Congress Voted Overwhelmingly To Remove Confederate Statues From The Capitol

Yesterday the House passed H.R.7573 which directs "the Architect of the U.S. Capitol to replace the bust of Roger Brooke Taney with a bust of Thurgood Marshall, to remove certain statues from areas of the Capitol which are accessible to the public, to remove all statues of individuals who voluntarily served Confederate States of America displayed in Capitol. The vote was 305-113, every Democrat, as well as 72 Republicans (+ independent Justin Amash) voting in favor. 113 Republicans voted against the resolution including:

Earl Carter (GA)
Doug LaMalfa (CA)
Alex Mooney (WV)
Jason Smith (MO)
Roger Williams (TX)
Ted Yoho (FL)

The Republican House leadership was split, with McCarthy and Scalise voting for the bill and Liz Cheney voting with the racists against it. The bill would cause the removal of 11 Confederate statues which have been publicly displayed and turning loyal Americans' stomachs since the Jim Crow era. Each was contributed by a Southern state. Arkansas has decided to replace its two statues of Confederate traitors with statues of Johnny Cash and civil rights activist Daisy Gatson Bates. Florida is taking back its statue of Edmund Kirby Smith, a Confederate general, and contributing one of civil rights activist Mary McLeod Bethune. Each state gets to contribute two statues for display in the Capitol.
In case you forgot who Taney was, he's the asshole Chief Justice the Supreme Court (1836-1864, when he died at 87, completely senile). He's best known for the Dred Scott decision, which he wrote and which says that blacks could not be considered citizens and that Congress could not prohibit slavery in American territories. He was pro-Confederacy but did all he could to sabotage Lincoln instead of resigning from the Court. The Dred Scott ruling is widely considered to be one of the worst-- if not the worst-- Supreme Court decisions ever made and Taney is considered the worst supreme Court Chief Justice in history. He wrote that blacks-- free or slaves-- had always been "regarded as beings of an inferior order, altogether unfit to associate with the white race... and so far inferior, that they had no rights which the white man was bound to respect."

According to The Hill, "The House has taken additional legislative actions this week to eliminate Confederate imagery. Earlier this week, the House passed its version of the annual defense policy bill with a provision to require renaming military bases honoring Confederate officers. And starting Thursday, the House is slated to take up a government spending package with measures to order the National Park Service to remove “all physical Confederate commemorative works” within 180 days and prohibit using taxpayer funds for construction projects on military installations named after Confederate officers unless they are being changed. House Democrats are further planning to unveil voting rights legislation later this week in honor of Lewis. It’s expected to build upon a bill that Democrats passed in December to restore a provision in the Voting Rights Act of 1965 that established a process for states with histories of voter suppression to obtain federal clearance before making changes to election laws."

None of this will pass the Senate until McConnell is either dead or deposed and until Trump is driven out of the White House (or dead).

Progressive Democrat Julie Oliver, running to replace racist Republican Roger Williams in central Texas, told us-- after Williams' vote against removing the Confederate statues-- that "We should hold no place of honor for those who who were in open revolt to the United States of America in defense of slavery and white supremacy. From slavery to Jim Crow, redlining, the War on Drugs, criminalization of poverty, mass incarceration-- racism is this country's original sin. We can't stop fighting for an America based on the principles of racial, economic, and environmental justice. In this moment of national pain, following the deaths of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and too many others, when thousands of Texans have risked their lives to get in the streets and speak out against racial injustice and institutional racism, Rep. Williams’ vote to enshrine those who glorified racialized chattel slavery is out of step with the majority of Americans, the people in this district and, yet again, puts him on the wrong side of history. Texas deserves so much better."

