Backlash Blues.

We've been here before.

Nick Vaughn: "A Historian’s Perspective on Confederate Statues."

And here.

Statue removal? Yes, the Civil War was about slavery -- and I'm just fine with tracing it all the way back to the Founders. Now, let's all go read a book.

Architectural critic Kate Wagner goes a step further. First, always read the fine print.

Kate Wagner is an architectural critic. In 2016, she founded McMansionHell, a blog that roasts the world’s ugliest houses. Her writing has appeared in The Atlantic and The Baffler.

Now, the doomed statuary.

The Secret History of America’s Worthless Confederate Monuments, by Kate Wagner (The New Republic)

They’re cheap, mass produced, and celebrate the Jim Crow South. So why do conservatives persist in calling them art?

What these statues represent of “our heritage and our history” has been hotly debated over the past few months, as NASCAR and even the state of Mississippi disavowed Confederate iconography. But the aesthetic resistance to their removal was summed up in Trump’s June remarks: that the statues are beautiful works of art that if destroyed would set historical preservation back years. As it happens, the true history of these monuments tells a different story: Far from “magnificent” artistic masterpieces, Trump’s vaunted statues are the Campbell’s Soup Cans of Confederate hagiography—cheap, mass-produced knockoffs designed to capture not just racism, but all its associated consumer revenue. For all the talk of their unparalleled artistry, they were about as easy to produce as the average fire hydrant.

Puppet Man.

This is a long but highly worthwhile read. I'd like to think it couldn't happen here, but we all know better. Ft. Wayne's councilman Jason Arp even looks like our former councilman Dan Coffey.

This article is highly recommended.

When the Culture Wars Hit Fort Wayne, by Charlie Savage (Politico)

A quiet Indiana city declared a holiday to celebrate its founder. In the age of Trump, nothing is ever that simple.

One chilly February evening last year in this Midwestern town where I grew up, a city council member named Jason Arp proposed a resolution: Starting that summer, the city should annually celebrate a “General ‘Mad’ Anthony Wayne Day.”

My hometown is a rust-belt industrial city of a quarter-million people on the confluence of three slow rivers, today home to branches of several defense contractors and a regionally famous zoo. Wayne was an early American military leader who in 1794 built a frontier fort here, during the period when white settlers from the young United States were pushing west into the Ohio Valley and coming into conflict with Native Americans. As a piece of city business, having a day in Fort Wayne to honor Anthony Wayne might seem—from a distance at least—to be correcting an oversight. Why wouldn’t the city have a founder’s day?

At the meeting, Arp, a stocky man in his mid-40s with close-cropped hair, leaned back and put forward a glowing portrait of Wayne as a hero and role model, clicking through a slideshow. Not only had Wayne won the Northwest Indian War and established the outpost that grew into the city, but he had earlier won fame in the American Revolution for leading a charge that overran a British outpost at Stony Point, New York. This feat, Arp said, had thwarted a British attempt to capture top American military leaders like George Washington and Henry Knox after the traitor Benedict Arnold had revealed their location. “We can thank Anthony Wayne for the fact that we even have a United States of America,” he said ...

Nick Vaughn: "A Historian’s Perspective on Confederate Statues."

I first met Nick Vaughn in 2015 when he was younger than he is now (oddly, I haven't aged) and was running for city council in the Republican primary. Nick lost a very close race, then graduated from high school, began his studies at Hanover College, breezed through university in what seemed like a few months, and ran for office again, this time for a county council seat. Unfortunately Nick lost another  tighterthanthis primary contest, but he's plowing forward with plans for the resurrection of The Aggregate (stay tuned) ... and found time to submit this guest column.   

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A Historian’s Perspective on Confederate Statues

I do not like to tout my credentials because I was taught to always be humble, however I feel it is necessary to explain my educational background for clarification. Firstly, on May 1st I graduated from Hanover College with a Bachelor of Arts in History. I did not have an official focus and I took classes on many topics including The Reformation, American Revolution and early republic, and a class specifically dedicated to Abraham Lincoln’s life, legacy, and how he has been portrayed by historians and popular media throughout the years. Additionally, I wrote my required Senior Thesis on Abraham Lincoln’s sole term in Congress.

While I tried to keep a diverse schedule of classes, I always gravitated towards the classes covering the time period from 1815 to the end of Reconstruction. Of course, the Civil War lay in-between the start and end date of the period of American History I find most interesting.

Before truly diving into the subject at hand, I also want to highlight my experience as a Republican college student. Many faux-conservative, incendiary personalities would have you think that Republicans are under constant chastisement, harassment, and belittlement on a college campus. Some also would have you believe that college campuses are hollowed liberal grounds where only the Democrats, Socialists, and Communists are able to freely share thoughts and ideas.

