Travis Rowley: Statues of Limitation

“The issue is never the issue. The issue is always the revolution.”

Okay, so now what?

Actually, allow me to expound on that. Let me not be as coy and cryptic as the phrase “black lives matter.”

Across the country, historic monuments are under assault. Many have been defaced and/or barbarically overthrown. Others are being removed before the progressive mob can reach them. Let’s even imagine for a moment the utter success of this campaign, a scenario in which every stone image deemed offensive has been eradicated by the Left’s history-hiding purge. Poof. Gone. All of them.

Okay, so now what?

Even the most dimwitted Democratic activist is capable of realizing the limits of the mere removal of every sculpture that happens to ruffle progressive feathers.

Or is he? After all, radicals have earned their reputation as people who value only destruction, but then lack the competence to refurbish the wreckage. The recent push to “abolish the police” is proof enough of that.

In what seems to be an effort to have the campus safe space engulf the entire country, we are experiencing a moment of mass “symbolism over substance” that clearly won’t accomplish the stated goals of Black Lives Matter and their political allies.  The absence of patriotic totems just won’t manage to exile “white privilege” to the ash heap of history.

If they haven’t done so already, I’m certain that progressives will defend their thuggery in the same way they always do after disregarding the norms of the democratic process — that is, simply by invoking the importance of “raising the consciousness” of others. You know, by pouring red paint all over statues of Christopher Columbus and other such spectacles.

The more “woke” people, the better. And the ends justify the means. The Left has taken us here before.

Of course, if progressives were truly serious about awakening the public, then they would be better off allowing statues to stand and establishing annual class field trips and monument tours that would afford them the opportunity to castigate these horrendous figures for years to come. With the monuments banished, however, this is no longer possible. So, you know, points awarded to the “erasing history isn’t the answer” crowd.

So, again, now what?

It’s hardly out of line to be curious over the odd amount of energy dedicated to something that clearly doesn’t solve anything. As BET founder Robert Johnson said about the removal of statues, “It’s not going to give a kid whose parents can’t afford college money to go to college. It’s not going to close the labor gap between what white workers are paid and what black workers are paid. And it’s not going to take people off welfare or food stamps.”

I’ll go out on a limb and assume Johnson would also agree that a memorial-free country will do nothing to solve the problem of fatherlessness, failing school systems, and embarrassingly high rates of violent crime.

“Frankly, black people don’t give a damn,” Johnson continued. “It absolutely means nothing.”

Exactly.

And as inappropriate as they might be, it has always been laughable to suggest that minorities become emotionally crippled at the sight of certain cultural tributes. But that hasn’t stopped disingenuous Democrats from acting as if the n-word is blared from Confederate statues every time a dark-skinned individual walks past them.

Like some sort of squeeze toy. Like some sort of last laugh orchestrated by John Calhoun.

This type of scandalous race-hustle is currently occurring in Rhode Island in the form of a controversy involving the removal of the word “plantations” from the State’s official name: The State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations. Despite their own acknowledgement that the state’s full name is widely unknown and rarely utilized, two Providence Democrats sponsoring the proposal publicly insist that the word “plantations” is still somehow “hurtful” to black Americans.

No. It isn’t. Because nobody ever says it.

If Senator Harold Metts and Rep. Joseph Almeida were truly concerned with black people experiencing emotional trauma, they would simply stop raising the issue.

Ransacking monuments and historic vocabulary is a sinister leftist antic. It aims to infantilize minorities by instructing them to obsess over race and embrace a crippling sense of victimhood. Its nefarious purpose is to pit Americans against one another, creating for leftist politicians the opportunity to portray any resistance as evidence of lingering white supremacy — and then convince blacks that politicians like Almeida and Metts are still fighting on their behalf.

This is what Chairman of the National Black Republican Association Frances Rice was driving at when he once explained exactly how Democrats have managed to “[run] our inner-cities [for decades],” failed miserably to improve living conditions, but are still somehow able to “incite blacks to cast a protest vote against Republicans [every election cycle].”

The Radical Ethic

“The issue is never the issue. The issue is always the revolution,” as one member of the SDS (Students for a Democratic Society) once proclaimed before that 1960s organization morphed into the domestic terrorist outfit known as the Weather Underground.

The modern Democratic Party now lives out this radical instruction, politicizing everything from hot summers to hurricanes — to lifeless stone. And people are correct to suspect that America’s current conflagration has nothing to do with offensive imagery.

Black Lives Matter, a radical anti-Christian organization that aims to “disrupt the Western-prescribed nuclear family structure,” boasts a co-founder named Patrisse Cullors, who admits to “[having] an ideological frame. Myself and [BLM co-founder Alicia Garza] in particular are trained organizers. We are trained Marxists.”

Cullors just happens to be an activist protégé of Eric Mann, a former 1960s radical and member of SDS.

The anti-liberty agenda undergirding the smashing of statues has not been difficult to decode. Once monuments of abolitionists, Abraham Lincoln, Catholic saints, and slaves themselves began to tumble — and once the American, not Confederate, flag began to burn at BLM rallies — we could confirm with certainty that the culprits are the same revolutionary agitators who have become so adept at meshing with American liberals and that we are witnessing the frightening culmination of what has been happening inside our educational institutions for decades. That is, millions of American citizens taught to interpret everything through a narrow racial lens, embrace Western shame, sympathize with fraudulent radicals, and replace thought with intimidation and political theater.

It has already been 33 years since Jesse Jackson and 500 other protesters marched on Stanford University to declare, “Hey, Hey! Ho, Ho! Western Civ has got to go!” Just last week, John Jay College Professor of Criminal Justice Erin Thompson instructed today’s monument topplers to “use chain instead of rope and it’ll go faster.”

The academy is probably lost forever.

We have now had several decades to decrypt the neo-Marxist sleight of hand and the Left’s manipulation of minority communities — the simple substitution of racial identity in place of economic class, and the slip from racist policing to motions of anti-capitalism.

One only needs to follow the Twitter handle @ProudSocialist to witness the celebration of BLM’s “movement to end the era of police brutality and white supremacist capitalism and begin the era of racial and economic justice in America.”

See what the “Proud Socialist” did there? You’ll always find “economic justice” one step behind “racial justice” because, after all, according to progressives, “race and class are connected.”

One CHOP activist recently challenged a crowd of fellow Seattle occupiers to “give ten dollars to one African-American person from this autonomous zone.” Suspecting that some might find this “difficult” to do, he found it crucial to explain what the BLM movement is truly all about:  “If you find this hard for you to give ten dollars to people of color, to black people especially … in the future are you gonna actually give up power and land and capital when you have it?”

Or, more simplified, as black Congresswoman Ayanna Pressley (D) demanded last week from the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives:  “Pay us what you owe us!”

The toppling of statues won’t complete the neo-communist objectives, the radical restructuring of American life. But it’s not without purpose. And this is only the beginning.

 

Travis Rowley is a former Tea Party / Republican activist and GoLocalProv MINDSETTER.

Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in The Ocean State Current, including text, graphics, images, and information are solely those of the authors. They do not purport to reflect the views and opinions of The Current, the RI Center for Freedom & Prosperity, or its members or staff. The Current cannot be held responsible for information posted or provided by third-party sources. Readers are encouraged to fact check any information on this web site with other sources.

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