I'm not going to help you with what else happened in the era because you clearly don't care. If you actually do there is limitless information you can find on the subject on the device you're using right now. Sorry, not going to waste my time arguing about such an asinine assertion you could realize is wrong within spending 30 seconds on Google. If my lack of give a fuck makes you feel like a winner then give yourself a big ole pat on the back.
Can we name this "Kanye West Syndrome"? Where, as an artist or performer, I may have feelings one way or another, but when it comes to them as a person, they are universally the equivalent of a used tampon stuck to a gas station bathroom wall. They should change the name of the band to Lady Anal Leakage to match the quality of their music. So, SO much of the glorification of the Civil War took place in the early 1900's, coincidentally peaking with Klan membership in the millions in the 1920's, and largely ending with the Civil Rights era of the 1960's. Look at groups like "Daughters of the Confederacy" for how some of this shit got propagated. And yes, literally all of it was an effort to prevent black people from infiltrating certain white communities and keeping them disenfranchised. What better way to signal "don't move here, darkie" than a giant statue of Confederate generals placed downtown? Why else would war criminals and traitors be used as political symbols decades after their era? There are statues of these people in places like Ohio and Montana, where....y'know, either the Civil War didn't take place, or they fought for the fucking North. The Confederacy, in it's brief life, didn't have time or resources to dedicate to monument-building, and what few existed back then didn't have a great path to survival to today. Putting it in a different light, it would be like Vietnam erecting statues of Oliver fucking North. It's incredibly bizarre to canonize people and a movement that committed treason over slavery. To paraphrase a poignant tweet, "It's surreal to see Republicans describe themselves as the party of Lincoln, while defending members of the Confederacy." I grew up in rural South Carolina, and had this horseshit fed to me until I left. The mythology around Confederate icons is incredible, but it is mythology...from "gentleman Lee" (IRL, he was quite an asshole...imagine that) to Stonewall Jackson's lemons. There's a place in Virginia that has Goddamned dioramas of Confederate generals fighting DINOSAURS. None of this is based in reality any more. It's the dying gasps of a culture reaching for anything tangible to base their fantasies of superiority. FFS, the most popular symbol, the Confederate flag, was a barely-used naval flag that your average Johnny Reb wouldn't recognize, yet some people behave as if Jefferson Davis had it tattooed on his ass cheek as depicted on top of the General Lee. We have a plethora of incredible historical sites and museums honoring men and women from the Civil War on both sides. Put some of those statues on those grounds, and stop, utterly...immediately and completely STOP using false cries of "history" as justification for racist iconography. We don't recognize swastikas as Tibetan symbols any longer, and it's long over due to recognize the current usage of iconography of the rebellion as outdated racist trash that needs to go. It's one of the things that I truly despise about where I came from: not that it happened, but that it's used today, in my lifetime, literally a century later, to remind an entire swath of MY countrymen, that have fought and died in wars the world over, that have earned their place ten fold, how unwelcome they are. I am angry enough to piss blood that in 2020, when there's literally an electric car in space for the sheer fuck of it, this is where we are. God damn it.
