The Trump Mirror
A frequent complaint about President Trump is that he is divisive and constantly picking fights. He seems uncontrollable in his tweets, and even many of his supporters wish he would tweet less and focus more on his accomplishments. On the other hand, many of his supporters love his tweets, and their reason is illustrative. For this latter group, the key is that Trump’s tweets are not an aberration of the political discourse. These supporters have seen the Left saying comparable things about conservatives for decades, yet with very little reaction.
In politics, it is natural to attack your opponent, and at times this does get dirty. But there is a difference between the parties. To somewhat oversimplify, but not too much, Republicans attacked Democrats as good people with bad policies. They are caring, but with wasteful spending, weak on defense, etc.. Democrats attacked Republicans as bad people, uncaring, greed, etc..
Nowhere is this clearer than with issues of race. In many respects, the hoodwinking of the public on this issue has been astounding; it is a testament to how much the Left dominates academia, the news, and entertainment media. From its founding, the Democratic party has been the party of race, first supporting slavery, and then later Jim Crow. It played a major role in both the rise of the KKK and its renewal. The KKK was effectively the military arm of the Democratic party, enforcing its dominance in the south.
The Republican party, on the other hand, was formed to oppose slavery and ended it following the civil war. It opposed Jim Crow and suppressed the KKK in its first incarnation only to see it revied when Wilson, a Democrat, became President. The Republicans were the party of civil rights; the Democrats opposed it with filibusters in the Senate.
Then came the 1960s, and, as the myth goes, the parties somehow switched sides. Now on the face of it, this is absurd. While it is understandable how individuals who were racists could come to see the light and realize how evil racism is, the reverse is more difficult to understand. What is not understandable is how this could happen to large groups, and particularly for this to happen simultaneously and so quickly.
The explanation for this magical switch is the person of Richard Nixon, and his supposed “southern strategy.” Yet, this would at best only, explain why the south changed from Democrat to Republican. Even then, it is not supported by the timing. The major Civil Rights Acts passed before Nixon, and the actual switch in party allegiance in the South came later under Reagan. But why let facts get in the way of a good myth.
A better explanation is that the parties remained essentially the same at their core, and only modified their language and expression. Before the mid-1960s, the Republican view of civil rights that dominated was best summed up by Dr. Martin Luther King when he said, “I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.” This view remains the main Republican view today. It is the individual that matters, not the group.
Democrats, on the other hand, always saw race as highly significant, and they still do. The Democratic party still divides people into groups, where one is a member of a group before they are an individual. In recent years this has been formalized in the concepts of intersectionality. It is seen, for example, in Biden’s recent statement that a person is not Black if they don’t vote for him. In short, the issue of race is still at the core of the Democratic party.
To hide their legacy, Democrats have redefined racism. Racism used to be judging people based on their race. Now, not considering a person’s race when judging them is racist. Segregation used to be seen as one of the evils of racism. Now segregation is encouraged by the Left as an expression of racial pride in things like the growing movement for all-black dorms at colleges.
Every election, Democrats still play racial politics, as they always have, just with somewhat different expressions. While they claim it is the Republicans that are racists, given their history, is it any surprise that the condition of minorities has only gotten worse in those areas that have been strongly Democratic for decades? Still, every election we have statements like Biden’s in 2012 saying Republicans are going to put blacks “back in chains” or Pelosi’s recent statement that Republicans are “trying to get away with the murder of George Floyd.” Comments like this were the “civil” discourse before Trump. Similar “civil” comments occurred in a wide range of areas beyond race.
What is “divisive” about Trump is not the tone of his rhetoric, but the fact that the fights back. Trump has a very large ego, even for a politician. You treat him nicely, and he will treat you nicely. You attack him; he will attack you. In this respect, Trump is a mirror. Thus to those on the Left and the Right, Trump is something new, a Republican who can give as good as he gets.
