It's not your fucking history! My great great grandfather was conscripted into service for the Confederacy, never owned a single slave, but he served on the side of the Confederacy, like many other poor whites that were conscripted to service. Know what he did after the war?? Came home and raised a family...and by all accounts, the man never spoke of his service again and died in his nineties a proud American. He raised his children to love this country and his grandchildren did the same. His grandson, my grandfather, had one of the few "integrated" country stores in our area in the 50's. A member of my family has fought in ever freaking war since the Revolution, but my ancestor viewed his service in the confederacy with shame. We're not a perfect nation and we have a helluva lot of sins to atone for, but to suggest that a Confederate monument is your history is fucking laughable "Mr President". It's NOT your history any more than the Vietnam wall or the Korean Momument or the WWII monument is "your history". Cause we know neither you nor your daddy served this country. You are pandering to your racist base with this drivel and you know it and shame on the media for not pointing this crap out! This isn't cute, it's not reality, it's a lie meant to stir up your base without any thought of the consequences. There should be no pride in the American Civil War, and frankly that goes for both sides. The war was an atrocity that never should have happened. More should have been done to curtail slavery at the time of the Unions founding, but it was too damn profitable and we needed all states to sign on to the Constitution. The North shares its own blame in the slave market and it should be highlighted. Likewise, Jim Crow laws after Reconstruction were allowed to take hold and thrive across the south without meangiful pushback on the federal level. Those measures would stand firm for nearly a hundred years until the Civil Rights movement of the 20thC. In 1958, only 4% of Americans supported interracial marriage!! It wasn't until 1990 that a majority of Americans supported interracial marriage! So, yes, we've come so very far but we've come too far to glorify and minimize the fact that our country was nearly ripped apart by slavery and even after that war our country moved to attempt to minimize and segregate our black brothers and sisters because they were viewed as "less than" or "other", and even after all of those struggles many Americans STILL can't accept that we are all one people, regardless of skin tone or background. So pardon my rant...I'm pissed as a Southerner to see a dirtbag like Trump suggest that people are removing his "history" when he owns no part of it, and I'm deeply moved and angered by the fact that in the 21st century we are still having to fight for the rights of all Americans in the face of deep racism and bigotry. Yet fight we must, even if it's only within our individual social circles!!
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