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| The Western Bamiyan Buddha of Afghanistan before and after |
I learned a new word today: CULTURICIDE. [Note: this is the correct form if you're talking about cultural genocide.]
I used to call it cultural genocide but today I found out this is an actual word. Let me lead you down last night's rabbit hole so maybe you can follow my thinking. Granted, it's not always all that cogent, but maybe you'll let the idea.
There's lots of different ways to think about cultural genocide. I'm not talking about the cancel culture movement. I'm talking about what the US did to the indigenous populations here, what the Nazis did in Europe, and what the Taliban did to the magnificent Bamiyan Buddhas in Afghanistan.
Brigadier General Richard Henry Pratt supervised Native American prisoners in Florida and believed strongly in the premise that one had to kill the Indian, save the man. Ultimately, he founded the Carlisle Industrial Indian School in Pennsylvania and was the architect of cultural genocide large swaths of our indigenous population. History.com provides an excellent description of how that worked in its article How Boarding Schools Tried to ‘Kill the Indian’ Through Assimilation; Native American tribes are still seeking the return of their children.
As part of this federal push for assimilation, boarding schools forbid Native American children from using their own languages and names, as well as from practicing their religion and culture. They were given new Anglo-American names, clothes, and haircuts, and told they must abandon their way of life because it was inferior to white people’s.
But that's only one kind of culturicide. The Nazis rounded up and slaughtered millions of "undesirable" people...like jews, Romani, and homosexuals, but they didn't stop there. They looted art and monuments. They burned synagogues, churches, and museums...but not before scooping up their cultural artifacts. A huge repository of art and artifacts was hidden in of salt mines in Altaussee in Austria. While the movie THE MONUMENTS MEN shows those guys as the heroes saving the cache, it was actually the miners themselves who disarmed the Nazis plan to blow up the mine, thereby saving it all from destruction. [note: the Wiki article does go into the historical accuracy of the film.]
As for the Taliban in Afghanistan...they followed the principles of ISIS and other Islamist regimes. They set out to obliterate anything that was not of Islam. They did not hide their loot in salt mines; they simply destroyed everything. If the rich cultural and artistic history of the Afghan people no longer existed........
We, the People, are not immune from being looted culturally. President Felon's desire to change the name of The Kennedy Center is the perfect example. Named for a president and first lady who embodied the expansion of America's cultural achievements deserves to be honored with that theatre. Neither President Kennedy nor Mrs. Kennedy stripped portraits of presidents they didn't like from the White House. They didn't decry exhibits that recognized the failures of America as well as the successes.
But wait! There's more. A romance writer is cited as having written a superb description of culturicide in a rather dreadful (yes, I actually read it) book called JAKE. Adrienne Bell wrote:
...by destroying a culture’s art, you destroy the people. If you erase every reminder of their history, their symbology, everything... everything that made them special and distinct in this world, then you can make those people forget who they really are. And that’s what conquerors truly want.
Feckless President Felon is trying to rewrite our history in the most revisionist of ways. He is removing entire classes of our armed forces from recognition based on sex. Yes, sex. Whether it is homosexuality, transgenderism, or how about just gender...it doesn't matter. He's got people in his cabinet who actively believe women should not vote.
To be very blunt: the White House is carefully curating what they think we should think. That, folks, is a form of culturicide.
Now for the rabbit hole. Here's where my thought trains runs amok.
I got to thinking about how President Felon is trying to build a garish addition for the rather sedate yet elegant White House. Here's what the White House says about it:
The White House State Ballroom will be a much-needed and exquisite addition of approximately 90,000 total square feet of ornately designed and carefully crafted space, with a seated capacity of 650 people — a significant increase from the 200-person seated capacity in the East Room of the White House....
The White House Ballroom will be substantially separated from the main building of the White House, but at the same time, it’s [sic] theme and architectural heritage will be almost identical. The site of the new ballroom will be where the small, heavily changed, and reconstructed East Wing currently sits. The East Wing was constructed in 1902 and has been renovated and changed many times, with a second story added in 1942.
This rendering is a little too ornately designed for the simple taste of the nation's house. I mean, it's like more Versailles than the image America usually presents....non-royal. This is the antithesis of who we are....or who we like to think we are. He is not an Ottoman Sultan, nor is he a king of any kind. He is OUR frickin' temp employee.
Meanwhile, back at the ranch...
He thinks we don't notice what he's trying to divert us from seeing with this bullshiht sidestep. But sometimes, he cannot keep his big trap shut....and he didn't keep it shut enough on Monday (today as I write this.)
In taking control of Washington, D.C.'s police force, he not only tipped his hand, but he exposed himself. Let me explain.
January 6th was, much like more recently in LA, a dry run in taking control of a city. He tried to overturn the election and used orchestrated violence to demonstrate how out-of-control the city of Washington was. It didn't work. He tried to take over LA, but while a little more successful, he did not end up running the government of LA or California out on a rail. He is attempting to try it again with this morning's announcement of wresting control of the DC police force using home-rule law.
His claims that the crime rate is DC is higher than it's ever been is total bullshit. Go look for yourself: Fact check: Violent crime in DC has fallen in 2024 and 2025 after a 2023 spike. No other city in the US is subject to home-rule like DC, but that's not gonna stop him. And he said as much in his speech:
You look at Chicago how bad it is. You look at Los Angeles how bad it is. We have other cities that are very bad. New York has a problem. And then you have, of course, Baltimore and Oakland. We don't even mention that anymore they're so -- they're so far gone. We're not going to let it happen. We're not going to lose our cities over this.
There it is, folks. This is nothing more than a harbinger of authoritarian control. Read the whole speech; it's a dilly.
You deny us the right to our own history. You change the facts in museums and the public square. You convince enough people you really just want to protect them....
And then you cancel elections because the people are being denied their true voice....the one that kowtows to him and his rhetoric.
Remember, you might not have seen it here first, but you've seen it here.
The Wifely Person's Tip o'the Week
If you haven't seed SIDESTEP
you need to see it.
Now.
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