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After President Trump's most recent rhetoric about Charlottesville inflamed even more criticism, a handful of GOP lawmakers, including Sens. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) and Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), are criticizing Trump directly, while others stay silent. (Jenny Starrs/The Washington Post)

President Trump on Thursday assumed the role of leading spokesman for the racially charged cause of preserving Confederate statues on public grounds, couching his defense in historical terms that thrilled his core supporters and signaled his intent to use cultural strife as a political weapon just days after deadly violence in Virginia.

Sad to see the history and culture of our great country being ripped apart with the removal of our beautiful statues and monuments, Trump wrote on Twitter.

So foolish! he added, bemoaning efforts in several municipalities to take down Confederate tributes.

Trumps celebration of monuments from a dark chapter of American history sparked wide debate over its consequences for his embattled presidency and the nations civic fabric, as well as over the challenges facing both parties as he delves into the culture wars.

A chorus of Republicans expressed alarm over Trumps words and their potential cost with voters. But Trumps allies inside and outside the White House, most notably White House chief strategist Stephen K. Bannon, argued that Trumps pronouncements would rally his political base while also serving as a welcome distraction from the policy stumbles and investigations that have hobbled the administration.

Democrats reacted with horror at Trumps enthusiasm for memorials to the Confederacy more than 150 years after the end of the Civil War and just five days after white nationalist and neo-Nazi protests in Charlottesville left one woman dead and at least 19 more people injured.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and others harshly condemned Trumps statements and called for the removal of Confederate statues from the halls of the U.S. Capitol. Some veteran Democrats, meanwhile, said Trumps remarks seemed aimed at rousing his base.

Hes hitting a raw and ugly political nerve around a certain segment of the electorate, said Democratic consultant Robert Shrum. But thats not enough to sustain him to get things done as president or get reelected.

Trumps comments came as he also ratcheted up his rhetoric on the threat of Muslim extremists in the wake of a deadly van attack Thursday in Barcelona. Taking to Twitter, Trump recycled a discredited tale that he had promoted during the 2016 campaign, asserting that Gen. John J. Pershing had ordered that bullets be dipped in pigs blood and used to execute Islamic terrorists in the Philippines. Historians have widely debunked the story as a fabrication.

Inside the White House, Trump advisers said the president is being guided chiefly by his own instincts, chafing at critical news coverage of his handling of the Charlottesville protests and charges of racism.

Bannon a hard-line nationalist whose position has been threatened in recent days by his clashes with moderate colleagues and his blunt remarks to a liberal magazine has fiercely defended Trump in internal staff discussions, according to White House officials.

In an email to The Washington Post on Thursday, Bannon said Democrats do not understand Trump and underestimate his appeal.

President Trump asked if statues of George Washington and Thomas Jefferson should be removed since they owned slaves while speaking in New York on Aug. 15. (The Washington Post)

This past election, the Democrats used every personal attack, including charges of racism, against President Trump. He then won a landslide victory on a straightforward platform of economic nationalism, Bannon wrote. As long as the Democrats fail to understand this, they will continue to lose. But leftist elites do not value history, so why would they learn from history?

Others in Trumps orbit agree with him, believing there is a potential strategy in decrying identity politics and political correctness a message that resonates with his base. But even within Trumps circle, there are those who wonder whether Trump has gone too far and risks alienating some of the swing voters who voted for him last year with hope for change, not racial division.

He was saying that this political correctness could lead to trying to rewrite American history. The problem is thats not the time to bring this up, said one Republican operative and unofficial White House adviser, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to offer a candid assessment. Now is the time to lower the emotional temperature of the country.

Many Republican leaders and lawmakers cringed as the president tweeted, and they sought to distance themselves from the White House. Rep. Peter T. King (R-N.Y.), a moderate, went so far as to call for Bannon to be fired.

Associates of House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said Thursday that Trump would be putting the partys already stalled legislative agenda at risk if he continued to carry the cause of defending Confederate statues.

Its a pretty tough transition from white supremacists arent so bad to lets do tax reform, Josh Holmes, a longtime McConnell ally, said in an interview.

But the concerns ran deeper than prospects on Capitol Hill. Some prominent Republicans said they were unsettled by the caustic nature of Trumps comments this week and what those remarks revealed about his ability to articulate positions on race and history that unite rather than divide the country.

