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You know, renaming something "Liberty" has been a central example of overly-politically-correct euphemism since WWII's "Liberty sausage", "Liberty cabbage", "Liberty steak".
I agree with your points on the merits of "Fort Liberty". "Fort Sherman" or "Fort Burnside" would have been better given both generals won important victories for the USA in the area. But ostentatiously refusing to use the official name of the base is clearly an attempt to dogwhistle something, and the rules of this board require me to charitably assume that what they are dogwhistling is support for the MAGA campaign to retain military bases named after white supremacist traitors, rather than actual support for white supremacism or treason.
In any case, "Troops from nearby Fort Liberty have not been deployed to the relief effort. Does anyone know why not?" is an attempt to "Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion." "Fort Bragg or whatever it's been renamed to" (when the correct name is well-known and can be found with thirty seconds' Googling) is what you say if the only audience you care about is the kind of person who cares strongly about naming military bases after white supremacist traitors.
For calibration purposes: In your view, is Ken Burns a supporter of white supremacism and/or treason?
This makes an awesome bookend to the recent discussion of Marxism, and whether the term is too widely applied. More generally, another brick in the "there is no 'we'" wall.
Assuming the secondary sources about The Civil War are roughly correct, Ken Burns was a useful idiot of Shelby Foote. Burns was not a historian, and was not aware that the Dunning School history he had learned in high school was largely bogus. So when Foote basically recounts the high school history Burns is familiar with added military detail and colour, Burns doesn't feel the need to consult a second historian. I think both Burns and Foote would have preferred to make a film that treated the Civil War as a series of battles between two groups of martially virtuous men with no underlying political causes, but obviously you can't do that and have it make sense.
Shelby Foote was unambiguously a supporter of treason (he said in 1997, "I would fight for the Confederacy today if the circumstances were similar.") but was probably not a white supremacist - I think an argument whether a Nathan Bedford Forrest fanboi who nevertheless supported Civil Rights is a white supremacist or not would quickly degenerate into a futile argument about the meaning of words.
...And PBS as well, of course? No one involved in the large bureaucratic government organization knew any better?
...Like the black historian prominently featured in the series, who talks at length in multiple segments about the black perspective on the war and its surrounding events? Further, my understanding of the standard Dunning School narrative is that the Civil War wasn't actually fought over slavery, that slavery wasn't actually all that bad and so on. My recollection is that PBS's The Civil War very explicitly claims that the civil war was fought over slavery, and is very explicit about the many ways in which slavery was barbaric and horrifying. So what exactly is the "largely bogus" history they're supposed to be communicating?
And the fact that the series they actually produced heavily engaged with the underlying political causes leads you to this conclusion how? Certainly they did not cover all the intricacies; just for one example, they portray John Brown as an honorable man driven to extremism by principle, glossing over the part where he and his companions engaged in straight-up terrorist murder of innocent civilians. Nevertheless, having read deeper into the details, it seems to me that their account does a good job of capturing the essence. John Brown was, in fact, a murderous terrorist, but he was also driven to extremism by recognizable principles, and his actions are understandable for the same reasons that, say, a person car-bombing a Blue Tribe office building over abortion would be understandable: at some point, the blood of the innocent must be answered for.
And by the same token, I can extend sympathy to the Confederates for the same reasons I can extend sympathy to current Blues: the line between good and evil runs through every human heart. No one is simply "evil", and the misery of humanity is not simply the fault of "bad people". We all have it coming, one way or the other, and we should at least consider valuing mercy over swift justice, because swift justice means not an axe in our hands, but our head on a block.
If I could summarize the narrative of the series, it would be that our society's embrace of evil brought ruin on a vast scale, but through the conflict people found a way to both end some of that evil and to restore peace again. The bloodletting was probably unavoidable, and given that it resulted in the end of slavery, pretty clearly a net-positive. The people on both sides had many admirable and many deplorable qualities, but in the end the admirable qualities came to the fore, and peace was restored. The result was not a just utopia, or even a particularly good society; as in our own time, the price of peace was the toleration of considerable evil. Nonetheless, it's hard to argue that things weren't better at the end than they were at the beginning, and in the history of warfare that is in fact a fairly notable outcome.
