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Latest GOP cancel culture: revisiting the Alamo


Nice Guy Eddie

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5 minutes ago, hpslugga said:

Several years ago, there was a study done that found that Americans ranked at or near dead last in the industrial world in math, but ranked #1 in confidence in math skills. We're a walking, talking, breathing example of the Dunning Kruger Effect.

I'm certain you feel you've explained everything.

It's okay, your stupid sticker looks good though.

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18 minutes ago, HenryJames said:

 

party of small guvmint at it again.

and wtf is this shit about the Cenotaph? they wanted to move it and he stopped it? why? it was put there in the 30's. it's not original to the site. its position is not sacred. I swear these shrinking violets and their personal crusades of nothing are more than I can take sometimes

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6 minutes ago, Longhorn_Fan68 said:

party of small guvmint at it again.

and wtf is this shit about the Cenotaph? they wanted to move it and he stopped it? why? it was put there in the 30's. it's not original to the site. its position is not sacred. I swear these shrinking violets and their personal crusades of nothing are more than I can take sometimes

Yeah, this and the wall is stupid. I also thought they were moving it as well. What happened since?

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1 hour ago, Nice Guy Eddie said:

Maybe sledgehammer is some lyric of Phil Collins' but the word is associated with Peter Gabriel. And while Peter Gabriel and Phil Collins are linked, its a poor reference.

Don't care anymore. 

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2 minutes ago, Surly Bevo said:

Smart politics. Patrick knows when there are a whole host of much more pressing issues facing the state he gets votes by getting his base to….Remember the Alamo

That man contributed more to the turning of bewildering inanities into a fucking language like no Texan ever did before, and imagine the territory that covers.

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25 minutes ago, workswithseed said:

Yeah, this and the wall is stupid. I also thought they were moving it as well. What happened since?

It’s an architectural travesty and ugly as fuck.  The Alamo will continue to be the worst of the missions on the Mission trail.  Just an excuse to drink at the Minger. 

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3 hours ago, aggie08 said:

I thought it was understood that the story of the Alamo is largely propagandized bullshit that we're just okay playing along with?

That's how I learned it, but it was before the latest wave of white people being bitchass pussies.

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Texian Iliad, great book by Stephen Hardin, does a great job of describing how the battle of the Alamo developed. One thing he repeats often is that the defenders of the Alamo expected relief the whole time. It's also interesting that so few actual Texians died there. They were mostly adventurers from the US.

Anyway, the only shame in finding out some soldiers routed against an overwhelming number of attackers is that their story has been used purely for myth. Soldiers rout. The only fall back for many was the line of individual rooms called the barracks where their lives played out in bloody, hand to hand struggles.

The real story is more interesting. But we don't want to hear that. We want super duper supermen.

 

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18 minutes ago, RomaVicta said:

Texian Iliad, great book by Stephen Hardin, does a great job of describing how the battle of the Alamo developed. One thing he repeats often is that the defenders of the Alamo expected relief the whole time. It's also interesting that so few actual Texians died there. They were mostly adventurers from the US.

Anyway, the only shame in finding out some soldiers routed against an overwhelming number of attackers is that their story has been used purely for myth. Soldiers rout. The only fall back for many was the line of individual rooms called the barracks where their lives played out in bloody, hand to hand struggles.

The real story is more interesting. But we don't want to hear that. We want super duper supermen.

 

I seem to remember it being referred to as the "Legend of the Alamo" when I learned the story, basically an admission that it was a romanticized version of the story, understanding that history books provide a lot more details of the nuances of what really went down. Again, that was before today's phenomenon of whiny white fragility.

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5 hours ago, Beantown Express 2.0 said:

The reason for Texas independence was so Texans could keep their guns, make sure abortions were illegal, keep the illegal Mexicans from coming across the border, and that booze wouldn't be allowed to be purchased on Sunday mornings.  It had nothing to do with slavery you leftist, socialist bastard!

By the way, I got a hundred bucks says the sentence above is taught in Texas schools in the next decade.....sadly.  


people were much happier being slaves !!!

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4 hours ago, Disco Strangler said:

Phil Collins got taken for a ride by some shady artifact dealers.  Basically, documents are probably real, but physical objects were likely fake.

He should retain a lawyer and sue, sue, sudio. 

