Disenfranchised American Heroes

I shouldn’t listen to Breitbart in the morning. Sometimes it gets me depressed as to the state of our America. This morning, Slater was discussing architecture and art as related to government buildings and statues, particularly observing how hideous it has become. Witness Obama’s blight on Chicago’s south side with a library that looks like its inspiration was an Eastern Bloc stairwell from The Bourne Identity. Put treads on it, and it could be rambling around Tatooine looking for scrap. Even the New York Times opined that democrats create hideous architecture. But most upsetting has been the fate of our historical statues that succumbed to the Charleston and the Black Lives Matter protests.  I understand that these monuments are a trigger for those on the left, who seem to be outraged at everything that doesn’t fit their worldview. But, like it or not, they are choosing not only to erase history but also to do it vindictively. The Robert E. Lee statue, for example, was melted down, its demise recorded, disseminated, and celebrated by the left. But far worse than being melted down is outright desecration. Statues are being used as “material”: altered, vandalized, spray-painted, and distorted. The Stonewall Jackson Memorial, a statue depicting the Confederate General on horseback, was donated to The Brick, formerly LAXART an art center in LA, who allowed the controversial painter/activist Kara Walker to disassemble the statue and piece it back together in a grotesque, distorted hideous work of “art” now displayed at the Museum of Art Los Angeles who claims the exhibit “topples white supremacy.”  The LA Times, in a glowing review, called it a “monstrous mutant” that “pushes back against white supremacy I would call it a tasteless, disrespectful disregard for our nation’s history. Recall General Jackson’s career began by heroically serving in the Mexican Wars after graduating from the US Military Academy at West Point. Born in what is now West Virginia, he naturally served with the Confederacy, distinguishing himself at Bull Run but ultimately losing an arm to friendly fire and succumbing to pneumonia. And now rewarded for his sacrifice and service to the United States before being on the wrong side of the Mason-Dixon Line, he is brutalized in death by being hideously transformed into an object of ridicule by an activist who has made a career “highlighting the impact of slavery” and calling it art. I am embarrassed we let this happen.