US Politics Thread 2016-2020

[August]

Outraged Democrats are outraged at Trumps not strong enough for them condemnation of last weekends political violence. Go figure.

But whereas Trump is being pilloried for not being one sided enough the Democrats have a long history of actual racism.

For example:
From the Wiki article on Woodrow Wilson Democrat President:

Several historians have spotlighted consistent examples in the public record of Wilson's overtly racist policies and political appointments, such as segregationists he placed in his cabinet. According to scholars, Wilson believed that slavery was wrong on economic labor grounds, rather than for moral reasons.

They also argue that he idealized the slavery system in the South, viewing masters as patient with "indolent" (i.e. lazy) slaves. In terms of Reconstruction, Wilson held the common southern view that the South was demoralized by Northern carpetbaggers and that overreach on the part of the Radical Republicans justified extreme measures to reassert Democratic national and state governments.

Cabinet heads appointed by President Wilson re-segregated restrooms and cafeterias in their buildings. During Wilson's presidency, the film The Birth of a Nation (1915) became the first motion picture to be in screened in the White House.

[vienna]

Originally Posted by August

Outraged Democrats are outraged at Trumps not strong enough for them condemnation of last weekends political violence. Go figure.

But whereas Trump is being pilloried for not being one sided enough the Democrats have a long history of actual racism.

For example:
From the Wiki article on Woodrow Wilson Democrat President:

There are those whose actions, utterances, and beliefs are repugnant and vile, and they are not limited to any particular stripe. Let's take a look at your 'attack' on the Democrats, whom you've lumped into one great mass, much in the way you decry how others have lumped those whom you seek to defend...

True, Wilson did enact and support actions and policies that were vile and inhumane and, yes, he was a Democrat. It could be argued whatever Wilson did was more than counter-balanced by another Democrat President, Lyndon Johnson, who pushed for and managed to get passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, a bill he actually got to sign into law as US President. At this point, it should be noted, the Southern, segregationist states in the US (virtually all of them former Confederate states in the Civil War) were solidly Democratic and voted for Democratic candidates and issues as a block. When Johnson, and the other Democratic leaders in Congress managed to get the Rights Act passed, the reaction from the South was swift and angry; the Segregationists felt they were betrayed by the Democratic Party. There was a sudden political vacuum in the South...

Steeping in to fill the vacuum was a political ploy called the Southern Strategy, wherein a political alternative to the disaffected Southern segregationist voters was offered as a refuge for their beliefs:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_strategy

Yes, the Republican Party, in an act of self-serving opportunistic cynicism went after the Segregationist voters in an attempt to shore up their sagging vote tallies, in effect actively aligning themselves racism and intolerance. This was not the action of a single person like Wilson to enforce segregation or Johnson to end segregation, this was an institutionalized, Republican Party-sanctioned embrace within its policies to support and endorse the Segregationist causes. The Republicans did get the white segregationist votes they yearned for, but at the cost of losing Southern and national African-American voters...

Around the year 2000, the GOP came to realize the Southern Segregationist vote was shrinking and the national mood among all voters was antithetic to perceived political support for racism; the GOP was also hemorrhaging the little African-American support it still retained. In the face of the fact the Southern Strategy was more of a bust than a boon, the GOP, in 2005, moved to distance itself from the very strategy they created, culminating in the GOP Chairman publicly apologizing for and repudiating the GOP's adoption of the Southern Strategy...

So, the question now is: Will the GOP leadership, both in and out of Congress, have the courage and moral and ethical substance to fully repudiate the stance of Trump and align themselves with the better part of the US people, or will they, for the sake of preserving dubious transient political "gain", once again fall back on a "Trump Strategy" and risk losing whatever little moral high-ground they have left?...

So, yes there was a racist Democratic President and he was thus abhorrent and his actions undone by a Democratic President...

Now, there is a morally abhorrent GOP president and what is the GOP doing to address the matter?...




<O>

[vienna]

Another reason Robert E. Lee was a great leader and a wise man:

Robert E. Lee Opposed Confederate Monuments --

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/updates/...ate-monuments/


Even Robert E. Lee Wanted the Confederate Flag Gone --

http://www.thedailybeast.com/even-ro...rate-flag-gone





<O>

[Hawk66]

How do they say, you should always look at the positive side of things.

