Bad Karma

It isn't easy to understand this statute.  For me, at least.

Just what is Teddy Roosevelt supposed to be doing (besides riding a horse)?  Is he going somewhere?  If so, where? Why are an African and a Native American walking beside him?  Why would three such persons and a horse come together in the manner portrayed?

Obviously they wouldn't.  I suppose it would be possible they could meet together in some fantasy novel or movie (I think of Philip Jose Farmer's Riverworld series, where everyone who has ever died comes back to life on the banks of an incredibly long river and must interact).  But it's unlikely that's what the sculptor had in mind.

From what I read, the standing or walking figures are intended to represent continents, presumably North America and Africa.  That TR as he was called has a connection with North America, indeed with both American continents, is obvious.  It isn't clear to me what he had to do with Africa, however, unless he visited it to kill large animals with guns as I assume he did, or perhaps visit the Pyramids.  Personally, I don't think that merits a statute.  

The use of figures to represent continents or cities or peoples was once fairly common in art, and that was the case for a long time.  The Romans were inclined to do this.  Coins or reliefs showing figures representing Britannia, Germania, Judea etc., in chains or kneeling before an emperor or Rome personified were produced in response to many conquests.

Assume these figures with TR represent continents.  What then?  Why is TR riding a horse between Africa and, say, North America?  Is he supposed to unite them in some sense, or lead them?  Is he a bridge between them?

Probably not.  As I confessed, I don't really know what was intended.  I can't speak to the intent of the sculptor or whoever commissioned the statue.  I can merely speak to my impression of it and my impression of it is first that it is weird, and second that it seems to depict the standing or walking figures as lesser than the figure riding a horse between them for God knows what reason.  Indeed, subservient to the rider, in the sense that anyone on foot next to someone on horseback feels at a disadvantage; whenever one sees a person on foot and one on a horse in some movie, the person on foot is in most cases subordinate to the one on the horse.

I would have no objection to the removal of the statue solely because I think it's weird.  But the depiction of a white man riding a horse between a Native American and an African is of course particularly disturbing at this time.

At this time.  It should, of course, be disturbing at all times.  But if what is happening now in the form of protests and statue removal and the reaction to them is any indication, we can hope that this time many if not most of us are offended when others demean or oppress people merely because they exist and are not caucasian, or white.

No rational person, I think, can claim that this nation's treatment of the indigenous peoples and those taken from Africa to be sold and treated as property was not extraordinarily terrible, and remains immoral.  The reasons given for the extermination, oppression and discrimination in the past were always self-serving and incredible, and are being given less and less credence as time passes.  Read John Calhoun's defense of slavery, if you can, and, as they say, weep.

What will happen, this time?  One wonders if there's truth in the doctrine of karma.  As I understand it, karma is the belief that the sum of a person's actions in this and previous existences decides a person's fate in the future.  If karma may be applied to nations, we have much to worry about.  Other nations would as well, of course.  But we're here, and this is now.