The Left is not used to this. Democrats are used to calling Republicans racist, greed, and uncaring. They are used to saying Republicans want the poor to suffer, kids to drink dirty water, and grandmother to die. They claim voting for Republicans will cause black churches to burn, and show Paul Ryan pushing grandmother over a cliff. They do this constantly, and Republicans cower. Then Trump comes along and gives as good as he gets, and his supporters cheer. Finally, someone is fighting back. The calls for someone less divisive are just calling for someone who will surrender to the Left, someone who will not fight back.
For conservatives, it is probably good that Democrats did not figure Trump out early. While Trump is the most conservative President in history, he is not really a conservative. Again Trump is a mirror. He is nice to those who are nice to him. He supports those who support him, and he attacks those who attack him.
Had the Democrats realized this early on, they probably could have sweet-talked him onto their side. If they had played to his ego, given the negotiator in him, he would have given them something, and probably more than conservatives wanted. They have certainly been uncomfortable with some of his offers. Democratic acceptance of these concessions would have brought criticism of Trump from conservatives, and the dynamic of his Presidency could have been reversed.
Luckily for conservatives, the shock of the Trump victory led instead to the attempt to destroy his Presidency with the phony Trump-Russia narrative. Pushing Trump even further into the Republican camp and enhancing the power of the far-left in the Democratic party.
The Obamagate Puzzle
We are continuing to learn more about how scandal called Obamagate. We have known about a few of the pieces of this puzzle for some time. These pieces included what, until recently, I had believed were the actions of a few rogue members in the FBI and the Intelligence community. Other pieces I wondered about or suspected, but with the documents released recently, this broad outline was confirmed, and now Obama and Biden have been linked to the growing scandal. As with Nixon, a major question is now what did Obama and Biden know, and when then they know it?
One new piece is the list of those requesting the unmasking of General Flynn from election day to Jan 31, 2017. It is clear that with over three dozen requests, the system was abused. We are asked to believe that all these people had legitimate reasons to request the unmasking. According to the Left and the media, unmasking is common, even routine. Yet, if it is so common and routine, why do we have all the rules saying there must be a legitimate reason to unmask a name? Why even mask names at all? I believe it is likely that many of these people were encouraged to request the unmasking to muddy the water. Almost certainly on this list is the name of the person who leaked Flynn’s name to the press, which is not just an abuse; it is a crime. The problem is, with so many names on the list, determining which was the leaker is much more difficult.
Another piece was the release of the House transcripts that Schiff had tried to keep hidden. He was finally forced to release them. These transcripts proved that Schiff had been lying all along, but then that was not a surprise. More importantly, it showed that many of the people on TV for years claiming knowledge of evidence linking Trump to Russia were also lying. When under oath, said they never saw any such evidence.
There never was any evidence. The whole Trump-Russia story has been a lie from the beginning. It was created and perpetrated to damage the incoming administration, eventually forcing a special prosecutor, who also found nothing, ending with an attempt to impeach and remove the President. Oh, but it is Trump, so it is all ok. It does not matter what lies you tell, what power you abuse, what laws you break, just as long as the goal is stopping Trump.
Granted, the Republicans are not clean and pure, but they are certainly better than the Democrats. Republicans played a key role in the investigation of Nixon. When evidence indicated that Nixon had violated the law, Republicans went to the White House to demand he resign. Where are the Democrats today who are upset with this scandal? Where are the Democrats concerned about the abuse of power? Where are the Democrats concerned about the violation of the law? They are MIA. Instead, Democrats continue to circle the wagons and defend these actions. Rather than being upset about the lying, abuse of power, and crimes, they continue to claim Trump colluded with Russia despite the evidence. For Democrats and the media, Trump’s guilt is certain, but they just need some more time to find some evidence of his guilt.
