The Natives are Revolting, Sire…

“All lovely things will have an ending,

All lovely things will fade and die,

And youth, that's now so bravely spending,

Will beg a penny by and by.” -Conrad Aiken

There is an old British colonial joke, dating back to the 18th Century, that goes something like this. The British Ambassador, visiting an diplomatic outpost in a small province in India, is having a cigar and a glass of Port with his old Cambridge friend when suddenly there is a loud commotion in the street outside the legation office. Walking over to the window, the old college chum glances down at the agitated crowds and announces to the Ambassador with casual restraint, “The natives are revolting!”

To this, the Ambassador wearily rolls his eyes and replies, “Yes…aren’t they!...”

I am reminded of this old bit of typically dry British humor as I sit here trying to make some sense of all the recent social chaos that has arisen under the aegis of the ‘Black Lives Matter’ movement. Racist? Perhaps. Politically incorrect? Absolutely. Yet, given the underlying spirit of vehement social anarchy that permeates much of it, it is contextually relevant to a surprisingly large extent. For, what began as a legitimate protest to right an inarguable wrong (the use of inappropriately excessive force by some police against blacks) has degenerated into a typically herd-like vendetta of the emotionally volatile masses to completely discredit what blacks call ‘white culture’ and every last vestige of its ‘poisonous’ legacy.

The BLM ‘protest’, which began peacefully enough, has now grown to embrace sporadic violent rampages that include wanton looting, destruction of property (private and public), gratuitous acts of blatant criminality, and most recently destruction of any and all public monuments that are deemed to be even slightly offensive to some sensitive soul. Not satisfied with tearing down or desecrating statues of Civil War figures, the list of offensive individuals deserving like treatment has expanded exponentially to now include anyone even remotely associated with slavery (Christopher Columbus, Junipero Serra, John Sutter and George Washington and Abraham Lincoln, unbelievably). Each day shrill young female media flacks breathlessly report on new instances of crowds pulling down statues in parks and public places with such scarcely restrained enthusiastic emotion that you’d think they were witnessing on-the-scene outrages of the Tsar’s cavalry, routing crowds during the Russian Revolution. There has been talk of attempts to desecrate the Mt. Rushmore Memorial. Just yesterday (‘Flash! Breaking NEWS!’) it was suggested by some (marginally sane) individual that all statues of the Christian Jesus, Mary and/or any monument including their display, be torn down ‘because there is no historic proof or evidence to support the allegation that Jesus was white.’ WTF!? Anyone who still has a full load of marbles should now accept the fact that the BLM protest thingie has finally, undeniably beamed itself resolutely into the Twilight Zone!

Consequently, at least as I see things, any last vestige of opinion that there still exists any such thing as an unbiased, neutral and objective media in these times should very quickly dissipate like the anally-generally smoke such beliefs are, upon viewing almost any major broadcast media network report. As intellectual and incisive conservative thinker Dinesh D’Souza points out in his very recently (2020) released ‘The United States of Socialism’, the blatantly left-oriented bias of mass media in this country is now a fact of contemporary life and we might as well cease expecting anything even remotely resembling ‘fair & balanced’ reporting by any large, commercial media network (Fox included).

D’Souza goes on to say that what we are urged to regard as ‘most trusted’ media network sources (by the media themselves, mightily tooting their own horn) are not only owned & controlled by large, leftist progressive commercial entities, so too are the academic journalism schools themselves dominated by leftist professors (who back in the 60s were probably out on the barricades hoisting pikes with Jean Valjean, before they got their PhDs and became professional seekers-after-tenure). Thus, today’s media journalist is produced in a congruent mold that generates thousands of like-oriented clones, each about as different from one another as Twinkies desert snacks. And God help the tender young journalist who dares to deviate from the official party-line by expressing a truly independent outlook!

Adding to this, I might add that all the major networks embrace the ‘diversity’ philosophy to such an extent that most television reporters and media personalities one encounters on both national and local stations are now female, or, if male, quite likely gay. And of course, extra game points are granted if the person is ‘of color’ or Hispanic. Despite the fact that officially Affirmative Action was legally disenfranchised, commercial media has been hewing to that not-so-covert moral philosophy for decades. In fact, California’s governor recently announced that it was very likely that his state would reinstitute Affirmative Action (via legislative efforts to place the issue on the coming November voting ballot). After all, what’s fairer than letting the voters in an overwhelmingly Democrat-majority state decide the matter, eh? Democracy in action! Yeah, team!

