Minnesota Star Tribune Editorial Paints Mt. Rushmore as Monument to White Supremacy
“The faces of the four presidents (white conquerors) peer southeast toward a reservation housing vanquished Lakota, who mostly live out forgotten, impoverished lives…”
Last Friday, Professor Jacobson blogged about New York Times executive editor Dean Baquet revealing plans to shift its focus after the Russian collusion failed. Now the publication will focus on portraying President Donald Trump as racist.
Part and parcel with that approach is the paper’s development of “The 1619 Project.” The creators hoped the project would alter our view of our founding to make the introduction of slavery the real beginning point of American history.
Conservative pundit Byron York has this analysis of “The 1619 Project” in The Washington Examiner:
The basic thrust of the 1619 Project is that everything in American history is explained by slavery and race. The message is woven throughout the first publication of the project, an entire edition of the Times magazine. It begins with an overview of race in America — “Our democracy’s founding ideals were false when they were written. Black Americans have fought to make them true.” — written by Times writer Nikole Hannah-Jones, who on Twitter uses the identity Ida Bae Wells, from the crusading late 19th-early 20th century African American journalist Ida B. Wells.
The essays go on to cover the economy (“If you want to understand the brutality of American capitalism, you have to start on the plantation.”), the food we eat (“The sugar that saturates the American diet has a barbaric history as the ‘white gold’ that fueled slavery.”), the nation’s physical health (“Why doesn’t the United States have universal healthcare? The answer begins with policies enacted after the Civil War.”), politics (“America holds onto an undemocratic assumption from its founding: that some people deserve more power than others.”), daily life (“What does a traffic jam in Atlanta have to do with segregation? Quite a lot.”), and much more.
During his show today, the iconic pundit Rush Limbaugh noted that sister publications would shortly push this message as well.
The first out of this nasty gate is The Minnesota Star Tribune, which just posted an opinion piece that portrays Mt. Rushmore as a monument to white supremacy.
The editorial, penned by Ron Way (a former official of the U.S. Interior Department and its National Park Service) even features the KKK!
But the back story of Mount Rushmore is hardly a rich history of a shared democratic ideal. Some see the monument in the Black Hills as one of the spoils of violent conquest over indigenous tribes by a U.S. Army clearing the way for white settlers driven westward by a lust for land and gold.
As it was in colonial America, the young country’s expansion was fueled by “Manifest Destiny” — a self-supreme notion that any land coveted by Euro-Americans was, by providence, rightfully theirs for the taking.
…The sculptures were chiseled by an imported Ku Klux Klansman on a granite mountain owned by indigenous tribes on what they considered sacred land — land that the U.S. Supreme Court said in 1980 was illegally taken from them.
The way continues in this vein, creating the most delusional piece of historical analysis I have ever seen published. Considering I have read books tying ancient Egypt to extraterrestrials, this is a remarkable achievement.
The racialism and fabulism drip from Way’s account.
…George Washington and Thomas Jefferson owned slaves.
Abraham Lincoln famously emancipated slaves, but he supported eradicating Indian tribes from western lands and approved America’s largest-ever mass execution, the hanging of 38 Dakota in Mankato for their alleged crimes in the 1862 war along the Minnesota River.
Teddy Roosevelt, in his “The Winning of the West,” wrote: “I don’t go so far as to think that the only good Indians are dead Indians, but I believe nine out of every ten are … .”
Even the orientation of the monument is racist!
At Mount Rushmore, you may learn that the sculptures are arranged for maximum sun exposure, itself a cruel irony: The faces of the four presidents (white conquerors) peer southeast toward a reservation housing vanquished Lakota, who mostly live out forgotten, impoverished lives in the shadow of their sacred Paha Sapa that, legally, still belong to them.
The approach is working about as well as Limbaugh predicted.
Mount Rushmore is racist? pic.twitter.com/S9Kg8VM0Qr
— JB (@yourproblemok) August 20, 2019
I really like Mount Rushmore. I’ve never gone there but your tweet has intrigued me. The Indians should be thanking these great men. pic.twitter.com/8OY7AtZSFT
— TRUMP CAT (@JSuxdix) August 21, 2019
What the crap is wrong with people who think Mount Rushmore is racist. Do you people have nothing else to do.I guess it’s were you are sitting in your safe place at school seeing who can come up with the stupidest things ever. Get a life !!!!
