It's so nice to see people installing gender neutral bathrooms nowadays

Celebrating the confederacy is wrong, but I also think museum-like stuff and graveyards are harmless and should be respected. First of all, not everyone who served had much of a choice. Many were expected to serve on one side or the other merely because of where they lived. This is true of much of history. Second, they're dead. It's over for these specific people. They're not a current problem. It's just disrespectful no matter who it is.

I am NOT defending anything confederate, but I know that nuance is lost on most people.

I'm in total agreement, and have visited many union and confederate historical sites (graveyards, prisons, battlefields), which have been invaluable sources of information.
I broadly agree, but would point out that the huge number of statues erected during the civil rights era, celebrating people that led a traitorous war to defend slavery have little to no historical value, and were put in place to send a message echoing what those confederate leaders fought for.
We teach about the Nazis without celebrating them - I don't see why the Confederates should be any different.
- I don't see any statues in this photo. Nobody here is talking about celebrating the Confederate soldiers, only suggesting that their graves shouldn't be pissed on.
- Would make a meme about pissing on the grave of someone that served in the Wehrmacht?
I’ve been to this cemetery and house—the staff are beyond amazing when it comes to putting things into context. There’s even a giant sign before you enter that says something to the effect “Take a moment of somber silence before you enter, humans were enslaved here.” They’ve also done a lot of work with local black historians to try and trace the genealogy of slaves from the plantation and restore the slave quarters to show how horrific it all was.
statuses should be dismantled or at least stored away in some museum, we shouldn't treat them like heroes

Please don't actually disrespect these graves.

Jokes are jokes
- Yeah, until idiots on the Internet start taking them literally. See: 4chan.

You know, I’ve been conflicted about this subject for a while. You see, my grandfather’s great grandfather was a confederate soldier. He was injured and sent back home to Alabama where he helped people during a cholera outbreak.

He was a complicated man without whom I wouldn’t be here. Was he racist? I’m sure he was. That wasn’t unusual back then for the north or the south.

Race relations are complicated everywhere. Not just in the south. Hell, not just in the USA. We lack the proper words in the English language to explain just how fucking awful slavery is. Slavery is abhorrent. Slavery is repugnant. Yet those descriptors don’t seem to properly convey just how fucked up slavery is. But believe it or not in the eyes of history that’s kind of a new take.

I’m sure that a lot of people will not appreciate what I’ve said, and that’s ok. I decided that the racism in my family stops at me. My kids have never met my family. Instead I tell my kids about the lessons I learned from the parental figures I collected like Pokémon. Like Ronnie if any of you read that comment a while back.

But also, when I was a kid, every Memorial Day we would go to the cemetery where a lot of my family is buried. We’d put flowers on everyone’s graves including a confederate soldier. Not because he was racist, but because he was family. For better or for worse.

