The Meltdown Over the Robert E. Lee Meltdown

This week, Eric, Dan, and Emily discuss the decision to melt down the statue of Robert E. Lee that was at the center of the 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. Is removing statues of Confederate generals erasing history? What is the proper way to memorialize the Confederacy, if there is one? And how should we think about and remember Robert E. Lee? Then the panel turns its attention to engagement farming on X (formerly known as Twitter) and Elon Musk’s announcement that posts with community notes correcting factual inaccuracies would no longer be eligible for the platform’s ad-revenue-sharing program. Is this a good way to fight misinformation online? Or will it just be gamed the same way ad revenue sharing is? And finally, was the Catholic Church's Synod on Synodality really, after all, just the friends we made along the way? How are we to interpret the 21,000-word report from the Synod? And what are we to make of its release coinciding with the news that a (briefly) excommunicated Jesuit priest accused of abuse has been returned to ministry? Charlottesville’s Lee statue meets its end, in a 2,250-degree furnace | Washington Post Removing statues won’t erase the past, could mar the future | Dan Hugger, Acton Institute Elon Musk on monetization on X | X (formerly known as Twitter) The Internet of Beefs | Venkatesh Rao, Ribbonfarm Synod report proposes ways to foster synodal Church | The Pillar Pope orders Vatican to reopen case of priest accused of adult abuse but allowed to keep ministering | Associated Press