Celebrating the confederacy is wrong, but I also think museum-like stuff and graveyards are harmless and should be respected. First of all, not everyone who served had much of a choice. Many were expected to serve on one side or the other merely because of where they lived. This is true of much of history. Second, they’re dead. It’s over for these specific people. They’re not a current problem. It’s just disrespectful no matter who it is.
I am NOT defending anything confederate, but I know that nuance is lost on most people.
I’m in total agreement, and have visited many union and confederate historical sites (graveyards, prisons, battlefields), which have been invaluable sources of information.
I broadly agree, but would point out that the huge number of statues erected during the civil rights era, celebrating people that led a traitorous war to defend slavery have little to no historical value, and were put in place to send a message echoing what those confederate leaders fought for.
We teach about the Nazis without celebrating them - I don’t see why the Confederates should be any different.
I don’t see any statues in this photo. Nobody here is talking about celebrating the Confederate soldiers, only suggesting that their graves shouldn’t be pissed on.
If you don’t think statues are covered under the umbrella of “museum-like stuff” and aren’t relevant to a conversation about what public relics of the Confederacy should be preserved, that’s a you issue, my guy.
Maybe you missed the point of my comment. I agree with you that Confederate statues erected during the civil rights movement are an affront to everything we stand for as a nation. I agree that they should be torn down wherever they exist.
I also don’t understand what any of that has to do with a photo of unmarked Confederate graves. Or how it would in any way justify pissing on them.
It has everything to do with the thread I responded to. Is there a reason you took issue with my reference to statues, but not other people with far more upvotes responding to the same comment in the same thread talking about battlefields, prisons, and houses?
I’d suggest you go back and read what we were all replying to - I’m clearly not the only one that doesn’t think this whole conversation needs to be restricted to the pissing on the graves in the photo.
Again, this is a you issue.
Would make a meme about pissing on the grave of someone that served in the Wehrmacht?
Would I? Yes.
Their ghost either understands and agrees, or they don’t and deserve it.
What’s pissing on Wermacht graves got to do with modern, politically motivated Confederate statues and teaching about the Confederacy responsibly in a similar manner to the way we teach about the Nazis?
I’m sorry to say that I think you got a little over-excited about your gotcha and blew your wad early.
You should probably check the meme in the OP for context if you’re having trouble figuring out how pissing on a Wehrmacht grave is connected
If you’ve got an issue with what OP shared, why would you bring it to me?
I don’t have a problem with what OP shared.
You pointed out how we don’t glorify Nazis. I was simply wondering if you would make a meme about peeing on German graves the way that OP made a meme about peeing on Confederate graves.
Im just trying to understand your position.
I’m not big on making memes, so no.
Do I think there’s equivalent moral culpability between the average vermacht and confederate soldier? Unsure - it’s a nuanced question I’m not well positioned to answer.
Would I piss on either? Probably not. Rupert Murdoch is my priority on that front.
I’ve been to this cemetery and house—the staff are beyond amazing when it comes to putting things into context. There’s even a giant sign before you enter that says something to the effect “Take a moment of somber silence before you enter, humans were enslaved here.” They’ve also done a lot of work with local black historians to try and trace the genealogy of slaves from the plantation and restore the slave quarters to show how horrific it all was.
statuses should be dismantled or at least stored away in some museum, we shouldn’t treat them like heroes
Please don’t actually disrespect these graves.
Jokes are jokes
Yeah, until idiots on the Internet start taking them literally. See: 4chan.
See also: [gestures broadly at American politics]
See also: [gestures broadly at this thread]
So, we shouldn’t say or do anything because some fucking moron will inevitably take it literally?? This is a meme sub ffs
deleted by creator
And how many of those corpses were poor white trash duped into fighting to preserve a rich man’s status quo?
I’m betting 98%.
Without looking and never studying American history, I bet >3% of the confederate soldiers were black slave soldiers fighting because their “owners” made them…
You’d be wrong. Few things terrified the white southern aristocracy as much as the prospect of armed black folk. There was a black militia in Louisiana which, inexplicably*, offered its services to the Confederacy. The Confederacy quite vehemently declined.
*well, not really inexplicably, but getting into race relations in former colonial French holdings and tbqh I don’t feel like going through that right now
That’s actually fascinating. I knew there were free black soldiers in the Union, but none in the south is mind boggling.
Our history classes coverage of the US civil war was basically: “we don’t want that fighting shit up here, so provinces were given less power, and we joined together because we needed to be able to defend ourselves in case the Union invades us.”
I think there was a last-ditch effort like, right before the South lost the war where they authorized black soldiers, but I don’t think they ever saw combat. May not have even been mustered and trained. But it was like a month or two before the war ended.
You know, I’ve been conflicted about this subject for a while. You see, my grandfather’s great grandfather was a confederate soldier. He was injured and sent back home to Alabama where he helped people during a cholera outbreak.
He was a complicated man without whom I wouldn’t be here. Was he racist? I’m sure he was. That wasn’t unusual back then for the north or the south.
Race relations are complicated everywhere. Not just in the south. Hell, not just in the USA. We lack the proper words in the English language to explain just how fucking awful slavery is. Slavery is abhorrent. Slavery is repugnant. Yet those descriptors don’t seem to properly convey just how fucked up slavery is. But believe it or not in the eyes of history that’s kind of a new take.