— LeeBates 4 Harvick ???? (@lbates702) August 21, 2019
If the #FakeNews media keeps it up, the election result in 2020 will be such that Mt. Rushmore will be updated.
If Libs think they are triggered by Mount Rushmore right now, just wait ’til we put Trump on there!#MAGA #TrumpLandslide2020 pic.twitter.com/p8VCMs4XTy
— A Dude of Horror (@TheHorrorDude) August 20, 2019
[Featured image via National Park Services]
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Comments
This explains why Trump required Mt. Rushmore to face SE when he had it built.
So, they’re looking in the direction of the wall?
I wonder if the Star Tribune is aware of the Crazy Horse monument being built into a mountain SE of Mt. Rushmore.
Ignorance is BS in media.
I was thinking the same thing. I had a children’s book in the 80’s, very nicely-illustrated, about the Polish-American sculptor (I forget his name) who undertook the project.
Typical Leftist ignorance in service of allegedly “woke” self-flagellation and race-obsessed Balkanization.
The left’s desperation is so intense they seem to care little about how obvious their actions are. They MUST keep minorities supporting them. Solution? Giveaway on top of giveaway like reparations, etc. And not just finding racism everywhere, but labeling it “systemic” and “institutional” and “endemic” for having been present from day one. Voting for progressives is the ONLY way to combat your new fears!
Just compared to 4 years ago this is so intense. And obvious. But when you are desperate, it doesn’t matter. And the media seems to have been waiting for this moment, too.
There is, perhaps, a sort of logic in that if you wish to radically change the USA then you’d logically start by declaring why what it is now is crap.
After all, it’s not as if either public schools or most colleges can be bothered to provide much American history, or as if the little they do provide isn’t overwhelmed with a massive narrative burden showing that, really, it’s always been an awful, oppressive, racist place.
Which is just to say that a project to destroy it must inevitably start with disparaging what it is and what it was, so as to justify the destruction.
I have a Native American grandparent. Most certainly indigenous peoples all over the world fared poorly.
For whatever reasons they lacked the spark, the drive to advance. If Europeans had not conquered them, some other group would have.
All life forms evolve, and all life forms which do not eventually are replaced by those which do. This is the nature of life.
America did become a melting pot, one where some groups fared better because they had traits which drove success such as being smarter, more industrious, had superior cultures.
America has been staggering successful as a result of this. We have nothing significant to be ashamed of. The jackasses are Star Tribune should be ashamed, but are defective and unable to see their own nature.
I wonder how the conquered Mayans felt when they looked at the Aztec Pyramids?
I guess we can ask the Anasazi.
How can it be racist? Liberals think its a natural feature
From the State that elected Stuart Smalley, Jesse Ventura, Ilan Omar. Yeah, there’s a bunch of supremacy for you.
Let me get this right. Abraham Lincoln who sacrificed a million white lives to free a million black people was a white supremacist?
These people must lay awake nights, trying to figure out another way to claim racism.
I notice they have no solutions to any of the real problems facing our country, no pragmatic proposals for dealing with the problems facing any group of Americans, just inchoate hostility toward non-Democrats.
Meanwhile I question this: “…. a reservation housing vanquished Lakota, who mostly live out forgotten, impoverished lives…”
The Reservation is the result of a treaty giving its residents more rights than ordinary American citizens. Among those rights is the ability to reject our modern way of life, and to live
“off the grid,” participating in our economy in the most minimal way, if they so desire. Many tribes chose this, as well as to run businesses that are illegal in the States where they are located (gambling facilities). They can do this because they are free of many of our laws.
So, they can live off the grid, and also run otherwise-illegal businesses, as they prefer.
Living off the grid will naturally result in low amounts of cash on hand or in savings, because that’s part of the point of living off the grid. The statement above does not take into account the business income of the Tribes, which can be considerable.
Furthermore, reservation residents are free to come and go as they please. If they live on the reservation, it is because they choose to do so, and if they choose to reject contact with the world outside (and thereby be “forgotten,”) that is also entirely their choice.
American Indians who choose to remain linked to the reservation have more freedom than any other group of Americans. They may not want to talk to ignorant fools. I wonder if Ron Way has ever been able to talk to an American Indian.
Nearly always, they are motivated by by some con to get other peoples money.