When you ignore bad behavior, it just gets worse. The media have been biased to the left for decades, and over the years, it has gotten worse. Now they are effectively an arm of the Democratic party. Consider the following mild example, from an article on Politico
“Conservative critics have suggested Rice sought the identities of officials on Trump’s transition team for political purposes, something Rice flatly denied on Tuesday. ‘The allegation is that, somehow, Obama administration officials utilized intelligence for political purposes,’ Rice told MSNBC’s, Andrea Mitchell. ‘That’s absolutely false.’ Her denial did nothing to slow the gathering wave of outrage in conservative media outlets.”
(https://www.politico.com/story/2017/04/susan-rice-flynn-unmasking-236884)
Note the “Conservative critics,” which suggests the criticism is partisan and thus easy to dismiss. Consider that last sentence. Why should “her denial” “slow the gathering wave of outrage in conservative media outlets?” Since when did the denial by an alleged wrongdoer warrant the end of an investigation? And again, why the “conservative media” label? Are conservatives the only ones concerned about the law and abuse of power? When have you seen a sentence like a Republican “denials did nothing to slow the gathering wave of outrage in Liberal media outlets” in the supposedly non-biased media?
Then there is the issue of whether or not these unmaskings were all legitimate. Some almost certainly were, but so many of them? Just what was the legitimate reason for requesting these unmasking? The names of American citizens are masked because the US government is not supposed to be spying on its own citizens without a court order. Those who request unmasking are supposed to have valid intelligence reasons. Why were so many of the names for the Treasury department on the list? Why did the deputy Secretary of Energy request Flynn’s name be unmasked?
Despite the lack of evidence of any Trump-Russia collusion, liberals and media insist that the investigations were all okay. If that is the case, does that mean it is okay for people in the Trump administration to open up investigations on Biden without any evidence? Was the real problem with Watergate that it was Nixon’s reelection committee that attempted the bugging? If Nixon had had the FBI, CIA, or some other government agency do it, everything would have been okay? Is it ok for Trump administration officials to unmask US citizens connected to the Biden campaign? Is it ok for Trump administration officials to leak this to the press? If Biden wins, shouldn’t we just forgo the subterfuge and go straight to appointing a special prosecutor who will hire only Republican lawyers that supported Trump? If not, why was this ok when the target was Trump? Finally, if this is the new norm, it should not be. After all, if they can do this to Trump? What hope do we have if they try to do it to us? We will be like Flynn, forced into a plea deal as the only option left.
The Rule of Law or Power
To understand where our country is at the moment only requires a simple thought experiment and a simple question.
(A) does (B). As a result, the government does (C). Does the identity of A matter?
In an ideal world, the identity of A should not matter for C. Granted, this has not always been the case. In fact, throughout much of history, the opposite was true. The identity of A mattered a great deal to C.
One of the great achievements of civilization is the Rule of Law, the idea that the identity of A does not matter. There is more to the Rule of Law, but this part is essential; you cannot have the Rule of Law without it. Without the Rule of Law, you have simply the rule of power. Whoever has the power, rules, and those with power receive different treatment than those without it. The power can be wielded by a King, a governing body, or a mob. Still, the simple fact remains if the identity of A matters, you do not have the Rule of Law, you have the rule of power.
Sadly, at the present moment, the identity of A matters a great deal. In fact, the idea that not only does the identity of A matter but that it should matter is at the core of the social justice moment. If A is a member of a disadvantaged group, they should get special treatment. If A is thousands of protestors who are supporting a favored political group such as Black Lives Matter, then they will be encouraged. If riots break out, they are justified, the perpetrators released, and it will be the police that apologizes. Don’t think that at the moment, the identity of A matters? Ask yourselves what would be the reaction if a Neo-Nazi group took control of a portion of an American city?
In short, at the moment, we are not under the Rule of Law; the government is buckling to the mob. Some in government are doing so because they see this as a route to power. Others see a chance to accomplish goals they could not achieve within the rule of law. Still, others are just acting out of fear. Whatever the reasons, they are all playing a very dangerous game, as the mob cannot be controlled.
