In what is best described as an act of Kabuki theater, the Cooke County Commissioners Court considered voting Aug. 17 for pretending to put the future of a Confederate statue and memorial on its courthouse lawn in the hands of voters.
Finding a loophole in Texas law, County Judge Jason Brinkley called a special meeting of the court to vote on a nonbinding referendum on the matter. Texas law allows counties of under 40,000 to do so.
Matthew McGee got to the point of the referendum, among speakers in public forum.
“I would like to remind people the referendum is non-binding. It’s still 100 percent up to the commissioners to act,” he said, making a reference to a “poll on racism.”
“It’s still the only county doing such a poll. It’s going to be national news and it’s going to be embarrassing,” he said.
Turns out Cooke County won't make the teevee screens. The Commissioners Court's four commissioners ignored Brinkley and voted 4-1 to reject the referendum idea and do nothing.
Surprised? No. Disheartened? Yes. No so disheartened as to hope that protestors are serious and stay out there.
As for the speakers?
Most supporters of keeping the statue ignored that Texas seceded over slavery.
Rachel Moore talked about a historic 1913 gathering of CSA and US troops at Gettysburg as healing. She either was unaware, or chose to ignore, that black US troops were excluded.
And, of course, people like this call youth protestors "socialists" as a pejorative, ignoring the meeting of that word, while accusing the protestors of rewriting history, when history was being rewritten even before Rutherford Hayes agreed to end Reconstruction.
Ignorance was not confined to past history, nor to speakers.
“I question Black Lives Matter. Is it exclusive by definition? Has Black Lives Matter produced any results?” Precinct 1 Commissioner Gary Hollowell asked.
The truth is that, just a week ago, the city of Austin voted to cut one-third of the bloat from its police budget and that it also made police actions reviewable by moving "internal affairs division" outside the department. BLM protests led a heretofore relatively conservative Austin City Council to take this bold step forward. (More from Grits here on how George Floyd and a local shooting by cop were the fuse for long-standing ideas to cross the finish line.)
Precinct 4 Commissioner Leon Klement seemed to indicate, in lines with Hollowell, that the "problem" was only one one side.
“If that rock causes you to hate somebody, that’s on you,” he said. As with Hollowell, it seemed the comment was directed only toward anti-statue protestors.
Precinct 3 Commissioner John Klement reference slavery having a global history, and slaves in the North, but didn't mention the race-based history of slavery in the U.S. He, like cousin Leon, noted his family had come from Germany after the Civil War but the statue was part of their history.
Yes? And yours truly wrote a column noting that Bismarck's Kulturkampf against German Catholics was part of your history, too, and suggesting you analogize from that. And you did not.
Precinct 2 Commissioner Jason Snuggs added that some people told him they could see the statue being moved, but not under this pressure.
So no, Bob Smith, Vince Rippy and other members of the self-styled Cooke County Activists for Truth in Society, the commissioners court did NOT display "exceptional courage." If not craven cowardice, they were closer to that than what you claim. The "Exceptional courage" was displayed a month ago by Gainesville Mayor Jim Goldsworthy and the rest of the Gainesville City Council when it voted to move the city's statue in the face of opposition from people like you.
Also of note? Mr. Young Republicans PR Tucker Craft (see here on earlier meetings and background) was not at this meeting.
I think part of what's lying behind less reactionary members of the county court, and others, is something that I've seen on Twitter, the idea that social changes happen by magic, without protest. I of course cited Martin Luther King back to the first few people who pulled that. I think a minority of people sincerely believe that, but for the majority, it's just another "talk to the back of the hand" stance.
Otherwise, it's clear that entrenched beliefs don't change, even when presented with plenty of evidence to create cognitive dissonance. Despite protestors repeatedly saying in commissioners court meetings that they're from Gainesville, opponents continue to claim they're all agitators from Denton. If people don't have the "exceptional courage" to critically examine their own belief systems, they're going to be poor judges of who else displays "exceptional courage." But, it's also easier to pretend that issues aren't real when you pretend that people in your own back yard aren't the ones raising the issue.
This all reminds me of Max Planck cracking wise about how what was really needed for a new scientific theory to become accepted was to have enough old scientists die off.
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