I’m sure that a lot of people will not appreciate what I’ve said, and that’s ok. I decided that the racism in my family stops at me. My kids have never met my family. Instead I tell my kids about the lessons I learned from the parental figures I collected like Pokémon. Like Ronnie if any of you read that comment a while back.
But also, when I was a kid, every Memorial Day we would go to the cemetery where a lot of my family is buried. We’d put flowers on everyone’s graves including a confederate soldier. Not because he was racist, but because he was family. For better or for worse.
But believe it or not in the eyes of history that’s kind of a new take.
That is not, in any way, a new take. That was very much the take at the time, even among certain slaveholders. For example, here’s Thomas Jefferson, a famous slaveholder, talking about the subject of slavery:
I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just: that his justice cannot sleep forever: that, considering numbers, nature, and natural means only, a revolution of the wheel of fortune, an exchange of situation, is among possible events: that it may become probable by supernatural interference! The Almighty has no attribute which can take side with us in such a contest.
Here he is, saying that God hates slavery, that slavers richly deserve death by the hands of their enslaved populace, and that slavery is a great injustice. All this while having about 200 slaves himself, including several of his own children.
Slavery is not now, and was not back then, a “complicated issue”. It wasn’t a moral gray area. It was a great evil perpetrated by incredibly evil people. Whether or not the slavers themselves thought that they were doing evil is irrelevant. All this hand wringing about “Oh, the times were different back then!” is complete hogwash. Do you think that abolitionists didn’t exist? That they didn’t tell people that slavery was evil even as the first American colonists adopted the practice? Do you think that the people back then were some kind of proto-human who didn’t have the capacity for empathy or morality?
Fuck that. Your grandfather’s great grandfather fought for and defended evil. He picked the wrong side. Oh, he helped some people who were sick? Bully for him. He was still a fucking prick. Fuck him forever.
Obligatory: https://youtu.be/FAZJVkelgcg
God, I fucking love that man. <3
Knew it was this before I ever clicked the link
“I mean they visibly didn’t like it”
So, I think you misunderstood what I was saying. I’m going to attempt to explain, but I just want it to be known that I don’t condone slavery. Because I think that you think that I’m celebrating my ancestry. I am not. I am acknowledging that without that person I wouldn’t be here, and maybe don’t piss on his grave. Maybe don’t piss on anyone’s grave except for GG Allen’s grave. I think he would have been cool with it.
So, here we go with the explanation.
Even Thomas Jefferson wasn’t that long ago in the eyes of history. I’m talking for all of human history. The Greeks, The Romans, the Egyptians. All of these cultures had slaves far longer than the US has been a thing.
Slavery was a thing for thousands if not 10s of thousands of years. I’m sure that the occasional person thought slavery was bad, but it wasn’t really a movement of any kind until a 2 to 3 hundred years ago.
I’ll give you that slavery as a concept is not a new invention, though the type of chattel slavery that the US participated in really stands out among the greater tapestry of global slavery. That being said, I think it is very difficult to say with any degree of certainty that the Greeks, Romans, or Egyptians didn’t really view slavery as being wrong. Literacy wasn’t a common thing in those civilizations; wealthy people and the non-inheriting sons of wealthy people pretty much held the monopoly on reading and writing. So while quite a lot of things were documented, most of what we’ve got were boring governmental administration documents. Things like tax receipts and livestock tallies. And also, very occasionally, the odd complaint about substandard copper. Most people didn’t record their thoughts on things because most people couldn’t write, and the people who did write were usually tied to the aristocracy, so it would be unusual for them to give a fair shake to the people who wanted them to free their slaves.
So while we have a lot more evidence of abolitionists in America and England going back to the start of the African slave trade than we do of, say, the Roman Empire, I think a big reason for that is just the prevalence of writing. Abolitionists could produce morality tracts for relatively little money, after all. So the idea that abolitionism is a relatively new thing in historical terms is not exactly a well-grounded thing because there are really good explanations for the absence of evidence, and there’s equally little evidence that everybody was on board with it.
So I’m going to take the opposite opinion here, and say that I don’t think that people now are fundamentally different than they were back then. Which means that there are a lot of amoral assholes who value their own wealth and societal status more than the personhood of their fellow man, but it also means that there are people who think that that’s fucking evil.
As for your relative, I mean… I’m glad that through chance he spawned a family that would eventually include you, but that doesn’t make him a good person, or even a person worthy of respect. Shitty people have kids all the time. I get that you want to include him in your thoughts because he’s family, but just because you share genetic information with someone doesn’t mean that they are worthy of your time, energy, or respect. I, for example, have quite a lot of family members who are traitors, and I refuse to talk to any of them. And if someone were to piss on their graves, I wouldn’t be the least bit upset about it.
You say that the US was unique, but once again we have proof that tons of slaves were used to do dangerous jobs like mining for thousands of years. We know about their high mortality rates. The Spartans famously had more slaves than citizens. It’s a large part of why they were the way they were. Slavery is a very unfortunate part of human history.
In mor recent times. European nations cut out the middle man and just enslaved large swaths of Africa. There is nothing unique about the USA except the civil war.