The one which I see in the running 'experiment' is that more and more people see that it is obviously not enough to just be not part of the political 'establishment'.

You need skills and be a leader...

[Mr Quatro]

Originally Posted by Hawk66

How do they say, you should always look at the positive side of things.

The one which I see in the running 'experiment' is that more and more people see that it is obviously not enough to just be not part of the political 'establishment'.

You need skills and be a leader...

True we should try not to judge people good or bad all of the time ... have you noticed that some of the Republican's against Trump ran for the GOP nomination in 2016?

Speaking of Senator Rubio I heard that someone in Venezuela has put out a price on his head.

http://www.miamiherald.com/news/nati...167720117.html

[Platapus]

It is not often that I find blog posts that are as awesomely awesome as my posts, but I think this is was well thought out. I kinda wished I had written it

I was involved in "protesting" (we called it direct action) on nuclear, environmental, and social justice issues, primarily in the 1980s and 1990s.
I was active at Nevada Test Site, Rocky Flats, etc. arrested numerous times, and went to trial at an interesting case in Colorado where we invoked the Nuremberg principles and were defended pro bono by Francis Boyle.

I support the counter-protestors in Charlottesville; however, the violence, punching, etc. was wrong and Trump has a point about that. Anybody who reads that last sentence I wrote and interprets it as, "sympathizes with Nazis" is too far gone for rational discussion.

With that said, the vast majority of counter-protestors were peaceful, so it is only a minority of them causing trouble.
Why is violence a problem? Let's look at practical issues, leaving to one side ethical issues for a moment:

1) The grievances the Nazis brought to the protest were illegitimate. However, they had a permit and a first amendment right to speak. The violence meant that a state of emergency was declared and they couldn't speak.
They now have legitimate grievances.

Think about that for a second. Some portion of them were hard-core racists, but some other portion looked to be people on the fence, confused kids and so on, with a more soft core ideology.

The words of their racist mentors now ring true.

"Society is against the white man! There's not such thing as free speech! We have to do anything necessary to defend ourselves!" They were handed these legitimate grievances on a silver platter by inexperienced activists.
A wonderful recruiting tool for the Nazis. A more productive approach would have been to let them speak, go home, and crawl back under the rocks they call home. That's been going on for years. You get a few outraged newspaper articles, and everybody forgets about the Nazis. Now Charlottesville becomes a cause for them. Many more people are looking at their websites today that would have been otherwise.

2) There is no percentage in escalating tension, especially when the other side has guns. Alison Krause, one of the four people killed at Kent State, was my babysitter a few years before that, when she was in high school. Nobody thought that guns would be fired there, either. The kid that ran over people in Charlottesville was a known Nazi. His high school teacher tried to talk him out of it, without success. But at least the kid didn't pull a Columbine, and maybe in part that is because of ongoing dialog. What if his high school teacher had shamed him in front of his peers, yelled at him in class, confronted him, and so on? We might have seen what happened in Charlottesville happen years earlier with this kid. It isn't backing down to not confront people. The clergy marched in Charlottesville peacefully, and honestly, their message was more powerful than the message of the folks fist-fighting in the middle of the street.

3) You lose sympathy from the public when you engage in violence. Let's say the counter-protestors had woken up at dawn, occupied the park, and refused to move. Let's say the police had to remove them forceably, but without active resistance on the part of the counter-protestors. By that I mean the police had to lift people off the ground, because the counter-protestors let their bodies go limp and so on. Right and wrong are clear in that scenario. There is no room for debate. But when you punch people, now you have a problem. You are not going to win many people over. Despite all the impassioned discussion of WWII and so on, a lot of people are only going to see that counter-protestors were fighting in the street, and they're right. It's undeniable. As far as they're concerned, you can take your cause and stuff it. They don't want violence in the street.
For this and many other reasons, the great humanitarian leaders like Martin Luther King and Gandhi advocated non-violent resistance. People hear "non-violence" and think "ethical, but wishy-washy." But that's not it at all. It is an effective and practical tactic. They were brilliant campaigners, who planned in detail potential court challenges, etc. and were acutely aware of the public image of their campaigns. It's worth noting that Martin Luther King organized sucessfully when his base in the south was roughly synonymous with the church. Those folks were non-violent and shared a common ideology. But he was unsuccessful organizing cities in the north, where the church didn't tie people together as well.

