Wednesday, December 14, 2022

A return to medieval superstition in "woke" America?

 

How, precisely, does exhuming a corpse contribute to "wokeness" or anti-racism?


The city of Richmond, Virginia, has dug up the remains of Confederate General A.P. Hill as it continues to purge Confederate symbols and monuments from public spaces.

The remains of Hill, which had been buried under a monument to the general, were located on Tuesday after two days of digging. The casket of Hill, who was reportedly buried standing up, was rotted away when workers finally found the remains using an excavator. 

According to local reporter Riley Wyant, the remains of Hill were blocked from public view using a tarp before they were transferred into a body bag and wheeled away on a stretcher. The remains were transferred to the general’s relatives, including John Hill, the general’s closest indirect descendant.

The city had brought in an excavator to search for Hill’s remains, which had been buried at an intersection of the city for over 130 years. On top of the grave was a statue of the Confederate soldier. The statue, which was removed via crane on Monday, was the last city-owned Confederate monument to be removed from Richmond.


There's more at the link.

To add insult to injury, the mayor of Richmond went on record as saying, "Over two years ago, Richmond was home to more Confederate statues than any city in the United States. Collectively, we have closed that chapter. We now continue the work of being a more inclusive and welcoming place where ALL belong."  All, obviously, except long-dead Confederate soldiers and their modern descendants...  Ironically, the late General Hill was reportedly not a slave-owner, and is said (by his wife) to have spoken out against the practice - not that that holds any interest or meaning for those who wanted him out of the way as an inconvenient and politically incorrect symbol of the past.

This appears to be another example of triumphalism - the attitude that "We're in charge now, so what we say goes, and if you don't like it you can lump it!"  It's the besetting sin of new rulers or conquerors throughout history.  In due course, when the pendulum swings and the worm turns, their monuments and handwork are in their turn overturned by the new triumphalism of those who succeed them in power.  However, that probably doesn't interest the current powers that be in Richmond.  They're looking backward, not forward.

(Speaking of looking backward, in January 897 the corpse of Pope Formosus was dug up and put on trial by his enemies.  Being obviously in no condition to rebut the charges, he was found guilty posthumously.  Nearer our own time, during the Spanish Civil war (1936-39), Republican authorities dug up the corpses of deceased nuns and monks and displayed their decayed remains to disapproving crowds of their supporters.  Neither atrocity, of course, had any effect on the living, except to provide an outlet for emotional condemnation of those who could no longer defend themselves.  One wonders whether those examples inspired the city authorities in Richmond?)

I hold no brief to defend the Confederacy.  I didn't even come to this country until 132 years after the Confederacy ceased to exist!  Nevertheless, I can and do condemn hatred, bigotry and racism in all their forms.  The actions of the Richmond authorities come perilously close, in my opinion, to qualifying for all three of those labels:  perhaps as much, if not more so, than the historical record of the late General Hill.

Welcome to modern America!

Peter


17 comments:

Fredrick said...

"Whites never helped us" and other moves of desperation to keep 1/3 of the Democratic base votes in line. I think this is more in line with Marxist ideas of the past rather than Faulkner's, or Medievalism. At least the Democrats, the party of Jim Crow and red-lining, have finally beaten R.E.Lee and A.P. Hill.

Steve Sky said...

That attitude was very well expressed by their leader, "We won. Get over it". And he encouraged the removal of all opposition symbols and people by his supporters. Removal of statues is just one part of the general rewrite of history to make it say what the left wants it to say.

It's 1984 in two parts. Rewrite the language to mean what the left wants it to mean (inclusive and welcoming; really?), and removal of history down the memory hole.

BobF said...

Put whatever label on it you care to, it still reminds me of a group of bullies in fourth grade.

Xoph said...

The knowledge of the people, the causes and the conduct of the war is so astonishingly small, it boggles my mind. One of the most important lessons we can learn about ourselves as a nation.

There is great truth in the Southern name for the war, the War of Northern Aggression. The aggression was economic. Many people fought not for the USA, but for their state. 60 years ago we would drive around the country on vacation seeing family all over and the differences were dramatic. Today most regional differences have been erased. Yankees distrusted me because of a southern accent. When I was assigned to a base up north I got tired of the prejudice and learned to speak yankee. As we grow more ignorant the prejudice has not diminished based on my wife's family's reaction to this day.

heresolong said...

Can you imagine the outcry if we dug up old Indian skeletal remains with an excavator just to get them out of the way of whatever we were working on? Oh wait, we don't have to imagine.

Eric Wilner said...

There's been a lot of superstition on the Left for a long time; many of their social, legal, and economic proposals are firmly rooted in magical thinking. It goes way beyond the beliefs in magic crystals, magic herbs, and so on.

riverrider said...

not medieval, barbaric. no, savage. i don't think ol abe planned on it turning out this way, though he did say the race was wholly ill prepared to govern themselves. yet he unleashed them upon us none the less. f 'em, they'll continue to be a festering shit hole right up until they burn down their own city, too stupid to see their own leaders, "reverends" all or most, are the reason they stay down. the tide will turn.

Mind your own business said...

There will come a time when the woke statues, public woke art works, street art of today's Woke are torn down and removed, their monuments desecrated, their heroes slandered, their complaints ignored and forgotten.

What goes around comes around. And we're sick of their shit.

And the old monuments will return. And if the Woke aren't careful, there will be a whole new set of monuments from a second war.

June J said...

Blacks in general don't seem to regard highly anymore MLK Jr's dream of being judged by content of character versus skin color. All they want is to make everything about skin color.
That being said, when do all the MLK Jr highway/street signs start coming down?

Bootmaker said...

A passage from Orwell comes to mind..."Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street building has been renamed, every date has been altered. And the process is continuing day by day and minute by minute. History has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Party is always right."

James said...

Woke is obviously a mental illness, and it is progressive. The line of the acceptable dead will continue to move left, until such as Dr MLK will slide to the bad side of that line. Those like Booker T Washington have already had night's shadow pass over them.
God, it is no fun being old and breaking down, but I don't know if I would take the gift of suddenly being twenty-five today.

Hamsterman said...

Once all the signs of the American Civil War are gone, perhaps all the evidence of Slavery will also be gone...

David aka True Blue Sam said...

They are getting closer to "Kill all the men, rape all the women."

John T. Block said...

People are ignorant of their own history, (deliberately, I feel) good or bad. I'm quite sure Gen. Hill doesn't care, being at best bones by now. But the Animisim of the Crazed Left thinks this "does something g." Other than shing their asses, I think of what....

Charlie said...

Sadly, the evidence of slavery will remain with us for some time yet.
Not monuments, but monumental decay.

milton f said...

The Enemy invented the term "woke". If you are inclined to perform the work of the enemy, continue to use their invented language.

If you are inclined to fight to your utmost all the evil deeds of the enemy, when confronted by "wokesters", why not use traditional English to identify their preferred delusion?

Pedophiles, in particular and those who would harm children are just so very close to the edge of criminality. Whenever they step over that, and act out criminally, they must be held accountable. Locally.

Veritas said...

Remember the men who destroyed these monuments erected statues to St Floyd of the recreational pharmaceuticals.

No one will note of mourn their passing, except in the manner that all plagues and disasters are noted.