I mean right now slavery is still a thing in places like China and the Middle East. Hell, it’s still a thing in the USA. Legally! There is legal slavery in the US through prisons.
None of these facts make slavery any less terrible. But also, we can’t deny that for most of history humans have been disgusting ghouls.
One day people will look back on us and talk about how horrible we were. How we destroyed the planet. They will hate us for our abuse of the planet. They will paint us with the same broad brush that you currently wield.
But right now, in this moment, you and I know that we are just trying to live within what is considered acceptable for the time. We have to have things that come in packages that pollute the very blood that flows through our veins. We have to use vehicles that pollute the air in our lungs.
We are also simultaneously terrible and just a normal human. We are also just doing the best we can with the flawed knowledge we have. But hopefully we learned something from the humans that came before us and repeat as few mistakes as possible.
You say that the US was unique, but once again we have proof that tons of slaves were used to do dangerous jobs like mining for thousands of years.
Slave mortality is not the main way in which US chattel slavery is unique. In Rome, Egypt, and Greece, slavery was usually the result of conquest or debt, not skin color. Additionally, slaves often had a path towards freedom and citizenship within their respective society. I am not as familiar with the Greek and Egyptian institutions, but I know that the Romans usually kept family units together rather than breaking them up and selling them off individually.
In short, while slavery everywhere is abhorrent, slavery in the US was much more brutal and unfair than most of the other historical examples. It got even more so after the British abolished the slave trade, and slave owners in the US had less access to new slaves. They leaned much more heavily on rape on an industrial scale to create more slaves.
In mor[e] recent times. European nations cut out the middle man and just enslaved large swaths of Africa. There is nothing unique about the USA except the civil war.
Well, that’s not exactly true. The vast majority of the slave trade went into the Americas. Most, actually, went to European colonies in Central and South America. These places tended to be even more brutal than North America, as costs were lower, so plantation owners felt that working their slaves to death was more economically viable than working them almost to death for a longer period of time. Slaves in Europe were a much different story. They often served the function of valets or curiosities to be wheeled out for the guests.
There is legal slavery in the US through prisons.
Yes. A nice little loophole that the 13th amendment provides. Trust me, I’m not happy about it.
But also, we can’t deny that for most of history humans have been disgusting ghouls.
And we continue to be. But just because a not-insignificant portion of humanity are disgusting ghouls, it does not mean that all of us are. It serves humanity to point out the awfulness among us, and the awfulness that we displayed in the past.
They will paint us with the same broad brush that you currently wield.
That’s pretty sanctimonious of you, tbh. As I mentioned earlier in our conversation, we are at the apex of literacy in human history. Hell, here I am at stupid o’clock in the morning typing out my thoughts to some stranger somewhere else in the world using software specifically designed for the easy sharing of ideas. So the idea that people at some point in the nebulous future won’t be able to find examples of people from today railing against the people polluting our planet and poisoning our water and air is laughable.
I’m not painting everybody in the 1800s in the US with a broad brush as you describe. I’m saying that slavers, and the supporters of slavers, are evil motherfuckers. There were people in the 1800s who felt exactly as I currently do about it as well. Were they painting their peers with a broad brush, too?
you and I know that we are just trying to live within what is considered acceptable for the time
I think this might be the source of our disagreement, actually. You seem to be under the impression that morality is a fad that changes with time, like bellbottoms or JNCO jeans (I still don’t understand that one, btw). But that doesn’t really explain the fact that we have primary sources from the 1800s who seem to share the same morality that we’ve been discussing.
I, on the other hand, believe that people have essentially remained unchanged throughout our species’ history. I think that if you took someone from Mesopotamia, and gave him English lessons and a crash course in modern technology, it’d be difficult to pick him out of a lineup from a handful of people on this very message board. Until he slips up and refers to the internet as “talk tubes of the gods” or something, obviously.
See the difference is in how we view morality. You see things very black and white. I see things as gray which is to say human. Even Mao Zedong the greatest mass murderer in recorded history was just a normal ass dude. He just had too much power and terrible ideas. He wasn’t a literal monster. He was a human flesh and blood like you and i. Doing what he thought was right for his country and himself, because he a human.
I have lived a lot. I have outlived most of the people I grew up with. I’ve seen people be monsters and simultaneously be saints.
I have done things that I swore I never would for various reasons. I have done horrible things. I have also done great things. People aren’t either good or bad. They are just people.
I could keep arguing with you about how much we do know about slave situations from antiquity. Because we know a ton. Especially the Greeks and Roman’s wrote everything down. But we know a good bit about the Arab slave trade too.
I could post links to every African genocide committed by every European nation that existed at the time. The Belgian Congo is especially nightmarish.
The US is not unique except it fought the change.
I don’t want to continue this conversation. Just because at some point some idiot is going think I’m defending slavery and I’m not. Slavery is bad and I think we can all agree on that. But I stand by my statement. If you look at over 10000 years of history. Only in the last like 300 years have we decided as a society it’s bad.
I hope you have a good week friend.
Doing what he thought was right for his country and himself, because he [was] a human.
I’ve never said that confederate soldiers were not human. Humans are very much capable of evil, as evidenced by like all of human history. But whereas some people choose to do evil things, other people choose to not do that, and choose to condemn those who do evil things. For example: do you think that Mao chose to do evil things? Do you think he thought that riling up all of the idiot kids in the country to torture and murder China’s scholars and teachers was a morally good thing?