When we did our actions, we had non-violence training. We expected to be arrested, possibly roughed up or beaten, and we had to learn to de-escalate, to not get involved. Not only did many of the counter-protestors in Charlottesville appear to lack non-violence training, but it looked like many of them were spoiling for a fight.

What was the plan, exactly? When we went to the Nevada Test Site, we based our resistance on the Treaty of Ruby Valley, which awarded the Test Site land to the Western Shoshone. The government subsequently took the land from the Western Shoshone, but the whole thing was fishy. We got permits from the Western Shoshone to be on the Test Site, signed by Corbin Harney. We wanted to provoke a court case. We were arrested for criminal trespass, and then got letters afterwards saying that all charges had been dropped. Happened year after year. But eventually, if you do stuff like that, you might find a fair-minded judge who is willing to hear the particulars of the case. In other words, we had a plan for change. What was the plan of the people fighting in the street in Charlottesville? It looked like no plan at all.

Our country is so partisan now, that if you point out what I just pointed out, you get called a Nazi. Why? Because you don't sympathize 100% with inexperienced activists causing trouble in the street. I sympathize with their cause, but not with what happened. The Nazis were wrong. I wish they'd never called that rally. But some aspects of the resistance were wrong too. I mean, what if the Nazis disappear from the face of the Earth tomorrow.
I saw people cheering in Charlottesville because other citizens were denied their right to speak.

So that would be O.K., in a post-Nazi world? No free speech, for anybody who decides that they know right from wrong? Next Bernie can't speak? Or Hillary? Or Ted Cruz? Maybe activists derail an Oprah campaign event and cheer, because they're "right?"

They way I see it, Trump was correct to call the left out in Charlottesville, even if he did it for the wrong reasons. Where he erred was in not making a more forceful and heartfelt declaration that the values of Nazis and white supremacists have no place in America. That should have been front and center.

I understand that a lot of people in the street were just kids, and spontaneous, and so on. I get it. I've been there. A lot. But still, a movement has to have goals, tactics, and principles. In any conflict, there is right and wrong on both sides. Maybe it's 95% to 5%, but there is still right and wrong on both sides. The left shouldn't deny that mixing it up in the street was bad. They should acknowledge it, and point to the much greater evil.

I end this with an appropriate quote that is one of my favourites


If we don't believe in freedom of expression for people we despise, we don't believe in it at all. -- Noam Chomsky

[SiegDerMaus]

I don't think it's the president's place to condemn ideology. What he did condemn was hate and violence. People do have a right to protest and to be heard, and to have their own political beliefs, however wrong you and I may feel they are. The president is the voice of our nation and of our people, I think it would be improper for him to condemn a belief held by Americans. But he did condemn what was wrong in those beliefs, and what those beliefs have wrought.

The violence on both sides was despicable. As was the hate on both sides, and I believe that is all that needs condemning. As a Christian woman, I believe in tolerance and non-violence, but I am also against the removal of Confederate monuments. The Confederates were not solely about slavery or racism. These monuments are monuments to people who risked their lives and livelihoods for a cause they believed in and for a country they loved. And we have no right to take that away from them. Or to revise history.

Regardless, I've drifted off topic a bit. The president condemning their ideology would be, to me, as bad as the leftist protesters cheering when they were denied their rights to protest. He condemned hate, and he condemned violence, and that is enough for me.

[Aktungbby]

Originally Posted by SeigDerMaus

As a Christian woman, I believe in tolerance and non-violence, but I am also against the removal of Confederate monuments. The Confederates were not solely about slavery or racism. These monuments are monuments to people who risked their lives and livelihoods for a cause they believed in and for a country they loved.

