Here’s an interesting article on the tangled family history of slave and slaveholder, which nonetheless veers into a sort of certainty that I find historically and rationally untenable:

The president has asked, “Where will it end?” Will the removal of General Lees lead to upheaval for Thomas Jefferson? Trigger the end for George Washington?
I would ask, How could a patriot be confused with a traitor? How can leading a war to bring forth a new country be confused with leading a rebellion to tear it in two?

I am not sure why that’s a question. The American Revolution was literally, in every sense, a rebellion that tore a country in two. It was, in fact, the first Civil War, pitting loyalist against rebels – former neighbors and fellow citizens all – in every state. During and after the war, tens of thousands of loyalists were killed and/or driven into exile. There’s just no argument about it. How can those two be confused? Because they are virtually the same thing.

The significant difference is entirely our estimation of the justice of their cause. It’s intellectually dishonest to pretend otherwise, and further to pretend that the justice of Washington and Jefferson hasn’t already been called into question. In fact, the rejection of their virtue is a long-term staple of liberal academia.

Cued to Head of Southern Poverty Law Center declaring Ben Franklin as member of the Radical Right

I remember a guest lecturer at Bard College, 25 years ago, who felt compelled to append “slave holding bastard” to every mention of either of those two founders. Those people marching around under red and black flags (the ones without swastikas) are not defenders of the morality of America’s founding. They don’t see some clear difference between General Lee and General Washington.

And the damned fact is, it’s not so easy to find the difference as it is to call one a “patriot” and one a “traitor”; as if the interchanging of those values is not the very struggle of history in a nutshell.
If those labels seem really clear and unrelated in your mind, I suggest perhaps you haven’t really considered the past.

Just struck me that simplistic divisions of people into “patriots” and “traitors”, the perfectly selfless and the perfectly selfish, is all the rage.

Hence, it was perfect that Trump was the one to popularize the question over statues of Washington and Jefferson, as we all know that everything he says that offends is completely wrong. He is the very epitome of virulent falsehood; falsehood elected to the highest office in the land. When he offends, we all know – in our bones – that it’s just his perversity again. The man is characterologically, even congenitally, incapable of making a good point.

Except, in this case, all of the people who deny there is any gray between “patriot” and “traitor” find themselves down the same ahistorical, ideologically defined, dead end.