I guess I’m not done writing about a core theme of this space. The core theme? That story both influences and reflects our behavior, “Rich people are stealing their wealth from peasants. Their history is a bloody stain on the peasants of the world. We have to erase rich people and their evil story.” So Richmond’s statue of Robert E. Lee has been covered in graffiti and the mayor has promised to take it down. We are ruled by yellow story.
My son said I should explain why I don’t want Confederate Monuments removed. I did that here. Part of our current problem is yellow story. To compete with social media traditional news outlets have returned to yellow journalism. The currency of modern journalism is fear and anger.
Next, some political organizations have adopted a strategy that relies on fear and anger to stay in power. They know that we are stupid when we are afraid or angry. We make choices we would never make if we had a moment to reflect and calm down.
Larga Vida el Sendero Luminoso
Then you have Sendero Luminosa, BLM, AntiFa and other communist revolutionary groups that root their identity in Marx, Lennin and Mao. All forms of communism and socialism are rooted in anger and fear. Communism can’t exist in a society where people are mostly happy. It has to have a warring populace who resent the others.
Nothing to do with Confederate Monuments, right? No, everything to do with these. For Senderistas to have their utopia they must destroy everything in the land. There cannot be anyone off-the-page with them. Nothing of the prior country can survive. So any monument that tells a story different from the orthodox narrative of Sendero Luminosa is evil and must be destroyed.
News Outlets love the story they get to tell when activists vandalize and destroy statues. CNN and other Senderista whores have spontaneous orgasms because they get traffic and their Sendero pimps give them likes. Political leaders get to show leadership without ever actually leading. These political whores get the power they seek through their Sendero Luminosa loyalty. Hot moans! Hot Moans! Get your Hot Moans HERE!
¿No está muerto el Sendero Luminoso?
So, a brief interruption to this screed. Sendero Luminosa is dead, right? It is not. First, three years ago Sendero Luminosa snipers killed three cops in the Ene Apurimac Valley. Second, and relevant to this piece, the Shining Path is an evil vision of a post-apocalyptic paradise. It is paved with the blood and ground bones of its enemies. The Shining Path is a beloved story for some. You can kill the people, you can destroy everything that came before, but a loved story is immortal.
Rome fell, all the Ceasar’s died, Ovid’s poetry survived. Abimael Guzmàn is in prison convicted of terrorism and treason. Even so, it’s not over for Sendero Luminosa. It will never be over. That vision, that story will live on as long as least one person passes it on to their children. This is the problem with trying to remove the symbols of the confederacy. The Confederacy will live on in the hearts of those who remember after the symbols are gone.
This is the game for Sendero Luminosa and its fellow travelors: keep inventing issues that have emotional punch and are innate characteristics of our shit show world. Slogans like “No Justice, No Peace!” and “Fuck the Police” make great feels as you walk down Richmond’s Monument Avenue in solidarity with the cause. They rely on angst at universal truths about us to manufacture their issues.
In the Beginning
Stories of the fall from Eden are roughly 5,000 years old. So for at least 5,000 years we have had free will and the knowledge of good and evil. We know, we understand and yet some of us continue to do bad shit. Knowing that, senderistas will scream at us, “NEVER AGAIN!” Yeah, uhm, about that.
There has to be an antidote narrative. One that isn’t born out of a dystopian tantrum pimped by senderistas bent on bringing the second coming forth on a road paved with the ashes, blood, and bones of the past. There is a better narrative told by dissident Jews who follow a martyred Nazarene carpenter: the Way of Christ.
Marxism dates to 1847 when Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels began writing the Communist Manifesto. We’ve had more or less of it for the last 173 years. The push for a Marxist America is almost a century old. It hasn’t succeeded for this reason: its soil is made of hate. The American Left shrivels to ash where there is hope.
La Revolución de Cristo
Jesus was uncompromising, John 14:6 ESV, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” This isn’t any less difficult, Matthew 19:21, “If you would be perfect, go, sell what you possess and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me.” Sounds kinda Marxist, doesn’t it? Just remember, Jesus was first.
There is one key difference between the Way of Jesus and the Shining Path. Like Judaism, the Way of Christ makes no sense if you don’t learn the history. Matthew 5:38-40 is absurd when read by Americans alive in 2020, “You have heard that it was said, ‘An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.’ 39 But I say to you, Do not resist the one who is evil. But if anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also. 40 And if anyone would sue you and take your tunic,[a] let him have your cloak as well.”
Our way is to shoot the son-of-a-bitch. That quote sounds like we are saying we love sandpaper dildos shoved up our anus. If you know the history and a little bit about Jewish culture in the period it takes on a whole, much better meaning.
Every day is a zero-day for senderistas. Yesterday evaporates behind a veil of today’s orthodox news speak. It never speaks of victory, hope, or love. If it did, the struggle wouldn’t be real. They need the struggle to be real.
You Can’t Have Enough Art
So . . . back to the monuments. Instead of tearing them down, we need to fight with more art. We need a building on the land owned by VCU where Lumpkins Jail once stood. That building should be a lament that tells the story of what it did. Lumpkins Jail was the largest slaveholding facility in Richmond for twenty years. I’d like to see VCU, the City of Richmond, the Commonwealth, and the National Park Service collaborate on a design for a building that tells Richmond’s story as one corner of a slave triangle that included Nigeria and England. It won’t happen because our current leadership is loyal to the Shining Path and ashamed of Robert Lumpkin.
Monument Avenue needs more art. Senderistas focus their story on the most angering narratives of African American History so they can move the ball on their post-apocalypse Peasant Utopia. The bitter past is only a small part of the African American story. Senderistas don’t want you to remember that history. They foment a yellow story of every day being a zero-day begun with a recitation of white cracker sin. We can win against them simply by remembering the rest of the story. I want more sculpture on Monument Avenue, not less.
I trust the arts community in Richmond to come up with sculpture for Monument Avenue that tells a fuller picture of African American History. Tell all of it, the bitter sin and the victories.
El Camino del Amor
Where Senderistas foment hate in furtherance of the struggle, Jesus spoke of love evangelizing his kingdom. The story of Christ is a story of love infecting power and winning. Marx hated Christ. His way of life called religion an opiate of the masses. Christians defied slave masters fighting to prevent slaves from learning to read by giving bibles and reading lessons. We insinuated our way of life into the hearts of African slaves and became part of their blood.
The Sendero Luminosa can’t further their revolution without destroying the church. A large part of African American History is absurd unless you understand its relationship to Christ. It’s not a coinkidink that churches are being attacked by BLM and Antifa. So much American music is born of slave work songs and black gospel. Elvis and Nick Jagger sang race music early in their career. N.W.A’s lineage traces straight back to the plantations of the antebellum South. This heritage can’t be told if the Senderistas are to succeed. The story of triumphant African American art has to die so a bitter Sendero Luminosa narrative can replace it.
Choose. Devote yourself to an abusive, violent, and hateful god-king who promises to be your Sugar Daddy and delivers bruises and bleeding or to a no-account carpenter from Nazareth who got himself crucified for speaking truth to the Jews. Plenty still genuflect before their home temple to Guzmàn, Mao, and Lenin hoping these will succor every whim. My friends and I follow the Way of Christ. For over 2,000 years we keep quietly winning.
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