“I notice they have no solutions to any of the real problems facing our country, no pragmatic proposals for dealing with the problems facing any group of Americans, just inchoate hostility toward non-Democrats.”
Well, duh? If you actually solve a problem, then you can’t fund raise off of it anymore. So why would Ds be motivated to actually solve problems?
I see this a a case of “projection” …. The Dems were the party of slavery, were the party of Southern segregation and, in my opinion, are still the party of the modern plantation. That would be inner city ghettos controlled by Dems; and citizens prevented from escaping by virtue of very poor schools run by Dem-controlled unions, who fight school choice tooth-and-nail.
Mt. Rushmore does look rather white, or at least a lighter shade of pale. Clearly racist.
Mt. Rushmore is located in the ‘Black Hills’. What more can anyone ask for?
This whole ‘racist’ thing is so stupid, so obvious, so desperate, so OVERDONE already, it just makes the NYT and most MSM look more foolish than usual.
Fake news?!? You betcha!!
Oh FFS… these people are blithering morons.
Native Americans were enslaving each other (and cannibalizing each other, among other atrocities) long before whitey ever landed on this continent.
Same with the Africans. And the Africans are still enslaving each other to this day. If your panties are all bunched up about slavery go over there and fix it.
Otherwise shut the fuck up.
“Sacred Black Hills”…. yes they were to the Cheyenne …until the Lakota drove them out of the lands. Souix were the enemies of many tribes. Jared Diamond in “Guns, Germs and Steel” showed that technology made one conquering people more successful than other conquering people. Cortez allied with tribes to overcome their conquerors …the Aztecs.
Cecil Rhodes …that terrible white man….help end local tribal warfare in Southern Africa. White missionaries in the South Pacific helped end tribal warfare there.
The “noble savage” is a myth be it in the Americas or Africa.
The ‘Strib’ as the writers at powerlineblog refer to it, is apparently going full Tower of Babel. Its all aboard now at the ‘Strib’ for Somalia and South Africa. Next stop Mogadishu.
Lord, I am so tired of these propagandists trying to tear America apart!
Wow. I wonder if the 2020 motorcycle rally at Sturgis, SD will get cancelled? Rather chicken of the MST not to publish this 2 weeks ago when the 2019 rally was going on (2-11 August 2019).
Half a million bikers converging on the Minnesota Star Tribune might be fun to watch.
“Year Zero” is coming to the US.
This stuff is almost indistinguishable from old Marxist pamphlets. Just substitute “racism” for the old “exploitation” and the job is done.
Ah, the cretinous media/leftard complex. IF everything is racist, nothing is.
The new left meme: all whites are racists – which itself is rabidly racist.
Isn’t that right, likes of Uncle Tom Commings, Uncle Tom Sharpton, Uncle Tom Obama and Auntie Tom Waters: all servants of the democrat plantation, happy to oppress generations of fellow blacks (fellow half-blacks, in obama’s case) in return for title, position…and money?
Right.
Fantastic stone carving with veritable representations of well known American presidents!
Gee, I wonder if he had some air tools and hydraulic lifts to remove the stone from the sculpted surfaces. /sarc
Are you implying that Mount Rushmore isn’t a naturally occurring outcrop? Wow! How could that be?
Truth before facts.
We need to kill all race specific benefits. They are innately racist.
One of the more unfortunate aspects of liberalism is the way liberals are always trying to out-crazy.
The ratchet never stops and never goes the other way. It only escalates.
would not be an easy task to pick four other presidents out of our entire history who were possessed of a greater love or greater vision for our country than these four(particularly GW and TR)
to declare them or their monument ” racist ” or emblematic of ” white supremacy ” borders on sacrilege against the character of these men and the honor of our country
Teddy did have a eugenics streak…. but not in the fashion of Sanger nor Woodrow Wilson. Teddy didn’t segregate the military and federal bureaucracy like Wilson.
It was thoughtful of the Borglums to leave some space up there for Trump’s visage. The cliff to Lincoln’s left looks very promising. I think DJT’d look good in granite . . . if they can get the hair right.
Ron Way thinks that people residing southeast of a mountain live in it’s shadow…
Abraham Lincoln a “White Conqueror”? Hard to believe an editor of a major daily would put that in print. Amazing how irrational and ignorant is the liberal media. Unvelievable. But, you just cannot make this stuff up can you?