One of the big differences between the American and French Revolution was the influence of the mob, which played a much bigger role in the French Revolution. The early leaders of the French Revolution sought to used the mob to achieve their aims. They found the mob impossible to control. Before long, the revolution became a Reign of Terror as the former ruling class went to the guillotine before the cheering mob. But it did not end there as the mob marched its earlier leaders to the guillotine and then their successors and then their successors. The mob is very difficult to satisfy. In the end, the revolution collapsed into the dictatorship of Napoleon.
In the present day, what does the mob want? Justice for George Floyd? Who doesn’t? The polices officers involved have been charged with murder and are awaiting trial. The major claim now is to defund the police. How is that going to end? They are beginning to get their way with the predictable results of huge increases in crime, including murder.
While defunding the police is irrational, it should not be surprising. The mob does not rule by reasons and debate, but by power and fear. Law and order stand in the way of the mob. To resist the mob directly is to risk your life; many people were killed during the riots. If you object to the mob, you can lose your job, as many others have found out. It does not matter how rational or reasonable you are. It does not matter whether or not you are right. The only thing that matters is are you in the way of the mob. You are completely free to disagree all you want, as long as you keep it to yourself. What is important is that you cower and kneel when the mob demands. In short, keep quiet, stay out of their way, and give them what they want.
I will not stay quiet. Too many have died to establish the Rule of Law. To many have died to preserve it. So I will stand for Rule of Law. I will stand for the truth. I will stand for liberty and justice for all. I will gladly say black lives matter, but only because all lives matter, equally. To say otherwise is racist by definition.
History, the Confederacy, and Monuments
Recently on EDN, Robert Cornwall had an excellent article on the need to study history. On that point, I completely agree. That said, I thought the view of history in the article he recommended was a bit binary and one-sided. To be sure, there is a lot of truth in the description of Confederate monuments being linked to the “the Lost Cause.” When I was younger (i.e., the 1960s and 70s), it was still not all that uncommon to hear at least some of the older southerners refer to “the war of northern aggression.”
While there have been some attempts to remove the issue of slavery from the Civil War, instead, trying to find some sort of economic justification, ultimately those attempts have failed. Whatever other factors may have been involved, they were clearly secondary. If one could somehow erase the issue of slavery from the early history of the United States, there would have been no Civil War.
Granted, in the early part of the war, many in the North were focused mainly on preserving the Union. Any such pretext was removed with the Emancipation Proclamation. In the latter half of the war, both sides fought over slavery, the South to preserve it and the North to end it.
Slavery, the original sin of the country, ran deep, dividing it from its earliest days. It stained the Constitution, dragging it away from the goals of the Declaration of Independence, where “all men are created equal” into a 3/5 compromise. It repeatedly plagued the early years of the country like a cancer eating away at its victim. Periodically, it would bubble to the surface, resulting in yet more compromises.
While the Democratic Party was mostly pro-slavery, the Whig party was split between those who wanted to restrict or even end slavery and those who were willing to accommodate it or did not care. As the abolitionist movement grew, this split among the Whigs eventually destroyed the party, and out of its destruction emerged the clearly anti-slavery Republican Party. With the election of the first Republican President, Lincoln, the South, fearing what the anti-slavery Republicans would do, started the Civil War.
The war ended, but the stain remained. While Republicans moved more towards the idea of the Declaration, Democrats continued to view issues through the lens of race. As Republicans began to lose political control of the South, the Democrats began to impose another form of racism: Segregation, which sadly would last until the 100th anniversary of the Civil war. While there are some notable Democratic exceptions, as there were for Republicans as well, for the most part, the Democrats were the party of race, first supporting slavery, then of segregation. The KKK was the base of many Democratic politicians who were often members themselves.
I was recently asked by a young software developer how is it that this was turned on its head? I answered that in many respects, it hasn’t. Democrats still tend to see everything through the eyes of race. Republicans are still the party where the color of one’s skin just is not that important; what matters is what one does and believes.
