Removing the Robert E. Lee Statue is Progress, But, Um…

The only Confederacy we’ve defeated is the one in bronze and granite — the real one might have won the war

Image: Mobilus In Mobili, Flickr, Creative Commons license

First things first: Yes, it’s a good thing whenever any statue to Robert E. Lee comes down.

So too with any memorial for traitors who made war on the U.S. to uphold white supremacy — the thing Alexander Stephens, the Vice-President of the Confederacy, said was the “cornerstone” of their government.

I mean, if the U.S. itself wasn’t racist enough for you, such that you had to make war with it to really maximize the evil, then fuck you and the horse you rode in on, be that horse real or made of bronze.

And you can miss me with your apologist bullshit about how Lee didn’t fight for ideological reasons but just went along because, as a Virginian, he felt compelled to defend his state. Funny, there were a whole bunch of Virginians in the Western portion of that state who felt compelled to break away, form an entirely different one, and remain in the Union.

So too, Lee’s professional colleague at West Point, George Henry Thomas, was from Virginia. Yet, Thomas — who went on to be one of the war’s most brilliant (and forgotten) generals — remained in the Union Army.