THERE’S NO GOING BACK
With protesters worldwide finding their voice, college football players have been doing the same
This is a time of deep stress. And who likes deep stress? Nobody. Well, maybe anarchists do. But anarchists are the emperors of delusion. Forget them.
Yet out of heavy stress can come good change, sparked by the re-examination of systems and ways of living that have been taken for granted or tolerated as ‘‘the way things are.’’
COVID-19 and the Black Lives Matter protests coming together really moved the needle for change in America.
It’s hard to say which statue anywhere in this country is safe, for instance. It’s hard to know which famous person, living or dead, can withstand the scrutiny of eager historians digging for frailty, avarice, cruelty, oppression. Statues are symbols, and symbols are powerful.
Of course, the Confederate heroes of yore got theirs. Statues of Robert E. Lee and Jefferson Davis were toppled or removed all over the South. Christopher Columbus did not fare well anywhere (except, notably, Chicago).
The statue of UNLV Rebels mascot ‘‘Hey Reb,’’ which stood in front of the Richard Tam Alumni Center on campus, was yanked by the school.
Stonewall Jackson and former Twins owner Calvin Griffith came down.
Francis Scott Key, Ulysses S. Grant, former International Olympic Committee chairman Avery Brundage, even the ‘‘Forward’’ statue in Madison, Wisconsin — an inspirational bronze figure of a woman created in 1893 by female sculptor Jean Pond Miner — all were torn down.
A frenzy of historical ‘‘correction’’ can be a hard thing to stop. When a mob tore down George Washington’s statue in Portland, Oregon, even a liberal-minded person had to wonder where the carnage would end, where the protesters would say, ‘‘This guy gets a pass.’’
The ultimate deduction is that our country wasn’t made with the belief that ‘‘all men are created equal,’’ unless you don’t count women, Native Americans, Black slaves and their descendants. The past was pretty evil, for the uninformed.
Nor was the tumult confined to the United States. Offensive statues of slave traders, slave owners or racists were torn down or removed by officials in England, Belgium, India, New Zealand