Welp, after last few weeks, I'm never going to read OT phenomenon of "tearing down the high places" the same way again.

This is not a statement on the morality of tearing down statues so much as an observation. Current moment sheds light on so many passages.

Thinking of Gideon tearing down Baal's altar & Asherah pole & the response. Again, not making a 1:1 correspondence, but the response of those wanting to kill him for doing this is entirely believable.

The rest of the story

Anyway, the point is that very little of this is about history as an abstraction or field of study. There's something very deep happening in this moment & we know that b/c of the intensity of responses across the board. The statues represent more than the people they portray.

Also, leaving this here w/out too much comment b/c I'm still processing it, but this was printed in an op-ed in small town newspaper here locally. I can't stop thinking about it:

There's something here that's really significant & I'm still teasing it out. It's something about the difference btwn begottenness & Darwinian view of blood lines. It's something about how eugenics shaped & still shapes this entire convo.

In Scripture, generations are linked in ways that allow them to both honor ancestors & call them out for their sins. It's a category we don't have in modern west & I'm still trying to figure out why.

Part of it is the uncoupling of generations in unhealthy ways, i.e.radical individualism. But part of it, I think, must also be an unhealthy view of heredity based in the eugenic categories that are basis of racialized history.

IOW, the category of heritage or ancestry (while the opposite of individualism) can be excessively flawed & not necessarily true or righteous.

Anyway, so much for not commenting