We spoke with two more progressive Democrats running strong popular races in the South, Lisa Ring (coastal Georgia) and Adam Christensen (north central Florida). Both of the Trumpist incumbents, respectively Buddy Carter and Ted Yoho, voted against removing the Confederate statues. Lisa: "Should we really be surprised that 1st Congressional District Representative, Buddy Carter of Georgia voted against removing statues of Confederates and defenders of white supremacy from the U.S. Capitol? Since 2017, I have been vying for his seat because he refuses to represent the people of Coastal Georgia and has no problem saying so. From telling his constituents that he didn’t care what they wanted when they begged him not to take away their healthcare at one of his last in-person town halls, to being the only legislator in Georgia ready to drill for oil off the Georgia coast, Carter consistently chooses corporate interests that line his pockets, or aligning with the current administration to advance his career rather than listening to the will of the people. Of course Carter remains out of touch with our changing times and the collective will of the American people as he supports 'states’ rights' and a heritage of oppression. I would expect nothing more of him."

Adam Christensen is up for the seat Yoho is abandoning and told us this morning that "Yoho’s vote today is just one of the many times that he has been on the wrong side of history. He has previously has-- disagreed with the reauthorization of violence against women act in 2018 and again in 2019-- he does not want the equal right amendment or the survivor bill of rights to pass. He was 1 of only 2 people to vote against the Emit Till Anti-Lynching bill, and has repeatedly stated that the Civil Rights Act is unconstitutional. Yoho does not represent my community or the people who live here in north central Florida. He is a political hack and he will not be missed when he retires in November. What we are focused on now is dismantling his legacy and the political infrastructure he built here. Because if his donors and backing just puts up another person with his ideology then nothing has fundamentally changed with his retirement."

My Jewish Trumpist Friend Is Offended By Mobs Tearing Down Statues Of Notorious Racists

My old friend-- let's call him "Mordecai X"-- a Floridian Trump parrot, says he's not a racist because:

1- he has a black cousin he likes and
2- he donated $70 (it was supposed to be $35 but he couldn't navigate ActBlue efficiently) to Mondaire Jones, who is black and gay.

Yesterday he shared this: "My grandmother was very very progressive artist socialite and actually gave way more love to her black grandchildren then to us white ones. I think she thought they needed it more." see? Not a racist bone in his body.

Like Señor Trumpanzee, X freaks out daily when he reads about a statue being defaced, let alone torn down. It offends him no end and considers it left-wing censorship and insists "they're" banning books and plays as well, something I assume he gets from Reddit or 4chan, which is where he gets his news.

But X, who is Jewish, is also a rabid Zionist and Judeo-nationalist. I don't want to further stoke his statue-mania with another discussion of the topic but I nearly sent him the Aiden Pink story in The Forward yesterday: 8 American Monuments Celebrating Anti-Semites. I wonder if X would take part in tearing them down-- or perhaps just approve if it were to happen. "In the weeks since protests against racism began after the killing of George Floyd," wrote Pink, "activists around the world have been toppling statues, either by pressuring public officials or by tearing the monuments down themselves. Activists have naturally focused on memorials to Confederate leaders or others who enacted racist policies, and associate monuments to anti-Semites with Europe, where they are common."

We don't have to look to the cheesy statue of King Edward I in Burgh-le-Marsh, England, standing in memory (since 2007, when it was erected) of the 700th anniversary of his death. Edward, if you're not up on your history of notorious anti-Semites, issued the 1290 Edict of Expulsion, expelling Jews from England. But here in the U.S. we also have memorials to rabid anti-Semites.

General George Patton's diaries, posthumously published in 1996, "reveal," wrote Pink, "that his opinion of the Jewish prisoners he encountered was scarcely different than the Nazis he had just defeated. He described the Jewish displaced persons as 'locusts,' 'lower than animals,' 'lost to all decency,' and 'a subhuman species without any of the cultural or social refinements of our times.' A monument to Patton was unveiled at the United States Military Academy in West Point, N.Y. in 1950, and then rededicated in 2009-- 13 years after his diary was published."

Who knew? But one we all did know about was Nazi-sympathizer Henry Ford... who did more than write in his secret diary. He was the owner and publisher of the Nazi propaganda newspaper, the Dearborn Independent, which were distributed in Ford auto dealerships nationwide. "The Independent," Pink reminds us, "frequently published screeds and conspiracy theories against Jews, including several under Ford’s own name, as well as copies of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a notorious anti-Semitic forgery. Ford was also frequently praised by Nazi leadership, which gave him a medal in 1938. Today, a statue of Ford is present at the Henry Ford Centennial Library in Dearborn, Mich. Another statue of him is found on the property of The Henry Ford, a history and science museum he founded."

