Kneeling as an act of conquest, not protest

Returning once again to those thrilling days of yesteryear, or 1908, to be exact:

"What good purpose," [Wiley Nash] asked in 1908, "is subserved, promoted and supported by the erection of these Confederate memorials all over the South?"

Nash had studied both literature and law at the University of Mississippi, so his answer came fully attired in his best rhetorical finery:

"Like the watch fires kindled along the coast of Greece that leaped in ruddy joy to tell that Troy had fallen, so these Confederate monuments, these sacred memorials, tell in silent but potent language, that the white people of the South shall rule and govern the Southern states forever.

Old times there are not forgotten; nor will they be, because we have set them in stone.

And who, you ask, is this Wiley Nash?

The 62-year-old Nash was eminently qualified for his leading role in the events of the day. He was a Mississippian by birth, raised in Oktibbeha County. In 1908, he was widely regarded as “a representative man of Mississippi,” a prominent Starkville attorney who had served several terms in the state Legislature and one term as the state's attorney general.

More to the point, he had fought in the war, enlisting at the age of 16. He was seriously wounded in Georgia — “shot through the right thigh” — but recovered and later rode with Harvey’s Scouts, a famously effective small troop from Mississippi.

Equally important, after the war he joined the cause of Redemption, the campaign to restore white rule in Mississippi, which culminated in stealing the elections of 1875 by violence or the threat of it, keeping most blacks from voting.

“Victory for the vanquished” is how Nash described it in Lexington.

“Mr. Nash has done yeoman service in the many efforts of the white people of Mississippi to wrest the state from radical rule and negro domination,” historian Dunbar Rowland wrote in 1907, praising Nash’s efforts “in the great and memorable struggle of 1875, the year, as the negroes say ‘when de white folks riz.’”

The monuments were to "remember history," but remember history in very specific ways:

We may be ever grateful to Nash as well, for among his fulsome remarks in Lexington, which run to roughly 7,000 words, he included a clear, concise, nine-point, itemized list on what the monuments actually mean.

Monuments honor “the Southern cause” and its “brave defenders, the living and the dead” (item one), and also "keep honored and honorable" the "present and future dominant and ruling Southern Anglo-Saxon element" (item two).

They "keep the white people of the South united — a thing so necessary — to keep, protect, preserve and transmit our true Southern social system, our cherished Southern civilization” (item six).

The ruddy leaping joy of perpetual white power is item seven: “The white people of the South shall rule and govern the Southern states forever.”

The final item, number nine: Monuments “will teach the South through all the ages to love the Southern Cause.”

Indeed, that's what monuments are for; to teach lessons.  'Twas ever thus:

Imagine what Paul would have seen had he visited Aphrodisias.  Imagine you are walking in the middle of that city on a busy street and turn in under one of the arches of a beautiful two-story marble monumental gate.  You slow down for a moment in its shade, but soon rejoin the sun's glare on a glistening east-west plaza, 46 feet wide, 40 feet high on both sides, and 300 feet long.  It is like entering a roofless funnel as long as a football field.  To your left and right are parallel three-story-high galleria line with bulky Doric Columns on the bottom level, sleek iconic columns on the middle level, and ornate Corinthian columns on the third and upper level.  Your eyes are drawn up along those columns toward the terra-cotta roof....[b]ut they are drawn more forcibly along the length of the plaza's funnel to the temple at its far end....Walking toward the temple...you look up at those high galleries on either side and see something that is unique in all the Greco-Roman world.  Between the columns on the upper two levels of both sides are 180 5-by-5 foot panels sculpted in high relief.

....On the middle level, history is absorbed into that mythical framework above it by a series of conquered peoples, personified as elegantly dressed female standing on inscribed bases, extending across the entire sweep of the Roman Empire and emphasizing military victories under Augustus.  To your right, in the south gallery's two upper levels, is the same celebration of war and conquest, the same absorption of history into myth, the same creation of Roman imperial theology.

...

A first panel is iconographically simple and still somewhat historical.  It depicts an idealized world-conquering Julio-Claudia emperor, not armored but naked except for a black cloak, standing in the center.  To his right is a battle trophy above a kneeling and weeping barbarian prisoner who hands are tied behind her back.  To his left is a female figure, either the Roman people or the Senate, crowning him with an oak wreath.  A second panel is iconographically more complex and much more cosmic.

That second panel depicts a nude Claudius (indicating, from Greek iconography, divine status) receiving a cornucopia from a female figure, indicating peace and prosperity (no war, plenty of food) and another female figure giving Claudius an oar, to indicate power over the sea (no more pirates).  "It displays divine control of both Land and Sea."

"Victory and conquest are felt to be an important justification of imperial rule...it is always victory over barbarians of various kinds...."*

Like, say, blacks in America, who should remain subjugated by whites. Monuments are placed by people in power to remind everyone who is in power, and why.  There's a reason the largest Confederate War monument on the Texas Capitol Grounds is placed directly in front of the Capitol building, and close to the entrance to the Capitol grounds on Congress Avenue (which leads directly away from the front door of the Capitol, ruler-straight down to the Colorado River).  It is a statement of who is in power; that is the "history" some do not want to "erase."

And yeah, you can connect it directly to Donald Trump:

“During the Holocaust Nazis referred to Jews as rats,” Scarborough said. “In Rwanda genocide was often justified, calling them cockroaches, slave owners considered slaves subhuman animals.”

“It opens the door for cruelty and genocide,” he continued. “Nobody is saying that Donald Trump is a Nazi, nobody is saying that he’s Adolf Hitler in 1938, 1939, 1940, but you can see time and time again … this is how dictators and tyrants open the door, and they do it by dehumanizing their political opponents.”

Trump’s dehumanizing language had been translated into cruel actions, such as his administration’s family separation policy.

“Guess what led up to his, what I think many would think is savage, behavior on the border?” Scarborough said. “When he launched his campaign he talked about Mexicans being ra[p]ists.”

“Just this past year, what did he call Hispanics?” he added. “He called Hispanics breeders, like they were animals, like they were dogs, like they were mules. We’ve seen it time and time again. So he uses that language, and what does it move to? It moves to a policy where infants are ripped from their mother’s breasts at the border, separated and possibly orphaned for life. There actually is precedent here.”

Lots and lots and lots of precedent; for all of it.  And all of it is very ugly.  Just keep in mind the weeping barbarians kneeling before Julius.

*John Dominic Crossan and Jonathan L. Reed, In Search of Paul, HarperSanFrancisco 2004, pp. 17-19, 22.