To the extent that this is not good enough for you, I think you are quite foolish, but we all make our own choices freely.
Hypothetical support based on "the circumstances" from a guy who, as you've noted, supported the civil rights act actually seems at least somewhat ambiguous; if he'd fight for slavery, why support the civil rights act? If he'd side with his state in a fight against the federal government over some actual present point of conflict, that would also be "similar circumstances", wouldn't it? Your entire case against him is that he has opinions on history and on hypotheticals that you don't like, not on anything of consequence he actually did.
Or perhaps I'm splitting hairs. Maybe you're right, and Shelby Foote was a Traitor. Presumably then, negative affect accrues, and we all join together to condemn his name and works, and to look with disfavor on those foolish enough to associate with him. Obviously this stance is principled, and not merely word games to exploit perceived vulnerabilities in those considered to be intellectual inferiors. So, just to be really clear here:
Bill Ayers: Traitor, or not? Worse than Foote, or not?
Angela Davis: Traitor, or not? Worse than Foote, or not?
It's hard to escape the impression that you are using "Traitor" and "Treason" as a conditioned call to obedience, as though you can apply the label and conservative types like me will fall in line because The Rules Are The Rules and we're All In This Together. It's an appeal to a system we share, and of course, you'll totally have our backs when the shoe is on the other foot; it's our turn to tear down the properly designated Bad Person, and of course, unquestionably, you also will do the same when we apply the label to someone in your general vicinity, because The Rules Are The Rules. This labeling-of-bad-people process is a thing we mutually share and respect, right?
Right?
Do you believe that a significant portion of Reds still recognize some degree of binding loyalty to your tribe, such that a concept like "treason" is meaningful? Do you think if a plane hits an office building in New York tomorrow, Reds are going to be lining up at the recruitment offices to avenge their "murdered brethren"?
After the Civil war, there was a "We" again. We made peace, and slowly, painfully, we tried to make a better society together. We weren't perfect at it, or even particularly good; I wish the southern Blacks had been armed en masse, and the KKK had gutted itself on organized community defenses rather than being allowed to dwindle into a jobs program for federal snitches. On the other hand, we actually made some pretty good progress, and The Civil War does a reasonable encapsulation of how we did it: we accepted that people in the past were neither saints nor monsters, and we tried to mourn the bad and move on with the good. And after much struggle and conflict, and after no small measure of injustice, things were legitimately pretty good there for a couple decades, Confederate statues and Confederate flags and all.
And now, because of arguments of the sort you're advancing here, the confederate statues and flags are gone, and all it cost us is a few thousand extra black people murdered every year for the last four years and continuing indefinitely into the future, a price that was predicted in advance, and that Blues here appear to find more or less acceptable. Respect for the valor of a defeated opponent wasn't killing massive numbers of black people, but deliberately spreading lies about how our whole society is based on "white supremacy" absolutely has. Blues needed a scapegoat for their own failures, and they didn't much care who got hurt so long as they could keep portraying themselves as the good guys.
For this and similar reasons, there is not really a "We" any more. Things are much worse than they were a mere decade ago, and they seem likely to continue to get worse for the foreseeable future. Another massive bloodletting is a distinct possibility. Like last time, people can see it coming, but cannot figure out a way to avoid it, or even properly understand the mechanisms of its arrival.
I, like you, blame Traitors. We would probably not agree on who they are, though.
This is a serious post and deserves a serious response, which I don't have time to write tonight. But one thing I will say right now is that I put the disclaimer "Assuming the secondary sources about The Civil War are roughly correct" in for a reason. The movie you are discussing bares no resemblance to the one discussed by Wikipedia and the most updooted reviews on IMDB. I would not be that surprised if I have been misled by wokestupid propaganda on IMDB, and not surprised at all in the case of Wikipedia.
Fair enough.
Grah.
