Tear It All Down
Robert Lee was a massive loser who didn't even want people to build statues to him, so finally we're tearing them down.
Hey. Welcome to Moronitude! It’s July 12th and you won’t believe what’s been going on! Oh, wait, no, it’s September.
I really hate that I went this long without a newsletter. Writing can be a really strange thing sometimes, particularly when you’re doing it as both a job and a hobby. I’ve written 3-5 drafts of a newsletter in the last month+, but as you have probably noticed, none of them ended up getting sent out. I felt like I was going through the motions, just writing about things to make sure I kept putting stuff out. And then, when it came time to send it… I hated it. So I hit delete and felt some shame.
Inspiration wasn’t coming to me. I was finding things that made me furious—like an asshole billionaire launching himself into “space” and the world applauding him like he wasn’t doing something a Russian dog did better back in 1957—but either I had already seen somebody else write a far better take, or I just wasn’t feeling what I did. So I hit delete and felt some shame.
When I started the newsletter I was excited by Substack, particularly because it was a way to hold me accountable. And then, I just went and skipped out on my job anyway. I guess this is a long way to apologize about not getting anything out for a bit. I’m just going very stream of consciousness right now as I’m on site in a studio with a lovely view waiting for a photoshoot to wrap up. Anyway, I’m sorry it’s been so long. I just didn’t want to put stuff out just to put stuff out, I want every one of these newsletter to be something I’m proud of. Thank you for subscribing and reading this drivel, you’re the real heroes here. So I didn’t hit delete and I launched right into getting furious at stuff….
Robert E Lee Doing What He Does Best—Losing a War
The Robert E. Lee statue in Richmond, Virginia has finally been torn down.
It was a long time coming, but on September 8th the statue was taken down and sent to an undisclosed location, which I have some mixed feelings about. I’m all for preserving a monument for historical purposes, on one hand. On the other, to paraphrase General William Tecumseh Sherman, I’m all for making the Lost Cause Confederate apologists howl. Which is to say I would have been delighted if they stuffed Lee and his beloved horse Traveler full of C4 and put on a show.
I’ve ranted about this before in this newsletter—it was actually a rant about this topic on my old blog that inspired me to even start Moronitude—but few things get me more riled up than so-called “American patriots” defending anything about the Confederacy. The way I see things, defending the Confederacy is basically saying you’re a white supremacist without saying it. Were there some interesting characters on that side of the Civil War? Sure. But they were still traitors to the United States. Were there thousands of people who took up arms for the sole reason that their home state was at war? Of course. But, again, they were traitors against the United States who thought that owning slaves was acceptable, despite not owning slaves themselves.
And yes, I empathize with people who find out that their great great grandfather fought for the cause, but you don’t need to be proud of the idiotic opinions of some relative who died more than a hundred years ago. I make fun of my own grandmother for liking boring zoo animals—she was very into horses and the like—you can certainly talk shit about great, great uncle Johnny Reb.
Any time someone opens up their stupid mouth to tell me how a bust of Stonewall Jackson erected in 1900 in the fucking Bronx is a testament to their heritage I feel the bile rise up and fill my entire being with blistering rage. If that’s your heritage, well, I hate to be the one to tell you this, but your heritage is bad. You shouldn’t be proud of it. You should be actively ashamed and do everything you can to right the wrongs of the bygone era.
I also can’t help but point out that the Venn diagram of people who say that nonsense and people who think the problems with today’s society stem from “participation trophies” is a single circle.
I want to circle back to Lee for a second here. If people truly revere the Confederate general, why would they want to defy his wish that there never be any statues erected in his honor? Going against your dead hero’s wishes isn’t exactly the homage you think it is, tuff.
It’s an overused cliche to use war metaphors when talking about sports and I would be ashamed of myself for using it as a writing device. But, and hear me out on this one, what if I used a sports metaphor to talk about war? Innovative, right?
The Confederacy is essentially the Buffalo Bills of the early 1990s, and Robert E Lee is Jim Kelly. They won a lot of early battles and built up a reputation for being a scrappy underdog (running through the AFC playoffs each year/1861-mid 1863), but when the chips were on the table and things really mattered they came up short. At first it was close (Super Bowl XXV/Gettysburg). The next loss was a little worse (Super Bowl XXVI is Vicksburg) and the third time around they got so thoroughly thrashed it was hard to take them seriously (Super Bowl XXVII is Sherman’s burning of Atlanta and the March to the Sea, which I guess equates Don Beebe chasing down Leon Lett with Hood’s Confederate forces cutting off Sherman’s supply train, two ultimately meaningless acts in determining the end game.) The last time the Confederates/Bills take the (battle) field the end has been practically predetermined. And just like that, after four years of relevance both are relegated to the dustbin of history.
Thank you for indulging that idiocy. Now back to the point at hand.
As they were tearing the statue down I found myself a little bummed out that it was being taken down. Not because I think it should exist, but because I thought what it had become was a pretty perfect end for Confederate monuments. The pedestal of the Lee statue was covered in graffiti, and that graffiti did more to tell an accurate account of Lee than any statue could ever hope to. The statue became a gathering place during the protests of 2020 and, to me, there’s something beautiful about that.
I find great pleasure in hearing people clutch at their pearls and complain about the “indignity” shown towards a “great man” when they see memorials like this getting torn down or spray painted. But when we’re talking about Robert E Lee, we are specifically talking about a man who believed that Black people didn’t deserve the dignity of freedom. In his eyes, they were property, not people. So now, 150 years later, why should I give two shits about his dignity?
I want to share a couple photos taken by Mel D. Cole, a friend of mine who I know from watching football games at Lucky 7’s here in Jersey City. As a Buffalo Bills fan, I’m positive he wouldn’t appreciate my metaphor above, but he is an amazing photographer who captured the scene around the Lee statue in Richmond marvelously.
That last one is one of my all-time favorite photos. If you needed to compress all of American history into one image, you could do a lot worse than this.
Lastly, you may have clicked a link above that brought you to my rant against Braxton Bragg and other Confederates. As I retrieved that link I saw a comment left on that blog about a year after its publication, one I had not seen before today. Here it is:
If you ever wonder why I keep writing about this nonsense in 2021, this is the exact reason. There are still morons out in the world with Blogger handles like “Rebelforever” who feel the need to continually rehash this crap to “own the libs” or whatever their idiotic reasoning is. And as long as they exist, I’ll be right here calling them out and pointing out every single historical inaccuracy and stupid notion they spew onto the internet. I will say, props to Rebelforever for using the unofficial motto of the Confederate States of America in his comment. Loosely translated from Latin, “Deo vindice” means “With God as our protector.” Not to blaspheme, but God got his ass kicked by a hard drinking man named Grant pretty quickly. Of course, God doesn’t actually choose any side in battle, and there is no greater red flag then when a political cause claims that God is on their side. Of course, I’m just some lib loon, what do I know?
This has been Moronitude. Sorry it’s been so long. I’m going to do better to keep up with these and, as always, thank you for reading.