Political Cartoons, Memes & Amusing Videos

[rareboy]

Of course...

But in a 'Hold My Beer' moment....

 

[NotHardUp1]

Why they try to tear the mountains down to bring in a couple more
More people, more scars upon the land

Sadly, as much as I love Mr. Deutschendorf and his music, that doesn't make him a good poster boy for not exploiting native lands.

First, he was the son of a US Air Force soldier in New Mexico, a beneficiary of an occupying force, since virtually all of New Mexico was Indian Territory by federal policy that relocted Eastern tribes to the barren Southwest. As such, he was raised in much better circumstances than the poor natives who still occupy New Mexico. He arguably succeeded in part due to his (relatively) privileged family, even if not rich.

Second, and certainly not outweighing the good he did in visiting China and Russia, his own conservation of the land doesn't serve as any exemplar for environmentalists. He built a huge mansion in Aspen, so it ill-behooves him to complain about sculpting mountains to bring in more wealthy homeowners.

Additionally, he was an avid golfer, a hugely damaging sport in wasteful consumptiton of freshwater to maintain artificial turf, cleaing natural landscapes to create Disneyesque courses, and for using incredble amounts of herbicides to keep the greens monocultures.

When I lived in Anchorage in 2007-2010, I saw an attitude there about not allowing more immigrants (from the States) into Alaska. Despite having the most vast, least occupied land within the nation, they felt selfish about it, as if it was somehow their private park. Never mind that they were not native there. Never mind that their existence there was only made possible by the waves of gold rushers, oil drillers, and tourists.

It's all well and good to adopt idealized standards for wilderness while ignoring one's own privilege or impacts.

What John Deutschendorf did for the world was a good thing, but that lyric doesn't ring true when looking at his own life.

It is a shame he died too young. I didn't learn until today that his plane crashed because he didn't understand how to calculate his fuel consumption. He literally died because he ran out of gas and crashed in a plane he built. Apparently there was a reserve tank on board, but the cabin was designed in such a manner as to not enable him to reach it, or the control to it, from the pilot's seat. Very sad.

 

[NotHardUp1]

Of course...

But in a 'Hold My Beer' moment....

So, guilt by association?

All cliff carvings are damned because white supremacists created one after the fact?

So, by your standard, you can condemn anything if someone nefarious later imitates it?

A poor argument, if prime propaganda. Replace relevance with redirection, and voila!

Will Victoria be taken down soon from Parliament, as a legacy of the colonial oppression? Or is it OK to enshrine an emperor in a land taken from the indigenous?

 

[NotHardUp1]

There is also the Crazy Horse Memorial, not exactly a totem pole, being blasted out of a mountain in the exact same manner, WITH the support of many Lakota and other tribes:

As in every use of a natural site, it has been condemned by some others.

But, it is seen as more respectful than harmful, and as a balance to Mr. Rushmore's Anglo-centric theme.

Crazy Horse Memorial Draws Attention to Living Mission in Indian Country : Crazy Horse Memorial®

Crazy Horse is the world's largest mountain carving located in the Black Hills of South Dakota. It is considered The Eighth Wonder of the World in progress.

crazyhorsememorial.org

 

[rareboy]

So, guilt by association?

All cliff carvings are damned because white supremacists created one after the fact?

So, by your standard, you can condemn anything if someone nefarious later imitates it?

A poor argument, if prime propaganda. Replace relevance with redirection, and voila!

Will Victoria be taken down soon from Parliament, as a legacy of the colonial oppression? Or is it OK to enshrine an emperor in a land taken from the indigenous?

We are already in the process of removing colonialist monuments, including shifting statues to museums....but I think you might be missing the point of the original poster's observation about destroying an entire mountainside to memorialize the guys. Who may be the most important four men who ever walked the face of the earth and would have gloried in being made so big and heroic.

This isn't a fight. I would have been beyond appalled by anyone defacing a natural landscape in Canuckistan for the aggrandizement of anyone.

But you have to admit...Nathan Bedford and the KKK being memorialized on the face of Monument Mountain was a bit over the top.

and by the way..the Crazy Horse monument is also a piece of schlock garbage.

 

[Riverrick]

Sadly, as much as I love Mr. Deutschendorf and his music, that doesn't make him a good poster boy for not exploiting native lands.

First, he was the son of a US Air Force soldier in New Mexico, a beneficiary of an occupying force, since virtually all of New Mexico was Indian Territory by federal policy that relocted Eastern tribes to the barren Southwest. As such, he was raised in much better circumstances than the poor natives who still occupy New Mexico. He arguably succeeded in part due to his (relatively) privileged family, even if not rich.

Second, and certainly not outweighing the good he did in visiting China and Russia, his own conservation of the land doesn't serve as any exemplar for environmentalists. He built a huge mansion in Aspen, so it ill-behooves him to complain about sculpting mountains to bring in more wealthy homeowners.

Additionally, he was an avid golfer, a hugely damaging sport in wasteful consumptiton of freshwater to maintain artificial turf, cleaing natural landscapes to create Disneyesque courses, and for using incredble amounts of herbicides to keep the greens monocultures.

When I lived in Anchorage in 2007-2010, I saw an attitude there about not allowing more immigrants (from the States) into Alaska. Despite having the most vast, least occupied land within the nation, they felt selfish about it, as if it was somehow their private park. Never mind that they were not native there. Never mind that their existence there was only made possible by the waves of gold rushers, oil drillers, and tourists.

It's all well and good to adopt idealized standards for wilderness while ignoring one's own privilege or impacts.

What John Deutschendorf did for the world was a good thing, but that lyric doesn't ring true when looking at his own life.