Friends, while I cannot speak for all college campuses, this was not my experience at Hanover College. You know those faux-conservatives I mentioned? I’m sure they have a rough time at colleges like Hanover. In fact, I know some who did. This is not because of their ideology, instead it is because of their inability to craft a coherent, fact-based argument. Additionally, some were poor students. I have had plenty of disagreements with professors who hold different political beliefs than I do, however I was never punished, chastised, harassed, or belittled for being a Republican. At Hanover, you don’t survive based on your ideology, but instead on the laurels and merits of your argument.

To suggest Hanover College is a very liberal school in an attempt to discredit what we have learned and the hard work it took is dishonest and extremely disrespectful to the thousands of people who have graduated from the college.

As someone who loves history and possesses a degree in the subject, the past couple of weeks with protests across the country advocating for police reform seemed like an unlikely place I would find myself. Of course, many are pointing out the shades of similarities this year has had to the 1920s due to a pandemic, or the year 1968 due to heightened racial tensions brought on by long standing and systemic injustices.

Recently, scars from the American Civil War have begun to be reopened as protesters advocating for racial equality have (rightly) begun advocating for the removal of Confederate statues and symbols from publicly owned land. As someone who has studied the Civil War, the Union, the Confederacy, and the historiography, this seems appropriate to me. Why do we have statues and symbols dedicated to traitors who attempted to break the Union because they wanted to enslave people?

To my initial surprise, many do not agree with this sentiment. However, after remembering back to my “Readings on the American Civil War” class, a class dedicated to the study of Civil War Historiography (what historians and scholars have written about the Civil War), I recall a couple weeks where we discussed Southern Revisionism and the Lost Cause ideology.

As someone who has read Jefferson Davis’ The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government, which, like nearly all former Confederate traitors, attempted to rationalize the reason for the South’s attempted secession as being due to states’ rights (and as being honorable), I can tell you this distorted reality is very far from the truth.

So why do people think that tearing down Confederate statues and symbols is “tearing down history?” Well, I suppose those monuments dedicated to traitors are historical in the sense that they represent a historical event, although from a perverted point of view. The argument, to me, is not whether they are historical or not, it is why do statues of traitors exist in the first place and why are people so irrationally attached to them?

There are three points I want to make in attempting to answer those questions: first, Southern Revisionism, the coming of the Second Ku Klux Klan, and groups such as the United Daughters of the Confederacy have spread lies so successfully about the American Civil War, that many schools across America still incorrectly teach the subject. Second, history is much more complicated and nuanced than Twitter or Facebook allow historical events to be conveyed. Third, racial undertones have turned into overtones regarding the subject as the removal of statues have been used as rallying points for the alt-right, neo-Nazis, and other traitorous and dangerous organizations.

In regards to Southern Revisionism as it relates to the KKK an infamous black and white film by D.W. Griffith (a Southern Revisionist who made propaganda films in support of the Lost Cause, white supremacy, and the KKK), The Birth of a Nation highlights the disgusting and disingenuous imagery and language used by Southern Revisionists. David W. Blights points out in his book Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory that “Dixon's [Dixon wrote the book Griffith’s film was based on] vicious version of the idea that blacks had caused the Civil War by their very presence, and that Northern radicalism during Reconstruction failed to understand that freedom had ushered blacks as a race into barbarism, neatly framed the story of the rise of heroic vigilantism in the South. Reluctantly, Klansmen—white men—had to take the law into their own hands in order to save Southern white womanhood from the sexual brutality of black men. Dixon's vision captured the attitude of thousands and forged in story form a collective memory of how the war may have been lost but Reconstruction was won—by the South and a reconciled nation. Riding as masked cavalry, the Klan stopped corrupt government, prevented the anarchy of 'Negro rule' and most of all, saved white supremacy.”

Today, you see similar disingenuous remarks made on Twitter regarding the cause of the Civil War. One tweet that made my blood boil is shown here.

The supposed quote from Robert E. Lee is fake, however he has written similar things as a way to play into and prop up the Lost Cause ideology. The quote, which is one sentence in a much longer statement from Abraham Lincoln attempts to portray Lincoln as never truly being opposed to slavery and instead was focused on the preservation of the Union. The full quote, from 1862, is “If I could save the union without freeing any slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that.”

