Yes. That Lee. Robert E. How do you react when you hear that name? Does your opinion of me change, simply because I mentioned him?

I’m tired of the arguments surrounding the Confederate generals and the whole damn Civil War, for that matter.

If you were conceived because your parents both got drunk one night and did it, “unprotected”, does that make your life any less worthy of being, of existing? Maybe this whole country is an existential accident, like the unplanned pregnancy I mentioned. Does that make America any less worthy of existing? Countries are like people. They die. Imperial China died. Imperial Russia died. The Soviet Union died. Slaveholding America died.

But we can’t change how we came into being. Here we are. Ignorance of the past won’t make it go away. Self-hatred and shame won’t change the facts of history, or make the lives of the dead any different.

Anyway. Robert E. Lee was born 214 years ago. Happy Birthday, General.