Melting Statue Of Abraham Lincoln

[Anita]

"The artist says the sculpture was meant as a reflection on Lincoln's abolitionist legacy. Now it says something about climate change, too.
The statue is an art installation by Sandy Williams IV, a Richmond artist who has made wax versions of historical monuments around the country, mostly on the East Coast. In collaboration with CulturalDC, a nonprofit that helps artists display their work around the city, Williams made a wax model of a seated Lincoln, based on the Lincoln Memorial, to be displayed on the lawn of Garrison Elementary School. The school stands on the site of Camp Barker, which was a contraband camp during the Civil War, where freed and escaped slaves would come to get education, medical care, and employment to rebuild their lives. According to Cultural DC’s website for the installation, Lincoln often visited the refugees at Camp Barker while he was president.

The first iteration of Williams’ Lincoln was last October. It contained 100 wicks, and was intended to be burned slowly over time by passersby, who were asked (via writing on the statue’s base) to blow out their flame before leaving the site. But before the statue was officially unveiled, Williams said, a group of people lit all the wicks and let them burn, leaving the statue a dripping carcass of what it had been."
https://www.washingtonian.com/2024/06/24...s-weekend/

Go here to see the October 2023 melted version. https://www.nbcwashington.com/news/local...d/3435498/

[David Lockmiller]

(06-24-2024 05:15 PM)Anita Wrote:  "The artist [Sandy Williams IV] says the sculpture was meant as a reflection on Lincoln's abolitionist legacy. . . . The school stands on the site of Camp Barker, which was a contraband camp during the Civil War, where freed and escaped slaves would come to get education, medical care, and employment to rebuild their lives. According to Cultural DC’s website for the installation, Lincoln often visited the refugees at Camp Barker while he was president.

They’ve canceled plans for any more lightings, but Williams said the work has prompted the desired conversations about history, permanence and our shared historical narratives.

With all of the recent rulings of the six Republican-President-appointed Justices of the United States Supreme Court (and more such important rulings to come shortly), an enlightened citizen might be concerned with the current history being made. Five men and one woman on the bench of the United States Supreme Court (in the current U. S. population of 336,673,595) are re-interpreting our constitution, in accordance with their conservative beliefs, on a massive scale.

[David Lockmiller]

(06-25-2024 11:59 AM)David Lockmiller Wrote:  With all of the recent rulings of the six Republican-President-appointed Justices of the United States Supreme Court (and more such important rulings to come shortly), an enlightened citizen might be concerned with the current history being made. Five men and one woman on the bench of the United States Supreme Court (in the current U. S. population of 336,673,595) are re-interpreting our constitution, in accordance with their conservative beliefs, on a massive scale.

What, might one ask, has this to do with the subject matter of Lincoln?

Good question.

And, the good answer is Chief Justice Taney and his order regarding the habeas corpus provision of the Constitution with which President Lincoln disagreed on constitutional grounds. President Lincoln won immediately because he had the power to enforce his opinion.

What might happen in similar circumstances if Donald Trump is elected President for a second term? He has already informed the citizens of the United States that all of those citizens who threatened our democracy, by storming the Capitol on January 6, 2021 and thereby suspending the constitutional act of appointing a new president, will be pardoned by him.

Today, the New York Times reported that the majority of the Supreme Court, including the three justices appointed by President Trump, have declared "criminal acts" to be constitutional according to the headline of the New York Times story:

"Corruption Law Allows Gifts to State and Local Officials, Supreme Court Rules," so long as they after-the-fact rewards.

Without reading the article, I submitted the following comment to the story for approval: "So, all one has to do is wait a little while and then corruption is legal?"

Here are the two most recent comment posts that have been approved by the NYTimes:

So SCOTUS has just OK’d the bribes they have been taking. That’s pretty self serving I must say. Basically I see it that proactive bribery is bad and naughty, but post active bribery is just great. In reality the beauty is in the beholder. Either way money washes everything clean. And this is our supreme court of justice, more like joke justice to me.

It is much more cost effective, and now legal, to bribe someone AFTER they’ve accomplished your wishes. If you paid them before, you aren’t certain they are corrupt and might be wasting your money. This way, you KNOW they’re corrupt and can also get the job done.

And, the following is most recommended post by fellow readers who have already read the story (with 1,289 recommendations) regarding this New York Times story:

The grift continues. I can make a law favoring garbage trucks, and after I make the law, the garbage trucks company is free to award me with kickbacks. This is how democracy dies and turns into oligarchy.

The New York Times article reads:

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, joined by Justices Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor in dissent, wrote: “Officials who use their public positions for private gain threaten the integrity of our most important institutions. Greed makes governments — at every level — less responsive, less efficient and less trustworthy from the perspective of the communities they serve.”