Don't Know Much About History

 

WATCH >> Ron DeSantis defends new curriculum that will teach children how slaves *benefited* from slavery.

"They're probably going to show some of the folks that eventually parlayed, you know, being a blacksmith into, into doing things later in life." pic.twitter.com/Ls1wyk3tr4

— Ammar Moussa (@ammarmufasa) July 22, 2023

They parlayed: only AFTER SLAVERY ENDED WHICH WAS NOT A GUARANTEE! Generations of unpaid skilled workers labored under the yoke of slavery incapable of seeking other opportunities because they were not treated as people, but property, with little post-slavery option outside of running for it and possible death or recapture. In the meanwhile, they were denied literacy, they were in a segregated church, they had their families sold away from them, they were heritable to other members of their owners' families.  (No, stop everything and read about slave law.)

And they could be abused to within an inch of their lives or past it including sexual abuse. They were used in medical experiments. They were believed to be less capable of pain, a belief that persists in medical practice sometimes even today. They made a straight face in front of white people to preserve their dignity before God and others. 

Bragging on Themselves

 

In NC tonight, Ron Desantis pledges to rename Ft. Liberty back to Ft. Bragg in honor of the incompetent, failed, fired Confederate General who rose up to help lead an insurrection and civil war against the United States. pic.twitter.com/62bVF0TZ8b

— Ron Filipkowski (@RonFilipkowski) June 9, 2023

So, I really had to ask myself, "What in the world does the governor of the Free State of Florida have against the name 'Liberty'?" Because the name went from Ft. Bragg, named after a General whose one notable win was against this nation in a conflict best described as treason in defense of slavery, to "Liberty", a cause I think we all should admire.

Ron DeSantis doesn't hate liberty, does he?

(Well, he's questionable on the First Amendment and it just goes to show, you can lead a person to law school, but you can't make them think the law's a good idea. I mean, he tries. And he tries.)

Maybe he does have a problem with liberty, for some people. It really does feel like a certain kind of signifying for a Florida Governor to back naming a US military base for a Confederate general. The base itself, of course, stays the same, and only the name changes--so why does he care?

It's grievance. Pretending something is lost because it's been re-named is as silly as claiming one's nose has literally been got or that one's face has gone away in a game of Peek-a-Boo.  Trump did the same kind of grievance and still does. If we change anything, we won't even have a country. 

Mike Pence is doing it, too.  It feels like they are trying to support the Confederate cause of states defying federal law, or even seceding, a very strange position for presidential candidates to take. And I could be wrong--they might just be catering to the assumed historical imaginations of Confederate flag-carrying racist whites. For some reason. And it doesn't even really feel like a thing that should be an actual issue--it's a wedge issue.  It's actually kind of a push-poll-like wedge issue, where they are trying to capture and create that audience at the same time.

I don't know why they think they are going to be better at doing this than Trump ever was. He's the Mozart of Malice, the Beethoven of bigotry. And he's liable to actually start a second Civil War--and those posers just wish. 

What Year is This, Again? Suburban Housewives?

Trump tweeted to an interesting demographic--"Suburban Housewives of America" to let them know that Joe Biden would kill their American dream of a little single home with a white picket fence and 2.5 children playing ball in the yard with their dog, Rusty, by letting the poor urban folks move into their neighborhoods and go to their schools and I don't even know what next!

Anyway, he linked to an article by Betsy McCaughey, and regardless of what year it is, she's the worst. But she does get to the nut of what all this is about, all right:

The president won the suburbs in 2016, but polls show Trump trailing in the suburbs largely because of opposition from women. They need to focus on what’s at stake for their families.

Sure, he might botch a pandemic response, kill millions of jobs, sue to end the ACA which would separate millions of American from health care (which we know McCaughey has concerned herself with like a busy little bee in her time, yes?), and has sent camo-wearing paramilitary forces to, for now, Portland to teargas moms, but he won't ever, ever....have apartment buildings put somewhere near your vague geographic vicinity, which is what I am sure this is actually all about.

Because the American Dream, is why.