What we want to see from our president is clarity and moral authority. And that moral authority is compromised when Tuesday happened, Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.), the GOPs lone black senator, told VICE on Thursday, referring to a news conference in which Trump said both sides shared blame for the violence at the white nationalist rally in Charlottesville.

Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.), the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, who has worked closely with Trump in the past, underscored the growing Republican unease when he told reporters Thursday that Trump has not demonstrated that he understands the character of this nation.

He has not demonstrated that he understands what has made this nation great and what it is today, and hes got to demonstrate the characteristics of a president who understands that. And without the things that I just mentioned happening, our nation is going to go through great peril, Corker said.

Anything less than complete & unambiguous condemnation of white supremacists, neo-Nazis, and the KKK by the @POTUS is unacceptable. Period, Sen. Dan Sullivan (R-Alaska) wrote Thursday on Twitter.

Trump shrugged off the criticism. Earlier Thursday, he slammed Sens. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) and Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) for their criticism of his leadership in the wake of the Charlottesville tragedy.

On Twitter, Trump called Flake WEAK on borders, crime and a non-factor in Senate, and praised Flakes primary challenger.

McConnell responded with a tweet later in the day, calling Flake an excellent Senator and a tireless advocate for Arizona and our nation.

He has my full support, McConnell added.

There is little public polling over what to do with Confederate monuments. An NPR-PBS survey conducted Monday and Tuesday by Marist College found that 62percent of respondents said statues honoring Confederate leaders should remain as a historical symbol; 27percent said they should be removed because they are offensive to some people.

That poll found a large partisan divide: Republicans prefer to keep statues by 86percent to 6percent, while Democrats split 44percent for keeping them and 47percent for removing them. Among African Americans in the survey, 44percent favored keeping them, and 40percent favored removal.

In his tweets Thursday, Trump appeared to equate Confederate generals Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson, who commanded Southern forces in the Civil War to secede from the United States, with Founding Fathers George Washington and Thomas Jefferson as potential targets of criticism because of Washington and Jeffersons status as slave owners an argument he first advanced at his Tuesday news conference.

You ... cant change history, but you can learn from it, he tweeted. Robert E. Lee, Stonewall Jackson whos next, Washington, Jefferson?

Charlottesville wasnt the first place that white supremacists had gathered recently to oppose the removal of a Confederate statue, but last weekend was the first rally marked by deadly violence. More rallies are planned for other cities as a show of force to pressure municipal officials into leaving Civil War symbols in place.

Trumps new enthusiasm on statues stands apart from his views last year. On the campaign trail, Trump said he agreed with the decision in 2015 by then-South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley to remove a Confederate flag from the statehouse grounds following the mass shooting by Dylann Roof, a white supremacist who killed nine African Americans at a black church in Charleston. Haley now serves as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.

I would take it down, yes, Trump said at the time. I think they should put it in a museum and respect whatever it is you have to respect.

Democrats moved aggressively on Thursday to counter what they described as a disturbing turn.

Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) said Trumps tweets Thursday represented an attempt to divert attention away from the presidents refusal to unequivocally and full-throatedly denounce white supremacy, neo-Nazism, and other forms of bigotry.

Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.), a member of the House Judiciary Committee, and a small group of Democrats called for a congressional resolution to censure Trump. Rep. Steve Cohen (D-Tenn.) said he would seek to introduce articles of impeachment. Neither measure faces a chance of success in the GOP-controlled House.

Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) announced late Wednesday that he intends to introduce legislation after Congress reconvenes next month calling for the removal of at least a dozen statues of Confederate soldiers and politicians inside the U.S. Capitol.

That collection includes two statues selected by each state, and the presence of Confederate political and military leaders among them as well as other figures with well-known discriminatory views has previously attracted protests.

There is no room for celebrating the violent bigotry of the men of the Confederacy in the hallowed halls of the United States Capitol or in places of honor across the country, Pelosi said.

A spokesman for Ryan said congressional Republicans would not intervene to remove the statues without the states consent.

These are decisions for those states to make, said Ryan spokesman Doug Andres.

Sean Sullivan, Ashley Parker and Scott Clement contributed to this report.

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Trump embraces culture war with call to preserve Confederate statues - Washington Post

With plans to protest outside Google's offices this weekend, conservatives are taking America's culture wars directly to Silicon Valley, a place that was long insulated from political rancor but is now one of the most important ideological battlegrounds.

