Trump the bigot stated, it is “so foolish” to be taking down monuments of confederates in this country. He’s wrong about that as well as about his equivocation of Lee and Washington but it goes further than that. Article 3 of the Constitution defines treason as levying war against the United States, which is exactly what Lee, Jackson and the rest of the confederates did. Since treason has traditionally been punished by death. They already got away with too much. Tear down the statues.
Then as if Trump wasn’t wrong enough in his consideration of Lee and Jackson; John Dowd, his lawyer,, another fat white guy, sent an email to conservative journalists praising the confederate cause and attacking Black Lives Matter as infiltrated by terrorists. John Dowd is exactly why people hate lawyers. He is wrong, arrogantly wrong, about almost everything he says. He claims that Lee was just like Washington and equates the Confederate treason with the American Revolution. I sure hope Dowd is the one responsible for keeping Trump out of jail. If so the Prez will have a new wardrobe to match his hair before we know it.
But that’s still not all. Retired four star General Barry McCaffery has come forth with the information that ten army bases around the country are named after Confederate generals. The largest base in the world, located in North Carolina is named after Braxton Brag who McCaffery says was not even a good general. Fort Gordon in Georgia is named after a Confederate general who later became the head of the Ku Klux Klan in that state. In McCaffery’s opinion, within the next five years the names of those bases should be changed to the names of medal of honor winners. Don’t forget, every single one of these men was, according to the Constitution, a traitor to this country.
In an interesting question, posed on the tube. Jeh Johnson, former head of Homeland Security under Obama was asked if he thought the election of a black president had, in any way, led to the re-emergence of hate groups like the KKK, neo-Nazis or white supremacists. I think Johnson flubbed the dub when he answered that it did not. I think that’s a very naïve notion and all one has t do is look around to see that Johnson is wrong. Surely, the election of Trump along with his spouting of alt-Right rhetoric has emboldened these bigots and racists to surge to the fore but Obama’s election got them started. It was the anger at having a black man as President first drove them from their rat holes.
We have always had racism in this country and anyone who doesn’t admit that is just too stupid for the discussion. Racism has ebbed and flowed at different rates over the years depending on a wide range of factors including, but not limited to who was in the White House. The fact that Barak Obama was black cannot be dismissed as irrelevant to his election. That fact scared the living daylights out of white supremacists by glaringly enhancing their argument that minorities were pushing white Americans out of their own country. Before Obama, minorities were an annoyance and a reason for the failure of the losers in these hate groups. Now they were a frightening common enemy that threatened to wash across the nation in a wave of murder and inter-marriage that would leave this white nation a brown sludge.
It’s a ridiculous argument but it’s a no brainer if you are speaking to ignorant haters. Obama’s Presidency absolutely fed the fears and hates of all the alt-Right. Trump’s election took those fears and gave them the platform to push ahead into the light where they have no concept of how to operate. Instead of subtly injecting their philosophy into places where it could, at least germinate, the first thing they did was to create a battle march in support of statues of a bunch of traitors.
Yes, it was a terminally stupid move, and our President, because he’s no genius himself; instead of condemning them for their hatred and stupidity, fed into their message by not denouncing them out of hand. It seems that Trump is unable to play any kind of long game, which is a blanket condemnation for a con man like him,. All he sees is what’s right in front of him and that day it was riots, which had involved both sides of an argument. Having neither the understanding to perceive the causes of the problem nor the intelligence to find a solution, Trump did what he always does. He looked at the immediate situation, which was two groups fighting, and intellectually unable to discern a cause, blamed both. This is only one of the reasons why he shouldn’t be President.
Not only didn’t Trump discern that there had to be a cause for the fight, he didn’t understand that his comments on the fight should have, as President, brought peace to the battlefield. That’s his job. That’s what presidents do. Of course he has no concept of this. He calls himself a peacemaker but all he does is wage war, from the smallest personal affronts to nuclear Armageddon.
But what’s even more important than Johnson’s statement on the significance of Obama’s election and the emergence of hate groups is what he had to say about those serving in our government today and that relates directly to Trump’s actions and how they have affected men and women with moral integrity.
Trump’s ignorant, racist statements following Charlottesville have driven many in the government to come to the conclusion that they cannot support or relate to a racist President and so they have resigned, sometimes in wholesale lots.
