The Fall of Assad, and the Fate of Syria and the Middle East

This had been happening over the past two weeks, but I didn't want to say anything about it because I'm tired of getting ahead of myself on historic events as they occur, but in the Middle East - alongside all the fighting and bloodshed - we're witnessing the swift and sudden downfall of a tyrannical regime in Syria (via Willem Marx at NPR):

A rapid advance by Syrian rebel groups on the country's capital has led to the collapse of Bashar al-Assad's control of a nation his family had ruled for half a century.

Crowds celebrated the seismic political shift in the streets of Damascus overnight and into Sunday, as Syrian state television broadcast a statement from a group of rebels, one dressed in a black hoodie, who announced that all Syrian prisoners had been freed from jail and Assad had been deposed.

The man reading that statement on television, just hours after the city's fall, had echoed calls from the leading group in this lightning rebel offensive, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, demanding that citizens and fighters alike ensure the country's national institutions were protected. He ended his statement with a declaration after more than 13 years of bloody civil conflict: "Long Live a Free Syria..."

The British-based war monitoring group, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, said Assad had left the country to an undisclosed destination.

Hours later, Russia, which had long used its military to prop up the Assad regime against wide-ranging opposition forces, also said that the toppled president had left the country. The Russian foreign ministry did not say where he had gone.

There's a timeline at AP News that helps highlight just how quick this whole turnabout moved. A lot of foreign policy think tanks are working overtime - like this Atlantic Council - to figure out the massive implications that Assad's fall means not just for Syria but for the entire Middle East region.

We're talking about a key Arab nation that had long contributed to the violent instability and chaos in the region well back into the 1950s. Syria - alongside Iran, and backed by Russia - were themselves backers for such extremists groups like Hezbollah in Lebanon, which contributed to ongoing violence with Israel and leaving Lebanon in political and economic turmoil for decades.

Syria itself has been broken by a decades-long civil war since 2011 - among a number of uprisings going back to the 1980s - that sent millions of civilians fleeing as refugees to avoid the indiscriminate bombing and gassing that Assad's regime deployed as means of putting down resistance. Gods, I last blogged about this civil war in 2015 when I pledged some financial support to help those refugees, and the war itself in 2013 when Obama's presidency attempted to defuse Assad's use of chemical weapons in that civil war.

The end of Assad means only a temporary respite in that war, unfortunately. Syria as a nation was cobbled together by a mix of differing ethnicities and religious groups - Kurds, Turks, Sunnis, Shi'a, Christians, dozens of smaller cultural communities - some of whom remain hostile towards each other even in this moment of possible nation-building into functioning coalitions.

This is the thing a lot of Western nations are dreading: the potential of Syria to backslide much like Iraq or Afghanistan or Libya into still-broken internally squabbling states that could become home to corruption and religious extremists.

In opposition to that dread, there looks to be a sizable amount of hope. The HTS rebels who claimed victory are posing - at the moment - as functional moderates looking to legitimize their rule. In the years that they've received training from their Turkish handlers, there is the decent possibility that they've learned how Turkey handles religious tolerance and can placate the larger Christian populations in Syria. The Turkish government - looking to reduce or end the ongoing Kurdish separatist movement in their own borders - would want Syria to take the burden of dealing with the Kurds: This would require genuine coalition-building.

A stabilized Syria should mean an end to one of the largest refugee crises facing the Middle East (and Europe/United States). Fourteen million displaced Syrians could start moving back - hopefully within weeks - just as long as serious rebuilding efforts are funded by foreign aid to rebuild cities and homes to move back to. Ending this crisis could well relieve a lot of discontent among the sanctuary nations - especially across Europe - that had their Far Right parties spewing racist outrage to promote their own agendas.

There is also the possibility that the end of Assad's regime - which was hostile towards Israel and a major backer of Hezbollah and Hamas - could shift the dynamics of the ongoing bloodshed that Netanyahu's government has been inflicting on Palestinian and Lebanese civilians over the past year. Cutting off Syrian support of Hezbollah ought to weaken their position in Lebanon to where the broken power-sharing system falls apart. Pacifying Lebanon ought to mollify Israel... although letting up on the ethnic cleansing in Gaza and the West Bank is going to require different tactics.

