2020 needs a reset. From the presidential impeachment debacle to Covid lockdown, cities burning and murder hornets, this year sucks! There have been some positive parts such as having time at home with family and time to work on the farm, but at the end of the day it feels like the nation is poised on the edge of a knife.
Tonight it was announced that Richmond's beautiful Monument Avenue has been taken down by the public officials who were its guardians, who were entrusted 130 years ago to preserve it. I had wanted to see it one day, but there is very little reason to visit it now. How have we forgotten our history? Ignorance - purposefully fostered ignorance - is how.
I noticed this swing in 2011 when I attended the Gettysburg reenactment and visited the NPS visitor center. The interpretive displays were misleading, one sided and in many cases wrong. They would have you believe that there was only one cause of the war - slavery. The honest historian knows it is more complex than that, but it matches the narrative set forth by McPherson, Foner, Zinn, and others. About that time I was told that Shelby Foote was no longer a respected source. Huh? Many of the seminal works by thoses names above (sans Foote) were published in the late 80s and early 90s. To use a term thrown about quite a bit by the modern Left, they "reimagined" the Civil War. Soldiers on both sides were once honored; it was part of the reconciliation. Now they are reviled and defiled.
Of course, the plague is spreading to Washington, Jefferson, and even Lincoln. Today Mt. Rushmore was called a monument to white supremacy and colonization. This is the kind of stuff that happens whan garbage like the 1619 Project is praised and even wins a Pulitzer. If you are unfamiliar with it, look it up. The basic premise is every action and reaction of the nation's story centers on slavery and nothing more.
What is right is seen as wrong and wrong, right. Will the pendulum swing back? Not sure. Hopefully. It sure is a brave new world though.
