this post was submitted on 07 Jan 2024
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The number of Confederate apologists in this thread is frankly insane. "Oh no! Someone is making jokes about pissing on the graves of traitors and slavers! What if there were some innocent people in there?? I mean, I realize that it's going to be really difficult to find someone who was so insanely stupid to not be aware that they were fighting for slavers and traitors, but what if they exist???!?! Are you going to piss on their grave, too!!!???!"
No, I think it's recognition that whatever crimes you think they've done, they've paid for it already in a permanent way. So joking about pissing on their graves (160 years later ffs) is ill taste. Feel free to smear shit or graffiti over confederate statues that seek to glorify the cause rather than memorialize the dead though since that is not the same thing.
I also think most common soldiers in the confederate army fought for no higher reason than they were drafted and had little choice; or they signed up to defend their state against an existential threat. If you look at recruitment posters of the time, they're talking of northern invaders raping and pillaging their women, property and lands.
Have they, though? Death isn't exactly unique. Regardless of how good or bad a person you are, everybody has death as their final fate. So dying for a shitty cause isn't exactly punishment, considering that people who were in favor of a good cause still met the same fate. Death isn't a punishment for being a shitty person, it's just a birthright.
Ok, but you know who else was drafted and had little choice? The people who defected. Some of those same people worked to further the cause of abolition by operating the underground railroad. Some of them wound up in prison, and some of them were hanged. I don't have any sympathy whatsoever for someone who lacked the courage or morality to fight against evil. And I have even less sympathy for someone stupid enough to fall for basic bitch propaganda like what you described.
Dude, that is so easy to say when you weren't actually there, in a completely different time.
The flow of information was completely different back then too. You have the worlds information at your fingertips, these people hardly new what happened outside of their town and even then it was delayed and through very few sources.
It's not that your anger is completely unjustified, but damn dude... Your anger is directed at a bunch of dead suckers most of whom were probably not large land owners and politicians. Direct it at their leaders, or better, the suckers very much alive, currently buying MAGA hats.
Oh, you guys, they just didn't know slavery was bad. They were very stupid. :( You can't piss on stupid people; that's like ableism or something.
What do you think pissing on the graves is for?
I run into MAGA / QAnon loons online and they suffer the opposite issue. They have plenty of information to choose from and they'll choose the worst and use cognitive dissonance to blank the rest. The number of times they'll dismiss stuff by proclaiming it comes "from the Soros media" or whatever. One basket case even replied to a news story the other day that Ukraine was a "movie set" to discount the news of missile strikes. How can you reach people like that?
I suspect for all people during the American civil war their only source of news was their local newspapers and fliers. Hardly surprising if they were unable to develop enlightened views that GP seems to judge them for not having.
And yet the North held them to those views when they killed them. Maybe the North should have tried asking politely.
I think you seriously underestimate my capacity for anger. Of course I direct it at the leaders and the modern-day traitors as well. My anger is a multi-faceted thing. Seriously, though, are you only capable of being angry about one thing at a time? Because if not, why would you assume that I am?
And as I said, the rubes you're describing will receive no sympathy from me. I don't rate willful stupidity or cowardice among human virtues. They might not be as deserving of a river of piss as the knowingly evil people who led them, but it's not like I'm going to get bent out of shape if someone pissed on their graves all the same. They were shit then, and they're shit now. The only thing that's changed is that ~160 years have passed since they died, and for some reason, some people seem to think that time passing means that bygones should be bygones.
Yes they have paid the price. They're dead as doornails, killed from battle, wounds and disease. And you seem to know a lot about all these people to blanket describe them as "a shitty person" each and all.
As for drafting, the point is obvious. Getting drafted meant extreme hardship for a man's family. Some communities resisted the draft, many more were impressed whether they liked it or not. And even those who volunteered were joining for more base emotions than slavery - they were literally told by all the media and information they had access to that the northerners were coming to destroy them, rape their wives & daughters, set slaves free to murder their families and steal their land. Maybe you live in an information rich media sphere but they didn't.
And absolutely the Confederacy was a terrible and rotten cause through and through but most of these people didn't have any choice in the matter. No more so than the people drafted in the North. In fact if you look at Confederate draft laws they were even more inequitable and bullshit to the poor as the ones for the Union, where the rich could buy their way out of service by finding a man in their stead, or simply for owning slaves. It's the poor bastards who didn't own slaves or hold wealth you see beneath those grave markers.
I know that they were slavers and the defenders of slavers. That's enough.
