A heap of broken images
Iconoclasm is cheap and fun. Like book-burning, it accomplishes nothing except to make the participants feel virtuous. All it takes is a hammer.
Since most people walk around with more computer power in their phones than Alan Turing could have dreamed of, may I suggest a quick visit to Wikipedia first? Someone decided that just because Matthias Baldwin had a statue in front of City Hall in Philadelphia, he must have been as vile a racist as Frank Rizzo. By defacing him with red paint and adding the charming touch of a noose, Unknown Freedom Fighter has at least drawn attention to a truly admirable individual, one of the city's first abolitionists. Baldwin (1795-1866) was an industrialist who underwrote a school for African American children and, as a member of the state's Constitutional Convention, fought for black male suffrage. So, sort of an anti-Rizzo.
Protesters in San Francisco pulled down a statue of Ulysses Grant in Golden Gate Park. That Ulysses Grant, the one who defeated Lee's army. Here the problem seems to be that he owned one slave, a "gift" from his father-in-law; it says here that he freed the man, William Jones, after a year, even though he was broke and Jones probably would have sold for a thousand dollars. What a bastard. Then there was the war, a necessary precondition for ending all slavery. Andrew Johnson used him as a prop, which he hated, and in 1868 he was elected president himself. It's regrettable that his administration is mostly remembered for corruption because Grant was someone I could happily vote for.
Five hundred thousand black men voted for Grant (presumably including William Jones), and his Electoral College margin was 214-80. He vigorously supported Reconstruction, sometimes with federal troops. His first Inaugural Address called for "proper treatment" of Native Americans. He believed women should have the vote. He appointed many Jews to the federal government and did what he could to protect Russian Jews from the czar, who was being more abusive than usual. He even proposed a Constitutional amendment to ban religious teaching in public schools, but it went nowhere. He created the first Civil Service Commission. He crushed the Klan. When he was dying, he wrote the best memoir of any president to provide for his wife. What is your problem, San Francisco?
During yesterday's Juneteenth festivities, protesters in Washington finally removed the only statue of a Confederate general on public land, Albert Pike, by pulling it down and setting fire to it (apparently granite burns). The city has been seeking Congressional permission to get rid of it since 1992. The police came but made no effort to put out the well-controlled fire. Just when people thought it couldn't get better, Trump emitted one of his rage-burps on Twitter, which was read out to the delighted crowd. Pike was a big cheese in Freemasonry, but the brothers have had nearly thirty years to find a new home for this thing. Now it's garbage.
Iconoclasm doesn't repair the past, but it sometimes makes the future wonder what people were thinking. I wish I could remember which French cathedral has all the statues of kings which have been beheaded. In the wake of decapitating an actual flesh-and-blood king (and his wife, and several thousand other people), it feels like overkill, like a mad temper tantrum. Nothing of the kind happened after the execution of Charles I in England, but hundreds of churches were defaced in the name of cleansing popish idolatry -- choir screens, paintings, stained glass windows, carvings, statues, the gold and silver altar equipment that were so important to generations, many of them astonishing works of art. Nobody saw their aesthetic importance because they were blinded by their sacrality, which had suddenly become dangerous and corrupt. In this post-religious era, we regret their destruction all the more.
These Jim Crow-era statues lack artistic importance even when they aren't as gruesome as Nashville's Nathan Bedford Forrest. Their historic importance stems from the fact that nearly all were erected decades after Appomattox, not to celebrate "history and heritage" but to remind African Americans that the South could do what it wanted because the North had lost interest, that all their suffering had been dissolved in those fraternal embraces of old men at Gettysburg that so charmed Ken Burns. It's a phony history that they commemorate, and it's time for them to go.
Since most people walk around with more computer power in their phones than Alan Turing could have dreamed of, may I suggest a quick visit to Wikipedia first? Someone decided that just because Matthias Baldwin had a statue in front of City Hall in Philadelphia, he must have been as vile a racist as Frank Rizzo. By defacing him with red paint and adding the charming touch of a noose, Unknown Freedom Fighter has at least drawn attention to a truly admirable individual, one of the city's first abolitionists. Baldwin (1795-1866) was an industrialist who underwrote a school for African American children and, as a member of the state's Constitutional Convention, fought for black male suffrage. So, sort of an anti-Rizzo.
Protesters in San Francisco pulled down a statue of Ulysses Grant in Golden Gate Park. That Ulysses Grant, the one who defeated Lee's army. Here the problem seems to be that he owned one slave, a "gift" from his father-in-law; it says here that he freed the man, William Jones, after a year, even though he was broke and Jones probably would have sold for a thousand dollars. What a bastard. Then there was the war, a necessary precondition for ending all slavery. Andrew Johnson used him as a prop, which he hated, and in 1868 he was elected president himself. It's regrettable that his administration is mostly remembered for corruption because Grant was someone I could happily vote for.
Five hundred thousand black men voted for Grant (presumably including William Jones), and his Electoral College margin was 214-80. He vigorously supported Reconstruction, sometimes with federal troops. His first Inaugural Address called for "proper treatment" of Native Americans. He believed women should have the vote. He appointed many Jews to the federal government and did what he could to protect Russian Jews from the czar, who was being more abusive than usual. He even proposed a Constitutional amendment to ban religious teaching in public schools, but it went nowhere. He created the first Civil Service Commission. He crushed the Klan. When he was dying, he wrote the best memoir of any president to provide for his wife. What is your problem, San Francisco?
During yesterday's Juneteenth festivities, protesters in Washington finally removed the only statue of a Confederate general on public land, Albert Pike, by pulling it down and setting fire to it (apparently granite burns). The city has been seeking Congressional permission to get rid of it since 1992. The police came but made no effort to put out the well-controlled fire. Just when people thought it couldn't get better, Trump emitted one of his rage-burps on Twitter, which was read out to the delighted crowd. Pike was a big cheese in Freemasonry, but the brothers have had nearly thirty years to find a new home for this thing. Now it's garbage.
Iconoclasm doesn't repair the past, but it sometimes makes the future wonder what people were thinking. I wish I could remember which French cathedral has all the statues of kings which have been beheaded. In the wake of decapitating an actual flesh-and-blood king (and his wife, and several thousand other people), it feels like overkill, like a mad temper tantrum. Nothing of the kind happened after the execution of Charles I in England, but hundreds of churches were defaced in the name of cleansing popish idolatry -- choir screens, paintings, stained glass windows, carvings, statues, the gold and silver altar equipment that were so important to generations, many of them astonishing works of art. Nobody saw their aesthetic importance because they were blinded by their sacrality, which had suddenly become dangerous and corrupt. In this post-religious era, we regret their destruction all the more.
These Jim Crow-era statues lack artistic importance even when they aren't as gruesome as Nashville's Nathan Bedford Forrest. Their historic importance stems from the fact that nearly all were erected decades after Appomattox, not to celebrate "history and heritage" but to remind African Americans that the South could do what it wanted because the North had lost interest, that all their suffering had been dissolved in those fraternal embraces of old men at Gettysburg that so charmed Ken Burns. It's a phony history that they commemorate, and it's time for them to go.
posted by Buttermilk Sky at 12:48 PM
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