As an undergraduate philosophy theology major at the Jesuit version of West Point in the distant suburbs of Boston, I was part of a cabal that considered re-doing a tradition -- our arch-rival other Jesuit school in the near suburbs of Boston had a giant bird, a chicken or a vulture or something, like a golden calf only of avian style located in the center of it's quad. It had long been a tradition to go there and paint the thing purple...a number of the radical anarchist philosophy theology types thought long and hard about revisiting that tradition...we chose not to because the dean of men got wind of it (leaks, leaks in the philosophy department! Or among the anarcho-commie-pinko-fag-community! Shocked) -- passing the word along that if we did such a thing, we'd be in Vietnam. Even if we didn't and the damn thing turned purple, we'd be in Vietnam. I mean, expelled. Actually, I mean Vietnam. it was Vietnam that stopped us...so, I joined the Army. Go figure...
What does the BC Gold Plated Sparrow on Steroids have to do with anything? Well, symbols even trite ones have an impact. They can't all be like Niedermeyer's horse. Screwing around with them can be a bad thing...
Case in point, the furor and saber-rattling over the War Memorial in Estonia. You know, the Russian War memorial honoring the brave soldiers of the Soviet Union who drove Hitler and the Nazis from the Rodina, the motherland...Who could want to tear such a thing down? Just because it looks like a leering rapist and bully getting ready to stomp your ass and buttfuck your five year old sister...
Well, of course, it's kind of like putting a monument to Kit Carson in Canon de Chelley or Window Rock the capital of the Navajo Nation. The Estonians were not really excited about the Red Army liberating them from the Soviets -- since just prior to the war to defeat the Nazi imperialists, the Soviets invaded the Baltic Republics. Kind of hard to get choked up about the Russians freeing you from the Germans when they had screwed you over before the Germans and would do so for a long time thereafter.
The Russians are pissed, seeing the removal of the damn thing to be an outburst of neo-Nazism. Yeah, right. While Churchill indicated that if Hitler invaded Hell, he would be compelled to say something complimentary about the Devil in Parliament, a lot of people were not all that enthused by the Soviets as allies. They weren't you know -- until Hitler invaded the USSR. The Estonians were never really given a chance to decide...100 divisions of the Red Army and the whole NKVD-MGB-KGB took care of that.
Of course, the Estonians could decide to make life miserable for the quarter of their people who hate Estonia...the Russian minority that lives there. I would be stunned to see Russia invade or do something really punitive to Estonia -- but, I spend a lot of time in current affairs being stunned . Who'd stop them? France?
Now, it's possible to bring down a symbol and have a good time...my people, the Irish, did so when the IRA blew down Nelson's pillar in 1966. Some anarchonistic Col Blimp types got incensed and wrote letters to the Times of London; I suppose some group gout-ridden, syphilitic inbreds in the House of Lords muttered darkly, but the fact is nobody gave a shit. What England did over 800 years was as bad or worse than what Russia did to Estonia in 50 years; but, both the Irish and the English maintain a sense of humor. As Wiki describes At 2am on March 8, 1966, a group of former IRA men, including Joe Christle,
gave definite shape to this opposition by planting a bomb that
destroyed the upper half of the pillar, throwing the statue of Nelson
into the street and causing large chunks of stone to be flung around
the vicinity. Christle, dismissed ten years earlier from the IRA for
unauthorised actions, was a qualified barrister and saw himself as a socialist revolutionary. It is thought that the bombers acted when they did to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Easter Rising. As a relic of Ireland's colonial past, the statue was a painful reminder to many. Plans for its removal by Dublin Corporation
were made and subsequently dropped several times. Others plans, also
not implemented, saw proposals to replace Nelson at the top of the
Pillar by other statues: among those suggested at various times for the
Pillar were the Sacred Heart, Patrick Pearse, Saint Patrick and John F. Kennedy.
No one was hurt by the IRA explosion. The closest bystander was 19-year-old taxi driver, Steve Maughan, whose taxi was destroyed. O'Connell Street enjoyed a cheery atmosphere for a few days as people crowded in to appreciate the novelty that was being referred to around town as 'The Stump'. Two days after the original damage, Irish Army engineers blew up the rest of the pillar after judging the vestigial structure to be too unsafe to restore. This planned demolition caused more destruction on O'Connell Street than the original blast, breaking many windows and causing painfully-amused Dubliners to roll their eyes and joke about how the authorities "should have got the original boys back to finish the job"
Louis MacNeice said it well in his poem Dublin, written long before the thing came down...
Grey brick upon brick,
Declamatory bronze
On sombre pedestals -
O'Connell, Grattan, Moore -
And the brewery tugs and the swans
On the balustraded stream
And the bare bones of a fanlight
Over a hungry door
And the air soft on the cheek
And porter running from the taps
With a head of yellow cream
And Nelson on his pillar
Watching his world collapse.
It is possible that the Irish and the Estonians are simply anti-being taken over by
outsiders and screwed over...
The Dubliners had a piece about Nelson's Pillar after the fact
"Poor Old Admiral Nelson is no longer in the air...
Maybe there'll eventually be some good songs about Tallinn...
Probably not as good as as this, of course...
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