Tag: statue genocide

bookmark_borderExcruciating, unbearable pain (yet again)

Posted on by Marissa
Yesterday, I found out something horrible. Something that I did not know before, although it happened seven months ago. As a result of finding this out, I am in the most excruciating pain imaginable. Every minute is completely unbearable.
Obviously, the fact that the man that I love has been murdered yet again is pretty awful, as is the fact that my city now has an official holiday celebrating the obliteration of people like me from the earth. The entire city is now contaminated, and I therefore cannot get any enjoyment out of any of the statues, restaurants, coffee shops, stores, events, streets, parks, ponds, forests, flowers, or wildlife in the city, because literally everything in the entire city now triggers excruciating, agonizing pain. Adding to the pain is the fact that this decision by the mayor happened seven months ago and I didn’t find out about it until now. Because of the omnipresent potential for triggering excruciating pain, I typically do not seek out this type of information, and actively take steps to avoid it. But the consequence is that when I do find out the information, I find out long after it happens, making the whole situation even more upsetting.
I am aware that I could contact the mayor, work with the state Italian American organization to try to do some advocacy, contact local Italian American organizations, and/or try to do something with the town Republican committee to “fight back.” But honestly, the prospect of doing any of these things makes me completely sick to my stomach. I find these possibilities to be completely repulsive on a deep, fundamental level. It’s as if my soul is completely beaten down, has nothing left to give, and is rebelling at the prospect of continuing to engage in a useless, futile battle. What is the point of fighting for the man that I love if he is inevitably going to be murdered, and the only question is how quickly? What is the point of fighting if I am only prolonging his torturous, agonizing death? But also, I can’t live with the prospect of doing nothing, because then I would appear to be condoning what happened.
My logical mind cannot come up with an explanation for why Christopher Columbus matters so much to me, and why these things have such a profound negative impact. Despite knowing on some level that my perspective is irrational, I cannot see the bigger picture, cannot step outside of this perspective.
I know that in order to continue living, I need to somehow come up with a different way of viewing things. But I can’t. Nothing else matters but Christopher Columbus and the Confederacy. Nothing will make me feel okay, other than society collectively recognizing that I hold the moral high ground, and not the people who hurt me. And the odds of that happening are essentially zero.
I can’t escape from the laughing face emojis, the jeering comments, the nauseating public statements, the pompous and self-righteous social media posts, the insults of “traitor” and “insurrectionist” and “racist” and “colonizer.” I can’t escape from the images of the beautiful men that I love being lynched, dismembered, smashed to pieces, beheaded, burned. I can’t escape from a society that views the perpetrators of these atrocities as holding the moral high ground and the victims (me) as shameful. This is the worst torture imaginable, and I cannot see a path forward.

bookmark_borderReflections on five years of excruciating, unbearable pain (and a bully who finds this entire situation funny)

Posted on by Marissa

Excruciating pain coursing through my entire body.

Rage and grief combined in a tsunami of anguish.

Agony more severe than what the pervious version of myself even believed it was possible for a person to experience.

My chest feels like it’s being crushed in a vice, my stomach feels like it’s filled with rocks, my soul feels as if it’s being eviscerated.

Again and again, I’ve tried to find words strong enough to capture these feelings. Although I consider myself a good writer, with a large vocabulary, again and again I fail.

I could scream at the top of my lungs until my throat bled and my voice became hoarse, I could punch and kick until every object in my house was destroyed and my hands and feet were shattered into a million pieces, and it still wouldn’t be enough to express the pain that I feel inside.

Images of horror seared forever into my consciousness.

Hideous, gaping wounds that will never heal.

What was once a normal city square with a war memorial a century old, a war memorial that had never hurt anyone, now turned into something profoundly dark, contaminated, evil. An abomination.

Just one example among dozens, hundreds, all combining to fundamentally change the world from good to bad.

Actions that should never have taken place, leaving permanent scars on the landscape.

Actions so horrifying, so repulsive, so reprehensible, that a part of my brain cannot fully comprehend that they actually happened. Perhaps it never will.

One sickening act after another. Display after display of vicious intolerance. All part of a slow, inexorable chipping away at beauty, at happiness, at goodness. All part of an effort to destroy me, to destroy people like me, everywhere. All part of a brutal campaign to obliterate from the world everything that makes life worth living.

A city, a state, a country, an entire world transformed so that only people who are like the majority can feel welcome there. Only those who fit in, only those who obey authority, only those who conform to social norms, allowed to exist.

More times than I can count, I’ve considered suicide. Death has often seemed preferable to continuing on into a bleak future, slogging through day after day of a meaningless and miserable existence.