For example, I don't know much about Brock "the Rapist" Turner, but I know he raped an unconscious woman behind a dumpster, so that's enough for me to say that he's a shitty person, and fuck him forever. And you know what? Anybody who sticks up for Brock is also a shitty person. And that's just rape. Slavery was so much worse, and also included lots of rape on top.
Ok, but all of those people who resisted the draft lived in that same media-poor sphere, did they not? Are you just going to pretend that those people didn't exist? Do you think they made the hard choices they did just because they had more information than their peers? If that's the case, why didn't people like Robert E. Lee, who had much more access to information than the vast majority of his traitorous compatriots also join the resistance?
Maybe it's not a differential of information, but of morality that is the determining factor.
Except for all of the people who "didn't have a choice" and chose not to fight anyway.
Let's be clear, here. I don't think they're pieces of shit because they were poor. There were plenty of poor people who died fighting against slavery. I have no desire to piss on their graves. They died heroes. The people who fought to advance the cause of slavery, though, fuck them forever. In this life, it is not your intentions that define you in the eyes of others, but your actions. Their actions caused a massive amount of pain and suffering.
Seems like the your depth of knowledge and critical thinking applied is purely based off a long history of reading internet comments
I'm not sure where you're getting that from. Care to share some of the insight that led to that conclusion, professor?
damn, you'd cry for the nazi camp guards as well, by that logic
How does that logic work please? I'm quite happy that most Nazi camp guards got strung up. I don't have an urge to go shit on their graves though. Also there is-ever-so-slightly massive difference between some guy getting shot on the frontline after being impressed into service and some sadist torturing and murdering people for kicks. The nearest comparison in civil war times might be a camp like Andersonville, but I was conspicuously not talking about Andersonville.
oh, so the guys who fought at the front invading half of Europe were fine? got it.
but death does not absolve the world of the crimes committed, and pissing on someones grave is showing that you don't respect these people, who should not be respected.
No, it is recognition that they're dead and you defiling graves of people you know nothing about, or their personal culpability is just stupid and gross.
so what? a dead Nazi is not bad? a dead slaver is not absolved of his sins? and how far does that "you personally don't know" go? hell, I don't know most neo-Nazis, I can still punch them.
Death might not be unique, but people's lives are. Their lives were taken from them. That was the price they paid
And they paid it defending slavery...
Do you know anything about those specific people? Or anything about the grave site besides this post?
Like, I dont care... Piss on all the graves you want. It means nothing to anyone but the pisser truthfully. But shits just silly ignorance to hate full demographics to the point to show the highest form of symbolic disrepect to unknown people and stories.
Cared enough to reply lol
My point is that everybody pays that price. They paid no more than every other person who has ever existed. Very few people actually want to die, but everybody eventually does. Those men received the same fate as the people they were fighting against. The main difference is that the world became slightly better for everybody else with every single one of them that died.
I'll leave you be, now that I realized most of the ignorant comments in this thread are coming from you. We probably won't get any good conversation going.
It may make life a little more confusing, but you might enjoy not seeing everything so black and white
I think you probably don't know what the word "ignorant" means. But it sounds good, and you have nothing to reply with, so might as well lob that one out. That'll show me!
Oh, I'm sorry, you're right. Slavery is MOSTLY bad, but you know, sometimes it was good! Or something equally stupid.
You go directly to an single point to vindicate a strong general stance. Go piss on there graves, who cares... They are dead and gone.
But we all deserve our graves pissed on then, if you can simplify shit down to good and evil applied to demographics so easily.
"A single point"? My dude... fighting and dying in the cause of more slavery is one hell of a point. And what I'm wondering is why do you keep attempting to minimize that? Like it's some trifle, like: "Oh, those crazy southerners! They had this weird fashion choice at the time where they tortured and raped people and forced them to work for no pay. So quirky!"
Are you telling me that you own slaves? 'Cause if you own slaves, then yes. I hope that when you die, an entire conga line of people take turns pissing on your grave.
Oh, you don't own slaves? Then what in the blue fuck are you trying unsuccessfully to say?
That people under the age who were required to serve in a war under the penalty of death arent all evil, and have often been documented to purposely not actually fight.
But celebrate pissing on them kids grave. It'll happen to all of us anyway.
I'm curious as to what percentage you think that group represents of the whole number of graves in that cemetery. I'm probably going to regret doing this, but I'm going to give you a massive benefit of the doubt here, and assume that for some reason, you think that a large percentage of those graves belong to children who were forced into service and who went weeping to the front line where their chests were subsequently pierced with minié balls. And here's why I'm going to assume that:
If you believe that a large percentage falls into that category, then you are merely woefully misinformed, and probably a supreme optimist at heart. Ignorance isn't necessarily a bad thing, but it is bad etiquette to argue an incorrect point so vehemently when it's incredibly easy to verify the actual truth. So the worst that I could say about you is that you have your heart in the right place, but your online etiquette could use some attention.