Well I've no objection to tearing down monuments of slave owners and I'm a Confederate reenactor to boot. But ya gotta be absolutely fair: Bear in mind that Lee had married up into the Custis family and 'his' slaves were actually the inherited property of his wife; Lee assumed management of his wife's assets including slaves on the death 1857 of his father-in-law- in accordance with duties of a gentleman/husband of the Virginia plantation class. General US Grant, who lived in Missouri had emancipated his only personal slave in 1859: one William Jones-$1500 value. The slaves from his father-in-law were still in the possession of his wife, Julia Dent, while she lived in Missouri on the (her) family's plantation during the war. Missouri, not being in rebellion, was not included in the Emancipation Proclamation 1862 (only specifically affected ten state in open rebellion) 1863 and were not freed until Missouri officially ended slavery in 1865. https://pastexplore.wordpress.com/2015/06/29/did-ulysses-s-grant-own-slaves-during-the-civil-war/ Bottom line: Both supreme commanders benefitted from slave labor during the Civil War! We must not permit 'victor's justice' in our historical revisionism of the PC moment! Grant's statues must be pulled down as well-such as the one in Washington DC...and of course no slave owner has any business on a $50 bill!
The Grant Memorial on the west side of the U.S. Capitol> It's all gotta go BBY! https://www.aoc.gov/capitol-grounds/ulysses-s-grant-memorial

[SiegDerMaus]

To be clear, I'm against tearing down any monuments. Monuments were built by those who came before us as sacred symbols of what they found worthy of honouring. Not only are they a valuable glimpse at the values of our ancestors, but they are a part of our history. And history, however dark, needs to be taught and preserved.

[Aktungbby]

^I completely understood that m'am:

Originally Posted by me

But ya gotta be absolutely fair

My post is to humorously point up that the 'ever-PC' NAACP and/or it's minions will never pull down Grant's statue currently opposite the 'Great Emancipator' in DC at the National Mall. Blame rather should be (conveniently) laid on the spouses...also good Christian Southern Belles "however dark" their inheritances which poor career soldiers like Lee and Grant (both had serious issues with bankruptcy) found suitably convenient as a means of rising in society. Ms Dent and Ms Custis had over two hundred slaves between the two of them. As a history graduate, any attempt at PC revisionism, much less deadly violence about it after 152 years is utterly reprehensible imho. And to be honest; Grant never defended his slave-holding with the alleged statement: "Good help is hard to find" We'll leave that remark to the current bankrupt(morally and otherwi$e) now infesting the White House!

[SiegDerMaus]

Originally Posted by Aktungbby

^I completely understood that m'am: My post is to humorously point up that the 'ever-PC' NAACP and/or it's minions will never pull down Grant's statue currently opposite the 'Great Emancipator' in DC at the National Mall. Blame rather should be (conveniently) laid on the spouses...also good Christian Southern Belles "however dark" their inheritances which poor career soldiers like Lee and Grant (both had serious issues with bankruptcy) found suitably convenient as a means of rising in society. Ms Dent and Ms Custis had over two hundred slaves between the two of them. As a history graduate, any attempt at PC revisionism, much less deadly violence about it after 152 years is utterly reprehensible imho. And to be honest; Grant never defended his slave-holding with the alleged statement: "Good help is hard to find" We'll leave that remark to the current bankrupt(morally and otherwi$e) now infesting the White House!

Ah, my apologies, I suppose Poe's Law strikes again.

I agree with you completely, though, that revisionism for the sake of "political correctness" is absolute garbage. In my high school days, I was part of a campaign to prevent our library from replacing our library's copies of the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn with censored versions to remove all the racist terminology. Are we that sensitive as a culture that some of us cannot take works of art in their historical context and appreciate them for what they are?

[vienna]

I don't know why Trump is so upset about the taking down of the statues of Lee, Beauregard, etc.: didn't Trump say he only liked generals who win?


https://wallbuilders.com/george-wash...very-virginia/

I found this link a few months ago when I was researching another subject (I am nothing if not tangential). The site itself is run by a conservative, religious-based organization. The linked page give a very detailed account of the issue of slave ownership by Washington and Jefferson and the attitudes of the two great men towards slavery. There is an impressive degree of citation and attribution to the page and, even though a bit long is well worth the effort to read; those of you who are of the "TLDR" bent are missing out on a very, very good source of information on the subject...

The site, even though by a religious group, is not heavy handed in its evangelism and is filled with articles and materials related to American history. It is well worth a good browse...





<O>

[Méo]

Originally Posted by vienna

didn't Trump say he only liked generals who win?

lol

[Platapus]

Instead of tearing down these statues/monuments, why not just erect an informative plaque on them explaining the history and the affects of the events depicted in the statue/memorial?

Citizens both current and future are not best served by concealing out history but by exposing them to our history (the good, the bad, and the ugly) and in educating the citizens about the history.

[August]

Speaking of awesome blogs I thought this was spot on.