First of all, ALL of the original states were founded and developed with the institution of slavery. In the feeble hope that you're sincere here... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antebellum_South Using the term "Antebellum" is inextricably tied to a culture, period, economic system and social structure that revolved around plantations, that relied heavily on slave labor. I think it's been venerated, canonized and almost fetishized by history. It's certainly romanticized. It's also a fairly brief period, from the late 1700's to 1861. Most of the pre-Civil War South wasn't predicated on slavery. It was predicated on subsistence farming, with few large enterprises. Slavery played a part in it, but the vast majority of slaves were indentured servants, often white immigrants, acting in a contractual term of servitude. The African slave trade took off in the 1600's and the American footprint was dwarfed by the Brazilian slave trade, among others. From what I've read, for most of the colonial period, the US was never the leading "slave destination" colony per capita (3.7% here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_the_United_States). The importation of slaves to the US was banned in 1807. The second US census was 1800, with a total population of about 5.3 million people, of which about 900k were slaves. The slave population peaked at 4 million just 60 years later (roughly)....out of 31 million people. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1860_United_States_Census. So, from 1800 to 1860, the percentage of slave population actually went down nationwide, but it was astronomical in places like South Carolina, where slaves were over half the total population in 1860. In the 60 years from 1800 to 1860, slavery grew dramatically in a few, concentrated areas. Slavery for the sake of slavery simply wasn't a thing...it served an economic purpose and it helped ensure enough labor to farm enough food to avoid starvation. I'm not defending it, it was still evil. However, for the average person living in South Carolina or Alabama in the 1800's, the prospect of having dozens of slaves was not only ridiculously distant (like being a billionaire NBA owner today), it was prohibitive: those were mouths to feed, and there is the law of diminishing returns in play. There was a merchant class and an upper class, and they had slaves in large numbers, but they were a rare minority (like billionaire NBA owners) with an out-sized impact on politics, culture and economics. In this period, there were many voting restrictions on white men that didn't own land (or didn't own enough land) and access to capital wasn't a thing...hell, the ability to write something on paper that would survive to today was limited to very few people. This skews our view of history. For most people, slavery was a rich landowner's game. The average American didn't own slaves in the early 1800's, and the majority of slave owners had less than 5. There really wasn't much point in having tons of slaves. All that changed when cotton became the economic driver of the region. Eli Whitney's patent of the cotton gin wasn't even granted until 1807. So the entire "plantation culture" grew within a generation or two. The average white farmer in SC or Georgia was still scraping that red clay without slaves all the way up to the first shots fired of the Civil War, but for a few people, they could take tremendous advantage of economic circumstances and become fabulously wealthy. And they did exactly that, retroactively justifying the horrors they committed in the process ("slavery was in the bible, after all, and if it were evil, it wouldn't be in God's book, now would it Eli?"). This era was incredibly, unbelievably unequal, where a tiny majority of plantation owners could own hundreds of slaves ("Of the estimated 46,200 plantations known to exist in 1860, 20,700 had 20 to 30 slaves and only 2,300 had a workforce of a hundred or more"). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plantation_complexes_in_the_Southern_United_States Again, the plantation lifestyle was a minority of the population, and the vast majority of the 46,200 plantations were only recognized as such because of enduring architecture. A tiny fraction fit the stereotype perpetuated in "Gone with the Wind". There was a period of about 60 years where the dominant economic activity of the region depended on slavery, analogous to how IT is the dominant economic activity of Silicon Valley today. So, what you're claiming is like saying "literally every soul in California works in IT": some do, and it's spawned billionaires, business models and it's own culture. However, it's inherently misleading to say it's "nothing but slavery".
I understand not wanting to destroy historical artifacts, whether it being the Mongols, Nazis or the Confederacy. But having statues of Confederate soldiers/generals/leaders on public property is laughably tasteless and un-American. I can’t imagine having to be black, grow up in the South and have constant reminders of slavery everywhere I go. It’s hard enough living around illiterate, racist rednecks. I grew up in Connecticut and some dipshit down the road from me had a Confederate flag plastered on the back of his truck. Moron.
I love the context but in popular culture the romanticism of the antebellum life was that of the NBA Owners. That lifestyle predicated on slavery and outright ignored with the Lost Cause narrative that gave rise to the romanticism we commonly know. If that shitty band wants to change their name they can do what ever they like. I even agree that the statues and stuff might be better placed in a museum or memorial park, put in proper context, that isn't such a prominent public space as they are now. My real beef so to say is the outright destruction of history. Tipping over and destroying them, vandalizing run amok they will fuck up anti slavery advocates statues because it is there and the people lived in the time. I also dont think it'll stop at Civil War figures, you've also seen them go after George Washington and Abraham Lincoln statues. While all of American history has the taint of slavery on it, and proper discussion as to these famous peoples' role in it, outright destruction and erasing history because the mob says so is not a path I want to go down.
