tearing down statues

It's like swimming in wet cardboard ... the thick, viscous slime of staying in, staying 'safe,' staying unlinked and un-connected. The TV purveys an endless litany of same ol' same ol' and the president runs around without a mask.

Down south and elsewhere, people are busy ripping down statues of those who made the Confederacy great. Wrong move, I'd say. Let the statues stand as a reminder of the mistakes of the past and the need to acknowledge mistakes made in the past. Will tearing down a statue of Jefferson Davis or Andrew Jackson or whomever root out slavery or the viewing of a black or brown person as inferior? No. Was it a mistake? Yes. Was it in aid of making money? Yes, among other answers. Is there a man alive who has not made mistakes and then been forced to shoulder that responsibility? Hell, even the former Nazis (under some duress, I admit) kept the gates that proclaimed in wrought-iron, "Arbeit macht frei..." over the entrance to a concentration camp.

Leave the statues alone.

Look in the mirror.

This is not blaming-the-victim claptrap. I figure it rather as an act of adulthood. The past cannot be undone. Remembering and honoring mistakes is better than thumbing a nose. Did I fuck up? You betcha! Now what? Let's not pretend. Fuck all the kum-by-ya nonsense ... this mistake is mine and I made it. Can I do better? I sure hope so, but acknowledging my ever-present capacity to make the same damned mistake again is part of the mix.

Precepts are precepts not in order to lop off the responsibility, but in order to nudge and remind me of precisely how vulnerable (and perhaps interesting) I remain.

PS:

The International Monetary Fund has said the global economy will take a $12tn (£9.6tn) hit from the Covid-19 pandemic after slashing its already gloomy growth projections for the UK and other developed countries in 2020.
The IMF said it would take two years for world output to return to levels at the end of 2019 and warned that governments should be cautious about removing financial support to their fragile economies.
In an update to forecasts published in April, the Washington-based IMF said it now expected the global economy to contract by 4.9% this year, compared with a 3% drop expected in the spring.