You didn't have to watch The Plot Against America to know that Charles Lindbergh was a Jew-hating Nazi stooge. He was, after all the spokesperson for the MAGA-organization of his day, the America First Committee. "Lindbergh publicly claimed Jews were pushing the United States needlessly into World War II," wrote Pink. "He also was a close friend of Henry Ford, who said in 1940, 'When Charles comes out here, we only talk about the Jews.' Today, a statue of Lindbergh, depicting him both as a child and an adult, is found on the lawn of the state capitol complex in St. Paul, Minn., his home state. A bust of his face also graces the Lindbergh Terminal of Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport."

Going back a little further, there is Peter Stuyvesant, the last Dutch governor of New Amsterdam before it was taken over by the British and renamed New York. Pink reminded his readers that "Stuyvesant initially refused to allow Jews to settle permanently in New Amsterdam, and while he later changed his mind, he made them pay a special tax. He also referred to Jews as 'the deceitful race, such hateful enemies and blasphemers of the name of Christ.' Today, several New York City locations are named after him, including the Bed-Stuy neighborhood and Stuyvesant High School. Statues of him can be found at Stuyvesant Square in Manhattan’s Lower East Side and Bergen Square in Jersey City, N.J. An Israeli legal advocacy group in 2017 called on New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio to remove the Stuyvesant Square statue, saying that the former governor was an 'extreme racist.'"

And what about Jew-hating fanatic Martin Luther whose virulent and deranged anti-Semitism influenced Europe for centuries. And although "the official Protestant organizations of Germany and Norway officially condemned Luther’s anti-Semitism in 2015, owing to his historical and theological significance, statues of Luther are still present at Protestant universities and seminaries across the United States. But there is one monument to him sitting on public lands: an 18-foot-tall statue in Baltimore administered by the city’s department of parks and recreation. The statue was erected in 1936 and had a rededication ceremony in 2011."

Last week, when his statue was pulled down in San Francisco, many of us learned that President Ulysses S. Grant, hero of the Civil War, once owned a slave. But did you know that as a conquering hero he expelled all Jews from Tennessee? The largest equestrian monument in the United States is a memorial to Grant in the nation's capital and isn't his visage on the $50 bill a monument to his memory we're all carrying around in our pockets from time to time?

And then there's notorious Kansas Jew-hater, Dorothy from The Wizard of Oz. Actually, populist and suffragette Mary Elizabeth Lease-- upon who Dorothy was based-- has a statue standing in Wichita. While campaigning for women's and farmers' rights she was a crusader against the banksters, but "often veered into anti-Semitic conspiracy theories," wrote Pink. "People who were forced to take out bank loans were 'paying tribute to the Rothschilds of England, who are but the agent of the Jews,' claimed Lease."

A statue of former Georgia Senator Thomas Watson used to stand on the steps of the Georgia state capitol until it was moved to the park across the street in 2013. "Watson," wrote Pink, "was a Georgia congressman and newspaper publisher who served as a vice-presidential nominee for William Jennings Bryan’s Populist Party in 1896. During the 1913 trial of Leo Frank, a Jewish man falsely accused of murdering a 13-year-old Christian girl, Watson’s paper whipped up anti-Semitic sentiment. After Frank was convicted and his sentence was commuted, Watson advocated for Frank to be lynched, which he eventually was. Watson was elected to the Senate in 1922 but died in office a year later. In addition to his anti-Semitism, Watson was also a white supremacist and anti-Catholic."

Just sayin'. But GovExec.com also noted yesterday that it isn't just military bases named for disgraced figures but that civilian federal buildings are also named after confederates, KKK members and segregationists. Eric Katz wrote that "In recent weeks as protesters nationwide have demanded new steps to promote racial justice, pressure has mounted for the U.S. military to rename its bases that honor Confederate leaders and for local governments to remove monuments. A review of civilian federal buildings shows a number of offices and federal courthouses named after Americans with racist histories as well... Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-VA), who oversees GSA and federal buildings as chairman of the House Oversight and Reform Committee’s panel on Government Operations, called for a change. 'The federal government must be a beacon of inclusivity,' Connolly said. 'Having federal buildings named after Confederate generals and members of the KKK is shameful and they must be renamed.'"