The rallies were inspired by James Damore, the former Google engineer who was fired last week for posting a 10-page internal memo arguing that the lack of women in tech could be attributed to biological differences. His dismissal sparked an outcry from conservatives who say their opinions are being muzzled by liberal technology companies and led Damore to criticize his former company for promoting a "particularly intense echo chamber."

"The March on Google stands for free speech and the open discussion of ideas," wrote event organizer Jack Posobiec, a conservative media figure who pushed the "Pizzagate" and Seth Rich conspiracy theories and was recently retweeted by the president.

Posobiec, who did not respond to questions sent to his Facebook page, said the marches planned for Saturday are not "alt-right" events and that he wanted to avoid the violence and mayhem experienced in Charlottesville, Va., last weekend.

The Details

Protests are planned Saturday at Google headquarters in Mountain View, Calif., and other company offices such as Venice, Atlanta, Pittsburgh and Seattle. It's unclear how many people are expected.

Google did not respond to a request for comment, and the Los Angeles Police Department said Tuesday that it had no information yet about a demonstration.

But the Mountain View Police Department confirmed a planned demonstration for two hours at Charleston Park across from Google headquarters. The department said organizers were not connected to Charlottesville participants.

"We want you to know that we are working with both Google and with the event planners to ensure the protest is a peaceful one," the department said in a statement.

Damore told CNBC that he is not involved with the marches, adding that "I don't support efforts to try to hurt Google directly."

Still, his memo pointed to the clash of ideas within the technology industry at a time when its products play an increasingly bigger role in the daily lives of Americans.

Facebook, YouTube, Twitch, Snapchat and other social media occupy 5 1/2 hours of the average U.S. adult's week, according to Nielsen, a span that has grown sharply in recent years. And the online platforms' power to spread and enforce cultural values has become a matter of contention across the political spectrum.

Conservatives point to years of evidence of a liberal agenda in the tech industry. They've drawn comparisons between Damore's case and Mozilla Chief Executive Brendan Eich, who stepped down a decade ago following outrage over his support of a ban on same-sex marriage.

More recently, right-wing activists say YouTube is filtering conservative videos so that they won't appear unless users toggle their settings to accept graphic or potentially offensive content.

Shifting Politics

The conditions are a far cry from just a few years ago, when technologists were thought of as political neophytes -- the descendants of a counterculture that turned hippies into billionaires like Steve Jobs. If there was a political streak in the valley, it tended to be libertarian.

But the 2016 presidential election demonstrated just how influential the region's platforms are to American public opinion.

Where would Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders' presidential campaign have gone without the rabid support of smartphone-wielding millennials spreading #FeelTheBern?

And how long would Donald Trump's campaign have lasted without his supporters' memes and the candidate's personal Twitter account?

Jeremy Carl, a former tech worker who serves as a fellow at conservative think tank Hoover Institution, said the anger among his ideological peers stems from "egregious" actions taken by Google and other big tech companies.

Efforts to take down or stunt the growth of potentially offensive online publications have reached a "ridiculous" level, he said.

Despite Trump's victory last year with the aid of a fearsome social media strategy, conservatives accuse Facebook, Twitter and Google of censoring their points of view by suspending accounts and firing employees like Damore who speak out against diversity training.

"The recklessness of the industry and its partisan politics have brought us to this point. They have no credibility among the right to do self-regulation," said Carl, who has advocated for treating Google as a utility company that must provide a neutral service.

At stake is the future of news and information in a country where facts are so often viewed through a political lens. Control of these digital platforms, once thought to be apolitical, could swing the national conversation around culture and politics.

No Alternatives

What also irks critics is that there are few alternatives to Google and Facebook. So conservatives who don't like those companies' politics feel they have no choice but to keep using their services.

"Internet people brag about freedom of expression in the U.S. relative to what's available in China, but that's just not the case when you look at the Internet monopolies in the U.S.," said Ron Unz, a Palo Alto software entrepreneur who launched unsuccessful campaigns for California governor and English-only education.

"You're talking about something closer to modern totalitarianism," Unz added.

(By comparison, China tightly monitors discourse on its closed-off Internet, employing thousands of censors and trolls to promote the government's positions and stifle open dissent).

Unz said he thinks tech companies should be held to the same standards as the government when it comes to freedom of expression because of their market dominance.

