• arc@lemm.ee
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    6 months ago

    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.

    • elbucho@lemmy.world
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      6 months ago

      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 bitch propaganda like what you described.

      • Raz@lemm.ee
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        6 months ago

        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.

        • petrol_sniff_king@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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          6 months ago

          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?

        • arc@lemm.ee
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          6 months ago

          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.

        • elbucho@lemmy.world
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          6 months ago

          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.

      • arc@lemm.ee
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        6 months ago

        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.

        • elbucho@lemmy.world
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          6 months ago

          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.

          • mob@lemmy.world
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            6 months ago

            Seems like the your depth of knowledge and critical thinking applied is purely based off a long history of reading internet comments

            • elbucho@lemmy.world
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              6 months ago

              I’m not sure where you’re getting that from. Care to share some of the insight that led to that conclusion, professor?

        • orrk@lemmy.world
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          6 months ago

          damn, you’d cry for the nazi camp guards as well, by that logic

          • arc@lemm.ee
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            6 months ago

            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.

            • orrk@lemmy.world
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              6 months ago

              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.

              • arc@lemm.ee
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                6 months ago

                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.

                • orrk@lemmy.world
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                  6 months ago

                  so what? a dead Nazi is not bad? a dead slaver is not absolved of his sins? and how far does that “you personally don’t know” go? hell, I don’t know most neo-Nazis, I can still punch them.

      • mob@lemmy.world
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        6 months ago

        Death might not be unique, but people’s lives are. Their lives were taken from them. That was the price they paid

        • elbucho@lemmy.world
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          6 months ago

          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.

          • mob@lemmy.world
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            6 months ago

            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

            • elbucho@lemmy.world
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              6 months ago

              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.

              • mob@lemmy.world
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                6 months ago

                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.

                • elbucho@lemmy.world
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                  6 months ago

                  You go directly to an single point to vindicate a strong general stance.

                  “A single point”? My dude… fighting and dying in the cause of more slavery is one hell of a point. And what I’m wondering is why do you keep attempting to minimize that? Like it’s some trifle, like: “Oh, those crazy southerners! They had this weird fashion choice at the time where they tortured and raped people and forced them to work for no pay. So quirky!”

                  But we all deserve our graves pissed on then

                  Are you telling me that you own slaves? 'Cause if you own slaves, then yes. I hope that when you die, an entire conga line of people take turns pissing on your grave.

                  Oh, you don’t own slaves? Then what in the blue fuck are you trying unsuccessfully to say?

                  • mob@lemmy.world
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                    6 months ago

                    That people under the age who were required to serve in a war under the penalty of death arent all evil, and have often been documented to purposely not actually fight.

                    But celebrate pissing on them kids grave. It’ll happen to all of us anyway.

          • mob@lemmy.world
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            6 months ago

            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.