Here are a few from Katz's list of buildings named for notorious racists:

• John A. Campbell U.S. Courthouse; Mobile, Ala.: Campbell resigned from the U.S. Supreme Court at the outbreak of the Civil War to accept a role as Confederate assistant secretary of war. After the war, Campbell fought as an attorney against reconstruction in the South.

• Clifford Davis - Odell Horton Federal Building; Memphis, Tenn.: Davis served as a Democratic congressman in Tennessee for 25 years. He first rose to political power with the support of the Ku Klux Klan, a group in which he was actively a member. Davis went on to become a signatory to the Southern Manifesto in 1956, a resolution introduced in Congress to decry Brown v. Board of Education’s mandate that states end segregation in schools.

• William M. Colmer Federal Building and U.S. Courthouse; Hattiesburg, Miss.: Colmer, a Democratic congressman, helped spearhead what became the Southern Manifesto, a document that implored southerners to use all "lawful means" to resist the "chaos and confusion" that school integration would cause. It was signed by 82 House members and 19 senators. He fought “tooth and nail” to block the passage of the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act in the 1960s, according to the New York Times. Of early court rulings against segregation, Colmer lamented there would be "an even increasing intermingling of negroes and whites in public places." Colmer went on to author a second manifesto in Congress that warned of “grave” dangers of federal legislation protecting civil rights.

• Thomas G. Abernethy Federal Building; Aberdeen, Miss.: Abernethy also signed the Southern Manifesto, as well as a letter to the administrator of Veterans Affairs in 1957 requesting VA segregate its medical facilities. A Democratic House member for 30 years, Abernethy left a significant trail of racist speeches and writings. In one such address on the House floor, Abernethy said, “There can be no dispute that a negro problem does exist in our country; that it exists in each and every section where negroes have collected in number; and that the problem is in proportion to the number in each area or city,” adding that, “for nearly 200 years we have lived in peace with our Black brethren of the South.” He went on to say God supported segregation. “Had he intended us to all be alike-- an amalgamated, mulattoed mixture of man-- surely he would have so created us.” Abernethy suggested the push for civil rights was part of a Zionist and communist conspiracy.

• Strom Thurmond Federal Building and U.S. Courthouse; Columbia, S.C.: Thurmond served in the Senate for 48 years and was one of the leading voices against desegregation and civil rights. He ran for president as a Dixiecrat in 1948 on a pro-segregation platform and vehemently opposed all civil rights legislation, launching the longest-ever speaking filibuster in an attempt to defeat the 1957 Civil Rights Act. When running for president, Thurmond said at one event, “There’s not enough troops in the Army to force the Southern people to break down segregation and admit the Nigra race into our theaters, into our swimming pools, into our homes, and into our churches.” While he served in the Senate through 2000, he never publicly renounced his segregationist views.

• J.L. McMillan Federal Building and Courthouse; Florence, S.C.: McMillan served in the House for more than 30 years. He spent two decades as head of the District of Columbia Committee, and “made little attempt to hide his contempt for the capital’s African-American majority,” according to John Lawrence, a long-time congressional staffer and author of "The Class of '74: Congress after Watergate and the Roots of Partisanship." When Washington’s black mayor sent the district’s first budget to Congress as it pushed for autonomous rule, McMillan responded by sending a truckload of watermelons to the mayor. McMillan was a signatory to the Southern Manifesto.

• Richard B. Russell Federal Building; Atlanta, Ga.: Russell, a senator for nearly 40 years, co-authored the Southern Manifesto. He led a boycott of the 1964 Democratic convention after President Johnson signed the 1964 Civil Rights Act, calling the landmark legislation, “shortsighted and disastrous.” Gilbert Fite, a historian who wrote a biography of Russell, said, “White supremacy and racial segregation were to him cardinal principles for good and workable human relationships. He had a deep emotional commitment to preserving the kind of South in which his ancestors had lived. No sacrifice was too great for him to make if it would prevent the extension of full equality to blacks.” One of the Senate office buildings next to the Capitol Building is also named after Russell.