The main goal of the war, in Lincoln’s mind, was certainly the preservation of the Union, however it should be noted that Lincoln was opposed to slavery ever since he saw the boats carrying slaves on the Ohio River between Indiana and Kentucky. During his time in Congress, he introduced a resolution to end the practice in Washington D.C. The issue of slavery and Lincoln is, as I stated earlier, much too complex for a Twitter or Facebook post. Hell, it’s even too complex for this article. If you’d like to learn more about Lincoln and the issue of slavery, I recommend starting by reading my thesis (linked above) and then using the bibliography to find further reading. Additionally, the movie Lincoln is a good starting point as well.

In the AP’s article on the disparity between where someone lives and how the Civil War is taught, they point out that “Confederate sympathizers have long promoted the “Lost Cause” theory that the Southern side was heroic against impossible odds, and that slavery was not the driving force behind the war. Edward Countryman, a history professor at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, said he learned that idea growing up in New York State in the 1950s.”

I want to especially point your attention to the “growing up ... in the 1950s” part of that quote. I would be being dishonest if I did not point out the obvious generational differences in the understanding of the Civil War. Not to be overly general, but the vast majority of people I know who post on Facebook about Lost Cause ideology and are opposed to the removal of Confederate statues and symbols are of a certain, older age group typically labeled “Baby Boomers.” This is because during the 50s and 60s, in response to the Civil Rights Movement, the Lost Cause ideology saw a resurgence and began to be taught in white schools again (or even more vigorously if not previously ended).

To be fair, both people vastly older and vastly younger have fallen victim to the Lost Cause myth, and it makes sense that more people will as Facebook and Twitter refuse to label falsehoods as such.

If there is anything you should take away from this article, I hope it is this: if you think that tearing down Confederate statues and symbols, memorials to traitors who enslaved people, is tearing down history, you might want to turn off the phone and computer, and pick up a book written by a reputable historian, take a trip to a museum, watch the movie Lincoln (not Gone With the Wind), or give me a call, because I am sick and tired of the ignorance.

A good reading list on the topic:

David W. Blight, Race and Reunion
David Donald, Lincoln
Kenneth Winkle, The Young Eagle: The Rise of Abraham Lincoln
Kenneth Stampp, The Causes of the Civil War
William Davis, Look Away
Gary Gallagher, The Myth of the Lost Cause and Civil War History

"The weirdness of historical Disneyfication" failed miserably, but it accurately presaged the Dickey Error.

Historical revisionism from the top, down -- all the way down.

The world of Disney? It's about making profits through unreality. That's great as entertainment, but should it be the basis for a political movement?

Maybe a political bowel movement, but The Donald already stole that idea. Consider the implications if the Floyd County Democratic Party were to read books about history, rather than make videos about fantasy.

I know, I know. Lots and lots of brains hurting.

America Almost Had a Disney Theme Park with a Slavery Section ... Inside Disney's America, the doomed '90s project that almost sunk the company, by Jacqui Shine (Atlas Obscura)

... The project is worth remembering, though, because while it was a peculiar chapter in Disney’s history, it's a familiar one in the context of the national struggle to define the public narrative of American history, where Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States does battle with sanitized high school textbooks in Texas. Lin-Manuel Miranda’s hit musical Hamilton has created a vigorous alternative narrative that rightfully centers men and women of color as America’s builders and inheritors, but it’s still optimistic enough that Lynne and Dick Cheney are among its fans. Disney’s not really to blame for the fact that we’ve retroactively fit U.S. history into a story about the “American Dream.” In this sense, Disney’s America is another slice of the apple pie.

Although he isn't dead yet, Morris eulogizes England.

Just the last four or so lines of dialogue are key to the Python skit, eh?

As the reporter Suddeath informed us earlier in the week, Doug England is heading south, and New Albany can have posterity now.

Chris Morris follows up with an example of his favored "lionize my elders irrespective of historical fact" essays, because that's what he does best.

Perhaps Papa can more fully explain how gambling boat referenda held in 1993 and 1999 were issues in England's 1999 debacle against Regina Overton. I'm not sure why we even have newspapers if theire function is to stand idly to the side as Hizzoner rewrites history, but don't worry. At least we still have blogs.

 ... He loved New Albany and wanted to see it prosper and grow. Maybe that is why he based his campaign in 1999 on getting a referendum passed to allow Caesars riverboat casino to locate in New Albany.

Oddly, no mention of the Clark-Floyd Counties Convention and Tourism Bureau's donation.

Unrelated question: Has anyone heard if there's still a plan to put the late Kevin Hammersmith's name on the Amphitheater as a memorial?

The contrarian's Thanksgiving and Black Friday observances.