I have done horrible things.
Like what? Torture? Rape? Murder? Murdering on behalf of torturers and rapists? Let’s not be coy, here. We’re talking about people who fought to defend slavery, not people who said an insensitive thing to Karen in accounting once.
If you look at over 10000 years of history. Only in the last like 300 years have we decided as a society it’s bad.
And I think that it’s a leap of faith to say that. There is historical record of abolitionists even from ancient Greece. Pointing to the paucity of primary sources about abolition at the time is a flawed argument because of the lack of general literacy. Here’s a quote from Aristotle’s Politics:
For some thinkers hold the function of the master to be a definite science, and moreover think that household management, mastership, statesmanship and monarchy are the same thing, as we said at the beginning of the treatise; others however maintain that for one man to be another man’s master is contrary to nature, because it is only convention that makes the one a slave and the other a freeman and there is no difference between them by nature, and that therefore it is unjust, for it is based on force.
So you have right there some evidence at least that even back then, people thought it was evil.
I hope you have a good week friend.
Ditto. Additionally, I hope you spend some time thinking about this conversation, and potentially re-evaluating your ideas about morality.
One day people will look back on us and talk about how horrible we were. How we destroyed the planet.
I’m not going to be upset with some 2150s punk kid who can’t discern that I very much disapproved of global warming, even though I didn’t step out to do much activism about it.
If it ruffles the feathers of some future conservatives, I hope he has a great time.
My extended family’s ancestors stole land from indigenous people that their descendants sold to provide a comfortable upper middle class life for their family. Fuck them for destroying the livelihood, culture and lives of those people. If people want to piss on their graves I wouldn’t stop them.
Well, cheers I guess. People are complicated. I guess that I can acknowledge that a person is flawed. While still admitting that they were probably a flawed human doing the best they could with the flawed information they had. You and I included.
I hope that one day you too will be able to see monsters for the humans they really are.
Hitler was a human. It’s okay to piss on his grave
My ancestor did murder millions of innocent people. Nor did any other confederate soldier for that matter. They supported a system that murdered countless innocent people.
So, at best they would be compared to rank and file German soldiers.
“No, no; not that one. I meant smaller monsters.”
I don’t believe in monsters. Monsters are just people who broke the social contract to treat all people around them with respect and dignity, so they don’t get to then demand respect and dignity in death.
People keep saying ‘it was a different time’ completely ignoring the fact there were people back then literally fighting for the rights of the oppressed.
They are dead and gone. What ever feelings the dirt and stone provoke are your own. The dead flowers too are only for yourself. Me, I despise the unempethic people who brought suffering to others. They did live in a different time and any one person alone couldn’t have done enough to change all of society. If I’m going out of my way to honor a thought in my head I would chose to honor the few that did put society on the right track.
And the saddest part is that slavery still exists today in several parts of the world.
I think this is rather distasteful.
Whatever side they fought on it would do well to remember that these people too have their stories. How many were dragged in to fight in the meat grinder, no matter their opinions?
Even German graves from WWII are typically left alone because they already paid the ultimate price.
Edit: if anything, this should serve as a reminder what war really is and why we should always avoid it if we can
There’s an old saying that the Civil War was “a rich man’s war, but a poor man’s fight”.
The National Parks Service put this together, and I think it really shows the people who died were fighting for a variety of reasons. It doesn’t mean we should glorify the Confederacy, but the people in that cemetery deserve their peace.
https://www.nps.gov/apco/planyourvisit/upload/Why-Confederates-Fought-Final.pdf
Rush Limbaugh’s grave, on the other hand, will always be a gender-neutral bathroom.
Even German graves from WWII are typically left alone because they already paid the ultimate price.
Jesus fucking Christ.
If John Bell Hood had had his head blown off instead of his leg, he’d probably be remembered as fondly as Jackson.
Fortunately (for the Union), he survived to “defend” Atlanta, then invade Tennessee. The Battle of Franklin being in that comedy of errors. The base wasn’t named after him until 1942. By people who read enough history to know Hood commanded the Texas brigade, but not enough to know how he commanded it.
I salute General Hood on account that he’s responsible for more dead Confederates than any two Union Generals.
Story time? Please?
This meme makes me miss the old ShermanPosting subreddit. Excellent post
There’s actually a ShermanPosting community here I made in honor of the old one!
Hell yeah! Subscribed :)
We need a Sherman posting Lemmy sub
The number of Confederate apologists in this thread is frankly insane. “Oh no! Someone is making jokes about pissing on the graves of traitors and slavers! What if there were some innocent people in there?? I mean, I realize that it’s going to be really difficult to find someone who was so insanely stupid to not be aware that they were fighting for slavers and traitors, but what if they exist???!?! Are you going to piss on their grave, too!!!???!”
No, I think it’s recognition that whatever crimes you think they’ve done, they’ve paid for it already in a permanent way. So joking about pissing on their graves (160 years later ffs) is ill taste. Feel free to smear shit or graffiti over confederate statues that seek to glorify the cause rather than memorialize the dead though since that is not the same thing.