It is a shame he died too young. I didn't learn until today that his plane crashed because he didn't understand how to calculate his fuel consumption. He literally died because he ran out of gas and crashed in a plane he built. Apparently there was a reserve tank on board, but the cabin was designed in such a manner as to not enable him to reach it, or the control to it, from the pilot's seat. Very sad.

Oh man! Don't rain on my John Denver memory.

Rocky Mountain High in dropped D tuning sounds gorgeous on a young boy's new Epiphone guitar. Add a campfire and a few friends and its almost heaven.

 

[KaraBulut]

 

[KaraBulut]

 

[KaraBulut]

 

[KaraBulut]

 

[KaraBulut]

 

[NotHardUp1]

We are already in the process of removing colonialist monuments, including shifting statues to museums....but I think you might be missing the point of the original poster's observation about destroying an entire mountainside to memorialize the guys. Who may be the most important four men who ever walked the face of the earth and would have gloried in being made so big and heroic.

This isn't a fight. I would have been beyond appalled by anyone defacing a natural landscape in Canuckistan for the aggrandizement of anyone.

But you have to admit...Nathan Bedford and the KKK being memorialized on the face of Monument Mountain was a bit over the top.

and by the way..the Crazy Horse monument is also a piece of schlock garbage.

When I start seeing the Queen Elizabeth highway and honorifics renamed, I'll be more convinced Canada is not making token gestures.

It's just too revisionist to constantly keep shitting on the past. The nation was in the Great Depression. The monument was but one of several works projects, and frankly, there's notthing more sacred about one mountain in the Black Hills than there is from any other mountain where granite or marble is quarried. Out of the vast tracts of land that are these united states, one cliff isn't a pattern and it isn't some terrible loss.

We do like our heroes, so tearing them down intellectually to suit PC moods is silly.

I've never in any way supported Stone Mountain or anything KKK or white supremacist, so, no, I won't have tot admit anything of the sort since I've never said or done anything to the contrary. Admitting is innuendo for reversal or confession or concession. None apply when it comes to Stone Mountain. Defending Rushmore has zip to do with Stone Mountain.

Whether Crazy Horse is or is not garbage, it's supported by MANY of the natives, so speaks to the issue of whether a mound of stone is more important to a people than the adoration of one of their iconic leaders.

 

[NotHardUp1]

Oh man! Don't rain on my John Denver memory.

Rocky Mountain High in dropped D tuning sounds gorgeous on a young boy's new Epiphone guitar. Add a campfire and a few friends and its almost heaven.

He was and is a beautiful piece of American pop culture, and from a time when it was a pleasure to turn on the radio and hear the latest tunes.

I'll always love his music, and his public image. I think he was the real deal.

Like a lot of icons from the 60's and 70's, they were charting new waters in environmentalism, free love, politics, and social theory. Many of them didn't face the withering blast of investigative journalism that today seeks to tear down everyone and everything by finding a spec in the milk pail.

Denver was a wonderful artist. His lyrics captured the soul of many who love the grandeur of natural wonder. But, that doesn't make any lyric a tenet in any public policy. It was a great lyric, and deserves to be praised for that, not for being the cornerstone of a policy shift that would have forbidden his own mansion from being built.

I spent the best hours of my youth in natural places, including camps, woods, and at lakes. I share your love of that music that was part of it.

 

[Kulindahr]

When I lived in Anchorage in 2007-2010, I saw an attitude there about not allowing more immigrants (from the States) into Alaska. Despite having the most vast, least occupied land within the nation, they felt selfish about it, as if it was somehow their private park.

I understand the attitude. Outsiders moving in tend to ignore the local culture and bring their own, drive up prices, fight to regulate how other people get to use their own property, work to shut down access to public lands . . . . It's not a matter of a "private park", it's a matter of people doing cultural imperialism with no respect for the neighbors they chose to live with and locals wanting to preserve their own culture.

 

[Kulindahr]

 

[Kulindahr]

View attachment 1713677219521.webp

 

[NotHardUp1]

I understand the attitude. Outsiders moving in tend to ignore the local culture and bring their own, drive up prices, fight to regulate how other people get to use their own property, work to shut down access to public lands . . . . It's not a matter of a "private park", it's a matter of people doing cultural imperialism with no respect for the neighbors they chose to live with and locals wanting to preserve their own culture.

The problem with the attitude in Alaska is that the ones expressing it were among the previous generations who had done exactly the same things as newcomers.

Cultural imperialism is already the state of affairs in both North America and in Alaska. The natives do not wear clothing of hides, nor do they live without the modernization of housing, transportation, food, or Western European values and culture. The native families eagerly took the ANCSA payment of $960M and for decades queued up for payments (per head) from the Alaska Permanent Fund, basically the payoff from the petroleum exploitation of the Arctic.

And it wasn't the native population that I heard the complaints from. It was the European descendants. It amounted to little more than greed.

The things you describe are simply the outworkings of settlement and population growth.

To the original point about Rushmore, exactly WHICH human artifacts and monuments are to be blacklisted and shamed? The Greek cities and temples? The pyramids of Giza? The Golden Gate Bridge? The temple at Angor Wat?

Every single urban city and human monument on this planet sits where there was once "pristine" nature. Selecting one and shamring it as a scar is a highly selective targeting while remaining silent about the ones that support our modern lifestyles, including timber and paper consumption and water use.

The local culture I saw in Alaska while living there looked pretty much like local culture in the lower 48, only less populated. There is no lack of big trucks, big flat-screened TVs, Lowe's, Sam's Club, fast food, beer cans, microbreweries, and plastic waste. It's all there, only more remote.

 

[Alistair]

Don’t forget this thread is a meme and funny picture video thread. It’s not a discussion thread.

 

[Alistair]

 

[KaraBulut]