I used to think that he was just remarkably insensitive and stupid.
It's taken me a while but this is beyond insensitivity and stupidity. It's deliberate.
There is a good comment in NYT today which deserves wider circulation. The piece is about Trump's refusal to consider renaming US bases which currently honor CSA generals etc.
These names are neither "legends" or "fables" as Trump says in his word salad of purple prose. They are the names of real men who sought to break up the United States, defended enslaving human beings, and were enemies of this country.
Somehow, sports figures who kneel to protest systemic racism, or protester young and old who object to police brutality and inequality, are called "un-American."
But people who fly an enemy flag, who fight to preserve statues of generals who sought to break up our Union, people who tote weapons of war into public spaces and government buildings are somehow seen as NOT disrespecting the flag and the United States?
It's abhorrent, it's incomprehensible. The namings, the statutes, the reverence for our great "heritage" and the renewed flying of the Confederate flag all came about during reconstruction for the purpose of asserting white supremacy. That's ALL this is about.
The president and those who prop him up are racists.
Currently sitting at 196 Recommends. One of those is mine. ML did follow it up with a correction 'during reconstruction' = 'long after reconstruction.'
Oklahoma is not significant in the 2020 election. That's a warmup.
Watch where future rallies are held. Are they in a swing state? Are they in a state that Clinton won previously?
Did you notice in 2016 Trump did not campaign in Pennsylvania in the last weeks before the election like Clinton did with a rally featuring a big name entertainer in both Pittsburgh and Philadelphia?
Instead, Trump was campaigning in Michigan and Wisconsin. What did Trump and Clinton know that you didn't when surprise, surprise Trump took Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin?
Everything in the public realm said Clinton had the presidency in the bag. Except she didn't.
Oklahoma is not significant in the 2020 election. That's a warmup.Watch where future rallies are held. Are they in a swing state? Are they in a state that Clinton won previously?Did you notice in 2016 Trump did not campaign in Pennsylvania in the last weeks before the election like Clinton did with a rally featuring a big name entertainer in both Pittsburgh and Philadelphia?Instead, Trump was campaigning in Michigan and Wisconsin. What did Trump and Clinton know that you didn't when surprise, surprise Trump took Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin?Everything in the public realm said Clinton had the presidency in the bag. Except she didn't.Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice ...
"Papa (Joe) got a brand new bag."
“In a world whose absurdity appears to be so impenetrable, we simply must reach a greater degree of understanding among us, a greater sincerity.”
"The statue was vandalized at some point during the days of demonstrations that occurred in the Pennsylvania capital, the Philadelphia mayor’s office said in an email.
Born in 1795, Baldwin moved to Philadelphia from New Jersey at the age of 16 and rose from an apprenticeship at a local jeweler to establish a successful business manufacturing train locomotives. Baldwin argued for the right of African Americans to vote in Pennsylvania during the state’s 1837 Constitutional Convention, and helped establish a school for African American children where he paid teachers’ salaries for years."
It may have been a group of overenthusiastic coal miners still basking in their glorious victory at the Battle of Matewan.
Them there Baldwin-Felts Detective Agency fellers weren't much liked in good ol' West Virginy. I'm sure they didn't have much love for Matthias Baldwin, either.
He had all the money back then. He probably used cheap, black labor to build his empire, too.
“In a world whose absurdity appears to be so impenetrable, we simply must reach a greater degree of understanding among us, a greater sincerity.”
In 1835, he donated money to establish a school for African-American children in Philadelphia and continued to pay the teachers' salaries out of his own pocket for years thereafter.[3] Baldwin was an outspoken supporter for the abolition of slavery in the United States, a position that was used against him and his firm by competitors eager to sell locomotives to railroads based in the slaveholding South.[3]
Your collective inability to acknowledge this obvious truth makes you all look like fools.
In 1835, he donated money to establish a school for African-American children in Philadelphia and continued to pay the teachers' salaries out of his own pocket for years thereafter.[3] Baldwin was an outspoken supporter for the abolition of slavery in the United States, a position that was used against him and his firm by competitors eager to sell locomotives to railroads based in the slaveholding South.[3]
Keeping up appearances was key.
History goes to the best writer.
“In a world whose absurdity appears to be so impenetrable, we simply must reach a greater degree of understanding among us, a greater sincerity.”
"Catton (the renown historian of the Civil War) remembered these graybeards as “men set apart” by a mystical experience, but also as “pillars . . . of the community” and the “embodiment” of all the values of a slowly dying, small-town America: Christian steadiness, patriotism, the “nation’s greatness and high density,” and especially a rock-hard belief in “progress” and the “future.” Writing at the time of Watergate in the 1970s, and, more important, during the depths of the bloody debacle of Vietnam, Catton saw these Civil War veterans as his lilac-scented wellspring of inspiration."
"Catton (the renown historian of the Civil War) remembered these graybeards as “men set apart” by a mystical experience, but also as “pillars . . . of the community” and the “embodiment” of all the values of a slowly dying, small-town America: Christian steadiness, patriotism, the “nation’s greatness and high density,” and especially a rock-hard belief in “progress” and the “future.” Writing at the time of Watergate in the 1970s, and, more important, during the depths of the bloody debacle of Vietnam, Catton saw these Civil War veterans as his lilac-scented wellspring of inspiration."
In the above, Catton was specifically referring to
"heroes from the Grand Army of the Republic’s E.P. Case Post No. 372 (who) were one living source of a Michigan boy’s historical imagination and dreams of escape from the stultifying backwater in which he came of age".
If you're going to quote David Blight, be sure you're not selecting something that makes it appear Catton was referring to Confederates.
Remembering his innocent youth one last time, the 73-year-old accused himself of “regarding the past so fondly we are unable to get it in proper focus, and we see virtues that were not there.” And then he gave his own brand of Americanized tragedy a devastating blow: “It is easy to take the tragic view (which I proudly supposed that I was doing), as long as you do not know what tragedy really means. Pessimism has a fine tart flavor when you know that everything is going to come out all right.”
For Christianity, by identifying truth with faith, must teach-and, properly understood, does teach-that any interference with the truth is immoral. A Christian with faith has nothing to fear from the facts
And now, Trump's acceptance speech at the RNC will be held in Jacksonville on the 60th anniversary of Ax Handle Saturday. Why not just drop the pretense and have all those in attendance dress in hooded sheets?
"The dildo of consequence rarely comes lubed." -- Eileen Rose