I’ve often paused to reflect on why excessive emotionalism and shrill, feminine affect so dominates newscasting these days. In my opinion, it’s because women are predisposed by nature (principally by gender genetics and neural arrangement) to relate to the touchy-feely side of things and it’s pretty easy to see that the entire ‘emotion-laden’ tone of most stories related by these anchors and reporters is nauseatingly redolent with smarmy stories about ‘moms’ (one of modern media’s favs!), minority children achievement stories and other ‘cuteness’ touches of like kind. I have to conclude, after watching a typical CBS/NBC/ABC/CNN/Whatever newscast that these programs specifically target an audience of women, who are most susceptible to ‘feel-good’ stories by natural inclination (when media is not trying to provoke viewer outrage with stories about criminals, car-chases and the excesses of police/law enforcement, that is).

“We’ll be right back with far more news in just a moment…including some good news about a rescued puppy…after these words…” (read annoyingly dumbed-down commercial TV news banners). It’s a regular formula, folks, and you’d better believe it…or at least get used to it.

Social scientist Charles Murray, noted academic and one of the chief bêtes noire of the leftist progressive socialist radicals (just read what the Southern Poverty Law Center has to say about him, in their scathingly acid-laden contempt for all that he represents to their post-Marcusian mode of ‘new socialist’ thought), has just this year (2020) released another extensively researched work titled ‘Human Diversity’ that maintains many intriguing hypotheses, not least among them that the evidence uncovered in his analytical social researches indicate that women are by hard-wired nature drawn to ‘people-related’ concerns, whilst men are drawn more to ‘thing-related’ subjects. All this has to do with brain biochemistry, as related to many complex bio-neurological components found (and differentiated in) his subjects. Despite Murray’s absolutely erudite, top-drawer academic street creds, you’d think he was a devil-possessed, drug-addled paranoid schizophrenic with delusions, judging from some of the SPLC’s more *sputter-sputter* castigations of Murray and his work.

Murray’s book is in fact both lengthy and horrifically complicated in its intricate and exhaustive examinations of the social science that underlies his findings. So much so that just reading it is almost equally exhaustive and complicated. However, even as a second-rate intellectual myself, his findings are quite evocative and convincing in almost every instance he cites. And I find the statements concerning women’s ‘touch-feely’ emotionalism quite telling when factored into the modern mass broadcast media formula.

It’s pretty obvious, even when reflected in somewhat more staid anchor Norah O’Donnell’s deliveries, as viewed on the CBS nightly national news, that women news anchors and reporters as a group tend to put a LOT of emotional energy into their spiels and exhortations…far more, generally speaking, than their male counterparts (with a few prominent exceptions, of course). Undoubtedly, this nuance is not lost on media moguls who appear almost compulsively obsessed with the task of reaching out to trip the volatile emotional hair-triggers of many women in their viewing audience.

This effect is so clearly obvious that from my standpoint the intentional use of characteristically shrill voices of young women reporters and media anchors to ‘reach out’, is not just intellectually dishonest but physically (physiologically) intrusive. Having to listen sympathetically to the routine concerns of my wife on a 24/7 basis is often trying enough, but to be literally surrounded by shrill soprano sound-waves on the media as well, especially when couched in pseudo post-Valley-Girl-inflected tones, tends to irritate the hell out of me. I therefore look forward to the occasional male voice in broadcast media with some eagerness, although given the OTHER (unspoken) broadcast media policy, that of employing men with softer, more emotive affect (which might translate to ‘gay male’), the overall impact on people like me is quite substantial. Naturally, when a media giant scores a ‘twofer’ (a new employee that may be a minority person AND gay, for example) I would imagine the corporate network board members are doing rounds of high-fives all around the meeting table. After all, doesn't that constitute philosophical compliance with a leftist hiring impetus intended to disproportionately favor 1) minorities, 2) females, and 3) gay people over 'non victim group' applicants?

