Madison City Council overturns Confederate monument decision, supports removal
Good God.
This is what we’ve come to. Tearing down grave markers, because history is political.
There’s nothing to say here that isn’t obvious and well-established. I have no point to make; the points make themselves. I’m just…sad. I’d almost inured myself to the destruction of monuments and memorials; I’d almost gotten used to the idea that, yes, this is the new reality, we will smash the icons of the past in order to show our fealty to the political furor of the present; but seeing it done to a tombstone, with actual men’s bodies lying under it, is apparently enough to get through whatever weary armor I’ve built up.
I sincerely hope that future generations never decide that you, or the people you care about, are unworthy of memory and dignity in death.
“You don’t have discussion in a cemetery. You have reflection, and you have memories, and this (monument) brings up memories that are not so pleasant in our history,” said Council Vice President Sheri Carter.
Yeah. Memories that are “not so pleasant” in a lichyard. Imagine that.
EDIT:
I have been informed that the thing being torn down is not in fact a grave marker. It’s an independent memorial, added in the early twentieth century.
The valence of the object-level morality here is unchanged, in the sense of “this is still very much the wrong thing to do” – and there’s something more-than-commonly-disgusting about deciding to get rid of politically-undesirable monuments inside a cemetery – but fundamentally this is just the usual horror, not a new and newly-horrifying variant. So far as I know no one has suggested defacing anyone’s actual grave.
My apologies for misleading you.