For many Democrats, the focus on races and dividing people into groups is so strong that they have a hard time accepting that Republicans really do not care about skin pigmentation. Instead, they take the resistance to dividing people into groups as itself a form of racism. They then create myths such as the southern strategy to project their past evils unto their political opponents.
Yet a Republican can, as many did, oppose Obama and yet enthusiastically support Ben Carson because of their policies and positions, not their skin color. For Democrats, Republican opposition to Obama is frequently portrayed as racism. The explanations for Carson, when offered, range from the incoherent to the disgusting (i.e., portraying Carson as an Uncle Tom).
So, where do I come down on Confederate monuments? While my mother was from North Carolina, my Dad was from Wyoming. I grew up as an Air Force brat, an Air Force that had been desegregated by Harry Truman, a Democrat, seven years before I was born. Most of my memories as a child come from Pennsylvania and California. I now live in Wisconsin. So I am basically a northern Republican and do not view the Civil War as a lost cause or a war of Northern aggression. After all, the South started it by firing on Fort Sumter. I view the Civil War as two things: A Victory, and Over.
Something common among the military, but not always understood by civilians, is the way that true warriors can fight so hard during a war, but then see those on “the other side” as fellow warriors after the war is over, even getting together to commemorate those fallen in battle. Thus, I can read a book like Rod Gragg’s “Covered with Glory: the 26th North Carolina Infantry at the Battle of Gettysburg” and not be rooting for my side to win or the South to lose. Instead, I seek an understanding of what they went through and suffered.
Towards the end of the first day of fighting, a federal soldier, Corporal Charles H McConnell of the 24th Michigan was falling back. He took his last bullet, and aiming at a large man in gray 30 yards away, pulled the trigger. The large man was Colonel John R Lane, of the 26th North Carolina. The bullet hit Lane in the back of the neck, exiting out through his teeth. It was a horrendous wound that nearly killed him. Yet 40 years later, at the anniversary of the battle, Lane and McConnell met again and became friends. How is this possible?
Ultimately, it is because warriors realize, better than most, that in war, those on both sides are caught up in something larger than themselves. Once settled, it is time to move on and turn swords into plowshares. I can admire as tragic figures “those on the other side” like Lee and Stonewall Jackson. I can get a glimpse of the internal struggle that some faced as they came up against good friends in battle like Armistead and Harrison at Gettysburg. In short, I see them as people who suffered and not part of an issue to be fought over.
In this light, when it comes to monuments in cemeteries or places like Gettysburg, I would be very strongly opposed to their removal. As for the others, I see them as much more problematic. I do believe that some of these celebrate the military tradition of the South, something that is much stronger than it is in the North. It is a part of who they are or at least were. Note that what is often called the Confederate flag was not actually the flag of the Confederacy but a battle flag. Like it or not, it is their history. But I can also understand the difficulty in separating this from the reason for which the war was fought, the preservation of the evil of slavery.
The love of history in me would hate to see their blanket removal as something akin to how Islamic radicals seek to purge the areas they conquer of any vestige of the things they oppose. Ultimately, I wish those involved would learn to be more like Lane and McConnell. I wish we could look back on the Civil War as a tragedy that engulfed the nation, caused by our compromise with the evil of slavery.
Frankly, it should be much easier for us than it was for Lane and McConnell, after all, no one alive today actually fought in the Civil War. Maybe a solution is that, rather than remove the Civil War monuments, we should focus on the positive endeavor of building more monuments to those who fought so hard to end the legacy of segregation in the Civil Rights movement.
Memorial Day
Tom’s father had died a couple of years earlier in an accident, leaving a wife and four children. It was the middle of the depression and times were tough. Tom, being the oldest, worked while finishing High School, to help make ends meet. After he graduated, he joined the military, and after training was sent to Nicholas Army Air Field in the Philippines. There he did what most military people do: perform their normal jobs while periodically being interrupted by various drills.
