I grew up in Richmond and went to college at VCU in the heart of the city. At one point, we had an apartment near the Virginia Museum and I’d ride my bike down Monument Avenue to go to class each day. (Suddenly I’m remembering having to ride home in a sudden downpour, hoping the books in my backpack didn’t get too wet.)

Anyway, even then, my friends and I knew those statues to traitors should not be there. We called Monument Avenue “the Avenue of Losers” (and I even worked that into my novel BLOODSUCKERS: A VAMPIRE RUNS FOR PRESIDENT which begins in Richmond).

So I’m glad to see that they’re finally removing the statues to the traitors, which were only erected by confederate sympathizers and racists during the Jim Crow days. You know — losers.

You want to idolize an evil man who owned other people and was willing to kill fellow Americans for the right to continue to do so? Fine, put the statue on your own property. This property — this avenue — belongs to us. We are refusing to use our money to support your evil on our property.

We should not be spending taxpayer money honoring people who rebelled and declared treason against that same government that now pays for the statues.

“It’s not honoring, it’s history” claim people who literally think that is a good argument. I don’t think it’s worth wasting my time explaining to these morons that we don’t honor bad history, and we don’t need statues to learn about history. (Somehow, we’ve managed to learn about World War II without a single statue of Hitler anywhere.)

So yeah, good riddance. Proud of my old hometown.