Here's what Americans do to Nazis:
It used to be a bar that you had to clear to get elected here in this goddamn country; don't be a Nazi, don't be a commie. Sadly, you could be racist, sexist, and xenophobic as all hell, but you at least had to clear that low bar.
So.
As the fucking President of the United States, here's what it's your job to do.
You put your ginormous orange gob in front of the teevee cameras and say this:
"Don't be a Nazi. Fuck "alt-right" and "white pride"; that shit's being a Nazi. Don't be a Nazi. Don't talk like a Nazi. Don't act like a Nazi. Don't hang out with Nazis. Nazis are evil. We killed shitloads of Nazis, there was a whole war and everything. If you talk like and act like and hang out with Nazis you are fucking evil. As your President, I hate Nazi scum and everything they stand for and I recommend you do, too."
See? Wasn't that easy?
But you won't say that.
Ever.
Because you can't. Because you know these Nazi shitpokes are your shitpokes, the ones who elected you, the only ones who still have your back after eight months of solid derp, the ones think you're doing such a great job, the very best job. Because you're a worthless goddamn orange oxygen-thief who should never have been trusted with anything more important than the menu choices at the Trump Tower grill.
But I'm leaving this here in hopes that somehow the Wizard figures out how to give you a heart, a brain, and some courage enough for you to act like a president of, y'know, the United Fucking States...
Lemme know when that happens.
19 comments:
In 1927, Fred Trump (Donny Tiny Hands father) was arrested at a KKK march cum brawl through Queens. It would not be unexpected if he picked up some attitudes from his father.
I understand that he went rogue, again, shortly after your post Chief.
The man utterly dominates the news and politics of America.
People can not stop talking about him.
Does this mean that more people are getting personally involved in political activities?
@Ael:
No. What it really means, is that we're getting scared.
"Madness in great ones must not unwatched go."
Thing is, Ael, I don't think any of us have seen anything like this, and I'm old enough to remember the crazed last days of the Nixon presidency. It's like watching a horrible car accident; it's so spectacularly gruesome you just can't look away, yet you know it's going to be a total disaster.
And Stormcrow is right, to a point. Some of us - me, for one - are getting angry. Furiously angry, like, give me a riot club and a shield and let me out in the street to club Nazis and Klansmen and Trumpkins (but I repeat myself). We knew the GOP was a theocratic, plutocratic shitshow. What we didn't expect was how utterly unhinged and fascist this Trump asshole would turn out to be.
At this point it's not really an open question whether he's objectively fascist, but the degree to which he's a fascist. I mean, that presser? Can you imagine Orange Foolius' take on the Battle of the Bulge: "Well, not all those Germans were Nazis. SS? Sure...but lots of them were good people just defending their country. And what about those 101st Airborne guys? They were pretty violent! Sad! Tony McAuliffe, saying "Nuts" to that nice polite German! Rude!"
This is way beyond bizarre.
Does this fear and loathing suggest that people will take a greater interest in those that govern them? Or will it simply cause "normal" people to "hide" from politics as a topic not fit for public discussion?
AEL -
I suspect they will take a greater interest. Unfortunately, after the 2018 congressional elections we will revert to our old trick of only paying attention to who is running for president. Which is nowhere near as important as local and congressional elections IMHO.
We would perhaps be better off with a parliamentary system. But the British PM Lord North during our rebellion (and leading up to it) had left a bad taste on the tongues of our founding fathers for parliaments.
When I think of the perpetrators as Nazis I feel optimistic given some of the responses I've seen, like this will be the wedge issue that stops this shit in its tracks.
Then today I tried to explain the distortive power of Confederate war monuments, especially ones put up in the 1900s, to someone who really should know better. I just couldn't get through, at a certain point their removal was always destroying history. The fact that people have to live in these spaces did not produce any empathy. That felt like I was being wedged, both by Trumps remarks and the whole fight in general.