"If the government is legally prohibited from censoring certain forms of speech, it seems wrong to allow Google to do what the government can't do," Unz said.

Uncertainty About the Agenda

It doesn't help either that tech companies operate in near secrecy -- driving suspicion that the Googles and Facebooks of the world are stifling conservative views with lines of hidden code.

"The "tech industry's point of view is embedded deep in the product, not announced on the packaging," wrote Ezra Klein, editor-in-chief of Vox. "Its biases are quietly built into algorithms, reflected in platform rules, expressed in code few of us can understand and fewer of us will ever read."

It's been difficult for Silicon Valley to adapt to the new political order. Many companies are at odds with conservative positions on immigration, climate change and sexual identity -- taking stances that seemed safely mainstream until recently.

Nonetheless, they've tried to appear more welcoming to President Trump and his supporters.

Apple Chief Executive Tim Cook, Amazon Chief Executive Jeff Bezos and Eric Schmidt, head of Google's parent company Alphabet, are among the big names that agreed to advise the president on his technology council.

Google has also tried to hire more conservatives for its lobbying and policy initiatives, and Facebook donated money to the Conservative Political Action Conference in February. The social network also replaced its news editors with an algorithm after conservatives said employees were suppressing right-wing content.

To be sure, Silicon Valley counts some conservatives and Trump supporters among its list of top entrepreneurs. None is more famous than Peter Thiel, the co-founder of PayPal and a billionaire venture capitalist, who spoke strongly in support of then-candidate Trump at the Republican National Convention last year. Thiel, despite running large investment funds, has become an outcast in some circles of the industry for his work with Trump.

2017 Los Angeles Times under contract with NewsEdge/Acquire Media. All rights reserved.

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Google Protests Bring Culture Wars to Silicon Valley - NewsFactor Network

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Wikipedia has been through many changes since its inception in 2001. Now that it dwarfs all previous encyclopedias in scope and depth, collaborations with expert contributors are aiding the increased focus on content quality.

In a recent letter to Science, a group of researchers make the case that there has never been a better time for experts to help shape the world's most-read information source. This is illustrated with examples of Academia-Wikipedia collaborations that have benefited both parties. Academics gain a public impact that is matched by few other outreach platforms (even obscure Wikipedia pages often get hundreds of reads per day). In return, the encyclopedia benefits from the accurate and expert-reviewed information.

The Wikimedia Foundation, the organisation that hosts Wikipedia, is currently formulating its strategy through to 2030 and has identified collaboration with the wider knowledge ecosystem as one of its key themes.

"It's a resource that we've all benefited from at one time or another. Scholars have the privilege of being able to devote their careers to knowledge, so I think it's only fair to give a little back," says Thomas Shafee

The academic community has a range of ways to get involved. The first is for individual scholars to directly edit the encyclopedia. Recent updates to its editing interface have made it as easy to write as a Word document. Multiple academic journals also offer the opportunity to dual-publish articles so that a cite-able version if published in the journal, and used to create or overhaul the topic's Wikipedia page (e.g. PLOS, Gene, Wiki.J.Med). The Wikipedia editor community is organised into groups with similar interests called "WikiProjects," which cover all pretty much all possible topics.

On a larger scale, there are also several successful models for organisations to form partnerships. One option is to organize groups of experts to review and update important pages (for example Cancer research UK's updates of several cancer pages). They can also train their members to ensure the best sources are integrated into articles (or example by the Cochrane Library). Indeed, several medical schools now teach Wikipedia editing as a student course. Another possibility is directly providing their own content for use by the encyclopedia (for example Osmosis.org medical video content). Even more extensive integration of their information is also possible with Wikipedia's structured knowledge database, Wikidata (for example the pages for genes and RNA families).

Greater involvement by subject experts will improve Wikipedias quality, which will in turn attract more contributors. Although the letter to Science focused on the biomedical field, these are examples of a much wider phenomenon. For instance, there have been several ongoing collaborations between Galleries, Libraries and Museums around the world to add their curated and well-sourced knowledge to Wikipedia (GLAM-Wiki).

In all this, the real winners are the general public. Barely a few decades ago an encyclopedia was a luxury item that few could afford. Now everyone has free access to an encyclopedia larger than could ever fit in most homes if printed. It seems reasonable to keep pushing for such a resource is as good as it can be.

