1984 is here. The Orwellian Era has officially begun in the United States.
CNN reports (external link) that a large statute dedicated to Robert E. Lee in Richmond, Virginia will be removed on Wednesday under orders by authorities of that state.
Gov. Ralph Northam called the magnificent statue, “Virginia’s largest monument to the Confederate insurrection,” and called it “an important step in showing who we are and what we value as a Commonwealth.”
That’s a failed understanding.
Too many transient Americans do not understand pride of place. Texans have always been taught about Sam Houston first and then George Washington. Lee was Lincoln’s first pick to lead the Union army but Lee declined out of loyalty to Virginia. Southerners in particular have a loyalty to the land that Northerners do not understand.
Three Union soldiers at the end of the war on a back road in Georgia were surprised to see a very old man coming along with an ancient musket. The war was lost. The man was hardly capable of fighting.
“What are you doing?” asked the Union soldiers. “The war is lost. Why are you here?”
“Because you are here.”
“Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street building has been renamed, every date has been altered. And the process is continuing day by day and minute by minute. History has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Party is always right.” George Orwell. 1984.
