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Begun, the Statue Wars have
Forgive the truncated tweet. You get the gist of the pith of his marrow.
Got it? Trump is waging a Statue Culture War. The people who topple anything that looks, y’know, old, and hence racist – that’s just, like, an expression of Real Feelings, and hence sanctified. If they tear down a symbol of Wisconsin Progress or an Elk or an actual Abolitionist, well, omelettes, broken eggs and all that.
That’s not war; that’s a way of starting a discussion.
If you don’t accept the premises and the direct action and the verdict of the topplers? You, not them , have decided to declare WAR. Prosecuting the people who tear down monuments is not a reaction to a culture war, it is starting a culture war. Proposing the creation of a national statuary center that celebrates the accomplishments of remarkable American individuals is waging a culture war.
The author of this tweet, according to Wikipedia: “Kenneth Paul Vogel is an American journalist and author who currently reports for The New York Times. From 2007 to 2017, he was the founding chief investigative reporter at Politico.”
Published in General
From the battle of britain I suggest watch from around 5:30. “where the fuhrer wishes to avoid all further bloodshed, and couldnt Churchill just surrender.”
I remember years ago Jonah Goldberg being interviewed by a reporter who complained to him about how conservatives were aggressors in the culture war, and he pushed back. “Really name me 3 things we initiated.”
The reporter had to concede that in fact Progressives were the aggressors.
https://www.wtnh.com/news/connecticut/new-haven/waterbury-christopher-columbus-statue-vandalized-beheaded/
Headline this morning in local fish wrap (AP story): AT RUSHMORE, TRUMP PUSHES RACIAL DIVISIONS
Given the current Jacobin reactions at the Times to any problematic actions, such as headlines not combative enough against Trump or op-eds published by Republican senators not named Mitt Romney, I suspect Vogel’s status as a white male has him feeling the need to love Big Brother harder than others, less any trivial action he says or does be grounds for cancelling. (The fun part at the Times may come when the activists in the newsroom ask why the Mexican guy puts the lion’s share of the money but has zero voting stock, or why they even need the people with the voting shares who’ve run things for 125 years, or the Mexican billionaire who partners with Trump supporters on oil and gas project there at all, telling them what to do. Sooner or later Nikole Hannah-Jones & crew is going to get tired of the Sulzbergers and Carlos Slim holding the reins of power and are going to want to liberate 40th Street and Eighth Avenue in the name of systemic historic oppression and seize the means of production for great justice. Even if that doesn’t work out all that great with the pressman or delivery truck guilds, the paper suppliers or even the Times’ IT department, if they suddenly find themselves working for the CHAZ/CHOP of newspapers.)
Hunters should secretly install motion activated cameras in trees near statues and monuments. At the very least, we can catch these vandals. Inform the police. Their resources can be augmented by civilian resources.
@jameslileks
Mr. Lileks,
I love you as a wealth of information, on all things obvious and obscure, and your ability to clear the air of smoke and let the truth finds its way to open air.
Can you shed any light on the history, use, context and interpretation of the Lawn Jockey statues, most commonly known as Jocko.
On first glance, these statues seem an insensitive throw back that minimizes groomsmen who were owned as slaves.
I am looking for a balanced and factual account from their origin, up to and including their modern interpretation as racial kitsch.
I’m loathe to join cancel culture and the current political culture’s imposition of narrative that distorts and redefines the meaning of LITERALLY everything.
I need links and authoritative sources. I’m not sure where to begin.
I thank you for your help, as well as contribution from anyone on Ricochet.
I hope not off-topic. I just learned that the president of my professional organization has issued a letter, which states in part (probably referring to the statues issue):
Eridemus: AND YOU (IDIOT) DON’T REALIZE THAT APPLIES TO HOW PEOPLE FEEL WATCHING DEMONSTRATIONS?
I’m so glad I don’t pay dues to them any more.
Yet the narrative remains, as perpetuated by Mr. Vogel and his ilk, that conservatives are always the aggressors.
