Perhaps, if protesters spent more time reading books and less time burning down housing projects and looting Targets, we could have a productive conversation about policing, racial equality and the social ills that contribute to both.
But that's looking less and less likely, considering these radical left-wing Marxists are apparently far more intent with a slash-and-burn approach to destroy anything in their path - including statues, monuments and memorials that have absolutely nothing at all to do with the "racism" they say they're fighting again.
To that end, here are 10 statues - which in no way comprises a complete list - that have been targeted for vandalism, destruction and removal by "anti-racism" protesters in recent weeks...
...despite having nothing at all to do with racism.
1. Ghandi.
Don't know if anyone still knows who Gandhi is - that's apparently questionable, these days - but let's just say he wasn't a Confederate general.
2. Matthias Baldwin.
Baldwin, an ardent abolitionist, was one of the first to argue for black voting rights a full three decades before the start of the Civil War. He also hired black workers when others wouldn’t, and even began a school to educate black students who otherwise wouldn’t have received a formal education - a school he funded out of his own pocket, by the way.
But that didn’t stop protesters from doing this to his statue in Philly.
3. Hans Christian Heg.
Heg was an anti-slavery advocate and a Union military leader to fell during the Battle of Chickamauga. Not that anyone cares.
4. A monument honoring the First Virginia Regiment.
Protesters pulled down a statue honoring the First Virginia Regiment Monument, a state militia regiment formed in 1754 before the start of the American Revolution. Not the Civil War – the Revolution.
Wrong century, jackholes.
5. The Grandview Cemetery Soldiers Monument.
Protesters defaced a Civil War memorial dedicated to the "honor of the patriotic men of Ross County who gave their lives in the war for the preservation of the Union.”
6. The Shaw Memorial.
This monument honoring the first all-volunteer black regiment of the Union Army in the Civil War.
I’m sorry, is my microphone on? I said the first all-volunteer black regiment of the Union Army in the Civil War.
7. A statue of President Ulysses S. Grant.
That would be the guy who fought for the Union, morons.
#BREAKING: Demonstrators topple statues in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park. @hurd_hurd will have details on our News at 11. https://t.co/RvmlMqu73s pic.twitter.com/iUZE28AvdD
— NBC Bay Area (@nbcbayarea) June 20, 2020
8. The Emancipation Memorial in Boston.
This statue depicts a freed black man, his shackles broken, in the act of rising to his feet after being freed by President Abraham Lincoln. Funding for the monument started with a $5 donation by Charlotte Scott, a former slave from Virginia.
But Boston’s not letting pesky facts get in their way of taking the statue down to appease the perpetually offended.
9. The Turning Angel Statue.
This statue in Natchez City, Mississippi, was toppled and broken. Why? No good reason, considering the statue was erected to watch over the graves of 5 children killed in a factory explosion in the early 1900.
10. This random elk statue in Portland.
Because as we all know, elks are the facists of the forest.
The elk statue in downtown Portland is now fully engulfed in flames. #antifa pic.twitter.com/EdqOnJCdSP
— Andy Ngô (@MrAndyNgo) July 2, 2020