Of course, anyone who exists politically to the left of center will read the above declarations and immediately scream for my head on a pike (as they simultaneously reach for the phone to report me to the SPLC as a dangerous political deviant), but I don’t mind saying that I have…from being inherently strongly supportive of minority, female and gay rights in an earlier incarnation (as a young 20ish activist in Berkeley with socialist leanings)…grown, with age, a certain amount of 'world-weariness' and mature awareness of the more sutble nuances of life into something of a sexist male person who far prefers the company of men to the shrill, high-strung emotionalisations of the wimmenfolk. Perhaps that’s partly the result of being exposed solely to women on the far-side of Menopause, but let’s face it, ‘The Change’ drastically impacts all the aspects of female comeliness that formerly drew us XY gene people to them like moths to a flame. Rare is it to find a woman over that invisible line who still manages to retain some of those lovely, desirable attributes and, if anything, all that is left is embittered, grouchy dissatisfaction piled up in their affectual ‘outboxes’. That qualifies me as neither a misanthrope nor a misogynist; just someone who is really TIRED of having to be constantly immersed in outpourings of female sentimentality, everywhere I turn.

But moving right along, and returning to Dinesh D’Souza’s insightful expostulations, one of the most bothersome aspects of the belligerently aggressive, left-leaning broadcast media these days is the fact that there are few alternatives to be found anywhere to that shrill, relentless and merciless ‘bitchiness’ that characterises media news reporting (as thinly cloaked as it is in sanctimonious declarations of being ‘fair, balanced and neutral’).

In his recent book ‘The United States of Socialism’, D’Souza covers a great number of carefully delineated and researched bases. In the process of going over the Democratic left’s fair-haired who (kindly old ‘Uncle Bernie’), he also does a fairly incisive assay of Bernie’s more radical (and shriller) fellow travelers (Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, E. Warren, et al). These women (and it’s particularly interesting to note that they are, excepting Bernie, ALL women) belong to the group of erstwhile ‘democratic socialists’ in America who come under the heading of ‘identity-socialism’. Identity-socialists all have strong ‘diversity credentials’ and align themselves with groups competing for leading ‘victimhood’ status with the eagerness of a maggot attacking dead meat.

Elizabeth Warren, who famously shamed herself by proudly proclaiming ‘Native American Indian’ heritage to gain credibility with disaffected minorities, recently made the outlandish, purely astounding pronouncement that: “Black trans and cis women, gender-nonconforming and nonbinary people are the backbone of our democracy.” This suggests to me either that Warren is accustomed to blowing smoke so thick that even she can’t navigate her way back to reality, or that she has one jim-dandy sense of self-deprecating, ironic humor. The real ‘backbone’ of American society are, of course, the great (but increasingly vanishing) American working class (of all persuasions) whose sweat and hard labor helped create the prosperity that enables identity-socialists to remain the parasites they are: capable of superlative word-mongering and prodigious rhetorical verbosity, but hopelessly unproductive economic blood-suckers (if their political ‘occupations’ were not established). Their primary talent, so it would seem, is their ability to move the mouth and string together endless paragraphs of words.

Bernie is an excellent example of the last category, as someone who until he finally got elected to office, had never held a productive job in his entire lifetime, and someone who (according to Dinesh D’Souza) had only barely managed to survive his earlier life thanks to the generosity of friends, who let him sleep on their couches (because he was essentially homeless). Once Bernie made a niche for himself as a paid politician, he quickly began to make money off his connections and today (so we are told), he and his wife own three separate mansions (making his net worth several millions of dollars). My-my-my! From Marxist to Capitalist (yet still spouting socialist rehetoric, *sputter-sputter*). Overnight!

D’Souza, in his researches, found that at one point in his earlier life, Bernie joined a commune, but after a year or two he was forced (by the others) to leave because he allegedly refused to lift a productive finger in the necessary income-producing work that supported the group, economically. His specialty was, according to testimony provided by others in his former commune (for the whole while that he was resident there) concocting elaborate doctrinal arguments and engaging in endless political discussions with the others (who apparently all got pretty damn sick of it all). D’Souza notes that this is quite typical of most of the new ‘young (& mostly female) identity-socialists’ who are so eager to spend others’ money to fund all their various select constituencies of entitled ‘victims’.

This point rises again and again, whenever the thorny question comes up 'How do we provide all the ‘free stuff’ that identity-socialists swear that America ‘owes’ their privileged entitlement-pets?' In essence, that ‘free stuff’ is the economic income and financial wherewithal of those who maintain salaried occupations, earn regular incomes and pay substantial taxes. It quickly becomes clear that all of the promised goodies ain’t nohow ‘free’ at all, once the rhetorical smoke clears off enough to grasp what is being implied and contrasted to the harsher realities that categorically refute this sort of pie-in-the-sky drivel that the leftist progressives are so fond of shoveling out.