Five years of this agonizing pain. This weekend, in fact, marks the anniversary. A holiday that most people associate with cookouts, beach days, or remembering our soldiers, is forever associated with genocide for me. (Many will argue that this word is too strong, but I believe it is entirely appropriate.)

To someone named Gerard, this entire situation is funny.

The situation that I’ve described above is humorous, amusing, entertaining, even hilarious to him.

Clearly, Gerard has never experienced pain, and has never experienced suffering. If he had, he would not consider the pain and suffering of other people to be funny.

Seeing symbols of yourself, symbols of inclusion, symbols of your right to exist, smashed to pieces with sledgehammers as a mob rejoices and a brass band plays. Knowing that the bullies who want to eradicate you from existence will never be punished, will never be held accountable, will never even be criticized by anyone but yourself, will forever be perceived as holding the moral high ground in the eyes of society.

This is something that Gerard has never experienced, but I have.

There are no words that can fully describe what this does to a person, the pain that it inflicts, how profoundly it changes a person, forever.

Gerard’s jeering, cruel laughing face emoji does not reflect negatively on me; it reflects negatively on him. Gerard lacks empathy, he lacks morality, he lacks logic, and I would go so far as to argue that he lacks both a mind and a soul. Gerard does not hold the moral high ground. I do.

bookmark_borderNo, Ilhan Omar did not learn from people impacted by her words

Posted on by Marissa

I recently came across a social media post in which Rep. Ilhan Omar attacks President Trump for having “trafficked in hate your whole life” and also claims, “I learned from people impacted by my words.” 

I dispute both of these statements. 

First of all, how, exactly, has Trump “trafficked in hate”? Which of his public statements and policy positions constitute “trafficking in hate,” exactly? Because I can’t think of any.

Additionally, Omar claims to have learned from people impacted by her words. So she’s publicly condemned the tearing down, removal, and vandalism of statues of Christopher Columbus and people who fought for the Confederacy? She’s advocated that the people who tore down these statues be severely punished, that the statues be put back in their rightful places, and that the people harmed by these actions be financially compensated? She’s advocated that Indigenous Peoples’ Day be abolished, and that the second Monday in October return to being celebrated as Columbus Day in every city, town, and state? She’s apologized to the people harmed by the war on historical figures, by suppression of political dissent, by violation of Second Amendment rights, by mandatory medical procedures, by anti-white racism? I’m pretty sure that the answer to all of these questions is “no.” Yet if Omar had actually learned from the people impacted by her words, these are all things that she would be doing. So no, Omar has not learned from people impacted by her words, and I know this because I am such a person.

bookmark_borderAn excellent response to an anti-statue bully

Posted on by Marissa

I came across the following comment on a social media post, and it is an absolutely excellent response to anti-statue bullies: 

“Hate and attack. That’s all you people know. Lack any intelligence to seek knowledge or understanding. Just hate and attack anyone or anything that doesn’t think like me. I am right and you are wrong and nothing can be said to make me think otherwise as my feelings count more than yours! That is the whole of you and those like you as seen by the rest of the world. Awful, hateful, spiteful people….exactly what you think you oppose!”

This comment hits the nail on the head. 100%. Spot-on. Exactly.

bookmark_border“Instinct is something which transcends knowledge…”

Posted on by Marissa
 
 
 
 
 
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A post shared by Nikola Tesla | Inventor & Futurist ⚡ (@nikolateslaquote)

Source here

This quote really stands out to me. It captures how I feel about the statues. For five years, I’ve tried one logical argument after another. I’ve tried and tried to find words with the power to convey exactly why these statues are so important to me, and why what happened to them was so wrong. But maybe the value of the statues is one of the truths that Tesla is referring to. Maybe this is a situation in which logical deduction, and willful efforts of the brain in general, are futile. There is something inside of me that knows with complete certainty that what was done to the statues is wrong on the deepest and most profound level. Maybe this something is the instinct, the finer fibers, of which Tesla was speaking.

bookmark_borderRemembering the Lion of Atlanta

Posted on by Marissa

A monument vandalized and destroyed by people who only care about the perspectives, the rights, and the feelings of the majority; who only tolerate the existence of people like themselves; who deliberately inflict harm and pain on people who are different for no other purpose than to inflict harm and pain:

 
 
 
 
 
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A post shared by Judy Smith (@judysmithphotography)

“The importance of preserving history and heritage, even in the face of controversy and loss.”

Amen to that. Every day, I strive to continue on in defiance of the people that I described above. On many days, this feels impossible. The pain reaches unbearable levels and my efforts feel pointless. Yet I keep trying to take meaningful steps to honor the historical figures that matter to me, and to find a meaningful path forward despite the horrific losses that they have inflicted. Because no matter what the people described above might think, preserving history and heritage are truly important.

bookmark_borderNew home for Surry County, Virginia, Confederate Monument

Posted on by Marissa

Some slightly positive news out of Surry County, Virginia: the Confederate monument which was unjustly removed from its rightful location is being put up in a new home.