I also think most common soldiers in the confederate army fought for no higher reason than they were drafted and had little choice; or they signed up to defend their state against an existential threat. If you look at recruitment posters of the time, they’re talking of northern invaders raping and pillaging their women, property and lands.
whatever crimes you think they’ve done, they’ve paid for it already in a permanent way
Have they, though? Death isn’t exactly unique. Regardless of how good or bad a person you are, everybody has death as their final fate. So dying for a shitty cause isn’t exactly punishment, considering that people who were in favor of a good cause still met the same fate. Death isn’t a punishment for being a shitty person, it’s just a birthright.
I also think most common soldiers in the confederate army fought for no higher reason than they were drafted and had little choice
Ok, but you know who else was drafted and had little choice? The people who defected. Some of those same people worked to further the cause of abolition by operating the underground railroad. Some of them wound up in prison, and some of them were hanged. I don’t have any sympathy whatsoever for someone who lacked the courage or morality to fight against evil. And I have even less sympathy for someone stupid enough to fall for basic removed propaganda like what you described.
Dude, that is so easy to say when you weren’t actually there, in a completely different time.
The flow of information was completely different back then too. You have the worlds information at your fingertips, these people hardly new what happened outside of their town and even then it was delayed and through very few sources.
It’s not that your anger is completely unjustified, but damn dude… Your anger is directed at a bunch of dead suckers most of whom were probably not large land owners and politicians. Direct it at their leaders, or better, the suckers very much alive, currently buying MAGA hats.
Oh, you guys, they just didn’t know slavery was bad. They were very stupid. :( You can’t piss on stupid people; that’s like ableism or something.
Direct it at their leaders, or better, the suckers very much alive, currently buying MAGA hats.
What do you think pissing on the graves is for?
I run into MAGA / QAnon loons online and they suffer the opposite issue. They have plenty of information to choose from and they’ll choose the worst and use cognitive dissonance to blank the rest. The number of times they’ll dismiss stuff by proclaiming it comes “from the Soros media” or whatever. One basket case even replied to a news story the other day that Ukraine was a “movie set” to discount the news of missile strikes. How can you reach people like that?
I suspect for all people during the American civil war their only source of news was their local newspapers and fliers. Hardly surprising if they were unable to develop enlightened views that GP seems to judge them for not having.
And yet the North held them to those views when they killed them. Maybe the North should have tried asking politely.
I think you seriously underestimate my capacity for anger. Of course I direct it at the leaders and the modern-day traitors as well. My anger is a multi-faceted thing. Seriously, though, are you only capable of being angry about one thing at a time? Because if not, why would you assume that I am?
And as I said, the rubes you’re describing will receive no sympathy from me. I don’t rate willful stupidity or cowardice among human virtues. They might not be as deserving of a river of piss as the knowingly evil people who led them, but it’s not like I’m going to get bent out of shape if someone pissed on their graves all the same. They were shit then, and they’re shit now. The only thing that’s changed is that ~160 years have passed since they died, and for some reason, some people seem to think that time passing means that bygones should be bygones.
Yes they have paid the price. They’re dead as doornails, killed from battle, wounds and disease. And you seem to know a lot about all these people to blanket describe them as “a shitty person” each and all.
As for drafting, the point is obvious. Getting drafted meant extreme hardship for a man’s family. Some communities resisted the draft, many more were impressed whether they liked it or not. And even those who volunteered were joining for more base emotions than slavery - they were literally told by all the media and information they had access to that the northerners were coming to destroy them, rape their wives & daughters, set slaves free to murder their families and steal their land. Maybe you live in an information rich media sphere but they didn’t.
And absolutely the Confederacy was a terrible and rotten cause through and through but most of these people didn’t have any choice in the matter. No more so than the people drafted in the North. In fact if you look at Confederate draft laws they were even more inequitable and bullshit to the poor as the ones for the Union, where the rich could buy their way out of service by finding a man in their stead, or simply for owning slaves. It’s the poor bastards who didn’t own slaves or hold wealth you see beneath those grave markers.
And you seem to know a lot about all these people to blanket describe them as “a shitty person” each and all.
I know that they were slavers and the defenders of slavers. That’s enough.
For example, I don’t know much about Brock “the Rapist” Turner, but I know he raped an unconscious woman behind a dumpster, so that’s enough for me to say that he’s a shitty person, and fuck him forever. And you know what? Anybody who sticks up for Brock is also a shitty person. And that’s just rape. Slavery was so much worse, and also included lots of rape on top.
Maybe you live in an information rich media sphere but they didn’t.
Ok, but all of those people who resisted the draft lived in that same media-poor sphere, did they not? Are you just going to pretend that those people didn’t exist? Do you think they made the hard choices they did just because they had more information than their peers? If that’s the case, why didn’t people like Robert E. Lee, who had much more access to information than the vast majority of his traitorous compatriots also join the resistance?
Maybe it’s not a differential of information, but of morality that is the determining factor.
And absolutely the Confederacy was a terrible and rotten cause through and through but most of these people didn’t have any choice in the matter.
Except for all of the people who “didn’t have a choice” and chose not to fight anyway.
It’s the poor bastards who didn’t own slaves or hold wealth you see beneath those grave markers.