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Wikipedia-academia collaborations benefit both parties - Tech Xplore

Some sports require speed, agility or lots of power to win. But archery is different and requires standing still, eye-hand coordination and control.

About 30 students, ages 8-17, learned these skills, and more, during two, weeklong Youth Archery Camps held July 31-Aug 4 and Aug. 7-11 at the Harker Heights Recreation Center.

Kent Carlson led the camp; hes both a Level 2 certified USA Archery instructor and a merit badge instructor with the Boy Scouts.

Theres an inner challenge of getting better the more you practice, and kids really love the control it takes for archery, Carlson said.

Adapted from the USA Archery Association guidelines, the camp covered basic safety, shooting technique, range set-up and stance and parts of the bow.

Each three-hour class included plenty of shooting opportunities from close range up to 10 yards.

Students started with a recurve bow, the simplest type, and then after building up some arm strength, used a compound bow with a pull weight of 16-25 pounds of pressure needed to shot it.

They shot at paper targets, played tournaments and archery versions of games, like Tic-Tac-Toe and Battleship. On the final day, they took aim at 3-D foam targets of a deer, pig and turkey.

As a self-taught archer, Tim Wise let daughter Angel Wise, 14, take the camp so she could learn the basics.

I like the hands-on training that is teaching her to do archery the right way, Wise said.

While archery is a fun sport, its also a weapon said Angel Wise.

Ive learned not to fear the bow and arrow, and gained some confidence from using it, she said.

This year marked the first time Harker Heights Parks and Recreation Department offered the camp, said Jeff Achee, recreation superintendent. It took a combination of Carlson offering to teach the classes and community support to make the camp happen.

Archery is a niche sport, so we hope to do the camp every summer since this one has been so successful, he said.

Carolicia Roberts, 11, took a breath, raised her bow, pulled back the cord, aimed and released the arrow almost in one smooth movement.

In the blink of an eye, it hit the target. In fact, all six of her arrows hit the target. But perhaps not too surprising since she started the sport two years ago in elementary school.

Im working on my stance and controlling my breathing to keep the arrow straight, said Roberts, who hopes to one day compete in the Olympics. This camp is really helpful; Im glad I took it.

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Area youth let fly at Harker Heights archery camp - The Killeen Daily Herald

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Sometimes America feels like the movie Groundhog Day: a place where we keep waking up again and again to the same crap, hoping against hope thatthistime no really,thistime things will be different.

Sothistime, the videotape of the police officer shooting the unarmed black teenager will lead to that officer's conviction and imprisonment. And then the alarm goes off and we are awakened from our dream state, just like we were the time before and the time before, forced to reckon with a seemingly endless repetition of horribleness.

Orthistime, as we watch tens of thousands of disproportionately black and poor people stranded in New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina, the nation as a whole will finally come to understand what those left behind had already known, and for a very long time: namely, that black lives really don't matter, and won't until we demand they do. Again, the alarm disturbs our slumber. And again, we hit the snooze button.

Orthistime, when yet another white kid shoots up his classroom, or another white serial killer murders a dozen people, buries them under the house or cannibalizes them, we will have our eyes opened to the fact that pathology and deviance are far from the exclusive purview of persons of color. So too when rich white men nearly bring the economy to its knees with financial chicanery so egregious as to make the most industrious of black or brown street criminals seem likerank amateurs by comparison. But then comes the alarm, a clarion that shakes us from our stupor, allowing us to go right back to fearing the usual suspects all over again.

And now, with the white supremacist terrorist attack in Charlottesville, we hope that out of such a tragedy we may finally come to appreciate the sickness of racism, and the indelible stain still besmirching the soil and politics of our nation so many years on. But in order for people to learn, they typically require teachers who are qualified to lead them to enlightenment. Events alone rarely do the trick and wisdom infrequently emerges fully formed from the well of good intentions, let alone fervent aspiration. Some assembly is required.

Sadly, we are in a classroom, so to speak, being taught by a man lacking even the most rudimentary pedagogical skills, devoid of content knowledge, and without the temperament to convey even the most obvious of lessons. A lesson one might think we had learned by now, but no: namely, that white supremacy is a death culta truth attested to by the bodies of millions of people of color through the years, not to mention several hundred thousand whites who died fighting that cult or defending it, from the Civil War to World War II. This cult cannot be accommodated. It cannot be excused. It must be condemned and it must be defeated as a mentality, as a movement, and as a structurally ingrained social and economic reality. And if its adherents cannot be deprogrammed, then theymust be defeated, without the least bit of sentimentality.

