Saturday 27 June 2020

Grab The Hammer And Chisel

Just a thought as America is looking at putting some terrible wrongs right from its past and yanking down statues and monuments to slave owners and in a previous post i noted that on some of the American money, the $1, $2, $20 and $50 dollar bills, the faces of slave holding Presidents were gurning back at Americans as they paid for their canned cheese or chlorinated chicken.   
Just as some inappropriately named Forts are facing an overhaul, i see an even bigger problem in South Dakota that may need to be addressed, bigger as in 60ft high and staring down from the side of a mountain.
Looking out from Mount Rushmore are George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln and while the last guy is certainly not on anyones radar as being involved in slave trading, Lincoln actually did everything to free the slaves, when it comes to Washington and Jefferson, oh dear.
George Washington, the first President, was a major slaveholder with 317 under his control and Thomas Jefferson owned over 600 and although Theodore Roosevelt never directly owned any slaves, he purposely did nothing to create political and social equality for blacks as he considered them 'altogether inferior to whites'.
Looking at pictures of Mount Rushmore, the three offenders are on the right with Lincoln seemingly on his own on the right hand side of the monument so it wouldn't be that much of a burden to remove the three and leave Honest Abe up there or with a bit of creative licence and a very sharp hammer and chisel, transform them into more deserving examples of American heroes.

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