In this 21st Century a hoo-hah has erupted over whether today's holiday is Columbus Day or Indigenous Peoples' Day.
In the once peaceful city of Portland, Oregon, statues of Abraham Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt were torn down overnight.
I can't make sense of it all.
So I resort to a cartoon, with which to wish you all a good holiday.
Tearing down the Lincoln Statue is understandable; in 1862 he okayed the mass execution of 38 Indians in Manakato, Minnesota.
ReplyDeleteTearing down the Roosevelt statue makes more sense. To quote him: “I don’t go so far as to think that the only good Indians are the dead Indians, but I believe nine out of every 10 are,” Roosevelt said during a January 1886 speech in New York. “And I shouldn’t like to inquire too closely into the case of the tenth.”
ReplyDeleteIt's sad. 😕
ReplyDeleteThere is a whole lot these days that I don't understand, at my age I figure it is not my problem, besides when I offer any opinion I am told I am some kind of an "ist" and I don't want to be any of those, so I am learning to shut the front door.
ReplyDeleteBTW, you may want to use a different term than "Hoo Haw", apparently it has a new meaning these days.
ReplyDeleteThe freeing of slaves was to insure the complete collapse of the South. A good deed done for the wrong reason, had nothing to do with human rights. Post Civil War Grant and Sherman set about to rid the "Indians" and take their land; first on the agenda was was the slaughtering of bison, it was said for every bison killed another Indian dies. I am not a left wing voter, but this is the history.
ReplyDeleteWe're all readdressing our painful history, sometimes in violent ways. I still think Lincoln was more hero than scoundrel, but I wish today's activists would keep in mind the context of the times in which those guys lived, and the attitudes that were then commonplace. It's unfair to expect them to hold the same viewpoints we do today.
ReplyDeleteThat's news to me.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.google.com/search?q=tendonitis&rlz=1C1GCEA_enUS901US901&oq=tendon&aqs=chrome.0.0j69i57j0l6.11051j1j15&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8 this magazine has more articles about what happened.
ReplyDeletelooks like the link failed: search Atlantic Monthly bison
ReplyDeleteHistory is controversial, and should be taught as such. No angels, a fair number of devils and monsters. It's a good thing to strip down heroes to their skivvies and ask them difficult questions. No kings, no gods, no heroes, we won't get fooled again! (we will, but maybe in a different way.)
ReplyDeleteIn a book that I'm reading the author suggests that we can respect our history while accepting the fact that it was, at times, wrong. Once we admit that to ourselves, we need to commit to correcting those wrongs.
ReplyDeleteThat cannot happen unless people begin to listen.