But the teacher does not understand the lesson, and so here we are. Instead, he has reverted to type, providing succor to the most extreme elements of the far-right fringe. Whether for reasons of true affinity, or the perception that such forces represent a substantial portion of his base without whom his approval ratings would fall even further, or because condemning them forthrightly would appear to him a man who apologizes for nothing and is loath to admit he has ever made a mistake as weakness, matters not. The results are all the same, no matter his intentions.

To say of those in the so-called "alt-right" who descended upon Charlottesville, that "not all" of them were white supremacists, and that there were "some very fine people" among them, as Trumpclaimed yesterday, is to miss the point by such a wide margin that it calls into question whether this man is even remotely in charge of his faculties. Even if one were to allow that some among them were not Nazis, not supporters of organizer Richard Spencer's calls for the creation of a "white ethno-state," and not enamored of the rabid anti-Semitism that characterized the event from beginning to end, it was, after all, a rally to "Unite the Right." In other words, to put aside whatever picayune differences might separate mere opponents of economic globalism from those who openly joke about pushing Jews into ovens, all in the name of reactionary solidarity.

It was an event intended to blur the very distinctions that the erstwhile leader of the free world would now have us make. It was an event to say, loudly and proudly, that among the right there should be no infighting, no rancor, no division. In short, it was an event intended to convey the message that even the ones who aren't neo-Nazis are willing to make common cause with those who are. As the Proud Boysa mostly misogynistic group dedicated to "Western chauvinism"have put it, there should be no "punching right," among their side's members. They are all one thing, not because I say so, but becausetheydo.

Not fine people, let aloneveryfine people, but rather, rotten fruit from a poisoned tree.

If I were a fine person and found myself at a march where, to my shock and horror, neo-Nazis and other bigots were featured, and I could see them with theirswastikas, and theirNational Socialist Movementbanners, and I could hear them yelling "f**k you faggots" at clergy and other peaceful protesters andhurling racial slursabout blacks, and chanting "blood and soil"(the direct English translation of a Nazi slogan), I would immediately leave, taking with me my profound embarrassment at having been so misled, so duped into believing this was just going to be a nice rally for conservative principles.Thatis what a very fine person would do, and even then, only after having ripped the swastikas from the hands of those holding them in disgust.

In fact, you know what "very fine people" would do to neo-Nazis? They would yell at them. They would defend themselves if need be. And yes, they might even mace them or punch them in the mouth. Very fine people detest Nazis. In fact, detesting Nazis might be a bona fiderequirement thede minimusdefinition for being considered a very fine person.

This is not to say I always find the tactics of Antifa to be helpful or strategic, because I don't. But to suggest, as the president did, that they are in some way the moral equivalent of those they were protesting or perhaps even worse because at least the neo-Nazis had a permit! is an act of moral inversion so putrid as to boggle the imagination. Whatever one thinks of Antifa tactics, there is simply a difference, and not a small one, between people who call for the purging of people of color and Jews from a nation, and those who fight back against people who call for those things. And if we say there is no difference between advocating genocide and oppression and resisting those who advocate genocide and oppression, then we are headed quickly to a place that puts equal moral condemnation upon the leaders of the Warsaw ghetto uprising as with those they were fighting. We are suggesting that the enslaved, who often resisted their owners violently, were no better than those who held them in bondage. We are suggesting that the kidnapped who slits the throat of her captor in the middle of the night is no better than the one who took her. And this is a perversion.

Keep in mind, the white supremacists said they would be coming to Charlottesville with weapons. Virginia is an open-carry state and they announced beforehand they would be prepared to take advantage of this fact, either for self-defense (their insistence) or to intimidate those who might stand against them. As such, and knowing that the fascists would be armed with guns, with knives, with clubs and other implements of war, for Antifa not to have brought something with which to fight back would have been to court an especially one-sided disaster. But however much mace stings and urine-filled balloons may stain one's clothes, to suggest they are equivalent as tools of terror to semi-automatic weapons or vehicles is to confuse spit wads with atom bombs.