I recently saw this post from the Virginia Division, Sons of Confederate Veterans, showing a crane and several workers in the process of re-erecting a monument. “Surry County Monument is going back up!! Strong work Compatriots!,” the post read. I wondered about the context behind this monument, and although doing research on these kinds of topics is fraught with potential for excruciating pain to be triggered, I decided to do just that. I found out that, according to the Smithfield Times, the Surry County Confederate monument had existed outside the courthouse in Surry, Virginia for over 100 years. Unfortunately, after bullies and bigots in the Virginia state legislature wrongfully passed the disgraceful law removing legal protections for people who are different from the norm, thereby allowing the past five years of horrifying atrocities to be unleashed, the Surry County Board of Supervisors decided to join in on the campaign of state-sponsored bullying of people who are different, and wrongfully voted to remove the monument. 

The one positive thing in this situation is that the county gave the monument to SCV Camp #9, who have now put it up at 384 Mount Ivy Lane, where it can be viewed by the public. A little piece of good news in what is overall a terrible situation. 

bookmark_borderJeb Stuart Preservation Trust’s response to the despicable bill HB1699

Posted on by Marissa

The Jeb Stuart Preservation Trust, the organization that runs and maintains Jeb Stuart’s boyhood home, wrote an excellent letter to the Virginia governor regarding the despicable bill that bullies and bigots in the state legislature are attempting to pass.

Here is the most important passage from their letter:

HB1699… can be argued as viewpoint discrimination. In 1995 Virginia Supreme Court held viewpoint discrimination as an egregious free speech violation. In Rosenberger v. Rectors and Visitors of the University of Virginia (1995), the Supreme Court declared: ‘When the government targets not subject matter but particular views taken by speakers on a subject, the violation of the First Amendment is all the more blatant. Viewpoint discrimination is thus an egregious form of content discrimination. The government must abstain from regulating speech when the specific motivating ideology or the opinion or perspective of the speaker is the rationale for the restriction.’

(emphasis mine)

The concept of viewpoint discrimination really captures what is so deeply and fundamentally wrong with this disgraceful bill and the thought process behind it. Thank you, Jeb Stuart Preservation Trust, for putting this idea into words and providing legal citations to support it.

You can read the letter in its entirety here.

bookmark_border“Hey MAGAs, show me your best cognitive dissonance!”

Posted on by Marissa

I recently saw a post from one of my Facebook “friends” regarding the accidental leaking of military information by Department of Defense officials in a group chat.

The post read: “Hey MAGAs, show me your best cognitive dissonance! Best one wins a new red hat!… Go ahead, twist me a pretzel and tell me why this is all OK.”

This post, to be blunt, really pisses me off. And it does so for two reasons:

First, the double standards and logical inconsistency. This person expresses outrage about what is a relatively minor problem in the grand scheme of things, while completely failing to express any criticism of an obvious, pervasive, and blatant campaign of atrocity that is enormous in both its scope and its severity. He calls an accidental leak “a major fuck up” and “justification for heads to roll.” However, he expressed not even the mildest criticism of the statue genocide that began in 2020 and continues to this day, a series of deliberate and intentional acts of extreme cruelty targeting people who are different from the norm in an attempt to ensure their erasure from society. It makes no sense that someone would get so outraged at what is essentially an accident, while apparently feeling no outrage whatsoever at a deliberate and cruel campaign to inflict harm.

Second is the entire way that the argument is framed. This person purportedly invites others to discuss and debate, while simultaneously stating that anyone who expresses a differing opinion is demonstrating “cognitive dissonance” and “twisting a pretzel.” This way of framing the issue puts people who see things differently in a no-win position: we could either be silent and pretend that we agree when we don’t, or we could speak up and have our views automatically be labeled as “cognitive dissonance” and “twisting a pretzel.” Talk about intolerance for those who think and feel differently than you do. What is the point of inviting discussion when you have no openness to considering alternative perspectives? Why even ask people to contribute their views, when you admittedly have no intention of actually hearing or learning from those views, but intend rather to use those views as evidence of their authors’ twistedness and cognitive dissonance?

Personally, I support Trump and his administration because I’m on the autism spectrum and my special interest is history and statues, so the events involving statues that have taken place over the past 5 years have had a profound negative impact on me. The issue of military information being leaked just isn’t important to me in comparison, and therefore I do not share the outrage that this “friend” and so many other people are expressing. This isn’t cognitive dissonance, and it’s not twisting a pretzel. I simply have a different perspective because I’ve had different life experiences and my brain works differently.