Morty did have a good point, though: who decides? Also, where do you draw the line? I'm all for renaming bases and removing statues of Robert E. Lee and other traitors to the country, but, at the same time, toppling a statue of George Washington offends me. But who exactly should be the judge of the balance of history? Yesterday I got a press release entitled "Teddy Roosevelt supporter to offer to spend $1 million to save statue at American Museum of Natural History." Frank Scurlock, public masturbator, founder of Scurlock Entertainment Global, Positive Sky and Air World Enterprises, and the owner of Space Walk Inc, a company specializing in bounce houses, ran for mayor of New Orleans in 2017 and came in 9th in the crowded field, garnering 385 votes (0.47%). He has now "announced a rally to save the statue and has offered $1 million to purchase the statue if it was to be taken down. Scurlock announced a rally of local residents this week. Scurlock says taking down this iconic monument defames the legacy of Teddy Roosevelt and believes that the history of our first environmentalist president should be preserved for future generations to learn from. Scurlock has been a controversial figure in fighting for statues that memorialize history and was arrested attempting to preserve the Jefferson Monument in New Orleans."

How Long Would A Statue Of Trump Last?

Sometimes, when a new dynasty began in ancient Egypt, the new Pharaoh would have his predecessor's name chiseled off statues and Temple wall carvings. More recently, when authoritarian governments fall, either revolutionaries have pulled down the statues of tyrants or incoming governments did it. It's an anomaly of history not just that rebel leaders' statues have remained standing in the U.S. after the fall of the Confederacy but that they were erected after the fall of the Confederacy! Earlier this week, Architectural Review published an essay by Darrian Anderson, Monuments to men: ego and stature solidified in stone. "Immense statues commemorating the power and hubris of tyrants," he wrote, "cultivate the idea that masculinity equates to the undisputed singular rule of an autocrat. From the Colossi of Memnon to the long-vanished Colossus of Nero, rulers have long envisaged themselves as demi-gods and articulated this in sculpture and architecture. The intention is primarily one of extending power; to tower over space and time. The larger, or the more insecure, the ego, the larger the monument. In overtly patriarchal societies these tend to express the clichés of hyper-masculinity-- muscular figures bestriding the earth as their dominion-- often referring to actual leaders, however exaggerated their physiognomy. One of the reasons these hyper-masculine structures have appealed is that there is a certain charismatic attraction to monumental displays of strength... With awe, there is always a hint of fear. 

In the early Soviet Union, there was, initially, genuine revolutionary optimism. Tsarist monuments were removed and replaced with monuments to emancipatory figures. One of the first monuments built by the Bolsheviks was ominously to the French revolutionary Robespierre; the architect of the Reign of Terror. The monument fell to pieces within days. By the time the Soviets’ own Great Terror was unfolding, work was under way to build the world’s tallest building, the Palace of the Soviets. Turning down Modernist entries from the likes of Le Corbusier, Mendelsohn and Gropius, the Stalin-directed jury had chosen a Boris Iofan-led design for a huge Neoclassical skyscraper with a towering ‘Free Proletarian’ figure, soon to be replaced instead by Stalin’s predecessor and legitimiser of his cult of personality, Lenin. The skyscraper remained unbuilt, with its materials being used in the war effort against their Nazi enemies, whose own muscular monumental figures mirrored theirs-- Stakhanovite ‘Worker and Kolkhoz Woman’ by Vera Mukhina having faced off against Josef Thorak’s Aryan Übermenschen at the 1937 World’s Fair in Paris.

...Putin lambasts the West as ‘genderless and infertile’ while simultaneously showing off his virility as the pinnacle of the Russian concept of muzhik (a difficult-to-translate term that loosely equates to a macho alpha male figure) in absurd choreographed stunts. He does so for the same reason that he endorses monuments to earlier potentates, and that he supports rebuilding demolished Tsarist cathedrals; to show Russia as the last bastion of civilisation compared with the collapsing decadent West, and to position himself, especially in times of wavering popularity or economic stagnation, as the father of the people, wedded to Mother Russia, in whose hands the country will never again be humiliated. In doing so, he is virtue signalling to his base. Putin realises that controlling views of the past is a consolidation of power in the present, and a way of laying claim to the future.