When I think of the perps as Confederates, my blood runs cold.
bb -
Not so huggable. FDChief and many others here have posted or commented before about the Nazis within the Ukrainian Maidan movement. I agree with him that we should never have supported them.
Nasty and evil here or over there IMHO.
StoneMason -
I have no beef with statues of Bobby Lee. But they should take down and smite into dust statues or memorials to war criminals Nate Forrest and Billy Quantrill.
As a sop to our southern citizens, I would have no problem in taking down any monuments to Union Generals 'Beast' Butler and Billy Sherman? Especially Sherman's statue in Central Park, the one that shows an angel leading the way for him.
Lee was as much a traitor as Forrest or Jeff Davis. Overrated as a commander, as well, IMO. He can go in the scrap heap of history for my money. The South has a ton of history outside the damn Rebellion. Our southern bros need to Get The Fuck Over 1865 and start being ashamed of fighting for slavery the same as Germans are ashamed of fighting for Nazism. They SHOULD be afraid and ashamed of the part of their past represented by Lee and Davis and Forrest and those bastards.
And Bill Sherman deserves his place on the pedestal if, for no other reason, his observation that the U.S. needed to put fear into the goddamn rebs, because "fear is the beginning of wisdom".
"Support for Ukraine" has as much to do with restraining our new pal Pootie from re-establishing the western edge of Russia at the border of Poland and Germany as any sort of luuuurve for the Ukrainians. Great powers support all sorts of nasty little regimes when it suits them, and the whole point here is to ensure that the EU people don't have to missle up against a resurgent Russia. Better to use these nasty little Ukrainian fascists than have the Poles and the Germans arming.
Here's an odd thing; I was cruising the backissues and came across this post from 2008:
http://firedirectioncenter.blogspot.com/2008/07/where-are-we-going-and-why-are-we-in.html
In it I'm pretty depressed about the State of the Union, and all my buddies try and buck me up. Turn that frown upside down, l'il camper! Things aren't all THAT bad! The U.S. is still goin' strong.
And...here we are, debating whether or not the fucking President of the U.S. is an actual Nazi or just likes actual Nazis a reeeeeeal lot.
WASF
Crikey FDC -
You are hardcore about a 156-year-old event. I've got some ancestors on both sides of that war. And am probably eligible for membership in both the Sons of Confederate Veterans and the Sons of Union Veterans. But have never had a desire to apply to either. Although perhaps I should and let it be known among fellow members that I belong to both? Rumor has it that Mom's Canadian great-grandpa crossed into Maine and took Lincoln's cash recruitment bounty and then scurried back to New Brunswick - smart man that one.
Sherman "put fear into the ... rebs"?? Maybe a few old ladies, or young ones that faced rape and robbery by his troops. If you look at a map of his advance during his scorched earth tactics in GA and the Carolinas; you see areas in which the KKK has been very strong. He was unprepared at Shiloh, screwed up at Missionary Ridge, suffered a severe defeat at Chikasaw Bayou, and had a nervous breakdown while in command at Louisville. His sole claim to fame was taking Atlanta at a time critical to Lincoln's re-election. Sherman was the overrated one. Plus his views on slavery were somewhat similar to Bobby Lee's.
Lee overrated? Perhaps. He screwed up big time at Gettysburg. But he was defeated in only four out of fifteen battles. Won too many Pyrrhic victories I guess. Should have used a Fabian strategy like Washington. But that would have meant abandoning Virginia and Richmond the Confederate Capital and Jeff Davis and the Confederate Congress never would have allowed that.
Getting back to Trumpy.
What is Melania thinking about his views on the fascists and neo-NAZIs? She was born and raised in Slovenia, which was a Socialist Republic at that time. I have to wonder if her father or grandfathers joined the resistance against Mussolini's fascists when they Italianized huge chunks of Slovene land? Or if they fought with Tito's partisans against the NAZIs? Her father worked for a state-run company so was in with the Titoist administration and certainly he or his father was not a former collaborator with the fascists.