What he's waiting for, I don't know.

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2 hours ago, Bateshorn said:

It’s an architectural travesty and ugly as fuck.  The Alamo will continue to be the worst of the missions on the Mission trail.  Just an excuse to drink at the Minger. 

Seriously, why the fuck didn't San Antonio save The Alamo? It's such a travesty that should be reversed. Like the saving of the USS Texas.

 #fuckgrandma

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6 hours ago, Nice Guy Eddie said:

Unfortunately if an issue discusses white people and their history of repression of others, it's a political issue. I have no doubt that right politicians understand this to be true but they're sick of white people being the villain. Or more likely, they don't want to be called out by white people that are sick of being the villain.

There is no downside in Abbott forcing that talk to be cancelled.

Every so often, we get the "Texas joined the confederacy for states' rights reasons, it wasn't because of slavery!"

And so I have to send them this:

https://www.tsl.texas.gov/ref/abouttx/secession/2feb1861.html

Quote

Texas abandoned her separate national existence and consented to become one of the Confederated States to promote her welfare, insure domestic tranquility [sic] and secure more substantially the blessings of peace and liberty to her people. She was received into the confederacy with her own constitution, under the guarantee of the federal constitution and the compact of annexation, that she should enjoy these blessings. She was received as a commonwealth holding, maintaining and protecting the institution known as negro slavery--the servitude of the African to the white race within her limits--a relation that had existed from the first settlement of her wilderness by the white race, and which her people intended should exist in all future time. Her institutions and geographical position established the strongest ties between her and other slave-holding States of the confederacy. Those ties have been strengthened by association. But what has been the course of the government of the United States, and of the people and authorities of the non-slave-holding States, since our connection with them?

Quote

The controlling majority of the Federal Government, under various pretences and disguises, has so administered the same as to exclude the citizens of the Southern States, unless under odious and unconstitutional restrictions, from all the immense territory owned in common by all the States on the Pacific Ocean, for the avowed purpose of acquiring sufficient power in the common government to use it as a means of destroying the institutions of Texas and her sister slave-holding States.

By the disloyalty of the Northern States and their citizens and the imbecility of the Federal Government, infamous combinations of incendiaries and outlaws have been permitted in those States and the common territory of Kansas to trample upon the federal laws, to war upon the lives and property of Southern citizens in that territory, and finally, by violence and mob law, to usurp the possession of the same as exclusively the property of the Northern States.

 

 

 

Edited by atomheartbevo
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I'm surprised nobody has had that removed from a state website.  I can remember there was a speech pre-9/11 that Perry gave about endorsing open borders, setting up a healthcare and education system with Mexico to cater to border residents, etc. that were eerily rational and treated the border as the border with the understanding that people move across it all the time.  At some point after 2007 or 2008 the speech was scrubbed (2006 saw a push for guest-worker programs by Perry, Bush, John McCain, etc.), but then such talk became verboten.

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6 minutes ago, atomheartbevo said:

I'm surprised nobody has had that removed from a state website.  I can remember there was a speech pre-9/11 that Perry gave about endorsing open borders, setting up a healthcare and education system with Mexico to cater to border residents, etc. that were eerily rational and treated the border as the border with the understanding that people move across it all the time.  At some point after 2007 or 2008 the speech was scrubbed (2006 saw a push for guest-worker programs by Perry, Bush, John McCain, etc.), but then such talk became verboten.

kansas republicans took over the whole party. 

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3 hours ago, Longhorn_Fan68 said:

party of small guvmint at it again.

and wtf is this shit about the Cenotaph? they wanted to move it and he stopped it? why? it was put there in the 30's. it's not original to the site. its position is not sacred. I swear these shrinking violets and their personal crusades of nothing are more than I can take sometimes

You wouldn't understand, you didn't grow up in Maryland and go to the University of Maryland, being raised on the tales of what went down at the Alamo!

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5 hours ago, Nice Guy Eddie said:

Maybe sledgehammer is some lyric of Phil Collins' but the word is associated with Peter Gabriel. And while Peter Gabriel and Phil Collins are linked, its a poor reference.

I was thinking of not replying at all, but not why sure this is so darn confounding for you.

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7 hours ago, Brisketexan said:

The story of the Alamo and Texas independence is like damned near everything else: it's complicated.

