Activists demonstrated at the former site of the Silent Sam Memorial in the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and at the contested Confederate Memorial in Dallas, Texas. Prior to the action in Dallas, activists removed the tarps and coverings shrouding the monument from view. Police, evidently rearranging their priorities, ignored the dealings of the criminal elements within the city to investigate why American men would wish to protest a corrupt government disgracing the memorials of their fathers. The corrupt-to-the-core officials in the city councils and campus institutions who have long watched their communities rot under mob rule, suddenly lurched to action to silence the patriots.
America's history is rife with conflict. The sovereignty of Americans, as a people, has been threatened again and again by foreign empires and nations, invading armies, scheming plutocrats, and now the very government which was built for the sole purpose of protecting the people it currently seeks to dissolve. The war between brothers that inspired these monuments to our nation's bravest and most courageous men remains an unequivocal tragedy. Wherever American life is spent without warrant, manipulating forces can be found reaping their dreadful harvest.
The battling machinations between agricultural and industrial elites, which sent the best of the nation to blood-soaked fields of their heartland in pursuit of some fruitless economic advantage presents the largest impetus for the destructive war within the nation. Those of a deracinated aristocracy sought to protect their investments and monopolies at the expense of the unity of the people who they depended on, and should have rightly been at the mercy of.
Politicians cowered and wavered in the face of the challenges offered by the century, and traded the destiny of their children for meaningless attempts at reelection. All the while the descendants of the same settlers, explorers, and pioneers drew rifles on their fellow countrymen at the order of those who let greed, control, and senseless ideals threaten the unity of the people and their state. Globally minded institutions traded sovereignty for profit with the importation of a foreign labor force seemingly incapable of the revolt which would have met them had they attempted similar methods of total control upon Americans themselves.
Whereas one side allowed the allure of economic independence through exploited labor to cloud proper judgement, the other allowed a corrupting elite to foster a dangerous set of ideals to threaten their own. All the while the honest and virtuous of the nation undivided paid the price for their failures as leaders, attempting to fight alongside anyone who embodied the people's cause.
These monuments must be remembered as anchors to an identity purchased in centuries of struggle. Unless this is done, leaders of the very same stripe will once again threaten America's destiny, divide the people's identity, and steal the nation's sovereignty.