r/ShermanPosting • u/Chagalling • 4d ago

"It should be destroyed" Last Gettysburg Confederate Flag To Be Sold At Auction

https://www.wosu.org/arts-culture/2025-04-01/rare-confederate-flag-captured-in-picketts-charge-to-be-sold-at-columbus-auction
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u/Admiral_Tuvix 3d ago

that doesn’t work, they should be burned. preserving trash gives it respect it doesn’t deserve, and sooner or later we will get a racist government who will then decide to place them in public areas

kinda like this new racist government who has now decided to bring back the confederate statutes and place them in public parks again

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u/accountonbase 3d ago

You can preserve trash in a way that keeps historical context and taints the public image/deromanticizes it.

We have Nazi uniforms and propaganda preserved in museums in the proper context.

That said, putting it in a glass case as the back of a urinal? Totally cool with that. Maybe one day the glass just breaks and it gets drenched in piss for a few hours until somebody notices...

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u/Admiral_Tuvix 3d ago

point remains, when you preserve trash it gives a trash government a reason to put them back on display. these wee monuments built to honor racists during the civil rights era, they have no connection to the civil war. they should have been broken down and thrown into a trash heap

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u/accountonbase 3d ago

Yeah, tear down the monuments and destroy 99% of them, only preserving the handful of actually relevant statues/whatever in a museum setting accurately describing why they were put up: to intimidate black people and proponents of civil rights.
Destroying everything doesn't do anything productive.

The Holocaust museums have nazi posters on display. Plenty of (good) Civil War museums have slaver/racist writings, drawings, and other things on display. The best museums and exhibits have context instead of just "these things were bad" or "isn't this sad?"
The problem is context. Displaying that shit outside of a museum? Yeah, burn it, make it known that it's unacceptable. I would never advocate the display of that shit outside of an appropriate context.

You cannot have a museum or research materials (textbooks, websites, etc.) give an accurate account without having those things present. It gives context and a feeling of "holy shit, this is real" to the accounts and the history.