Let’s be clear, here. I don’t think they’re pieces of shit because they were poor. There were plenty of poor people who died fighting against slavery. I have no desire to piss on their graves. They died heroes. The people who fought to advance the cause of slavery, though, fuck them forever. In this life, it is not your intentions that define you in the eyes of others, but your actions. Their actions caused a massive amount of pain and suffering.
Seems like the your depth of knowledge and critical thinking applied is purely based off a long history of reading internet comments
I’m not sure where you’re getting that from. Care to share some of the insight that led to that conclusion, professor?
damn, you’d cry for the nazi camp guards as well, by that logic
How does that logic work please? I’m quite happy that most Nazi camp guards got strung up. I don’t have an urge to go shit on their graves though. Also there is-ever-so-slightly massive difference between some guy getting shot on the frontline after being impressed into service and some sadist torturing and murdering people for kicks. The nearest comparison in civil war times might be a camp like Andersonville, but I was conspicuously not talking about Andersonville.
oh, so the guys who fought at the front invading half of Europe were fine? got it.
but death does not absolve the world of the crimes committed, and pissing on someones grave is showing that you don’t respect these people, who should not be respected.
No, it is recognition that they’re dead and you defiling graves of people you know nothing about, or their personal culpability is just stupid and gross.
Death might not be unique, but people’s lives are. Their lives were taken from them. That was the price they paid
And they paid it defending slavery…
Do you know anything about those specific people? Or anything about the grave site besides this post?
Like, I dont care… Piss on all the graves you want. It means nothing to anyone but the pisser truthfully. But shits just silly ignorance to hate full demographics to the point to show the highest form of symbolic disrepect to unknown people and stories.
Cared enough to reply lol
My point is that everybody pays that price. They paid no more than every other person who has ever existed. Very few people actually want to die, but everybody eventually does. Those men received the same fate as the people they were fighting against. The main difference is that the world became slightly better for everybody else with every single one of them that died.
I’ll leave you be, now that I realized most of the ignorant comments in this thread are coming from you. We probably won’t get any good conversation going.
It may make life a little more confusing, but you might enjoy not seeing everything so black and white
I think you probably don’t know what the word “ignorant” means. But it sounds good, and you have nothing to reply with, so might as well lob that one out. That’ll show me!
It may make life a little more confusing, but you might enjoy not seeing everything so black and white
Oh, I’m sorry, you’re right. Slavery is MOSTLY bad, but you know, sometimes it was good! Or something equally stupid.
You go directly to an single point to vindicate a strong general stance. Go piss on there graves, who cares… They are dead and gone.
But we all deserve our graves pissed on then, if you can simplify shit down to good and evil applied to demographics so easily.
“Nazis deserve respect too!” these absolute cretins sob, “They were products of their time!”
It’s a stupid joke. It’s often best to just let the dead lie. In any case, the stones and dead that lay beneath them don’t care - you can’t hurt them or impress them.
You want to “get even” with them? Good! They did a bad thing and paid the immediate cost with the loss of their lives. But to truly get even - forget them and let them be lost to time and memory. As it stands, you obsess over them just as much as if you were a member of the KKK.
As it stands, you obsess over them just as much as if you were a member of the KKK.
You have some very strange ideas, my friend. What do you imagine my day-to-day life to be like? How often do you think I tell people that we should all piss on the graves of confederates? Hourly? Daily? Monthly?
Don’t you think that it’s more likely that me defending pissing on the graves of Confederates has much more to do with the fact that I’m responding in a thread that was specifically about pissing on their graves?
I mean, for fuck’s sake; I didn’t even make the thread. If anything, PugJesus would be the obsessed one; he made the fucking thread, after all.
Is it that you think that I’m obsessed with the concept because I’ve made several replies in this thread? Well… I’ve made several replies in a lot of different threads. Usually, when someone replies to me, I will reply back. That’s just how forums and communication in general work. Do you not do that? Careful! Better not reply to me, or I’ll assume you’re obsessed with me!
Your strident defense of the joke and replies to others is the indication you are in strong agreement with the “joke”. What else is anyone reading your replies supposed to think? That you don’t care about it at all?
Your strident defense of the joke and replies to others is the indication you are in strong agreement with the “joke”.
Yes, I am! Congratulations for understanding basic contextual clues!
I’m not sure how that makes me obsessed with it, though, as you initially suggested. I mean, it’s a bit of a stretch to go from pointing out that I agree with the meme to:
you obsess over them just as much as if you were a member of the KKK.
Or were you just being hyperbolic in some weird attempt to shame me for thinking that evil people deserve to have their graves pissed on?
Or were you just being hyperbolic in some weird attempt to shame me for thinking that evil people deserve to have their graves pissed on?
A bit perhaps. But mostly just pointing out the silliness of it all. Whatever point you are tying to make is lost on them. As I said, the stones and the remains that lie beneath them do not care about your opinion of them - and they never did even in life. And making a big deal out them now only serves to keep the memories alive.
Whatever point you are tying to make is lost on them.
Do you think that I think that the scant remains of people who have been dead for ~160 years give a shit about whether people piss on their graves? Because I can assure you, I do not. I have never argued that pissing on someone’s grave is a way of punishing them; that’s an incredibly stupid thing to say, and as a rule, I try to not say incredibly stupid things. But pissing on someone’s grave is a great bit of catharsis for the pisser, especially if the pissee was an evil motherfucker.
And making a big deal out them now only serves to keep the memories alive.
