Cowardice: a lack of courage or firmness of purpose – Merriam-Webster
For variety’s sake, we’ve never written about the same subject twice in a row, but felt this topic worthwhile to revisit. It’s now been a week since the incident in Charlottesville. The bulk of news reporting of this past week has been about peoples’ reactions and responses to what happened. We recognize it’s a challenge for anyone to be sober and objective when there is so much emotion inherent in a fiasco like this. After allowing some time for it all to sink in, and reading and listening to the reverberations, one word springs to our minds – cowardice. Just about every entity involved in this situation displayed cowardice to some degree, and we try to explain how below.
The Charlottesville City Council – Initially, the City Council did the right thing by establishing a Commission to study and then recommend a course of action for the future of several Confederate memorials and other spaces within the city. Its report, issued in December of 2016, was well written and made reasonable and well-thought-out recommendations. For the Lee statue, as well as a sculpture of “Stonewall” Jackson, the favored recommendation was to leave both in place but provide for “…the inclusion of new accurate historical information and transformation of the sculpture and its place in the city’s evolution”. Bravo! A superb recommendation that both preserves the artwork and uses it to inform the public and put this part of our history in its correct context. Unfortunately, the City Council voted against this recommendation, as well as an alternative recommendation from the Commission to relocate the statue to another park. They chose instead to just remove the statue and ignore the Commission’s recommendations entirely. It’s probably true that had the Council accepted the recommendation, they would have had to stand-up to public debate and disagreement from both extremes (isn’t that their job??). They instead took the cowardly and lazy way out. Not unexpectedly, their decision led to the world seeing Charlottesville spectacularly and unnecessarily “devolve” for some days rather than evolve over time in the way the Commission recommended.
Rally Participants – White supremacists, neo-nazis, and representatives of the KKK as well as a number of other small “alt-right” groups and some local residents comprised this assemblage. Among them were despicable characters to say the least, and as it turned out, one murderer. Unsavory as many of the rally participants were, under our Constitution they did have a right to assemble, as long as it was done “peacefully”. Straying from rallying around the avowed cause of preserving Lee’s statue, they instead came organized around throw-back names and hateful ideologies, immediately erasing all shreds of legitimacy for any cause. The passions revived by the symbolism of these mouthy but numerically tiny groups completely overshadowed the issue at hand. Reanimating antiquated hate societies as a way of “rallying” not only indicates ignorance of the art of rallying effectively, but shows they were too cowardly to debate the actual issue.
Counter Protesters –This group consisted of people who identify as “anti-fascists”, racial justice activists, and even anti-Capitalists (one sub-group calls themselves “Redneck Revolt”). There were also many local ministers and citizens of Charlottesville present. The stated reason for this group attending, as is also their Constitutional right, was in support of the removal of the Lee statue. In reality, they came to confront the extremist attendees on the other side and in the process created a narrative of “defending” against an ill-defined threat to the city. They then (predictably) reacted out of proportion to that nebulous threat. It is unclear what harm, aside from ugly speech, the counter-protesters were there to prevent. In our review of events, we cannot find any evidence that the rally participants made threats to destroy property or lives in Charlottesville during their rally. Did we miss something? As detestable as the rally attendees were, it is highly likely that no one would have been killed last Saturday had the “counter-protesters” not compounded an already volatile situation. Yes, they certainly had just as much of a right to be there as the rally participants, but they also knew what was likely to happen if they blocked the entrance to the park (a local minister even sent out a warning in advance). It’s a brave decision to stand down from your passions to help prevent a fruitless flashpoint. The cowardice here was not making that hard decision. Tragically, a woman died. Of comparatively lesser consequence was that ordinary citizens wishing to express their views regarding the statue went unheard in the chaos.
Those in charge of the Charlottesville Police – The fact that the police didn’t act to put at least some distance between the above two groups from the start was irresponsible. However, it isn’t fair to cast blame on the police officers themselves as they were duty-bound to follow orders from their superiors. The unnamed superiors who decided to prevent the police from intervening until the situation was already out of control are cowards. We’ve heard the excuse that law enforcement had to legally wait until it was determined the event had turned from “peaceful” to “violent”. We don’t buy it. The police had both the numbers and the equipment to prevent this from escalating.
News Media – Following the terrible things that happened last weekend the media deluged the headlines with an entire lexicon of high-powered taboo words – white-supremacist, neo-nazi, Ku-Klux-Klan, Hitler (the all-time favorite of the media), racists, slaves, etc., etc., etc. It also fueled a false impression of the size of these hate groups. For example, the KKK today is a minute shadow of its former self. Its membership is less than 1% of what it was in the 1920’s and its existence today is one of toothless symbolism. The membership rolls of the other hate groups are similarly small. Yet, if you dropped in from outer space and read the headlines this week, you’d be convinced Charlottesville was under attack and had to be defended with force. The holier-then-thou media then defined what reaction was sufficient for politicians, celebrities, pundits and others to voice. If you didn’t meet the media’s morality test you were not only castigated but associated with the extremist ideology of one side or the other. Very few in the media had the courage to include even a hint of objectivity and largely stoked the agitation of a gullible public moved by the emotions and violence of this event. Disgustingly cowardly.
Politicians – With one notable exception, it was fascinating to watch politicians from both sides of the aisle race as quickly as they could to any available microphone and denounce white supremacy, neo-nazism, and the KKK. For them, there was no other context out there and no way to discuss the situation authentically. They were completely beholden to the almighty media and only cared to satisfy the press and look good in its magic mirror. And God forbid they didn’t denounce the situation strongly enough, which might result in their being portrayed as complicit. This group, without question, was the most cowardly of all.
In evaluating the performance of all these groups this past week we have a wardrobe suggestion for when they return to work on Monday. Last February, a new style of hat debuted at the Woman’s March in Washington, D.C. We think these would wear quite well, particularly on the heads of the Charlottesville City council members and the majority of our national politicians.