We are down this path because of the refusal to consider that maybe having monuments to traitors and slave owners in prominent locations without any sort of context or real historical significance is a terrible idea. People finally get mad enough, they have had enough and they take matters into their own hands. Once you set the mob loose good luck controlling what happens. It's the exact same thing with the police brutality. Had the egregious murders by cops been addressed at any point with anything other a paid vacation or simply making then move to another city. (And this is in cases with clear video evidence) Address the issue before it boils over and you have some control over what gets hit. Let the rage boil over completely and good luck controlling anything. *edit to fix a doubled word
They're fairly common in Florida and in my experience most people sporting the confederate flag think other people 'get' their bizarre rationalizations and revisitionist history for doing so. Sure, a fruit cake here or there might not get it, but they really don't understand how stupid and misguided it looks to everyone else. We used to have a poster on here who had one plastered on his car, and got all pissed off when ths subject came up. He was from... Canada. I can't remember his username, but I distinctly remember he was happy to explain why it was important for a Canadian to put that on his car. "Don't tread on me!"
https://youtu.be/3tR6mKcBbT4 Dave Chappelle, ladies and gentlemen. God Damn. Also, powerful from a Marine: https://i.redd.it/w2h1ec2uah451.jpg
See? No accountability. No admittance that you need to change. Nothing but lies and posturing for the press cameras. Cops do not fucking care about how much pain they are causing. They care only about their own bullshit clique: https://nypost.com/2020/06/11/nypd-lieutenant-apologizes-for-kneeling-alongside-protesters/amp/
The most popular excuse for displaying it usually along the lines of “My but great-great-great-great grandpappy fought for the Confederacy in the Battle Of Whogivesafuck!” ...okay, they fought in the civil war. They also fought for the WRONG SIDE. You should feel ashamed of your bloodline, not proud. And while on the topic, why do Southerners like reinacting the Civil War battles? They know how it ended, right? It’s like reinacting Vietnam.
Is anyone following the CrossFit saga this week? Andy Stumpf, whom I greatly admire, dropped a bombshell video. I recommend watching.
Effectively Crossfit as a brand is soon going to be dead. Even with the transition of CEO going from Glassman to Castro, Glassman is still the 100% sole owner of the company so everything being done is still at his direction. It'll be interesting to see what happens with the Games, at least this year. My prediction is after this, you see Rogue basically continue to take over and implement their own version since they've already picked Reebok up as a sponsor of their Invitational. As a Columbus resident, I'll admit it'll be good for the local economy.
Glassman is such a fucking tool. I loved his non-apology, though. Really won him over in the community of no one.
https://youtu.be/tTxzym5KHjQ Having a Navy SEAL look into the camera and tell you if you try to sue him he’ll burn this motherfucker to the ground has to give any rational person pause.
I grew up in the south. My History teacher did reenactments, but he did so on the North's side. Someone has to be on the winning team in these reenactments, unless a bunch of northerners are coming down to kick our butts again. I grew up in a county with 96% white population. I went to my junior prom with a black girl, she would drink and crash at my house until our mid-twenties when I moved away. I really don't know why I'm bringing that up. I think, hope, that she and all my black friends I grew up with felt safe and accepted around us and that they still would to this day, even though we drifted apart as life went on. I certainly never owned or displayed a Confederate flag. I hope this doesn't sound too much like a hey-i-have-black-friends-post. I'm just disgusted by some of the news and comments I'm seeing on FB.
Exactly why does CrossFit have a CEO, anyways? Does hopscotch have one as well? I guess you need to call it a corporation justify having to pay over $200 a month to bounce around in a bombed-out plaza store converted into a gym.
Get this...he owns 100% of the company. I didn’t realize all this time it was a private sole proprietorship. Way to shoot yourself in the dick with one email.
something else will come up and take its place. Hopefully something better. With everyone learning how much exercise they can actually do at home, the logical assumption would be some type of streaming, netflix-like platform. Peloton has a good one, but obviously it focuses around the/a bike so it's currently limited. My brother-in-law was really into crossfit for a while, it was more like a club bordering on a cult than anything. Elements of it are certainly good, but the company itself, at least in my experience from afar, left a lot to be desired. I'm honestly surprised it lasted this long.
What company??? What is the product he invented? What is the “patent” they own? CrossFit is nothing more than a borrowing/stealing of other things. All the excerises and equipment used existed before, they just made them speedy and half-assed.