Tom could see the approaching storm that would become WWII and mentioned this in his letters home. He wrote of how they had received a shipment of fighters, but that they were in crates and needed to be assembled. They were still assembling them when the war started on December 7,1941. The Japanese invaded the Philippines the next day. Tom and the rest of the troops, along with their Filipino allies, fought valiantly. With their base destroyed they, retreated to Bataan.
Roosevelt promised reinforcements, so they struggled to hold out till they arrived. In March Roosevelt ordered MacArthur to leave and go to Australia. Tom and the rest of those left behind continued to fight on, till they could be reinforced. But in the end, there was no way to win. The promised reinforcements were never sent; food and ammunition ran out; and the Japanese force was too strong. Yet still they fought to hold out. Then their positions were overrun, and on April 10, 1942, exhausted, starving, wounded and sick (most had malaria and/or dysentery), they surrendered.
But as horrible as their ordeal had been, the worst was yet to come. The Japanese commander had ordered provisions be set aside for the expected 25,000 prisoners. But he was unaware that the real number of captured Americans and Filipinos was more than 75,000. Nor was he aware of just how bad their condition was. They had held out as long as possible and so when they did surrender they were in very bad shape. In short, the provisions he ordered to be set aside were nowhere near what was needed, and the Japanese army command structure did not allow for questioning orders, even to correct mistakes in information.
To make matters worse the Japanese viewed surrender, whatever the circumstances, as a dishonor. Thus it did not matter how valiantly they fought, how long they had held out, or how low they had been on food and ammunition, they had surrendered and did not deserve to be treated honorably. Since there were not enough trucks to transport all the them, what came to be called the Bataan Death March began.
Tom was not one of the lucky few whose guards, realizing how inhumane the situation was, just let their captives go. Even though he was sick, he was forced to march the 30 miles in the blazing hot sun to the rail center. Most had no food or water for the march. There was no stopping, and many were beaten. Many just died on the road; others were shot if they did not keep up. If Tom was fortunate, he would have still had shoes. Many didn’t and their feet burned as they walked on the hot asphalt as it baked under the sun.
At the rail head in San Fernando Tom and other prisoners were pushed into rail cars. Because of the large numbers of prisoners, they were packed in as tightly as possible and in the hot sun, the metal walls of the cars burned unprotected skin. Many lost consciousness from the sweltering heat of the boxcars. Others suffocated in the cramped space. Yet they were packed in so tightly, the unconscious and the dead remained standing until the cars were unloaded at Capas.
Tom survived the trip to Capas. From there Tom was once again forced to march the last eight miles to Camp O’Donnell. Suffering from sickness, starvation, and exhaustion, Tom only lasted five days in Camp O’Donnell, dying on May 18th, 1942. He was 22 years old. Later Private Thomas A. Hushbeck would be posthumously awarded a Purple Heart.
When people ask me what Memorial Day means to me, I think of my Uncle Tom, even though he died thirteen years before I was born. For me it is his holiday, but not his alone. There were the eight who died on Lexington Green in that first engagement of the Revolutionary war, and all the others who came after them to secure our independence, along with those who gave their lives in the War of 1812, the Civil War, the Spanish-American War, World War I, World War II, the Korean War, The Vietnam War, Gulf War I and now the war on Terrorism in Iraq, and which continues in Afghanistan, and that is just to name the major conflicts.
Whenever there was a need, Americans like my uncle Tom have step forward, knowing what may happen. Like my Uncle Tom, many have paid the ultimate price so that we can live in freedom. Many may consider “Freedom is not Free” a cliché, just another slogan for a bumper sticker, but the cost of our freedom was paid by my Uncle Tom, and all the others who have in the past, or will in the future give their lives in defense of this country. It is for them that we fly the flag on this day. It is because of them we can enjoy the time off and relax on this day. They have given all that they had, and suffered in ways we can never imagine so that we might live in freedom. So while I enjoy the day, I will remember them. For they deserved to be honored and remembered.
