You telling people that they just need to consider the view points of rapists and slavers to understand how a 44 year old slaver raping his 14 year old slave could of in someways have "degrees of benignity" is not a winning argument.
But
your argument, such as it is, involves as I have suggested the creation of *cartoon images* against which you can organize and rally your contempt and anger to stimulate a general hatred that extends beyond the moral failing of the man Jefferson to a poisonous hatred of the country, its founding, its institutions, and is part-and-parcel of your narrative of contempt and hatred.
What I have been suggesting is that you are definitely involved in these sorts of projects — it is all recorded here in your own words! — and that I recommend examining the structured narratives and ideological positions of people like those that comprise Antifa and also those that comprise BLM. I suggest that Critical Theory and especially race theory, postcolonial theory and also queer theory, be examined from a critical perspective — just as I am doing in respect to all you say — to better understand a virulent movement which, in my opinion, is not creative or productive, but largely destructive.
In this regard — though TigerAce predictably pushed it violently away with an imperious gesture of distain — I presented Ari Horowitz’ short video-essay on
an aspect of BLM. This
aspect is real. But just as you and Tiger rail against your *cartoons* you also become cartoons as you dig your heals into intractable positions. These dovetail into positions of militancy which are, through and through, destructive.
I can well see everything troubling and problematic in the relationship that Jefferson had with Sally Hemings, so the points are not lost on me. Yet it is within even that *power unbalanced* relationship, as we would see it today through application of that particular way of seeing power-dynamics, that also points up the ‘benignity’.
It is likely — I am certain of it in fact — that it is easier for me to see this situation (Jefferson and Hemings) through the context of my own cultural background: Venezuela. It is a highly stratified society in which people within very (starkly) different strata carry on human relationships. And though I am not supportive of it and see many negaite features in it, concubinage is ever-present throughout the culture, from bottom to top. But this is not the only area where very warm and human interchanges occur between persons in different social strata. So, what I notice is that people find a way to get along under what we would describe as *unfortunate circumstances*, or circumstances we find *unfair* and even *unjust*.
I have in mind the life-long relationships between well to do families and the women, and sometimes men, who associate themselves with those families as drivers, maids, nannies and such. These relationships extend completely beyond an employer-employee relationship such as you encounter in the States and involve many different levels of commitment. For example helping the servant’s children get through university, or providing other resources, health care, etc. I have one woman in mind who cared for her longtime servant when she was very sick and eventually died.
So, it is through these lenses that I can visualize aspects of benignity within the slave-master culture of the South.
You chose the wrong side. Good luck convincing the majority of the bengin nature of kidnapping and then raping a 14 year old girl. We can certainly, by learning about history, understand how this was normal and prevalent in a particular society but no one is rocking with you that it was ever okay just cause it happened really long ago. No one is going to join you out on that lonely island except deplorables and mutants.
Ah, but there you can see how your definition is what you are referring to — a definition that you have invested with life and spirit. Again this is the *cartoon* that I refer to.