And what thinks his son-in-law? He, Jared Kushner, is the grandson of Jewish Belarusian holocaust survivors. He is supposed to be a Senior Advisor to the President. What advice did he give him?
Here's the thing, Mike. We, as in the "US public" we, need to see the Civil War the way modern Germans see WW2; a dreadful, shaming episode that throws an ugly light on the things that we built into our country and they way they, in turn, shaped us. Until we do we won't and can't destroy those things and the vestiges of those things. We SHOULD be ashamed of the traitors. We should hide our ancestors that fought for slavery like we'd hide the one that was imprisoned for child rape. Hardcore? You have no idea. The toxic legacy of our national unwillingness to confront the Civil War and what it represents about our national enthusiasm for killing and enslaving non-white folks has led us into some really dark places.
Bill Sherman led the strategic campaign that gutted the Confederacy. That's why he's the better commander than Lee, who thought that tactical victory compensated for strategic weakness (and, as I mentioned, never really understood that improvements in the infantry battle rifle meant that the tactical defensive would always prevail). Had Lee been anything more than a nice, polite brigade commander he'd have, as you note, gone to Davis and confronted him with the reality that without foreign allies and trade (i.e. without a functional navy and a domestic policy free of the slavery taint, since the British and French publics would oppose any approach to slavers) that the CSA was doomed. He didn't because he didn't think that way. Grant and Sherman (and Halleck, whose contribution to logistics was significant) realized that, like Washington against the British, all they had to do was "not lose the war". Battles? Fuck battles. The U.S.'s economic and demographic power was such that they'd have to lose a ridiculous string of battles to lose the war. What they had to do was gut the South economically and strangle its trade. Grant and Sherman's western and southeastern campaigns did the former, the USN did the latter.
Lee wold have made a fine corps commander. As the boss of the Army of Northern Virginia he made one too many frontal attacks. As the military leader of the Southern Confederacy he was an unmitigated disaster, whose prolongation of Southern treason killed more of his people than Yankee bullets did.
As far as Trump's people go...who gives a shit? All Orange Foolius listens to are the angry, humiliated voices in his own head. So as far as he's concerned Melania is a life-support system for a vagina and Kushner is a gofer for daddio.
FDChief -
It is not just southerners that are NAZIs, Kluxers, white supremo wannabees, or just your general purpose racists. There are hundreds of racist organizations in the north and the west, here are a few. Listing them all would take a ream of paper:
Detroit Michigan is the home of the neo-NAZI National Socialist Movement (NSM).
That group, the NSM, was founded by former members of the American NAZI Party, which was founded by a Bloomington Illinois guy, George Lincoln Rockwell.
Oregon??? Volksfront and the Northwest Hammerskins for starters. There are more.
The AWS (Advanced White Society) is found primarily in Ohio and the Mid-Atlantic states.
Skinhead groups are found throughout all 50 states.
The NeoNAZI National Alliance was originally started in West Virginia, a state that fought for the Union and seceded from Virginia when Virginia seceded from the Union. Weird though that you can see the stars and bars throughout WV now although their ancestors wore blue, NOT gray (same could be said of southern Unionists in Alabama and western NC/eastern Tenn - their great great grandsons are now sporting rebel flags on their pick-ups).
Hell, there are even neo-NAZI and white supremo parties in AEL's Canada, four are listed in Wiki.
Trump is NYC born and raised. Seb Gorka, one of his alt-right advisors is British. Your hometown radio racist Lars Larson calls Tillamook his home and went to the U of O in Eugene. Mike Cernovich, alt-right radio wingnut is from California. Hal Turner another racist broadcaster and blogger is from NJ.
So be ashamed of your own ancestors. I'm proud of all of mine, the Virginia ones, the ones from the great state of Maine, and the wily Canuck who took Lincolns dollars and skedaddled back across the border. None of my ancestors, including the southerners, were slave owners. Although there were plenty of slave owners in the north until just a few decades prior to total emancipation.
