On a snowy day in Denver last week, we drove to the History Colorado Center to learn more about the history of this magnificent prairie town encircled by the majestic Rocky Mountains. The 14s peaks were visible in the distance snow-capped and hard to access by ordinary people. They call them 14s because they reach to the sky upwards of 14,000 feet, too high to ski and too high for ordinary people to climb.
History
Colorado Center is housed in the $111 million building finished and dedicated on
28 April 2012, replacing its predecessor, the Colorado History Museum which
closed in 2010. The former Colorado Historical Society, rebranded as History Colorado, administers the center.
The modern
4-story building is adorned in the exterior
right front corner with a life-size statue of a buffalo. The atrium vaults four
stories in a rectangular shape with different themed exhibits.
Past the
entrance and the museum store is the large statue of a Union soldier, marked
here and there by flecks of spray paint, having rested too high on its pedestal
for the BLM vandals to destroy it.
The museum
plaque accompanying the statue explains, “This monument stood in front of the
State Capitol until it was toppled in June 2020 during protests for Black
lives.” This statue was installed in 1909 to memorialize Colorado’s role in the
Civil War.
The museum’s description of this statue is that “it holds multiple meanings for viewers today: a tribute to those who’ve served and sacrificed in the nation’s armed forces, a reminder of atrocities committed against indigenous peoples, a symbol of white supremacy and injustice, a casualty of destructive lawlessness, and more.”
It appeared
that an attempt had been made by the curators to clean the paint before it was
placed there. There is a photograph of the spray-painted pedestal the statue
once stood atop with an explanation for its location and fate.
“After the
statue fell, when some people said, ‘monuments like these belong in a museum,’
we decided to take them up on the suggestion and give everyone an opportunity
to discuss what the monument means to them.”
Never mind
that the statue did not fall by itself, it was brought down by a violent BLM
mob while the authorities stood by and allowed it to happen.
A quick
reminder that Denver is a sanctuary city for illegal aliens and Colorado is a highly
Democrat blue state with Marxist red blood flowing through its citizens’ veins.
The museum
is a hodge-podge collection of artifacts, chock full of political posters and real
historical statements and Marxist opinions, socialists, social justice and
racial justice propaganda, interspersed with bits of interesting history such
as mining, the hard and lonely life in the prairie, the first school in Colorado, and Dust Bowl facts as it affected the
state.
An entire floor is dedicated to social justice, racial justice, and “white supremacy” opinions by various leftist groups and museum curators who focused on the evils of “white supremacy,” a made-up construct by radical leftists with no intent of taking responsibility for their poor choices in life. The leading motif of the entire floor is that white people are bad and everybody else is good.
I learned sobering
facts about the Dust Bowl which affected Colorado prairie residents during the
1930-1936 period. A particular room gave visitors a sense of what people must
have encountered daily, the howling wind, the lung clogging by fine dust which
settled everywhere inside and outside, in some places several feet deep, and
inside on everything families owned and their bodies.
One section on
the first floor was dedicated to the town of Keota, Colorado, established in 1880.
It was the “iconic homesteading mecca that faced drought and famine but was
also filled with kindness and community.” The resilience of Coloradoans was
remarkable. The highlight of this floor’s exhibits were the school and the
general store with photographs of descendants of the original residents alive
today.
Artifacts,
archives, and photographs are exhibited in the Stephen H. Hart Library and
Research Center. The collection is comprised of maps, clothing, photos from the
1850s, teapots, newspapers, marriage and death records, political posters, etc.
Mining and
the hard life of miners is a most interesting feature of the museum center. Photographs
of former miners from different times, their daily lives, descriptions and
quotes from real people, how gold and silver ore were exploited, how the
mountain was blasted, and how the buckets to retrieve said ores from the mines
gave birth to the ski lifts and gondolas of today.
Several
areas contained a lot of political propaganda about social and racial justice.
All the nine principles of propaganda were used:
1.
The big lie
was always chosen over the small lie because people tend to believe it more
readily.
2.
The selling points were focused on two – social and racial justice which demanded that the
land be returned to its rightful owners, the indigenous peoples and the
Mexicans.
3.
The social and racial justice mantra was repeated so much that any visitors had no choice
but to believe both.
4.
Blame was
fully placed on white people who were debased, defamed, and dehumanized for
their alleged wrongful deeds.
5.
Exhibits
appealed to emotion only.
6.
Issues
presented were not grey, they were life/death, good/evil,
freedom/slavery, love/hate.
7.
Posters with slogans had no literal meaning, they appealed to strong
emotions.
8.
Pandering ignored
intellectual and reasonable arguments; statements had strong emotional tones.
9.
Moral limits
were ignored in order to make an useful case for the construct of “white
supremacy.”
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