Regardless of their specific individual modus operandi, the basic battle tactic employed by the ‘new socialists’ in America remains quite similar to that of their classic socialist predecessors: creating inflammatory class antagonisms, based upon division, alleged inequities, and resentment, to achieve their political ends.

As D’Souza further explains, “What’s the goal of identity socialism? Ultimately, it’s about trying to get people to define themselves in terms of their race, gender and sex organs. These various forms of division are intended to create large, resentful victim groups. The Left hopes to bring together enough of these victim groups to form a popular majority. In this way, they can then rule unobstructed over the rest of the population.”

Earlier, I decried the increasing use of emotionally volatile young females as media broadcast anchors and reporters as a deliberate and intentional company policy (perhaps unstated openly as such, but definitely encouraged by station human resources…read: ‘public relations’… departments of the station corporate owners). I am reminded of a phenomenon described as the ‘femininisation’ of American culture that has often been discussed at various levels and times in past and current literary circles. This phenomenon was explored in some detail, albeit a bit too intellectually abstruse for my tastes, in Ann Douglas’s 1977 (republished in 1998) feminist work ‘The Feminisation of American Culture’.

Douglas makes the argument that back in the 19th century, organised religion’s previously iron-handed influence on setting moral and ethical standards of public behavior began to progressively wain, effectively removing much of the previous social reinforcement of ‘humane gentility’ that the Christian religion champions, a development that coincided with the final phases of Westward expansion in America, a movement that concurrently amplified and reinforced traditional masculine values of rugged self-reliance and stoic self-actualisation.

Women, whether consciously or not, began to press for reform of this unbridled culture of frontier masculinity and as they gained ground in their quest for social equality exerted increasing pressure on American culture to ‘gentrify’. As women moved into western towns they brought this mind-set with them, knowingly or otherwise.

That spirit of social reform, slowly at first but increasing rapidly, gained strength as new attainments were achieved in America in establishing the desire (by women) for full social equality for women. This progressed notably with the so-called suffrage and temperance movements and also benefitted hugely from manpower constraints imposed by major conflicts such as the world wars on participant nations.

Women’s interests were traditionally drawn to literature and ‘cultivated’ pursuits, disproportionately to men, whose interests, activities and tendencies were less intellectual and more physically direct in nature. Thus, women’s desire to ‘tame’ and ‘gentle’ what they viewed as deplorably roughshod (and ‘needless’) masculinity began to permeate our culture through largely literary means. This dynamic, greatly simplified in expressed terms, was the early beginning of the present social trend of ‘feminising’ our American culture.

Since women were traditionally the literary ‘readers’ in our society, most 'social-consciousness-related' writing was naturally aimed in their direction, finding a far more sympathetic, ‘emotionally receptive’ and empathetic audience in women than in men, as a general rule. Only highly educated men (back then a very, very small percentage of the American male population), were ‘cultivated’ to appreciate the ‘finer’ aesthetics of life (read: reflect and/or acknowledge female sensitivities and gentility). Most men (and certainly most women) were largely unlettered and remained rather rough around the edges, but educated and literate women certainly exerted a far larger influence than their numbers alone would suggest.

In more recent times, as women gained both social equality and access to upper levels of socio-economic power, this tendency to ‘feminise’ or ‘gentle’ traditional masculine notions of normative manhood has expanded exponentially, aided not insignificantly by collateral inclusion of such formerly outlying (victim) groups as gays (and others who feel they have either been suppressed or victimized by straight, ‘religiously fundamental’ culture). While the topic of human sexuality is a veritable minefield of social controversy in which is it impossible to state anything without immediately drawing fire from several quarters, it is safe enough to say that gays are generally far more ‘sensitive’ and in closer touch with their feelings, emotionally speaking, than non-self-declared gays. Thus, gays generally tend to have (arguably), at all levels of the above considerations, a tendency to manifest far more emotional volubility than non-gay individuals. This effect may be observed in broadcast media network employment. This is generally also identifiable in the excessively ‘emotional’ style of reporting that one would not normally expect to see in traditionally straight males of erstwhile conventional masculinity. It is certainly NOT the sort of affect one was accustomed to seeing in an Edward R. Murrow, Walter Cronkite, or Morley Safer who 50 years ago were the ‘face’ of national media news broadcasting.

