
A monument to General Robert E. Lee formerly stood in Charlottesville, Virginia. As part of the “Swords Into Plowshares” project, the statue was melted down. Artists will use the metal to make new public artwork. Photo by Eze Amos.
One example of me playing the fool: I’ve spent far too much precious time fighting with Lost Causers on Twitter.
Twitter became an outlet for me during the lockdown, something I could do on the clock while stuck at home. I started playing around on the platform, using the account of my then employer, the tiny Institute for International Law & Justice at NYU. I began by promoting our events and publications, and within months our account was up from a handful of subscribers to 11K. I’m proud of this, and I have a hard time feeling proud of anything.
Before Elon Musk ruined it, International Law Twitter was exciting. It disrupted the elite gatekeeping of the field and transformed scholarly communication, while new intellectual networks coalesced, especially in the Global South. By osmosis, I knew enough about International Law to help connect scholars, not as another expert but as a supporter, like a fan cheering on a team: Go International Law!
Of course home and life and work and play were all mushed up together during the lockdown. I became a little loopy from the isolation. I started scratching at my skin and pulling my hair out again. I started drinking too much. The Law School’s Office of Communications chastised me for making a joke @ the BBC Twitter account about The Young Ones. [It was a funny joke and I stand by it.] So I moved over to my personal account, to make my jokes over there instead.
Next I insulted a Lost Causer, or a Lost Causer insulted me, and they figured out who I was, and my connection to Ben Cooter Jones, one of their heroes. Then I was swept up into the ongoing Twitter Civil War, on the side of the Union of course, where I met many brilliant people with encyclopedic knowledge of the conflict such as Brooks Simpson.
The Union historians waged intellectual battles, and I reveled in seeing them take Lost Causers down with facts and logic. I waged battles of mockery. I’ve developed a thick skin, after years as a New Yorker, and I’m not afraid of sparring with people. I discovered a talent for infuriating Those Still Fighting the Northern War of Aggression Online.
Lost Causers on Twitter are trolls for the most part, who hold misogynist, racist, and other repugnant views, and who insist on inflicting those views on others. A very few are deluded but polite, and they try to rein in the others from calling me a bitch, slut, tramp, whore etc. I’ve given polite ones a chance, hoping our interactions might influence their views on things Confederate.
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According to intermediaries, my father’s last straw with me was Twitter. His version of our estrangement boils down to, “Rachel talked ugly about me on social media.” I was honest. I spoke openly about things that happened between us, things he hoped I would never talk about, let alone on Twitter. I don’t feel guilty. If he wanted me to sing his praises, he should have treated me better. He should have told wife #5 Alma to retract her claws rather than ignore her constant cattiness. I asked him to engage in family therapy with me, and he never responded. So our relationship is over, by his choice, and yes, I processed some feelings about that online.