Ah yes. People pissing on Confederate graves is what is keeping alive the memories of the confederacy. Not the statues or the people with the confederate flags, or the politicians currently in congress who believe that Robert E. Lee was a founding father. Nope, none of that does, but pissing on the graves, yeah. That’s the real ticket.
So a couple of sentences back, when I said that I try to not say incredibly stupid things? Maybe you should make that same effort going forward.
The best way to celebrate confederate generals is by melting down statues dedicated to them during the civil rights era and re-casting them into urinals
My uncle will be turned into a toilet when he dies. That’s he get’s for being a forced birther.
Apt username.
Go ahead, I’ll give you another chance to respond like a real person.
Apparently civility politics is back in style for pleading for sympathy for… [checks notes] people who fought to uphold one of the most brutal forms of an already brutal institution in defense of white supremacy.
Won’t someone think of the slaveowners?
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I’ll tell your great-granddaddy you said hi.
It’s functionally the same logic as… [check notes] American civilians deserving to die in 9/11 for being complicit in American imperialism. Would asking Bin Laden not to attack the WTC count as “civility politics”?
“Disrespecting the graves of soldiers who literally fought and died in a war for slavery is the exact same thing as killing civilians in a terrorist attack because a rich Saudi kid was assmad that infidels were on holy land in the early 90s”
10/10
Take a few minutes to hear from a man who fought in the Civil War as a 16 year old boy for the 26th Virginia Cavalry.
He wasn’t old enough or educated enough to even realize slavery was one of the causes of the war. At the end of the video he blames the wealthy/politicians for getting them into it, and celebrates the end of slavery.
Makes you wonder what his story would have been if the south had won
I’m assuming you’re thinking every single soldier in the Confederacy fights because they want their precious slavery.
not everyone who served had much of a choice. Many were expected to serve on one side or the other merely because of where they lived. This is true of much of history
I’m pointing to this comment made by someone in this post. Feel free to piss on the grave of Jefferson Davis or soldiers who thought like him. Also, Bin Laden thought every American civilian is just as guilty as the soldiers.
From Messages to the World: The Statements of Osama bin Laden, as quoted in the guy’s Wikipedia page:
“Furthermore, he argued that all Americans were complicit in the crimes of their government due to majority of them electing it to power and paying taxes that fund the US military.”
Assuming you’re American, what do you think if someone you don’t like uses the same logic against you?
I’m assuming you’re thinking every single soldier in the Confederacy fights because they want their precious slavery.
The war is literally about slavery. As I pointed out elsewhere in this thread, the calculus is the same as people who fought for the fucking Nazis - if you’re ‘brave’ enough to die for slavers, but not for slaves, you deserve to be cast in with the slavers.
Also, Bin Laden thought every American civilian is just as guilty as the soldiers.
Okay…? Why does the rich Saudi kid’s opinion on how civilians are totally okay to murder matter here?
Assuming you’re American, what do you think if someone you don’t like uses the same logic against you?
… how is that the same logic? Please, explain to me how “It’s okay to disrespect people who served in the armed forces of a revolt whose sole purpose was slavery” and “It’s okay to murder civilians because they pay taxes” is the same logic?
Okay…? Why does the rich Saudi kid’s opinion on how civilians are totally okay to murder matter here?
Probability-wise, you’re mad that Bin Laden even thought of murdering civilians in the first place. Bin Laden didn’t care because in his view, they’re virtually combatants i.e. valid targets for a struggle that you disagree with, to put it mildly.
… how is that the same logic? Please, explain to me how “It’s okay to disrespect people who served in the armed forces of a revolt whose sole purpose was slavery” and “It’s okay to murder civilians because they pay taxes” is the same logic?
The intensity of the desired action (mere disrespect vs. murder) is very different, but its logic is the same from my perspective: I want to do X on Y because I don’t like that Y does Z. Let’s take the “okay to murder civilians because they pay taxes” hypothetical sentiment. Though very remote, it’s not impossible for an unhinged enough anarchist to believe this and actually act on it.
Probability-wise, you’re mad that Bin Laden even thought of murdering civilians in the first place. Bin Laden didn’t care because in his view, they’re virtually combatants i.e. valid targets for a struggle that you disagree with, to put it mildly.
I can say infants are virtually combatants, and it doesn’t make it so. Why is his insane argument at all valid?
The intensity of the desired action (mere disrespect vs. murder) is very different, but its logic is the same from my perspective: I want to do X on Y because I don’t like that Y does Z.
… what
“I want to put murderers in jail because I don’t like that murderers kill people”
is thus the same logic as
“I want to murder gay people because I don’t like that gay people have sex with the same gender”
are you fucking shitting me right now
are you fucking shitting me right now
No. It’s really the same logic. Otherwise, homophobia would not be even a thing anywhere in the world.
I’m thinking that by your logic, you would also urinate on the graves of Vietnam veterans, many of whom had no choice, because they were conscripted, and either lacked the means to avoid conscription or were unable to flee the US.
