Vice President Michael Pence recently said that the solution to the Confederate Monuments problem is to build more monuments. Upon reflection, I realize he is absolutely right. Thanks to him and smart people like Steve Bannon and Alex Jones, I am no longer blinded by the historical narrative implanted in my sheeple brain by liberal snowflakes like Shelby Foote. I now know that Robert E. Lee was not a traitorous slave owner who violated the oath he took upon graduating from West Point to wage war on the government that educated him. He was a patriot defending his guest workers from being exploited by freedom hating Northern aggressors. And the God-given loyalty to the state of Virginia decreed by birth on its soil outweighed any oath sworn to by a mere lad in his early twenties… far too young to be held accountable for keeping such a commitment.
In the interests of helping the vice president with his desire to add more reminders of our past in order to have a more complete picture of our history, I’d like to offer a few suggestions of statues that should be added immediately. I’d like to start with General Winfield Scott. A fellow Virginian, Scott was responsible for the “Anaconda Strategy” that led to the Union victory. If Southerners truly love this country, then the Virginia born architect of the plan that held it together should be as honored just as much as the man who tried to rend it asunder. I think a statue of Scott with a giant snake standing on a torn battle flag should be erected alongside the one of Lee on the UV campus. Just in the interest of historical balance and perspective, of course.
Virginians could even prove that race has nothing to do with their glorification of the Confederacy by erecting a statue of Mary Bowser alongside Lee and Scott. A freed slave, Bowser was an extremely important Union spy. But I don’t want to leave out other southern states. Louisiana should erect a giant memorial to Aaron Burr, former vice president who not only killed Alexander Hamilton, but turned traitor by trying to get the British government to help him liberate Louisiana from President Jefferson. And let’s not forget the first American traitor, Benedict Arnold. It is a disgrace to historical accuracy that the only acknowledgement of his great service to the colonists at the Battle of Saratoga is a boot statue. Just because he was the first American to discover that Congress couldn’t be trusted and then switched sides doesn’t mean we should forget his bravery in battle.
Let’s not restrict our search for historical inclusivity to the Civil War. Birmingham, Alabama should build a monument to Robert Edward Chambliss who bravely risked his life by handling the explosives used in bombing a church in the city. Now, some people might point out that “Dynamite Bob” killed three little black girls in the process. But I think that is missing the point. Bombingham is an important part of Alabama’s history and the death of the three girls is regrettable, but it helped persuade the rest of the country that the Civil Rights Movement was necessary. So he should be celebrated for moving us toward a “more perfect union” that included black voters.
Besides, Dynamite Bob truly believed in his cause, and according to Southern apologists, believing in a lost cause and being willing to die for it is something to honor. To satisfy whiney liberals, a statue of another Alabamian, Angela Davis, could be erected as well. Davis, an avowed communist, also believed that violence in defense of a cause one holds dear is not only acceptable but required.
The more I think about it, the bigger this task of creating more monuments seems. And Pence is right that we need to depend on local input. For example, there are so many historical sites throughout the country where lynchings occurred. Maybe we need a national holiday for establishing new historical monuments. Instead of American flags, Wal-Mart could sell hangman nooses that people could use to decorate spots where they think a new monument should be built. When enough nooses accumulate in a particular spot, that’s where a new statue should be erected. There are so many people of historical importance to be remembered: Robert Henry Best, Rainey Bethea, the Rosenbergs, and Aldrich Ames. The latter might even help repair Russian relations since he was a Putin favorite.
I’m very excited about all these possibilities. I’m going to start a Twitter campaign for a statue of Mister Mxyzptik to be placed in a place of national importance, preferably on the White House lawn. If it weren’t for him, I’d never be able to understand, let alone appreciate this Bizzaro world we live in. And that is something worth celebrating.