Agree with you about Trumpy. But not about Sherman. Halleck was the strategist but never got his due. His focus on Corinth is what gutted the south, that and the river campaigns on the Mississippi, the Tennessee, and the Cumberland. Sherman's looting and scorched earth policy in GA, SC, and NC did NOT. But Sherman tried it again when he let Sheridan do it to the Sioux in the Winter Campaign of 1868. Fat lot of good it did, it only pissed them off and they came back in the mid 1870s with vengeance. The admiration for Sherman by Victor Davis Hanson is a negative IMHO, the same for Liddell-Hart's two cents on the subject. But 'scorched earth' campaigns, offensive ones not defensive, is a whole new subject we perhaps ought to discuss someday over at MilPub.
FDChief -
You are right. You will never convince me and hundreds of millions of other Americans of that. You stand alone, or damn near alone.
I do despise Trump. I also despise the Klan, neo-NAZIs and white supremacists.
I will never despise those Confederate veterans that fought to protect their homes and families. The only ones that I know of that fought for slavery were the 'Bushwhackers', 'Border Ruffians' and Quantrill's guerrillas that murdered civilians simply because they were anti-slavery. I despise them. And I despise the southern politicians like Christopher Memminger and Robert Rhett that started the war to keep slavery a viable economic system, but like hundreds of the other 'Fire Eaters' and treasonous politicos never served in the Confederate Army or Navy.
18 Virginians fought as generals in the Union Army. And from many other southern states also. Farragut and Samuel Lee both southerners fought for the Union Navy. Sam Lee was a first cousin of Bobby Lee. General George Thomas, Union hero at Chickamauga, was shunned by his Virginia sisters - they turned his picture to the wall, refused to accept money from him even though they were poverty stricken after the war, and never returned his letters except for once when they challenged him to change his name. Tens of thousands of families were divided during that war. That is what I also despise.
Going by Wikipedia, as of 2016 13.3% of the population of the US is African American.
I'm not from the US, so I really can't fathom the kind of hurt that comes from family being turned against each other by secession.
Here in Australia there was a vicious little colonial war to open up the nation for settlement. Colonist driven ethnic cleansing with the occasional organised push when resistance solidified, no treaty, just a gradual marginalisation of the locals. Eventually some protectionist policies in the 1900's that might as well of had the aim of outright destroying what culture was left.
We've got a big war memorial/museum in the capital city, we're a young country and pretty much every school group gets to go at some point. It's a nice museum, good exhibits, fair history, but it was established with a mandate to commemorate our 20th Century wars. The Australian War Memorial. Now for those one or two Indigenous kids (maybe more) in each school group, what does it say to them that the history of Australia's conflicts starts with British wars in Africa around 1900?
Why should they be dragged through a white Australian right of passage when the same respect is not paid to their ancestors war of resistance? I can't truly grasp what that would feel like either, only sense something of the emptiness it would leave inside. I suspect that's not far from what African American southerners might feel when they walk past a statue of Lee or see a confederate flag flying in a public place.
I used to be pretty bluff about this sort of thing, 'why should we compromise the purity of the history?', not sure when I started thinking differently. That's all it is though, thinking a little differently, embracing a few more viewpoints. If that's what it takes to fill a bit of that emptiness and share in the history of the nation, it's not a big ask.
StoneMason -
Communities that want those statues taken down should take them down. I have no problem with that.
My beef is with the labeling of 22% of this country 'pond scum' for something that happened 150+ years ago. If we consent to that we should have a similar label for those New England states that did the great majority of bringing African slaves to this country and bringing both African and Native American slaves to the Caribbean islands for the sugar plantations.
And to another slaver, Christopher Columbus.
And for the Dutch that brought the first African slaves to Virginia.
And to the other slave trading nations of Spain, Portugal, Britain, France and Denmark
We should all (me included) get off our pedestals and go watch the eclipse. Bring your NASA-approved glasses. Already a bite taken out in my neighborhood. We won't see the total eclipse here. But 90% + will still be magnificent.
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