Excrement and History

In 1972, archaeologists excavated the slave dungeon at Elmina Castle in Ghana...what they found was eighteen inches of the floor's surface (that had been pressed into oblivion by thousands of tourists and hundreds of years of historical amnesia) covered in a combination of dirt, human feces, blood, and skin.

Elias Canetti (Nobel Prize Author) writes of this "cannibalism" of the powerful:

"Anyone who wants to rule men first tries to humiliate them, to trick them out of their rights and their capacity for resistance, until they are powerless before him as animals...The ultimate aim is to incorporate them into himself and to suck the substance out of them. What remains does not matter to him.

He disposes of them as he does his excrement...by it we know who we have murdered."

On this MLK weekend, I hope that we could dream, rise up (even from the flesh, blood & excrement of our ignoble past) and live out the true meaning of our creed...that all men are created equal.

Confederate Statues:NOLA 2016

On December 17th, the New Orleans City Council voted 6-1 to remove four Confederate Monuments (including statues that honor Robert E. Lee, P.T. Beauregard, and Jefferson Davis) from city streets. The monuments have long been a source of anger, bitterness, and division in the community as they "represent the very worst part of the history" of New Orleans.

Those opposing (IMO...mostly Confederate/ Southern "Heritage" Apologists) the removal have said that "we can't hit the delete button" on history and have been granted a hearing with a federal judge this week to stop the removal of the monuments.

As readers of this blog may know, I have written in the past about my views on Confederate and American monuments/ statues in relation to historical memory.

Click here to read "Destroy Confederate Statues and Yankee Amnesia"...

http://coachfogs.blogspot.com/2014/10/destroy-confederate-statues-and-yankee.html

I applaud the City Council for their decision and hope that like post- Nazi Germany we will dismantle our homage to traitors.

I would suggest these statues be placed in a non-commercialized "Museum of Truth" (similar to German Holocaust Museums and former concentration camps) where we might really begin to build a proper memory of America's past in order to create a better future.