Tbh pave it for a parking lot
- History is important, even history we disagree with. Especially history that some current ideologue wants to hide
- These people being killed left suffering for their family and friends, a missing generation was a huge problem for their community
- Most soldiers were likely fighting for their friends and communities. Maybe I’m overstepping for things I’ve never experienced, but I would be willing to bet that very few individual soldiers chose to be there to support slavery, or had anywhere near that amount of abstraction in their motivations
This is what a cursed place looks like. Somewhere you start desecrating and bad things will happen to you from some truly bad souls.
I also like that one big contiguous urinal they have in D.C near the Mall
Which one is that?
I hope that’s not what they meant. I try not to assume people are anti-abolitionist until stated otherwise.
The Vietnam one
I mean, I don’t regard US soldiers in Vietnam as having fought for an abominable cause the way Nazis or Confederates did, and the Memorial Wall is definitely meant as a reminder of the shame of sending men to die for nothing more than political posturing. The US picked the shittier of two shitty sides in a war we had no business being in, not unlike the Central Powers of WW1. But I also don’t get worked up over it, because ultimately:
A. It’s not like it’s disrespect towards soldiers who fought for genuinely positive causes, however flawed, like the soldiers of the Union or US soldiers in WW2
and
B. I understand that the undisciplined conduct of US forces in Vietnam and the indiscriminate and criminal decisions of the US government during the war raises a great deal of justified antipathy.
I save my anger for the psychopaths who start the wars, and I use words to express myself rather than pissing and shitting on corpses.
I love the sentiment
But also I WILL be pissing on Kissinger’s grave.
Yeah that’ll teach those long-dead conscripts!
Yeah, fuck 'em.
What do you call someone ‘brave’ enough to die for treasonous slaver scum, but not brave enough to die against treasonous slaver scum?
Slaver scum.
Tens of thousands of men from the South volunteered to help their actual country’s army. Many more resisted in other ways, took up arms as partisans, or simply left traitor-controlled areas. I have no more sympathy for conscripts of the CSA than I do for conscripts of Nazi Germany. Were they inherently terrible people? No, probably not. But they made a choice that was, ultimately, cowardly and evil, and they deserve no asspats on that account.
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Is it really better to abandon your responsibilities and your family just so some self-righteous pissant won’t piss on your grave in 150 years?
No, you do it just so that you aren’t actively killing and dying for the sake of maintaining your fellow human fucking beings in a state of abject bondage, being tortured, raped, and killed at the whims of rich men.
Not getting piss on your grave is just a bonus.
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Would you include literal child soldiers who had no idea slavery was a cause of the war in that “slaver scum” category?
If you watch that video, you can hear from someone who fought in the 26th Virginia Cavalry. Towards the end of the video, he celebrates the end of slavery, and blames the politicians for bringing them into the war. Many of the folks buried in these cemeteries were uneducated, rural children who only knew they were “defending their homeland from invasion”.
Do we really need to piss on their graves?
Would you include literal child soldiers who had no idea slavery was a cause of the war in that “slaver scum” category?
Literal children? No, because children are generally accepted to have reduced independent moral agency for a variety of reasons.
Many of the folks buried in these cemeteries were uneducated, rural children who only knew they were “defending their homeland from invasion”.
My guy, that Lost Causer myth hasn’t been accepted in historical academia since the 70s. There was broad understanding and acceptance on the Confederate side, amongst the rank and file, that the war was being fought for slavery and white supremacy. You wanna roll out John Smith from Nowhere, Atlanta, and say he’s a very special boy who didn’t understand what was going on? Sure, whatever makes you feel better. I’m sure there were a couple of innocents in the Wehrmacht and the SS as well who were simply too dumb to understand what was constantly and loudly repeated by both sides of the conflict. But unless you want me to single out his grave to be spared, I don’t really know what relevance your saintedly ignorant theoretical individual has to the discussion.
Only on Lemmy could “pissing on the graves of child soldiers isn’t cool” be a controversial take.
“Don’t piss on Wehrmacht graves! You might hit someone who was innocent!”
Exactly. One in every six Wehrmacht troops fighting on D-Day was a non-German, many of which were prisoners who’d been forced to fight for the Nazis. You might actually be pissing on the grave of a Korean POW who’d been shipped to the German frontlines by their Japanese captors.
Source: https://militaryhistorynow.com/2014/06/02/germanys-foreign-volunteers-helped-man-the-atlantic-wall/
“In one more memorable encounter, members of the American 101st Airborne stumbled upon a group of surrendering Asiatic troops in German uniforms. Despite repeated attempts, Allied interrogators were unable to communicate with their curious Wehrmacht prisoners. Only later was it discovered that the soldiers originally hailed from Korea and had absolutely no interest in fighting for the Third Reich. How they ended up in German uniform is one of the Second World War’s most outlandish sagas.”
Hey, we found a Good Person! Virtuously expressing themselves by pissing!
Here I thought I was just a memer, humorously expressing myself by mocking shithead Confederates.
You got everything right except the “humourously” part.
I don’t know, I forcefully blew air out of my nose. That’s a pretty high bar of humor met for me.
Probably in the same way the confederates blew air out their nose when they ganged up on the people they considered worthy of grave-pissing.
Shitty behavior all around. You sound like a confederate to me.
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Smooth brain take of 2024 lmfao.
Their ratio on here is pretty good though.
Probably because they aren’t a traitor.
Pissing on graves sounds like confederate behavior to me. Enjoy your ratios and your piss and shit, which is how you apparently express yourself.
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