Because they’re saying it to an audience that wants to believe it’s true. The Times, CNN and the others have niched themselves to where they get by only appealing to upper middle class angry urban progressives, because they’ve convinced their advertisers you can’t get a broad swatch of the public anymore, so it’s better to have a hardcore loyal niche with disposable income. That’s why people like Ken Vogel can make accusations without having to back them up with facts or defend them against critics — the paid subscriber base of The New York Times doesn’t want to hear that, nor does much of the staff, which is why even a neutral headline in the paper triggers a perpetual two minutes of hate, until the offending party confesses their crime before being metaphorically (for now) executed.
I don’t think it is a rabbit hole, rather a well worn path, about to be paved.
🇺🇸
These are the stars I will wear on my arm to the Freedom Train (cattle car), the reeducation camp, and subsequent incinerator for failure to negotiate the leftist traps.
Should the left gain momentum in their quest to destroy Liberty, the irony will not be lost on the exponential volumes of natural gas or the burning of innumerable forests to silence the sizeable remnant of Freedom Fighters.
Quibble: Vogel does not technically claim that Trump started the Statue War. He claims that Trump is using taxpayer-funded Federal resources to wage the Statue War. Arguably, Vogel’s complaint is merely that one side in the Statue War has an unfair advantage, and also perhaps that the Statue War is being waged by the Executive Branch without authorization from Congress.
And just WHERE will this Statue park be? I vote for Seattle area.
Sometimes the world doesn’t need quibbles.
Instapundit posted a link to a story on the Times withdrawing its content from Apple News, which included the information that…
…which goes to why they’re pandering to their subscriber base — instead of the normal newspaper model of revenue coming mainly from ads, where you sell the advertisers based on your subscribers, the Times has decided it can eliminate the middle man (who needs those capitalist enslavers of the proletariat anyway?), and get the bulk of their revenues from a hardcore base of loyal progressive readers.
The irony here, and the likely potential downfall of this strategy, is if the Times was to get its way, and Biden beats Trump in November, the paper would face the same type of subscriber fracturing that the Democratic Party faced with the Bernie wing, in that if Biden did try to avoid going pedal-to-the-metal hard left, those people would be angry, and would demand that the Times be angry along with them. But if the paper did that, they’d risk losing their liberal subscribers who just wanted power back, and would be enraged at the paper for not just being the PR machine for the new administration.
MSNBC learned that lesson in the transition from Bush 43 to Obama, where they lost a huge part of their audience that came for Bush 43 hate, but didn’t hang around to hear the new administration defended at all costs. The Times’ business model of virtue signaling to angry subscribers likely works best only if Trump stays in office, to give them and the reporters at the Times a target for their anger.
I assume that is a bad thing, yes?
Agreed. The tone of a speeches like this one is serious, tough, and with a touch of optimism. Trump’s natural mode of speech is “rah-rah”, and he’s not particularly polished at being somber. I think, given his limitations as a speaker, he did reasonably well.
Maybe that’s because tearing down statues is illegal and harming statues on Federal property is a Federal offense subject to prison if convicted. Federal resources are always used to arrest and convict any Federal criminal. Basically leftists behave like teenagers. They think they should be able to do anything they wish because they occupy such high moral grounds. When they get caught and punished they run crying to mommy and daddy. The big mean Federal government is hurting them again. Well the big mean Federal government hurts everyone. Welcome to the real world kids.
Lebanon, Kansas. It’s the geographic center of the United States.
How is that going to bait the communists?
Closer to the missile silos?
She often has a quiet, seriously serene look…like a model on a cat walk…just neutral. She looked like she was having fun last night.
But I bet now that Jonah believes Trump started it.
Yes. I am sure he thinks it is Trump’s fault.
SOmeone ouught to ask
I doubt that Jonah would be any different than the reporter mentioned. After admitting that Jonah was right that the Progressives were the aggressors in the culture war, I’m sure he went back to his office and right back to believing – and writing – as he had before. And if you got Jonah to admit that Trump didn’t actually start it, it would go right down the memory hole, and his next column would still read like he blamed Trump.
Ditto.
What has the left ever built but gulags?