When the Pendulum Swings Too Far

I don’t usually complain and I’m far from being a hard-hitting investigative journalist. But lately there are some things I’m seeing I feel compelled to speak out about.

From what I’m seeing nationally we have become a nation of victims who are offended by every little thing that somebody else does.  It reminds me of the Tom MacDonald song, People So Stupid.

In the last couple of years people have started using the term “cancel culture” to rid society of things that offend them.

Aunt Jemima syrup, Uncle Ben’s rice, and Land of Lakes butter all have been found to have offensive packaging and were changed. The Cleveland Indians are now the Guardians and the Washington Redskins have become the Commanders.

On the other end of the spectrum is the Bud Light controversy. Anheuser Busch partnered with Dylan Mulvaney, a transgender actor and social media influencer. This caused an uproar among conservatives and led to a boycott of Anheuser Busch products.

Way to read the room, Budweiser.

The people speaking out against this were ridiculed and it was said people were afraid of a beer can. This led to a huge drop in sales.

A couple of years ago Nike pulled a shoe off the market with the Betsy Ross flag design. This was because spokesperson Colin Kaepernick said the original flag the Revolutionary War was fought under stood for racism because the founding fathers were slave owners.

Really?

The Federal government has also got into the act by scrubbing any reference to Confederate officers from military life. This has come with a hefty price tag of $62 million.

You can’t make this stuff up.

The funny thing is one of the bases, Fort Benning, has served as the home of the Infantry School since 1918. It had been named after General Henry Benning. This was done at the request of the Columbus, Georgia Chamber of Commerce.

I am a history nut, but I have to admit I had no clue Fort Benning was named after a Confederate officer. I’m pretty sure the millions of others who also trained there didn’t either, or they didn’t care.

Also being renamed are Forts  Lee, Hood, Bragg, and Pickett.

When I was in the Army we had a saying, one aw crap can wipe out a thousand attaboys.

Here’s a prime example: Robert E. Lee. Lee served in the United States Army from 1824 to 1861. He graduated from West Point and became Colonel after serving with distinction in the Mexican War. He was in charge of the troops which put down John Brown’s insurrection at Harper’s Ferry.

Lee turned down command of the Union Army to stand with his home state Virginia during the Civil War. Even after 34 years of honorable service, he’s being judged by four years of his life. He was the superintendent of West Point but his name has been scrubbed from the institution.

One base name change I find curious is Fort Polk in Louisiana is being renamed.

It seems Fort Polk was named after General Leonidas Polk. I never heard of him. But the Army could have saved some money by just renaming it Fort James K. Polk after the 11th president.

When I was in Germany if you went in a museum the years 1933 to 1945 were conspicuously missing. This was because those were the years they were under the rule of Adolph Hitler. The Germans had scrubbed any mention of those years from their history.

But not completely.

One day I went into a German Rathaus, town hall. To my surprise, there were photos lining the wall of their boys who served in the World Wars. There were pictures of guys in SS and Luftwaffe uniforms. The German veterans wore the same kind of cap. If it had one gold button on the front if they served in World War I and two for the second world war.

Admittedly, there weren’t any statues with swastikas or other symbols of the Nazi regime prevalent in town squares or parks. But those who served the lost cause weren’t vilified or canceled. They became lessons for the future on how not to do something.

You’re probably wondering where I’m going with this.

For the past couple of weeks there’s been a hullabaloo over Jason Aldean’s song Try That In a Small Town. The song was pulled from CMT because it was racist.

Aldean caught a lot of heat from those wonderful people on the View. Ironically, they also labeled it racist and deplorable. And some of them hadn’t even seen the video.

The funny part is Aldean released the song in May without any controversy. When he released the video that’s when it hit the fan.

While his lyrics have no mention of race, the video had depictions of Black Lives Matter protesters looting, burning, and spitting in policeman’s faces. I guess using these videos makes Aldean a racist.

One of the things I read online said the video was filmed in front of the downtown square of Columbia, Tennessee.  There was a lynching there on November 13, 1927.

In their infinite wisdom at CMT, it was deemed that because a lynching took place on those grounds around 96 years ago Aldean was obviously pro-lynching. So they pulled the video from its lineup.

The one thing I learned at Slippery Rock University in the history department is you can’t look at history with a 21st-century eye. History isn’t there to be liked or disliked. It’s there to learn from.

By today’s standards To Kill a Mockingbird wouldn’t have been published. Or the movie Blazing Saddles would never have been made. One of my favorite Disney movies, the Adventures of Davy Crockett, now has warnings before the movie that it depicts Native Americans in a bad light.

With everybody trying to write history to suit their own agenda it’s hard to know what’s right or wrong and everyone is afraid of offending some other group. It's like walking through an unmarked minefield, you don't know until you trip one.

Here’s a novel idea.

The next time something offends you instead of getting on Facebook or Twitter and complaining about it, just pass it by. If you don’t like who’s sponsoring a product, don’t buy it.

Don’t like the politics of someone’s movie, don’t watch it. Don’t like what someone’s book has to say don’t buy it or read it. Don’t like what a candidate stands for? Don’t vote for them.

Things have a way of working themselves out without protests and changing things. While this may be a simplification of the state of affairs and how far we’ve come. But the pendulum is swinging way too far to what is good for everybody and only placates special interest groups.

In the immortal words of Rodney King, “Can’t we all just get along.”

Rant over. I feel better now.