The ultimate downfall of monuments lies within the impulse to build them-- the fear of mortality. Every tyrant’s monument is a declaration not just of power but hubris and vulnerability. One of the first targets when regimes topple are the monuments.

Might it be best then to abandon the idea of creating these giants, given it has legitimised the rule of tyrants for so long, perpetuating views that masculinity equates to the unquestioned singular rule of an autocrat? There are certainly other approaches. The abstract spomeniks of former Yugoslavia are haunting and idiosyncratic ways of memorialising, appearing alien and inviting further inquiry. Another way of avoiding egocentrism is to use the symbolism of animals, from the oxen of the Sardarapat Memorial to the mythical Kelpies of Falkirk. It is worth noting, however, that there are innumerable other aspects and approaches to life than power and politics, however crucially they matter.

Other monuments are possible, just as other masculinities exist beyond the conqueror or the tyrant: for instance, in those who have the strength and integrity to be kind, empathetic and to stand against injustice. These can be articulated in creative, complex, moving and subversive ways. The key is to construct monuments that encourage questions rather than impose singular answers.

In the city of Budapest there is a poignant example in the statue of Imre Nagy, the communist leader who was executed for defying Moscow in favour of the Hungarian rebels of 1956. Until recently, his ghostlike statue stood gazing towards the parliament; not a saint or a god or a giant but something greater; a flawed man who had turned against tyranny. That he continues to trouble the conscience is tacitly confirmed by the fact that the statue was moved on the orders of the right-wing prime minister Viktor Orbán. The real monuments to the human spirit, troubled and troubling, are the ones that authoritarians of all variations wish to hide.

They All Fall Down is a short essay Kelly Faircloth penned for Jezebel yesterday. "All over America-- and increasingly, across the world-- statues are falling to the ground," she write. "They’re being pushed or pulled by coordinated teams of protesters or, if the project is too big for anything less than a professional crane crew, covered in vivid, colorful graffiti. It began with Confederate monuments and moved to Bristol, England where a group of protesters threw a statue of slave trader Edward Colston into the nearby river. Statues of Christopher Columbus, King Leopold II, and Oliver Cromwell are all under a new spotlight. But any king could tell you: These statues were never about history. They were political statements-- assertions of control and legitimacy-- and there’s absolutely nothing new about their politically-charged toppling, either. In any revolution, one of the first orders of business is to send images of the powerful careening to the ground."

Statuary has long been central to the consolidation of state power. Over the course of his four-decade reign, the Roman emperor Augustus frequently asserted his legitimacy through coins and building projects like the Ara Pacis, “The Altar of Augustan Peace,” essentially a large announcement rendered in marble that Augustus had finally put a stop to all Rome’s many wars at home and farther afield. But he used statues, too, to assert himself as the rightful emperor of Rome at a time when the empire was still adjusting to the idea of being ruled by an emperor at all.

His successors followed in his steps; a heroic equestrian statue of emperor Marcus Aurelius has been particularly influential in the centuries since, inspiring an entire tradition of civic statuary. It survived the Middle Ages and continued on public display in Rome because, as Allison C. Meier explained at JSTOR, the Catholic Church thought it was supposed to be Constantine. Hence it provided a prominent model as the Renaissance gathered steam. Donatello’s Gattamelata, which was commissioned by the Republic of Venice to celebrate an important military leader, would be particularly influential, and over time, equestrian sculpture became a genre unto itself, a go-to for representing overpowering military might, used by European kings for centuries, towering over those walking by.

...America embarked upon a similar program, rebuilding the national mythology after the Civil War-- there’s a triumphal equestrian statue of William T. Sherman outside Central Park. And, of course, the former Confederate states were busily asserting the legitimacy of the Jim Crow system when they put Confederate memorials large and small across the landscape. Richmond’s Robert E. Lee statue, too, is directly in the tradition of the Marcus Aurelius statue, asserting not just legitimacy but the power to crush anybody who dissents against that authority.

