This is the sculpted pillar that can be found on the bridge at Michigan Avenue in Chicago. All I could think about after seeing this, besides the many other troubling things I encountered
during my visit, was this: really? Are you serious? This genocide is still something we are proud of in America?
And not too far away, maybe a few blocks (I can’t remember the exact location right now), lay this monument to the false visions of George Washington, the man who sanctioned slavery and the genocide of the Native Americans:
It reads, “The government of the United States, which gives to Bigotry no Sanction, and to Persecution no Assistance, requires only that they who live under its protection should demean themselves as good citizens in giving it on all occasions their effectual support.”
Which America is that, I wonder? I have not seen it, though it would be nice to, some day.
1 Comments
November 26, 2007
It is the America which sometimes exists. Just as people are fallible on a daily basis, groups of people can magnify fallibility, can magnify the actions of base emotions. But ideals are a locus, and better off stated than not on this statue. Washington was all too human. Heroes are by definition, 2-dimensional. I doubt either of us would leap onto a pedestal and not chuckle as they made our statue.
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