White House chief of staff John Kelly spoke to the "good" and "not so good" parts of US history on Monday, speaking highly of Confederate general Robert E. Lee and attributing the origin of the American Civil War to a "lack of an ability to compromise."First, that's all utter horseshit. The Civil War was about the right to own people as livestock. It was about their desire to open more territory for the farming of people. That's what they declared at the time. A lot of the Confederate soldiers were drafted and both draft evasion and desertion were huge problems for the Confederacy, as a large number of their soldiers knew that they were fighting for the rights of rich people to own slaves, while the slavers exempted themselves from fighting the war. But the officers, especially the highest-ranking ones, actively committed treason. There is no intellectually honest way to gloss over the point that they were traitors who fought to preserve slavery. The "Noble Cause" bullshit was an after-the-fact rationalization to cover up the bitter truth that the Boys in Gray committed treason and fought for the right of rich white people to own black people.
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He continued: "But the lack of an ability to compromise led to the Civil War. And men and women of good faith on both sides made their stand where their conscience had to make their stand," Kelly added, not making any mention of slavery -- a major facet of the Southern economy and a key benchmark that separated northern and southern states when they chose sides in the Civil War.
Given that, as I've explained before, none of Trump's ancestors were even in this country for the Civil War, Trump's infatuation with the Confederate traitors is either naked political calculation or a manifestation of his inner nazism.
But all that overlooks the saddest thing: Donald Trump sent out his Chief of Staff, a retired four-star general, to stoke up the fires of resentment over losing the Civil War as a way to distract the news cycle, if only on Fox, from covering the fact that the walls of the Mueller investigation are closing in on his administration.
General Kelly had the reputation of being an honorable man. But Trump just sent him out to play racist troll in order to save a news cycle or two.
The bitter lesson is this: If you work for a racist and hateful boss, especially in public life, the stink of racism and hate will rub off on you.
I guess you could say that Kelly knew what he was signing up for? And yes, the revisionist history Bobby Lee defenders are coming out of the woodwork tonight. I keep telling them to go read the goddamn Cornerstone Speech, but I don't think it's working...
ReplyDelete-Doug in Oakland
I knew nothing of General Kelly before this administration. People see a uniform, hear the word "Marine," and ding ding, woof woof, calling Doctor Pavlov, they assume he's a superhero. It seems,however, he gave some clues as to his inclinations before he got this job:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.salon.com/2017/06/12/john-kelly-the-grownup-forget-it-homeland-security-chief-turns-out-to-be-another-trump-zealot/
I have a hard time envisioning a compromise between "thou canst own slaves" and "thous shalt not own slaves".
ReplyDeleteOr, to put it another way: "Black people are citizens" vs. "negros are domestic animals".
There is no compromise between the two.
Kelly is probably smart enough to figure that out. Which means that he is either just another batshit Nazi or he is trolling us.
And yes, I use the word "Nazi" to tag the slave-owners. Both Nazis and the pro-slavery people believe the same thing: That "those people are subhuman." The only difference is what the two groups sought to do with their "subhumans".
Kelly is just beginning to get with Fergus' program: the worse the latest crime in need of distraction from, the more heinous the verbal malfunction needed to do that distracting.
ReplyDeleteThis week, it's Mueller issuing indictments of campaign operatives, so a defense of slavery is a good fit. Next week, or next month, when the indictment is for a Trump or a Kushner, it will be a full-throated endorsement of heroin, dead babies, and dead endangered species of animal served to grade school children.
-Doug in Oakland
Apparently ninety years of constant compromising with the slave owners wasn't good enough, and Abraham Lincoln should have just jumped into the Potomac when they threw a fit over not having complete control over the federal government for the first time in memory. Several traitor generals couldn't even wait for him to be inaugurated or resign from the army before they started seeking positions with the southern states' armies.
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