The proper way to have a serious discussion is to get to know a person really well, and then have an intimate meeting of the minds. That isn't really practical in a forum like this one, so to a greater or lesser extent, I find myself building a model of the person I'm talking to, and then arguing against that model. I can update the model as the conversation progresses, but it's a lossy process at the best of times, and it's prone to bleed-through when having a very similar part of a conversation with multiple people.
I've argued this particular issue a number of times with a number of people, and it's entirely possible that I'm rounding you to positions you don't have. If that's the case, you have my apologies. If you want to continue this later, I'll be interested in reading your thoughts.
If you ever get the chance, you should watch "Civil War". It is one of my favorite documentaries, and I think it is an excellent example of actual "civil religion", in the sense the rationalists use the term.
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Too antagonistic by half.
Your original comment is fine. Maiq’s comment is fine. But Nybbler is right—insisting that your interlocutor is dogwhistling is not particularly charitable.
Look I’ll just cut in here and say that really the reason I worded that name as I did was that I was aware of the fact that the name had been changed, but wasn’t precisely sure what it had been changed too. The sources of the information were still calling the base Fort Bragg. I figured that was more clear than googling the new name and having everyone confused about which base I’m referring to as most people would likely know Ft. Bragg is an American military base in North Carolina. If I’m creating confusion, I’ll edit if needed. I tend to go for clarity over anything else.
Hm? No, you did fine, in my opinion.
You’re allowed to call it what you want, @MadMonzer is allowed to question the credibility of the xitters, all good. It’s only the last response that pushed too far, and it’s because of tone more than content.
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One can object to the practice of renaming things to fit modern political sensibilities without supporting the politics or the actions of the people they were originally named after. The idea that this sort of renaming is required arises from a a whole constellation of beliefs about the scope of politics, the role of language, the lens through which history should be interpreted, etc. that many people simply don't share.
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It was renamed in 2023. You don't think it takes a while for this name update to course through the public consciousness? People will still call it Fort Bragg out of reflex. It also sounds cooler than 'Fort Liberty'.
And is there anything truly terrible about consciously refusing to use its new name if you think the entire sentiment animating "NAME CHANGE FOR JUSTICE NOW" is toxic?
I was not aware that it was renamed, but at least one of the people @MadMonzer linked to was very clearly aware, as they made an explicit point of refusing to use the current name.
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It's not a dog whistle, it's a train whistle; everyone can hear it. And no, you're not being charitable by implying your opponents are white supremacist traitors.
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Roads around me get renamed from time to time. Decades go by and all the locals still refer to them by the old names, because that's what they called them for 30-60 years.
Once upon a time, the way the Soviet Union renamed cities and shit every time the political winds changed was looked down on with mockery.
Twitter has been renamed X for over a year now. I've yet to encounter a person who actually calls it X except with sarcasm.
Names are sticky, stop reading so damned much into it.
You missed the best one, The iconic Lake Shore Drive in chicago got renamed to Jean Baptiste Pointe du Sable Lake Shore Drive during BLM. Dusable was a french black man who maybe discovered Chicago but probably didn't and has a half dozen other things in the city named after him.
I assume Chicagoans still call it "Lake Shore Drive" and nothing else?
There's also the case of the bridge over a wide part of the Hudson River in New York, originally named for that widening -- the Tappan Zee (from Dutch for "Sea") Bridge. It had the name "Governor Malcolm Wilson" prepended to it, but nobody cared and nobody used it. Then it was replaced by another bridge, which is named the "Governor Mario M. Cuomo Bridge". They managed to get the traffic reports on the local news station to call it that (I assume the Cuomos have stock), but no one else does. Even the signs indicating directions to the bridge in New Jersey still say "Tappan Zee Bridge". People call the new bridge by the old name of the former bridge.
Yeah, LSD is too icon to actually change the name, it's just a trap for out of towners using voice gps navigation now when it suddenly interrupts their song for like 10 seconds while it says the fake name.
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Ask someone in New York about the Avenue of the Americas, or in Philly about Columbus Boulevard, Martin Luther King Drive, or the Avenue of the Arts. (The only renaming Philadelphians accept is Kelly Drive)
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