taboo, disguised as an obsession.
Listening to those debates — and they were debates, not droning postmodern conference papers — I saw what academia and the intellectual life might have been, and once was. I was lucky to witness the last generation of great scholars duke it out with collegiality and enthusiasm. I will never forget drinking scotch with C. Van Woodward, who I had assumed had died years earlier, and discussing Reconstruction, and the very topic about memorials at hand here.
The Althouse commenters remind me of that experience as nothing has since. But please don’t ask me any questions about the Civil War, unless they’re about how they performed the amputations. Which you don’t want to know.
Danno wants me to wise up. Ppffftt.
The ACWABAWS is part of my heritage--history being what happened; heritage being what happened in your place, to your people. I never took any formal study of the Woah (as my elderly relatives called it) but ended up being the campus expert once the old bulls of the history department had retired--the generation taught by the likes of Vann Woodward, who I was lucky to talk to after a lecture he gave in the 90s.
One of the best parts of my job was working with the primary sources. That's the record in the raw . . . sometimes cooked, which is part of the challenge.
Since there are no statues left on Monument Avenue, they should probably rename it. Richmond is majority black now, and last time I was there it appeared to be turning into your typical urban ghetto.
Call it George Floyd Blvd from now on, in memory of the late, great fentanyl addict.
I know how lucky I was to be able to study under that last generation too, Narr. You’re right: Woodward was the one who taught them. The impression I got in his presence was that he was dismayed by the ways several things turned out: the turn hard left but also the (far smaller) turn hard right.
Many if not most of the people in those rooms had begun teaching in the early Sixties or even late fifties, swung hard left — I mean literally, proudly Stalinists —but then regretted it more and more deeply for the rest of their lives. With a longer perspective, Woodward had seen all things come and go and come and go, but he was not an optimist that academia could survive. And it has not.
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