|
|
|
|
|
|
by Haven_Monahan
3415 days ago
|
|
|
Sorry, we will have only binary & atom-thick appraisals of historic figures in the US today. John Calhoun == Bad; Grace Hopper == Good. And that's all you need to know. The ones doing the renaming have no independent convictions of their own. Or for that matter, much insight into or sympathy for, the differing views of others, let alone others from different times or places. What they do have instead is a hyperactive self-righteousness gland, which is easily tickled to orgasm by the thought of them being on the right side, the side of the angels, in any conflict. It is what passes for their conscience. This explains the drive to cast all historic conflicts in the most reductive & simplistic way possible. So much the easier to spooge over how progressive they are for hating on the wrong side John C. Calhoun is a person without mention of whom any history of early 19th century America would be incomplete. Yet, he can be dismissed with infantile invective ("human sewer"), as though he, like all antebellum Southerners was a monodimensional cartoon villain, like Decepticons who had an abiding interest in...cotton. I am cheered by the fact that more and more normal citizens are seeing this performative outrage pantomime for the chauvinism-of-viewpoint that it is. |
|
|
No one's stripping him out of the history books. Why does he deserve the honor of having a college named for him?
> Or for that matter, much insight into or sympathy for, the differing views of others, let alone others from different times or places.
I guess I can't pass up the irony of this statement. I grew up in the South. I'm old enough to remember a time when Confederates were seen as noble. Old enough to have people tell me quite sincerely that "those people had it good as slaves."
Attitudes have changed since then and in part because enough white people attempted to learn about and gained sympathy for a group of people very different than themselves: the enslaved black Americans of the 19th Century. Without the understanding and empathy which crossed cultural and racial boundaries, there would never have come a time when Calhoun's name was considered a negative by the majority.