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Thursday, July 9, 2020

"Whataboutism" (Red Lives Matter)

臭蟲論  

(with credit to Lu Xun[1])

What about 1495 in addition to 1619?

What about 1962 in addition to 1865/1965?

What about Jorden Stephens in addition to George Floyd?

Can we make the Washington, Donehogawa Commonwealth or District of Crazy Horse (Tȟašúŋke Witkó)? Should Washington itself become Pulaski or Rush? Who really is pure enough to deserve this honor (asked ironically)? The man who saved Washington or the doctor whose students killed him—abolitionists both, though Rush a demonstrable racist.

Are there statues of General Stand Watie that need to be torn down?

Why is there no Gen. Ely Parker (Donehogawa) statue?

Why do Uncle Ben and Aunt Jemima ride off into the sunset before the Redskins or the Indians? Is it tyranny of the minority majority?

You want to talk about Joseph Vann?  Let's talk about Buffalo Soldiers.

It is high time to name a federal holiday for a day when a white general came to Galveston, Texas, and announced that a white President's words bestowed freedom upon the remaining slaves, but why don't we name it with the Karankawa word for the sixth month of the year instead of naming it after June. [2] Or maybe we should make the day that white men in Utah in 1962 finally bestowed the franchise on American Indians a federal holiday.

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[1] "A synonymous Chinese-language metaphor [for whataboutism] is the "Stinky Bug Argument" (traditional Chinese: 臭蟲論; simplified Chinese: 臭虫论; pinyin: Chòuchónglùn), coined by Lu Xun, a leading figure in modern Chinese literature, in 1933 to describe his Chinese colleagues' common tendency to accuse Europeans of "having equally bad issues" whenever foreigners commented upon China's domestic problems. As a Chinese nationalist, Lu saw this mentality as one of the biggest obstructions to the modernization of China in the early 20th century, which Lu frequently mocked in his literary works." (Wikipedia)
[2] The Latin name for June is Junius. Ovid offers multiple etymologies for the name in the Fasti, a poem about the Roman calendar. The first is that the month is named after the Roman goddess Juno, the goddess of marriage and the wife of the supreme deity Jupiter; the second is that the name comes from the Latin word iuniores, meaning "younger ones", as opposed to maiores ("elders") for which the preceding month May (Maius) may be named. Another source claims June is named after Lucius Junius Brutus, founder of the Roman Republic and ancestor of the Roman gens Junia. (Wikipedia)

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