However, if you don't believe that, if you rightly believe that the group you're referring to represents a miniscule portion of the graves in that cemetery, well then. I suppose that means that you are intentionally being obtuse about a point in an attempt to defend the people who fought and died on behalf of slavers. And that doesn't say very many kind things about your character.
So. Since I'm giving you a massive benefit of the doubt, here's some demographic information about the confederate army:
https://www.battlefields.org/learn/articles/who-fought
My best guess is that this cemetery isn't filled to the brim with buglers and drummer boys.
Honestly, thet website doesnt say much. But what I gathered was
Young, dumb as fuck, non-slave owning men fought a war under the threat of death for desertation or cowardice. Those are the truly evil ones.
Hey - I acknowledge that the foot soldiers of evil aren't usually as evil as the people in charge. I even said as much in an earlier comment in this thread. But they still fought for an evil cause. Their rich internal lives don't matter a whit to the people they hurt. So yeah. I'm not going to be upset in the slightest at someone pissing on their graves. They've earned the derision with their actions.
And we all deserve our graves pissed out for what our "leaders" have done, and who we've given money to.
I guess in the end, it doesnt matter. We'll be dead, all had shit leaders, and our graves will get pissed on eventually.
You keep trying to put really stupid words into my mouth, and it's getting grating. Confederate soldiers don't deserve to have their graves pissed on because a bunch of rich men thought it'd be cool to become traitors and set up their own government based on horrible principles. They don't deserve to be pissed on because they occasionally purchased sugar made at a plantation in Jamaica. They deserve to have their graves pissed on because they fought on behalf of slavery.
I've been very clear about my position this entire time. I have no idea why you keep trying to weasel-word me into some wishy-washy nonsense about how all people are bad or something.
"Nazis deserve respect too!" these absolute cretins sob, "They were products of their time!"
It's a stupid joke. It's often best to just let the dead lie. In any case, the stones and dead that lay beneath them don't care - you can't hurt them or impress them.
You want to "get even" with them? Good! They did a bad thing and paid the immediate cost with the loss of their lives. But to truly get even - forget them and let them be lost to time and memory. As it stands, you obsess over them just as much as if you were a member of the KKK.
You have some very strange ideas, my friend. What do you imagine my day-to-day life to be like? How often do you think I tell people that we should all piss on the graves of confederates? Hourly? Daily? Monthly?
Don't you think that it's more likely that me defending pissing on the graves of Confederates has much more to do with the fact that I'm responding in a thread that was specifically about pissing on their graves?
I mean, for fuck's sake; I didn't even make the thread. If anything, PugJesus would be the obsessed one; he made the fucking thread, after all.
Is it that you think that I'm obsessed with the concept because I've made several replies in this thread? Well... I've made several replies in a lot of different threads. Usually, when someone replies to me, I will reply back. That's just how forums and communication in general work. Do you not do that? Careful! Better not reply to me, or I'll assume you're obsessed with me!
Your strident defense of the joke and replies to others is the indication you are in strong agreement with the "joke". What else is anyone reading your replies supposed to think? That you don't care about it at all?
Yes, I am! Congratulations for understanding basic contextual clues!
I'm not sure how that makes me obsessed with it, though, as you initially suggested. I mean, it's a bit of a stretch to go from pointing out that I agree with the meme to:
Or were you just being hyperbolic in some weird attempt to shame me for thinking that evil people deserve to have their graves pissed on?
A bit perhaps. But mostly just pointing out the silliness of it all. Whatever point you are tying to make is lost on them. As I said, the stones and the remains that lie beneath them do not care about your opinion of them - and they never did even in life. And making a big deal out them now only serves to keep the memories alive.
Do you think that I think that the scant remains of people who have been dead for ~160 years give a shit about whether people piss on their graves? Because I can assure you, I do not. I have never argued that pissing on someone's grave is a way of punishing them; that's an incredibly stupid thing to say, and as a rule, I try to not say incredibly stupid things. But pissing on someone's grave is a great bit of catharsis for the pisser, especially if the pissee was an evil motherfucker.
Ah yes. People pissing on Confederate graves is what is keeping alive the memories of the confederacy. Not the statues or the people with the confederate flags, or the politicians currently in congress who believe that Robert E. Lee was a founding father. Nope, none of that does, but pissing on the graves, yeah. That's the real ticket.
So a couple of sentences back, when I said that I try to not say incredibly stupid things? Maybe you should make that same effort going forward.