Statistically it has been demonstrated rather clearly (to my satisfaction, at any rate) that in terms of academic achievement, women have risen to the top of the stack. There are far more female college graduates at all levels (undergraduate and graduate) today than male, and women have also been shown to demonstrate (generally speaking) higher levels of literacy, interest in and propensity for education than males. This trend continues today, disturbing as it is to many such as myself, who feel that the world is still far too raw and violent to encourage the osmotic spread of mildness, gentility and so-called ‘civilising’ influences. Evidence Russia, which Vladimir Putin rules with a sophisticated and unapologetic sort of post-USSR brutal style that exults traditional patterns of traditional male masculinity. His is merely one example. A hyper-feminised nation, such as the progressive, liberal socialist faction desires to foster in America could hardly hope to compete with such a hyper-masculinised nation in the event of anything short of a nuclear war. And yet that seems to be where we’re heading, from all appearances (non-nuclear conflict). The ‘stacking’ of the national media deck of cards (no pun intended, although it is an amusing one) with well-endowed, attractive young women (and feminised…gay?...male) journalists is certainly a big step in that direction, serving to overly ‘sensitise’ their viewing audience in potentially insidious ways.

Sadly, since the vast majority of the media’s viewing audience (at least those who watch television regularly) tend to be dull, reflexively apathetic non-thinkers, that are easily amused with the execrable ‘infotainment’ crap that the networks have become accustomed to spoon-feeding them), what more perfect arena could there be in which to capture the narcissistic, self-absorbed little materialistic souls that comprise television’s main viewing audience? Particularly now, due to the constraints (quarantining, social distancing and ‘stay-at-home’ admonishments) imposed by the very real and quite serious viral pandemic. Talk about a captive audience, perfect for foisting ‘feminising’ agendas even further onto us!

Ann Douglas’s book, cited above, was written in full sympathy with the ‘feminising’ movement, of course. I, in contrast, represent the very firmly opposed anti-feminist faction, who feel that if anything, making our culture more ‘touchy-feely’ sensitive as we strive to prevent the complete disintegration of America (by the current coalition of misguided young progressive socialists) is to invite the ultimate dissolution of whatever was originally ‘united’ about the US of A.

Others, monitoring the present social violence that has seized the fancy of so many young, largely clueless and unstudied idealists in America, have frequently drawn parallels with the downfall of Athens, or that of the ancient Roman Empire (in the ‘Sack of Rome’ in 410 AD) when Alaric I, the first king of the Visigoths, defeated those outposts of Western civilisation. Alaric was by no means a ‘kinder, gentler’ barbarian, despite the fact that he had been exposed to some of the more benign aspects of outlying Roman culture as a child.

To some extent this is quite ironic, for during most of my earlier life I hewed to the philosophical ideals of an equitable society in which women were granted full regard, alongside men. Back in my early Berkeley days (the 70s), I actually believed the more exaggerated rhetorical pronouncements of the leaders of the student protest movement I moved within. The fact that in actual fact these Marxist-inspired ‘revolutionaries’ I hung with maintained a double standard in regard to women failed to register with me. That is, despite all the grand horse exhaust about ‘women holding up half the sky’ (that the young Maoists were fond of quoting) that was regularly heard, once the Berkeley and Oakland police began rushing the barricades, the immediate ‘battle cry’ was actually “Women & children up FRONT!”, the idea being that they would serve as a convenient buffer to deter excessive police brutality. Thus, the lie was rather starkly exposed concerning actual male attitudes towards women’s liberation and female equality! And in fact, back in most Communist & Socialist regimes (the USSR, Communist China, et al), despite the same tired proclamations of female equality, women were in fact equally regarded as unequal and subservient to most male interests. Reality versus party doctrine. [But it's one thing for a male-dominated political system to claim support for female equality, and entirely another for a largely female-dominated system to do likewise. I would remain hugely suspect of the first case, absolutely convinced of the veracity of the second.]

Today, now that I am well past the age where the softer more beguiling aspects of pre-Menopausal femininity are largely incapable of tempering my outlook, and aided by the broadening experience conferred by age and substantial world travel, I recognise the marked and decidedly deleterious downside of present efforts to remake American society into an androgenously passive, emotionally tender and more acquiescently genteel one (at least in terms of the inadequacies of that effort in preserving our capability to compete with other nations, such as Russia and/or China). Our competition on the world stage already considers Americans attitudinal ‘pussycats’ in terms of temperament and grossly lacking the warriorlike stamina requisite to successfully defending a nation. An army of women? I don’t think so!