No, there is no left equivalent of Richard Spencer's call for the ethnic cleansingpurging reallyof non-whites from the U.S. There is no left equivalent of theDaily Stormer's callfor white supremacists to protest and disrupt the funeral ofSaturday'smartyr, Heather Heyer. We do not march around campuses with torches shouting racist slogans, orsurround our political adversaries as the white nationalists did Fridaynight at UVA (very muchwithouta permit, I might add) and then wade into their numbers and beat them.

There has been a string offar-right murderssince the election of Donald Trump, which has no left or progressive equal, and an even longer history of disproportionate reactionary terrorism with no parallel on the other side: at least 12 times as many fatalities and 36 times as many injuries from right-wing terrorists as from those who could potentially be considered "left." And not merely because right wingers are more talented at their craft, but because there are simplyfar more incidentsin play.

But these pesky facts things most teachers seek to convey to their students are mere trifles to the instructor in this case, who by his immunity to facts conveys a casual indifference to truth that cannot but deepen the roots of the present crisis. Committed to an alt-reality of his own making, the president sought to elide the differences between Robert E. Lee and Thomas Jefferson, as if calls for the removal of statues of the former would, by necessity, lead to calls for the removal of those in homage to the latter. In effect, he wondered, where will it end, all this political correctness, which seeks to erase historical figures from the national memory?

But confederatestatuary is not intended as a history text, and those who erected it mostly in the early 1900s, long after the war, and during a time when lynching and the reassertion of white supremacy in the South was at its zenith never intended it to be so. These are altars of worship, where the faithful come to drink of the blood and taste of the flesh of their Great-Great-Grandpappy Beauregard, whose perfidy and characterological rot they still refuse to face. To defend these statues on the grounds of historical memory is perverse, for they misremember that history entirely and the cause for which Lee and others were fighting.

Yes, Thomas Jefferson was a slave owner, and this fact should be understood and not sanitized or considered a mere time-bound failing on his part (as it often is at the University of Virginia, for instance). But still, there is a difference between someone who said "all men are created equal" even if his actions suggested he didn't mean it, and those who said (as did Confederate Vice President Alexander Stephens) that white supremacy was the "cornerstone" of their new government. One provided us with a flawed yet visible exit from the national nightmare in which he himself was implicated. The others including leaders in the states who issued declarations of causes for their secession, and in each case named the maintenance of slavery as their purpose would have extended that nightmare in perpetuity, and without hesitation. Whether Jefferson intended it or not, he gave us a blueprint, however blood-spattered, for building a functioning democracy. Lee and his cohorts had no interest in such things, nor the vision even to imagine them. And that matters.

When Southern whites made the choice to go to war with America they did so because however much racism had been embedded in the nation from the start, they didn't find our commitment sufficient. And that's saying a lot. They chose a side. It was a side of evenmoreoppression, evenmoremistreatment than what the North had been helping dish out upon black bodies and upon indigenous peoples for many a generation by then. It is the same choice the white nationalists are making now. In a nation where they as whites already have half the unemployment rate of people of color, one-third the poverty rate and12 timesthe median net worthof black and brown folks, they are choosing to go all in for even greater dominance, even greater hegemony. They look out at a nation beset by profound institutionalized inequities and rather than ask how we might fix them or just shrugging and saying "oh well," as so many are wont to do are literally saying that those disparities are not largeenough. As with the differences between Jefferson and Lee, this suggests some rather profound dislocations between white nationalists and most of the rest of us.

Or does it? Because see, now it is time for us to choose a side if we haven't already, and to recommit to the fight. And by we, I mean those of us called white in this place. When David Duke and Matt Heimbach say that their movement is "speaking for white people," they are trying to draft us into their army quite without our consent. When Andrew Anglin says this movement will "take over the country," as he did this weekend, he is advocating the overthrow of the government. Yours. Mine. Ours. If you are white, and don't resist this draft with every fiber of your being if you don't decide in fact to burn your draft card and insist that you will choose a different way to live in this skin then you will have confirmed that they are rightthat they do speak for you. And you will have revealed yourself as an enemy of all that is good about this land. Please know, history will not remember you well for it.

Tim Wise is an antiracism educator and author of six books on race. His website iswww.timwise.organd he tweets @timjacobwise.

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If This Is a Civil War, Pick a Side: Donald Trump, White Nationalism and the Future of America - AlterNet