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That might have been the overall topic but it wasn't the topic of this argument. This argument is about Robert E Lee and the quality of his moral character, that is why I accused you of year zeroing after you said that he was a failure of a human being for choosing to fight for the confederates. Lee's choices, not yours, or mine, or some town council's. If you had just said 'I'm fine with the smelting, I don't think Lee should be celebrated because he was a piece of shit' I wouldn't have said anything, the same way I didn't say anything to everyone else who said something like that. The only reason I said anything to you is because it annoys the crap out of me when people scorn historical figures for not having the same amount of information as we have in the 21st century. Also I have used year zero thinking or something like it multiple times before here without being accused of comparing someone to Pol Pot - without being misunderstood at all even - so I'm going to stick with it.
Re covid, since I wasn't specific enough (sorry about that), who are the failed human beings - the vaccinated or the unvaccinated? I asked because I wanted to demonstrate the position Lee was in, of being stuck in the middle of a vicious argument between two sides that both have good points, not to mention the numerous personal factors that can get in the way. In my experience people have two options - no more - either they work off principles or they do as their most respected authority tells them.
For the failure of a human being angle: the framing of Lee as personally against secession and slavery - though there are many reasons to be skeptical - yet choosing to not only side with the secessionist slavers but become Confederate army supreme commander and personally lead the war slaughtering those trying to stop them would make him a traitor not only against one's government and former comrades but against one's own self and sense of right and wrong. Can't even use the "I was just following orders" cop-out when he was the one issuing them, or "I had no choice" when he was both offered US military command and had the option of sitting out the war in retirement. That would be the supreme failure as a human being in my eyes. Knowing better, having multiple ways out, and doing it anyway with mass murder. That should be scorned, not celebrated. "Vaccinated versus unvaccinated" is not even comparable.
The Confederate fire eater slavers acted in accordance with their beliefs that their cause was righteous. Under the framing of Lee as someone who opposed secession and did not like slavery, the act of him taking up arms to fight and kill for the Confederacy anyway is even less sympathetic, the piles of dead and mangled he personally created a Mt. Everest next to the mole hill of any personal reservations.
And this debate is against a backdrop of 20th and 21st century southern white right wingerd pushing Lee and a personality cult around other Confederate generals as paragons, role models, and heroes for those living today, teaching kids to hate "Yankees," and defending statues that were mostly erected in the 20th century as a middle finger to the civil rights movement and black, center and left southerners, erasing southern unionist history in many areas and promoting valorization of these generals and their short-lived rebellion as the core of Southern culture and Southern identities over everything else. Khmer Rouge comparisons for those wanting to take down those statues from a place of public honor are far off the map, this is just the South getting a little less right wing.
How did you achieve such a poor understanding of the Southern pride mindset when you apparently grew up in it? "A traitor against one's own self and sense of right and wrong?" That's the kind of thing I'd expect to hear from a dyed in the wool Yankee - or an Aussie or a European even - zero understanding of the culture and philosophies involved. How did your Kingstown family manage to teach you the confederates were the good guys without ever teaching you why they thought themselves the good guys?
Generally when people explain precisely what they meant by a term, continuing to behave like they meant your outrageously uncharitable interpretation just proves you are being dishonest. Same goes for pretending you don't understand analogies that have been fully explained.
This is making the mistake of conflating being a Southerner with being a certain type of right winger who likes the Confederacy and sympathizes with their motivations. One can understand and have believed in an ideology yet later come to disagree with it and have disdain for the figures that ideology (quite literally) puts on a pedestal. So it goes for myself and Confederate whitewashing apologetics. Reverend Father Uncle Ruckus notwithstanding, black Southerners have never been fond of revering the Confederacy yet this does not make them Yankees, Australians or Europeans.
I take southern pride in Mark Twain, Tennesse Williams, bluegrass, marksmanship, barbecue, country music*, Mardi Gras, rock n roll, southern gothic, moonshining, NASA, Harper Lee, unrestrictive gun and knife laws, certain SEC football teams, Cajun and South Florida cooking & culture, MLK, Cormac McCarthy, Florida spring break, Sgt York, Claire Chennault and more great artists, political figures and athletes than can be named. I do not take pride in a couple generals who fought a short-lived secession war to continue slavery, or in their present day fan club.
As stated before, choosing to do something one knows is wrong plus killing tons of people in the process is what I consider to make one a failure of a human being. The abdication of responsibility when one knows better combined with mass carnage. Trying to ask me to categorize randos who did or didn't get vaccinated into that mold isn't going to work. They do not even come close to the category of "failure of a human being" in my mind. It's like asking me to pick which counts as a kidnapper, the guy who illegally downloads movies or the guy who pays for Netflix.
*With the exception of certain trends out of Nashville whose best remedy is measured in megatons.
After conceding that the Year Zero mindset label applied to MadMonzer and I was a reference to Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge, what more is there to debate about it? I was pissed, that's not going to change, it can be continually relitigated without changing my negative reaction to being given that label one iota or you can just drop it and move on.
Yeah, I will move on to conversations with honest interlocutors. Or at least ones that aren't still trying to twist my arguments after I've called them out about it. For the record though judging randos is the entire point of the covid analogy, your inability to do it - especially once you were told how it works - strengthens my argument more than any engagement would have.
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