Johnson comments that this is a mistake and this column agrees wholeheartedly. At a time when the government is staggering under the weight of non-functional appointments of incompetent fools like most of Trump’s cabinet, the nation needs all those who disagree with Trump’s morals and comportment to stay in their jobs and fight for the right.
Kristen Soltis Anderson pointed out this week that what was seen as Trump’s unacceptable comments on the alt-Right were not so unacceptable to a large group of Republicans who still support him. This gives us an insight into the fact that there are many in this country who, prompted by the wrong forces, will accept or espouse positions of racial bias that many of us find morally repugnant. Trump is trying desperately to appeal to these people. Former Presidents tried to convert these same voters to a more morally acceptable position, but Trump has no moral center so he is only interested in acquiring votes with no thought as to how he does it or what harm he causes to the country.
But in the end it’s Alex (The Slime) Castellans who finally comes up with the real item that’s saving the Republicans no matter what trash Trump is promoting. It’s what keeps them from being able to abandon him. Simply put, the Democrats haven’t provided an alternative. He’s right. With a President that everyone who has any intelligence wants to decry, with a large part of the Republican leadership (not all) in open revolt, the Democrats have nothing to offer except a pathetically tepid, “We don’t like Trump either.” For those who are looking to dump on Trump that is the lamest attack imaginable.
The Democrats need two things. They need them desperately and they need them now. They need a platform and they need a candidate. Without both they are nothing, and will lose again in 2018 and 2020. The nothing pill they tried to feed us with “A Better Way,” was ridiculous. What is the better way? Spell it out! Now, when the President is wrong and the GOP is falling apart is precisely the right time to jump in with both feet.
And they can’t be tepid. They must be bold. No halfway moves. Single payer or bust! No wall of any kind! A complete revision of the immigration policy! A real tax policy that raises taxes on all but also raises the minimum wage and adds jobs through infrastructure projects financed by the government! Add a complete change in the thrust of military spending, and much. much more.
Look, the Democrats have made a huge deal about the GOP having had seven yeas to devise something viable to replace Obamacare and the fact that they came up empty. Well, they’re doing the same thing now. Right now when the problem exists. The above- mentioned programs are not foreign to anyone in Washington. Many Republicans have the wrong idea on how to solve them but the Democrats have been banging away on them for years and now they have to elucidate specific programs that are functional enough to make the changes in this country that are necessary for national success.
These programs must belaid out in minute detail and lucidly explained so that everyone, regardless of their education will understand them. They also need someone to sell them. There was never any question that Hillary was quite possibly the most viable candidate possibly ever to run for President but too many people just didn’t like her. Maybe it wasn’t her fault, maybe she was a victim of Bill or GOP lies. It just doesn’t matter. Hillary lost and now we must pick up the cudgel and fight a new fight. In order to do that we need a candidate that is intelligent, honest, a forceful orator but most important charismatic, because baby that’s who gets the votes.
If the women want to fuck him and the men want to be his friend, he’s in like Flynn. And I say he advisedly because right or wrong running a woman in this election will definitely cost votes and the Democrats can’t afford a single vote to go the wrong way. The same is probably true for a minority candidate, although maybe the right guy could fill the second spot on the ticket. The next Democratic candidate must be able to take a carefully and clearly elucidated set of programs and sell them to the American public with more class and elan than Lever Bros. uses to sell baby soap.
Three of the last four Democrats elected President did it on charisma. Kennedy, Clinton and Obama were all super charismatic guys! Jimmy Carter got there because he was following a crook and a guy who fell off airplanes. Donald Trump, love him or hate him had a definite charisma. It was dipped in vitriol and eventually undercut by his venomous personality and heinous lies but there are still those out there who would follow him through hell.
This blog contends that unless the Democrats come up with someone who charms and enchants, they will once again come up short. And I just don’t see that guy out there, not right now. Not unless George Clooney decides to run. But don’t laugh. The GOP made it work for them with Reagan and they’re still chanting his praises, despite the fact that he was only a middling President who brought heroin back into this country on a major scale, destroyed the middle class with trickle down economics and spent the last couple of years of his Presidency trying to find his socks.
No, it’s charisma and good programs if we want to lead the country again. If not, the nation will fall back on the phony religious hypocrisy of Mike Pence or the insanity of one of the other intellectual dwarfs that jam the GOP roster, because the GOP will never elect anyone of intellect or honor, even if they could find him.