And, so, one of the first orders of business in revolutions throughout history has been attacking the statues that upheld the previous regime. Ritual destruction stands in a long tradition that also dates back to the Romans, a practice known as damnatio memoirae. The revolutionaries of the 18th century targeted symbolically weighty statues. In Paris, they made a point of attacking the Basilica at St. Denis, the burial place of centuries of French kings, and damaging their tombs-- which Napoleon Bonaparte later ordered restored, as he restored elements of the monarchy. In 1776, fired up after a reading of the newly signed Declaration of Independence, New Yorkers pulled down a large statue of George III at Bowling Green-- which was, incidentally, based on the statue of Marcus Aurelius. For decades, Irish republicans wanted to topple the pillar to English naval hero Horatio Nelson in the center of Dublin, but despite multiple attempts, it wasn’t until 1966 that somebody managed to blow the thing up.

Defaced and toppled statues are a defining image of the late 20th century and its geopolitical sea changes. The U.S.S.R. and its satellite states were famous for their giant tributes to Lenin and Stalin; those were scattered as the regime fell. But the destruction isn’t always a straightforward moment, either: A defining image of the Iraq War was the removal of the statue of Saddam Hussain, seized upon by the media and George W. Bush’s administration and held up as an example that American troops were, indeed, being greeted as liberators. But it was only the beginning of a long quagmire, rather than a confirmation that the mission had indeed been accomplished. That’s not surprising considering that the toppling was stage-managed by the U.S. Army, and there’s a world of difference between a crowd of protestors spontaneously targeting a monument and an occupying military doing so.

U.S. occupiers tear down Saddam Hussein statue in Baghdad

As protests have swelled globally, statues of kings are looking newly vulnerable. Across Belgium, statues of Leopold II, who was responsible for atrocities in the Congo at the dawn of the 20th century-- and also Queen Vicroria’s first cousin by marriage-- have become the focus of intense protests; one was set on fire, and another covered in red paint. The longer this goes on, it may even prompt new scrutiny into the connections between the Crown and Britain’s role in slavery. For instance, officials in Glasgow suspect a statue of the Dutch-born William of Orange could become a target-- since, as William III of Great Britain, he benefitted personally from the slave trade and helped increase access to the business, which enriched Glasgow. The anti-monarchical group Republic has petitioned London mayor Sadiq Khan about the statutes to such figures as William IV, who argued against the abolition of the slave trade before he took the throne.

Capetown bids adieu to Cecil Rhodes

And yet, the Windsors have been very, very silent in the face of the uproar, even as Meghan Markle delivered a speech supporting Black Lives Matter and she and Harry reportedly plan to get more publicly involved, which likely would have been impossible before they left the royal fold. “Had Meghan and Harry still been in the U.K. and working members of the royal family that speech couldn’t have happened,” former palace aide Dickie Arbiter told Newsweek. “It’s highly politicized because of the very nature of what it is. It is a social issue for the United States and it is not for a head of state to voice an opinion, whether the queen or the president of France or whoever.”

But of course, it’s not merely an American social issue-- slavery is deeply intertwined with the history of the United Kingdom, its elite, and its royal family. Nor is that limited to Great Britain-- colonial occupation, bound up in racial oppression, has been central to the project of European monarchy, though the Brits are among the last royals standing. And while Prince Charles called the slave trade an “atrocity” on a 2018 royal visit to Ghana, acknowledging Britain’s role in the business, they’re a long way from fully owning up to the history. The Windsors essentially serve publicly as living civic statues; thus far, they’ve always triumphed through their ability to morph what precisely they stand for. But staying on their plinth will require more delicate balancing than ever.

There will never be a postage stamp with Trump's ugly visage on it, let alone a statue of him in the U.S.-- and his much ballyhooed grand monument to himself  a southern border wall, will never be built. The most powerful and lasting monument and historical contribution to Trumpanzee would be-- in a just world-- photos of him in school text books as the first American president to go to-- and die in-- prison.

Tipping Point by Nancy Ohanian