Ricochet is the best place on the internet to discuss the issues of the day, either through commenting on posts or writing your own for our active and dynamic community in a fully moderated environment. In addition, the Ricochet Audio Network offers over 50 original podcasts with new episodes released every day.
Hip-hop Civil War Soldiers, Wearing Nikes…
The last Confederate statue was removed from Richmond, VA in 2021. But simply removing reminders of our history is, apparently, not enough. Johns Hopkins is adding a new statue to their property, based on a famous statue removed from Richmond last year. Check out this description:
What Wiley created and unveiled was Rumors of War, a 27-foot tall bronze equestrian statue modeled closely after a Richmond statue featuring Confederate General J.E.B Stuart. While the horse is almost exactly the same, Wiley swapped the sword-brandishing Stuart in his military greatcoat for a dreadlocked Black man in a hoodie, distressed jeans, and Nikes. Wiley, who was tapped to paint President Obama’s official portrait in 2018, says the sculpture, like his paintings depicting Black figures in Old Master-inspired settings, honors the “monumental in people once considered peripheral,” and that the bronze depicts “the evolution of our society.”
Today’s left, like other power-hungry groups who have sought to control various societies throughout history, understands the Orwellian principle of controlling the future by controlling the past. Or rather, by erasing the past and replacing it with something that fits the narrative they are trying to impose on their subjects. This is clearly part of that project. But a dreadlocked black man in modern clothes triumphantly riding a military horse from 170 years ago into, um, into what? A shopping mall? What on earth? Imagine someone 170 years in the future, gazing upon this statue – what will they think?
They’ll probably think the same thing they do when the read history books about our era: “Those people back in 2020 weren’t serious. About anything. I mean, what on earth were they thinking? Not much apparently. A military horseman. Wearing distressed jeans and Nikes. For heaven’s sake…“
I suppose this makes sense, in a way. The left removes statues about an era in our history which makes us uncomfortable, and they replace them with statues which make no sense whatsoever. That frees one from introspection or any effort at understanding other people of other eras; or anything else that makes leftists uncomfortable.
Eh, it was worth a try. Forget it. No, this makes about as much sense as anything else on the left. Interpreting the symbolism of this statue is like listening to a Biden speech.
I’ll just stop paying attention. It hurts less.
Maybe that’s the whole point.
Whatever.
Published in General
I tried, but I simply can’t imagine that.
Maybe I just don’t want to.
Except American slavery.
They might even try to tell you Alexander Hamilton was black.
That we worshiped Blacks and Perverts. It won’t just be this statue they gaze at. There is massive amounts of other evidence accumulating.
Hope the doc’s correct and they just think what idiots we were.
It’s a monument to riots. No doubt he is looking back at a dropped big screen.
—
I’m going to extend my remarks granted general consent:
This literal “man on a horse” imagery ties together two salient facts:
1) the riots of 2020 in which many man-on-horse (or man posing with sword) statues were defaced or removed by a violent Marxist outfit claiming to represent the interests of blacks.
2) a triumphalist, in-your-face, post-modern ugliness in which objects of respect (statues, institutions, people, facts) are lampooned and destroyed.
The original statues were not art for art’s sake, but commemorations. This new one is a commemoration as well — the battle of 2020 which was won by the race-hustling Marxist media-government complex, in which murderous, destructive riots and looting were called “protests”. BLM puts a black face on Marxism to the detriment of blacks.
I ain’t savioring anybody, but I’m also not poking a stick in the eye of blacks with my little joke. I’m poking BLM and its enablers, most of whom are white anyway.
It’s good to honor black people who did things worth commemorating. Perverts? Probably not.
I’m not automatically against the statue described in the OP, but I’d rather it was in addition to the statues that were torn down instead of being a replacement.
Tear down reminders of Democrat history and replace it with what Democrats wish they were. And pretending to poke conservatives in the eye.
The J.E.B. Stuart monument was created by Frederick Moynahan. A nearly identical sculpture in Syracuse, New York honors Union General Gustavus Sniper. Here is a view from the back side of the Sniper statue.
Comparing the works, one thing is painfully obvious about the Wiley statue…the sculptor knows absolutely nothing about riding a horse. Both Moynahan statues show the rider with low hands, firmly seated and looking to the right. The horse, while showing a stylistically exaggerated neck and head bent at the poll, is bent left. The rider is properly attired with boots with heels. Heels and a toe cap on the stirrup help to prevent the rider’s foot from being caught in the stirrup and being dragged in the event of a fall. Were this statue to come to life, the horse would move forward in a relatively straight line, walking quietly, because the rider’s hands are low and quiet.