It ain't all noble freedom bullshit.  But....it's also not all "we fought Mexico so we could be racist against mexicans and keep slavery."

90% of the human beings of good and decent character of a certain time.....were also racist.  Because that was THE conventional wisdom (as just one example of a belief we find loathsome today that wasn't the case 150+ years ago).  People are.....complicated.

I am a son of Texas.  I have family members with historical markers on their graves.  And even their history in the Texas borderlands is....complicated.  History has few angels, and few devils.  Instead, it's full of people, in shades of gray.

The conservative reflexive pushback against ANY discussion that doesn't start with "America/Texas is the awesomest bestest and there ain't no place awesomer bester!" is pathetic and sad.

My family is pretty damned complicated, like many are that stretch back that far in certain parts of the country.  I had relatives on one side enter NE Texas in the early 1830s (not a part of any official/legal colonies).  My Cherokee ancestors came into Indian Territory (Arkansas and Oklahoma back then), and some that were married to Anglos moved into NE Texas in the late 1830s and 1840s as well.  The one little branch I'm talking about in this instance, on our DNA tests, most of us have Native American DNA that shows up in the single digits (some have more, there was a lot of intermarriage in that part of Oklahoma and Arkansas at that time). They play up the Trail of Tears thing, and how the government was just horrible, and they make sure that everybody knows they are descended from Trail of Tears victims (some maybe think that explains their lot in life, I dunno), and some that they are still living on the land allotments from the Dawes stuff over a century ago are very proud they've kept those allotments in the family.

When researching a family history book for this branch, I came across documents (letters, a diary, various legal documents) showing our ancestors' hardships and some of the claims they filed against the government about their losses, etc. (family received very little, pennies on the dollar kind of thing). 

One time, some relatives who were fixated on some of the larger financial figures in the documents (some extremely large holdings in North Carolina), were joking about how much that is worth today, and that they are owed reparations. I mentioned that the largest land holdings were plantations and that the large property losses on the Trail were slaves that died along the way.  

You'd think I threw a hand grenade into the room.  That did not fit the narrative they had crafted about their "noble" ancestors.  I pointed out that it doesn't change their suffering (we had some ancestors who had large families and lost a bunch of kids on the trail, etc.), it's just that things can extremely nuanced. They really wanted that confirmation bias for what they believed prior to my little bombshell, and my bombshell somehow meant that they had to view those folks differently (and it really shouldn't have - our family held slaves for less than 40 years, and it was fairly confined to just half-a-dozen members).

All of the shit that went down before and after the Alamo does not take away from the fact that there were some extremely brave folks at the Alamo, and some extremely brave folks who fought in the other battles, and that Texas was founded by some very hardy folks.  Yes, there were plenty who were in the "fuck you pay me" mindset of only looking out for themselves and their financial gains, but the vast majority were probably fairly good people who were just trying to better their family's lot in life.

It's like respecting that the a Confederate ancestor fought through some extremely hellish battles and conditions and came out the other side, but at the same time stopping the pretense that they were fighting for anything other than the fact that they had been drafted, or what was laid out in the various articles/declarations of secession.

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4 hours ago, Longhorn_Fan68 said:

party of small guvmint at it again.

and wtf is this shit about the Cenotaph? they wanted to move it and he stopped it? why? it was put there in the 30's. it's not original to the site. its position is not sacred. I swear these shrinking violets and their personal crusades of nothing are more than I can take sometimes

There is a group of crazed hardliners I used to follow on Facebook that kicked up a huge fuss about the cenotaph. Would not listen to reason if you told them that ugly-ass thing went up in the 1930s....They also swallowed it hook line and sinker when George P. Bush's land commissioner opponent put it out there that because Bush was half-Meskin, he was planning to put a statue of Santa Anna on the Alamo grounds. It really is one of my favorite bogus campaign slurs of all time, because it was so old-school Texan, incredibly ridiculous, and last but not least the rage it induced in the rubes. I seriously was thinking some of those people were going to spontaneously combust while they were typing their misspelled rants against George P. 

It would be next-level trolling to go in there late one night and plunk down a Santa Anna statue....

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5 hours ago, MaybeACoordinator said:

The kind of people who believe all those myths are the same type as the guy who always turns in his paper late. 

I was trying to figure out how to work that one in.  It's tough, tho.