But believe it or not in the eyes of history that’s kind of a new take.
That is not, in any way, a new take. That was very much the take at the time, even among certain slaveholders. For example, here's Thomas Jefferson, a famous slaveholder, talking about the subject of slavery:
I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just: that his justice cannot sleep forever: that, considering numbers, nature, and natural means only, a revolution of the wheel of fortune, an exchange of situation, is among possible events: that it may become probable by supernatural interference! The Almighty has no attribute which can take side with us in such a contest.
Here he is, saying that God hates slavery, that slavers richly deserve death by the hands of their enslaved populace, and that slavery is a great injustice. All this while having about 200 slaves himself, including several of his own children.
Slavery is not now, and was not back then, a "complicated issue". It wasn't a moral gray area. It was a great evil perpetrated by incredibly evil people. Whether or not the slavers themselves thought that they were doing evil is irrelevant. All this hand wringing about "Oh, the times were different back then!" is complete hogwash. Do you think that abolitionists didn't exist? That they didn't tell people that slavery was evil even as the first American colonists adopted the practice? Do you think that the people back then were some kind of proto-human who didn't have the capacity for empathy or morality?
Fuck that. Your grandfather's great grandfather fought for and defended evil. He picked the wrong side. Oh, he helped some people who were sick? Bully for him. He was still a fucking prick. Fuck him forever.
- Obligatory: https://youtu.be/FAZJVkelgcg
- So, I think you misunderstood what I was saying. I’m going to attempt to explain, but I just want it to be known that I don’t condone slavery. Because I think that you think that I’m celebrating my ancestry. I am not. I am acknowledging that without that person I wouldn’t be here, and maybe don’t piss on his grave. Maybe don’t piss on anyone’s grave except for GG Allen’s grave. I think he would have been cool with it.
  So, here we go with the explanation.
  Even Thomas Jefferson wasn’t that long ago in the eyes of history. I’m talking for all of human history. The Greeks, The Romans, the Egyptians. All of these cultures had slaves far longer than the US has been a thing.
  Slavery was a thing for thousands if not 10s of thousands of years. I’m sure that the occasional person thought slavery was bad, but it wasn’t really a movement of any kind until a 2 to 3 hundred years ago.
They are dead and gone. What ever feelings the dirt and stone provoke are your own. The dead flowers too are only for yourself. Me, I despise the unempethic people who brought suffering to others. They did live in a different time and any one person alone couldn't have done enough to change all of society. If I'm going out of my way to honor a thought in my head I would chose to honor the few that did put society on the right track.
My extended family's ancestors stole land from indigenous people that their descendants sold to provide a comfortable upper middle class life for their family. Fuck them for destroying the livelihood, culture and lives of those people. If people want to piss on their graves I wouldn't stop them.
- Well, cheers I guess. People are complicated. I guess that I can acknowledge that a person is flawed. While still admitting that they were probably a flawed human doing the best they could with the flawed information they had. You and I included.
  I hope that one day you too will be able to see monsters for the humans they really are.
And the saddest part is that slavery still exists today in several parts of the world.

Yeah that'll teach those long-dead conscripts!

The number of Confederate apologists in this thread is frankly insane. "Oh no! Someone is making jokes about pissing on the graves of traitors and slavers! What if there were some innocent people in there?? I mean, I realize that it's going to be really difficult to find someone who was so insanely stupid to not be aware that they were fighting for slavers and traitors, but what if they exist???!?! Are you going to piss on their grave, too!!!???!"

No, I think it's recognition that whatever crimes you think they've done, they've paid for it already in a permanent way. So joking about pissing on their graves (160 years later ffs) is ill taste. Feel free to smear shit or graffiti over confederate statues that seek to glorify the cause rather than memorialize the dead though since that is not the same thing.
I also think most common soldiers in the confederate army fought for no higher reason than they were drafted and had little choice; or they signed up to defend their state against an existential threat. If you look at recruitment posters of the time, they're talking of northern invaders raping and pillaging their women, property and lands.
- whatever crimes you think they’ve done, they’ve paid for it already in a permanent way
  Have they, though? Death isn't exactly unique. Regardless of how good or bad a person you are, everybody has death as their final fate. So dying for a shitty cause isn't exactly punishment, considering that people who were in favor of a good cause still met the same fate. Death isn't a punishment for being a shitty person, it's just a birthright.
  I also think most common soldiers in the confederate army fought for no higher reason than they were drafted and had little choice
  Ok, but you know who else was drafted and had little choice? The people who defected. Some of those same people worked to further the cause of abolition by operating the underground railroad. Some of them wound up in prison, and some of them were hanged. I don't have any sympathy whatsoever for someone who lacked the courage or morality to fight against evil. And I have even less sympathy for someone stupid enough to fall for basic bitch propaganda like what you described.
"Nazis deserve respect too!" these absolute cretins sob, "They were products of their time!"
It's a stupid joke. It's often best to just let the dead lie. In any case, the stones and dead that lay beneath them don't care - you can't hurt them or impress them.
You want to "get even" with them? Good! They did a bad thing and paid the immediate cost with the loss of their lives. But to truly get even - forget them and let them be lost to time and memory. As it stands, you obsess over them just as much as if you were a member of the KKK.
- As it stands, you obsess over them just as much as if you were a member of the KKK.
  You have some very strange ideas, my friend. What do you imagine my day-to-day life to be like? How often do you think I tell people that we should all piss on the graves of confederates? Hourly? Daily? Monthly?
  Don't you think that it's more likely that me defending pissing on the graves of Confederates has much more to do with the fact that I'm responding in a thread that was specifically about pissing on their graves?
  I mean, for fuck's sake; I didn't even make the thread. If anything, PugJesus would be the obsessed one; he made the fucking thread, after all.
  Is it that you think that I'm obsessed with the concept because I've made several replies in this thread? Well... I've made several replies in a lot of different threads. Usually, when someone replies to me, I will reply back. That's just how forums and communication in general work. Do you not do that? Careful! Better not reply to me, or I'll assume you're obsessed with me!