Wiley’s rider is wearing flat soled shoes, is holding on to the cantle of the saddle seemingly for balance with the reins held at chest height. His back is strangely arched and he is looking at something behind him. The horse is still bent left, which is nearly impossible given where the reins are. Were this statue to come to life the rider would end up bassackwards in the dirt.
Fail.
We should make statues of freedom fighters like Frederick Douglas, but the Lefties don’t like that freedom thing.
But the Lenin statutes are coming back in the Ukraine. Give it 10-15 years Dr. B. Expect to see Robert E. Lee statutes back hopefully before I pass.
Conservatives, people of good faith and even the GOP should be seizing this current with relish: the distinctive Black experience of America is in large part a history of mistreatment (to put it lightly) by Democrats. The Republican rôle has been to fight and then to meekly give in to Democrat terrorism for the purposes of saving the Union. The lessons to be learned are important ones: Democrats are evil and only an energetic and sustained rejection of their ideas, their practices and their persons can restore liberty and prosperity to all.
It’s all about feelings and not about any real reason or thought. Personally, I wouldn’t mind leaving the Confederate statues and building bigger and more beautiful statues of Black-Americans. If it’s a farming community I would like to build a bigger and more beautiful statue of George Washington Carver but if it’s an artsy community I’d like Langston Hughes.
Building is good. Let’s build beautiful statues. Let’s not even bother tearing down statues of lesser people let’s focus on building stuff. We should have Booker T. Washington in charge or everything. He would just uber around confederate statues because he would be developing businesses and charities and schools.
Adam Carolla once spoke a mean joke about Ireland that was dead-on. He openly admitted to the Irish Crowd that you he would make fun of England but when he got to England he would make of fun of them. In England he said, “You don’t care what the Irish say so I think that’s how it should be?”
If by using the plurality here you are including “the Left” then it is a non-starter. The Left seems incapable of creating beauty. In fact, destruction of beauty is part and parcel of leftist ideology. Beauty would infer a greater or transcendent modality above the collective. Any of the transcendent characteristics that make us human (above other lifeforms) and celebrates individuality (music, art, language, family, love) are targets of the Left. In their view, minimally they must be denigrated but ultimately destroyed.
Hopefully, they will think.
As edited.
If the Biden Administration ordered the figures in the Iwo Jima Monument to be replaced by Brian Steltzer, Rachel Maddow, All Sharpton, AOC and/or PeeWee Herman, I doubt the statue would elevate the perception of the left for posterity.
Not far from my workplace, Winfield Scott, George Thomas, James McPherson, David Farragut, and John Logan have statues with traffic circles named for them. I doubt that these impressive bronze figures have inspired anyone but a few rare tourists to look up those guys.
Statues don’t have the same cultural impact they once did. For some, they are just convenient tangible locations for cancellation/indoctrination/intimidation sessions.
Wow. I need to go lie down…
At least then it would have context.
A great way to honor a man who never existed doing something that never happened. If they wanted to honor an actual Black man, they could have done that. Is the message here that if you want a positive Black role model, you have to fabricate a fictitious one? And that’s how you fight racism?
Great point. Think of all the great black men and women throughout history. Why would he have to make one up?
Perhaps because the great black men didn’t wear dreadlocks or Nikes?
I don’t know. No idea.
Right. I don’t see this as Civil War (well, not the one in the 1860s anyway) — I literally think this is about 2020. They’re just borrowing imagery to crap on because Marxism and Postmodernism are the same thing.
I would offer: so many historical great black men do not fit the victim narrative. Carver, Douglass, King (Martin not Rodney), Thomas (Sowell & Clarence), BT Washington, Ashe, Robinson, Carson…and this is quite abbreviated.
It seems it has little to do with being black but everything to do with being the “right kind” of black.
I’ve walked by the original ‘Rumors of War’ statue in Richmond a few times. There’s nothing admirably artsy about it (I’ve seen magnificent horse statues all over Europe) and the name seems disconnected from the statue and so means nothing to me. The rider is not a real person and has no story that I’m aware of. This expensive equestrian statue is meaningless and boring.
I call it ‘Horse Thief’.
It’s fantasy art, in the same league as a painting of Donald Trump holding a gold-plated machine gun while riding a tank. Or the knock-off of George Washington crossing the Delaware, but updated with Trump. Tacky, but not something I’m going to get worked up over.
I don’t see that happening. You have daughters whose long-term success and security you care about. You can’t not pay attention.
{ Makes for great rhetoric, though. }
Thus the reason it is best not to have children. The world is fallen and getting worse. Best to save them the bother.
I’m not sure the deity from whom the world has fallen would agree.