Of course, this is the ridiculous face of the destroy-history impulse that's gaining ground, or at least media coverage, around post-America. The ugly face can be seen in such incidents as the vandalizing of the Christopher Columbus statue in Baltimore.Last night, it was reported that ESPN would be switching out a reporter during a University of Virginia game because of… his name.Robert Lee will, instead, be covering a different game. One not near Charlottesville, Virginia. Robert Lee, in case you did not know, is an Asian American reporter. No one is going to take him for a Confederate or a white nationalist. Yet, ESPN was really concerned that this would be an issue, so they pulled him.
I'm generally not real big on letting my punditry be driven by intuition, but sometimes that which is in the air is so palpable that it warrants a place in the discussion. And you can feel it. There's been a recent sharp uptick in the decades-long guilt chic that afflicts a lamentably large swath of the post-American populace.
We now have such a distorted sense of virtue and of what a basic concept like consideration is all about that we smash all our connections to history with glee and relief, as if what occurred amongst our forebears in the same time and space we occupy is a burden we can and must cast off.
The end of this process is the presumption that we mortal, fallen beings can define love, which is, of course the exact reverse of how the universe actually works, wherein love defines us.
We are tossing out our very humanity. The new arbiters of virtue have determined there is no need to study the life of the likes of Robert E. Lee (the Confederate general), his long Virginia roots, his work as an Army engineer, his distinguished service in the Mexican-American War, his stint as president of Washington College.
We're well on our way to the names of historical figures serving as shorthand for our half-baked presumptions.
And that is going to lead to not only our thinking that we can define love, but that we can define truth itself. Which, of course, leads to the question, who is the "we" that is going to get to do the defining?
We are still a government of laws and mob rule must not prevail and that is what this is. But to call us Post Americans because of this is a misnomer. Yes, RE Lee was a great American and when it came time to fight the good and awful fight he failed. The wounds of war linger long (often not considered fully when engaging in same). These Confederate monuments were allowed in the regrouped union as a salve to the tortured feelings of the defeated South. They should remain short of court orders than can be appealed. Never forget. Never forget any war, else we forget how terrible they all are on all sides.
ReplyDeleteIn agreement with everything you say here except the exception you take to my use of the term "post-Americans."
ReplyDeleteThis is clearly post-America. What else shall we call a place that has safe spaces for triggered law students, Teen Vogue publishing an anal-sex how-to, the Supreme Court finding some kind of "right" to homosexual "marriage," policy on all levels driven by alarmism over an utter fiction (that the global climate is in some kind of trouble), three out of the four most recent presidents being malignant narcissists, declining church attendance, ugly music, and an utter lack of seriousness on everybody's part regarding the government's $23 trillion of debt?
That's why we must remain at least a government of laws, not men. Over my dead body and likely yours.
ReplyDelete