If John Bell Hood had had his head blown off instead of his leg, he'd probably be remembered as fondly as Jackson.

Fortunately (for the Union), he survived to "defend" Atlanta, then invade Tennessee. The Battle of Franklin being in that comedy of errors. The base wasn't named after him until 1942. By people who read enough history to know Hood commanded the Texas brigade, but not enough to know how he commanded it.

I salute General Hood on account that he's responsible for more dead Confederates than any two Union Generals.

Story time? Please?

This meme makes me miss the old ShermanPosting subreddit. Excellent post

We need a Sherman posting Lemmy sub

The best way to celebrate confederate generals is by melting down statues dedicated to them during the civil rights era and re-casting them into urinals

My uncle will be turned into a toilet when he dies. That’s he get’s for being a forced birther.

Tbh pave it for a parking lot

History is important, even history we disagree with. Especially history that some current ideologue wants to hide
These people being killed left suffering for their family and friends, a missing generation was a huge problem for their community
Most soldiers were likely fighting for their friends and communities. Maybe I’m overstepping for things I’ve never experienced, but I would be willing to bet that very few individual soldiers chose to be there to support slavery, or had anywhere near that amount of abstraction in their motivations

I also like that one big contiguous urinal they have in D.C near the Mall

Would be a bit rough if someone actually did this

Misspelled "rad".
- What word would be the misspelled one?

I've argued this before, but if Russia has any hope to move towards capitalism rather than their current communist streak, whoever succeeds Putin would be wise to sell the opportunity to piss on Putin's grave.

If done smartly, this could be a really good opportunity for Russia. Imagine going to pissonputinsgrave.com and being greeted by several packages:

Base package - $15. You're in the neighborhood and you want to piss on his grave. Just buy the ticket, show the QR code to Igor and he'll look the other way while you enjoy pissing on the cunt.
Deluxe - $450. 5 nights in a 4-star Moscow hotel await you. Entrance to museums, the Kremlin and Putin's grave are included in the price. Enjoy pissing on his grave every night of your vacation, even multiple times a day. Igor will even aim your penis at the grave if you want.
Oligarch - $1000. Deluxe package, but with flights to and from your location included. Igor will come pick you up. Igor will insist on aiming your penis at the grave.
Remote - $5000. Why visit Russia when you can go to places that aren't shitholes? When you're truly wealthy, you can have your cake and eat it too. Igor will come to you. He will be carrying a gold cup with your name engraved on it in rubies. You may fill it with the liquid/solid of your choice, and Igor will take it back through customs somehow. You will receive a video of that very same cup being poured onto Putin's grave, and will receive the cup back as a souvenir, after it has been thoroughly sanitized. You can of course have Igor hold your penis at any point while he is visiting.

This is what a cursed place looks like. Somewhere you start desecrating and bad things will happen to you from some truly bad souls.