An editor at VICE News wrote an op-ed calling for the removal of Mount Rushmore, in light of the controversies about Confederacy memorials, statues, plaques and monuments. Why did the editor call for this?
The editor wondered if any American president was worth memorializing on Mount Rushmore, so why not get rid of the entire monument, he wondered.
Here’s a snippet from his piece:
I visited Mount Rushmore in the summer of 2015, and it’s nothing like Abe Lincoln squatting on his (recently vandalized) throne or George Washington’s phallus towering over everything in DC. Instead, Rushmore is a testament to the human ability to conquer nature in our own image. Standing in front of it conjured feelings of both wonder and disgust in me. Obviously, Washington and Thomas Jefferson were remarkable individuals who helped usurp British rule in America and, eventually, establish a new empire. But they also enslaved their fellow man, committing special kinds of inhumane acts that should never be confined to footnotes. Unfortunately, that is exactly how those troublesome truths are treated when you face the awesome grandeur of Rushmore, a monument so incredible it obscures the multifaceted nature of these old dudes, transmogrifying them from individuals with a capacity both for greatness and evil into pure American deities.
Photo by animaltourism.com 
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