In the context of real American history, to the exclusion of mythology and wishful thinking, the holiday we term "Thanksgiving" is ironic, to say the least, and as noted here so often, Americans and irony generally maintain separate residences.

Each year around this time I like to play the role of thorn in the side of those Pollyannas among us who are prepared to give thanks for phenomenons like the slaughter of Native Americans and the doctrine of "manifest destiny" that eased the consciences of those pulling the trigger.

And, although my business probably will profit from the commencement of the shopping season on the day after Thanksgiving, it's always useful to lampoon the idea of consumerism as cardiovascular exercise and/or religious attainment.

Two postings from 2007 make the case. I gotta go paint. Unless Bluegill or the Highwayman have anything to say, we'll probably be taking the blogging day off tomorrow ... unless, of course, my annoyance level peaks. Don't forget: If you're shopping, shop local. Bentonville already has enough, don't you think?

Are they selling giftcards down at the 2 Horseshoe pole dancing emporium?

Black Friday, Part Two: “Literally millions of native peoples were slaughtered.”

Black Friday, Part One: "Any world that I'm welcome to ... is better than the one I come from."

ROCK's slope gets even more slippery, and Carl Booth sticks around ... with some help.

Reclaim Our Culture Kentuckiana's latest website update yet again confirms that the supposed anti-pornography group has a far greater interest in espousing a specific vision of evangelical Christianity than in defining pornography in any substantive way apart from its own narrow religious perspective.

The update has nothing whatsoever to do with pornography, but instead trumpets the exaltation of mass delusion in interpreting American history through the dubious proposition that the nation’s founders, if resurrected today, would all be worshipping at the same exurban megachurch as ROCK's community pillars.

We strive to inform and educate regarding America's true history and foundation so that it might be preserved for generations to come. Our modern culture has, in many instances, forgotten that our founders relied on Providence and acknowledged its role when fashioning our republic form of government. Our national motto - IN GOD WE TRUST - is an historical acknowledgment and accurate portrayal of America's heritage and what our founders deemed critical to the model of liberty and freedom the American experience has become throughout the world.

As others before me have noted, the proper question to ask any time an ecstatic theocrat introduces “In God We Trust” is this one:

"Trust in which God?"

In like fashion, the proper question to ask any time an ecstatic theocrat purports to “reclaim” culture is this:

“Reclaim which culture?”

As still others before me have noted, “reclaiming” the culture of the Founding Fathers strongly implies embracing slavery, withdrawing a woman’s right to vote, pouring sewage in a trench dug down the middle of the street and treating mental illness by chaining the patient to the wall of an asylum.

Need I point out for the benefit of One Southern Indiana members who may be reading that not a jot of ROCK’s most recent pronouncement about trusting one of the other God has the slightest relevance to the struggle against pornography – much less to economic development?

Has 1SI’s chairman Kerry Stemler yet conceded this point, one that CEO Michael Dalby at least had the grace and courage to acknowledge?

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Speaking of Kerry Stemler, did anyone read the article in Saturday’s edition of the Tribune relating the story of the Carl Booth/DeCrane Aerospace veneer company’s relocation to River Ridge in Jeffersonville?

Carl F. Booth Veneers leaving New Albany for Jeffersonville, by Eric Scott Campbell.

Carl Booth announced Friday he’s moving his growing specialty-manufacturing business to Jeffersonville’s River Ridge Commerce Center. He’ll inhabit an amount of vacant industrial space that his hometown currently lacks.

None of this comes as a surprise. It had been known for quite some time that a projected expansion of New Albany’s industrial park would come too late to keep Booth in town. Although dismayed at losing the business, elected and appointed officials in New Albany were quoted in the Tribune article as expressing happiness that Booth’s company would at least not be leaving the state of Indiana, a sentiment seconded by Governor Mitch Daniels. In particular, One Southern Indiana was singled out for effusive praise pertaining to its role in keeping Booth around.

Dan James, interim executive director of River Ridge, commended One Southern Indiana for its persistent recruitment.

“They promote this piece of property as an equal partner. These guys are great,” James said.

So, what then were the terms of the deal that drew Booth to River Ridge? The usual package of economic incentives and abatements were cited, as well as this:

… Booth’s and developer Kerry Stemler’s company, Bridgeway Development, struck a deal to build a 100,000-square-foot building at River Ridge, then lease it to DeCrane for $6 million over 15 years. Booth will add $2 million in new equipment, he said.

That's the same Kerry Stemler who is the chairman of One Southern Indiana, and it has caused me to undertake a long overdue search for deep metaphysical meaning.

To wit: Does one trust God or 1SI for that kind of bottom-line-boosting Providence?