Edited by Bullneck
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I sometimes think that a lot of our bigger problems boil down to the fact that we (as a nation) never had to confront the a lot of stuff that we have done and we never moved past such events and never had to self-reflect upon them, which allowed us (or rather the politicians, writers, and journalists) to give certain folks and events an almost mythological status.  

As a result of that mythological status, we get to shove certain things off the side and pretend like they aren't important to the conversation. And it's not helped by politicians like Patrick who are not playing to historical accuracy, but instead playing to an audience.

If you point out that the Alamo folks had plenty of time to bail on the Alamo, that Houston didn't consider the Alamo important at all (and preferred to make a stand at the Guadalupe River), that the Alamo was an extremely poor choice to make a stand at for several reasons,, that the folks in the Alamo wrongly believed they would be reinforced, etc. it can absolutely challenge the image that many (particularly Boomers) have built up around that event. Houston's letter spelled it all out:

Quote

 “Colonel Bowie will leave here in a few hours for Bexar with a detachment of from thirty to forty men,” Houston wrote from Goliad to Henry Smith, the provisional governor of Texas, on January 17. “I have ordered the fortifications in the town of Bexar to be demolished, and if you should think well of it, I will remove all the cannon and other munitions of war to Gonzales and Copano, blow up the Alamo and abandon the place.”

But Bowie, being in over his head and being inexperienced in military matters, changed his mind and went over Houston's head. 

But we can't talk about Bowie's inexperience or his getting suckered in by others who were there before him, because we have this mythos build up around them, and we cannot second-guess them, even though their contemporaries cursed their decisions.

 

 

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48 minutes ago, atomheartbevo said:

It's like respecting that the a Confederate ancestor fought through some extremely hellish battles and conditions and came out the other side, but at the same time stopping the pretense that they were fighting for anything other than the fact that they had been drafted, or what was laid out in the various articles/declarations of secession.

That really sticks out for me.  War is war, and it's all hell.  I've been fascinated by the greater attention being given in recent years to workaday accounts of German soldiers in WWII.  What they went through, what it was like, what they saw and felt.

Because by and large, Private Jones, Private Shulz, Private Higashi.....they were just regular dudes from down on the farm who got called up by their country, sent to do a job, and fought for the guys beside them in the foxhole.  The gripes of each of them -- about the chow, shitty equipment, etc. -- are universal.  The trauma of battle is universal.  Soldiers are tools, and MOST of them are just used by a higher-level authority.  Ideology doesn't play that big a role in what they are fighting for.  So, as a result, I shouldn't hate Private Shulz or Private Higashi (unless the individually committed some crime/atrocity).

Same goes for the Mexican private in Santa Anna's army.  Private Dominguez was just there doing a job.  He'd have probably been much happier staying at home in Oaxaca.  It's okay to acknowledge that.  We don't need every Texan to wear a shiny white hat, and every mexican soldier to be a sinister villain.  The main reason we don't need that is because it would be a lie.

But truth seems to have little value or role in the current conversation.

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2 hours ago, atomheartbevo said:

Every so often, we get the "Texas joined the confederacy for states' rights reasons, it wasn't because of slavery!"

And so I have to send them this:

https://www.tsl.texas.gov/ref/abouttx/secession/2feb1861.html

 

 

 

They had to say it was slavery because they were so ashamed of their strong feelings regarding states' rights. 

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8 hours ago, PenelopeWitherspoon said:

This.  And we really need to stop judging people who lived centuries ago by today's moral standards.  Truth is, EVERYONE in the world does good and bad things.  People are complicated.  Teach the facts, and leave the interpretations and opinions OUT.

As a great early 21st century philosopher once said:

 

Not everybody is the perfect person in the world. Everyone does -- kills people, murders people, steals from you, steals from me.

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6 hours ago, Longhorn_Fan68 said:

party of small guvmint at it again.

and wtf is this shit about the Cenotaph? they wanted to move it and he stopped it? why? it was put there in the 30's. it's not original to the site. its position is not sacred. I swear these shrinking violets and their personal crusades of nothing are more than I can take sometimes

moving it is fine, but, the date it was put up isnt completely random.   It marks the 100 year anniversary of the battle… 

 

Plus the 1930s is still considered historical. We need more public art, not less.   
 

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