Very recently I had a YOU-Tube video brought to my attention, in which a black religious leader (Rev. Dr. James W. Manning), the Founder of the Atlah Church and Ministry, spoke from the heart to say that it was time to stop allowing people to run amok, unrestrained, and out of control, excusing it in the name of BLM protesting. He was speaking of his fellow blacks and his words were electric with frank, no-holds-barred verity. He went on to say that today’s young ‘entitled’ blacks carry large chips on their shoulders and go around ‘…deliberately daring white people to knock them off’. It was well past time, he further stated, to knock those chips off and for whites to stop reflexively apologising for being the alleged cause of all black miseries and suffering.

This is just a poor recapitulation of his remarks I have given here, and if that video is genuine, unaltered and/or not an outright fake I have no way of verifying. Given the ultra-sophisticated graphic software means available to many these days, malicious altering of such seeming realities is more than a very real possibility, certainly, but I have yet to find any evidence whatsoever on-line or off that that YOU-Tube video was falsely contrived.

At any rate, and if one accepts the Reverend's purported utterances, that prompting is absolutely correct. It IS well past time to stand up, unafraid of the guaranteed character assassination that will be directed at anyone (most especially any white person) who dares to assert those truths, and declare the violent excesses being committed in the name of BLM protests to be wrong and to cease those illegal actions.

The looting, violence, rioting and general mayhem we are witnessing (not even including a largely out-of-control wave of statue vandalizing, destruction and tear-downs in public areas across the nation) must be brought to an end without any further delay, for what we are witnessing here is an attempt (by the ‘identity-socialist’ progressive leftist radicals) to trash the very basis of American freedom (freedom that ironically has allowed all these outrages to occur in the first place).

Sadly, there is every likelihood that a concerted, organised and covertly directed hard-core of radical nihilist anarchists are largely responsible for initiating these more extreme acts of social outrage, which have successfully drawn in a great number of unthoughtful, easily swayed (need I say ‘uneducated’, perhaps only marginally intelligent?) bottom-dwellers to enthusiastically take up the banners of anarchy and help carry out these extreme acts of violence. In fact, very little critical attention has been paid to the matter of separating out the legitimate (peaceful) BLM protestors from the above provocateurs and it would certainly be extremely difficult to do so definitively, barring a major and rather sweeping investigation into all this by a major national law enforcement group such as the FBI or some other national intelligence agency.

Still and clearly enough, it is time for the present much-maligned majority (whites) to stand up and refute the false and poisonous rhetoric that is being maliciously passed off as truth by the leftists. Ironically, it would take a black person like the Reverend Manning to state all this unequivocally, since a white counterpart stating the same thing would probably be immediately harangued into silence by an overwhelming wave of reactive leftist denial it would assuredly prompt. That said, Rev. Manning’s stated opinion is hardly an isolated one. It has been reflected in at least several others by black individuals in YOU-Tube videos that have recently aired, containing the same message: There’s no need for well-intended and responsible white members of society to assume the burden of guilt for any perceived historical black injustices, simply because they’re white.

Amen, brother Manning! [And SUCKS to you, liberal leftist progressive media broadcast organisations for your  deplorably partisan journalistic ethics!]

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Postscript: This evening, on one of the broadcast media news programs, a network reporter did a short segment on foreign (non-US) reactions to the BLM protest in Rome. He made the very interesting point that Rome was today still absoutely FULL of WW2 vintage pro-fascism (Mussolini) memorials, despite the passage of so many years since the fascist era, yet no one was in any avowed hurry to tear any of them down.

In that same segment, the reporter interviewed a black Italian of Ethiopian origin, who expressed the opinion that tearing down statues and memorials is in truth merely 'wanton destruction' of centuries of history; and since the entire history of the ancient Roman Empire is redolent with slavery and slave culture, once you start tearing things down, where does it all end? The famous Roman Colosseum, for example, one of the most notable historic landmarks of the ancient world, was witness to some of the bloodiest, most brutal gladiatorial contests to the death between slaves that the world has ever witnessed. Do we need to tear it down, too, so as to be 'politically correct'?

Instead of 'destroying history' (which is essentially 'denying historical fact'), what is really needed (this black Italian opined) are rather constructive lessons in history, to educate and inform.

In my opinion, that is an amazingly astute and commendable argument to advance, even if somewhat ironic, considering what Italy did to his ancestral Ethiopian home in 1938. I only wish we had a few clear thinkers like that among the crowds of marginally functional protestors the US news reports unceasingly dote on each day!