A lot of this is going to involve diplomacy - and money - and gods help us if any of this drags long enough until trump is back in the White House to break it all out of his greedy self-interest, but let's not stress about that just yet (get on Air Force One NOW Biden, and get to Damascus to hammer out a deal before Christmas goddammit!).

The most obvious thing to note out of all this is how broken Russia is right now. As Michael Scollon and Frud Bezhan at Radio Free Europe point out:

When Vladimir Putin took the reins of power in a post-Soviet Russia in shambles a quarter-century ago, he immediately set about restoring Moscow's status as a global power.

It took 15 years, but Russia heralded its military intervention in the Syrian civil war as proof of its return as a force to be reckoned with on the international stage.

Moscow leveraged that image to expand its influence throughout the Middle East and beyond as a counterweight to the West.

Now, the fall of the government of President Bashar al-Assad, a key ally of Moscow, has dealt a serious blow to Russia's great-power ambitions.

"Putin's military adventure in Syria was designed to demonstrate that Russia is a great power and can project its influence abroad," said Phillip Smyth, a Middle East expert. "Losing Syria is a huge slap in the face for Putin."

Assad's ouster represents not only a reputational hit to Russia but likely a major strategic setback.

Syria is home to two major Russia military installations: an air base in Hmeimim and a naval base in Tartus. The latter is Russia's only warm-water naval base and provides Moscow access to the Mediterranean Sea...

Reports were fast and furious on social media that Russia's fleet at Tartus sailed out days ago - abandoning Assad even then - arguably forced to travel the long way around to the Atlantic and Baltic Sea, as getting back into the Black Sea means facing an eager Ukrainian torpedo boat drone attack that would happily sink it (that is if Turkey reopened the path through Istanbul's waterway for them).

Moscow capitalized on its involvement in both Syria and Ukraine to sell itself as a power capable of challenging the United States, NATO, and the West in general while expanding its global reach from the Mediterranean to Africa and Latin America.

Following Russia's all-out invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Syria became more of an asset for Moscow, experts say, while also presenting the challenge of maintaining military campaigns on two fronts...

Syria's fall quickly makes it clear that Russia can't handle a two-front war. Putin is so obsessed and focused on conquering Ukraine that he can no longer provide manpower or equipment or time to any of the client states he's been propping up across the globe. Russia - aside from their nuclear missiles, and there's even some serious doubt about that - is no longer a military powerhouse. Their political and economic influences are just as diminished.

In fact, he's been vacuuming up equipment and manpower from those client states - look at all the weapons manufactured in Iran, look at the North Korean troops "volunteered" to slam into the meat grinder in Kursk - in a desperate attempt to force Ukraine to a negotiation table where Putin hopes to retain his land gains to justify retreating and repairing his losses. Putin dares not make any more mass conscription efforts among his own Russian people without risking draft riots. And he can't provide any mercenary support - bye, Wagner! - overseas (especially now that his long-range bases are cut off).

It used to be from the Cold War onward that Soviet Russia - and Putin's Russia - were militarily and financially capable of spreading their influence and support across the entire globe. Putin was attempting to market Russia as an alternative to other global powers like France and the U.S. across Africa, but now those efforts seem empty and likely unfulfilled. Client states like Cuba and Venezuela are now literally struggling to keep the lights on. Other nations that could be allies in Russia's time of need - China and India - are now too self-sufficient and too powerful themselves to where they can stand on the sidelines and see what benefits them most as things fall apart.

There's a lot of chaos still out there - not just in Syria and in Ukraine - and a lot of it can get worse when a meddling and incompetent trump gets back into office.

Keep hoping the good things happen before then.

This Is What Censorship and Whitewashing Look Like

So this Sunday, Doonesbury ran a comic strip that directly attacked Ron DeSantis' attempt in Florida to whitewash American History: (edit, I had a bad link earlier. second edit: where are all the views coming from? please comment below...)

I can't show the whole strip (copyright), but you can click the link to see it. While Trudeau is usually good on research - when he states a fact in his strips, he can vouch for the sources - he does make a mistake claiming that I-95 is the best escape route to take. Christ, I-95 is a parking lot just like I-4! The teacher will never make it. Take the backroads like Highway 441!

All kidding aside, the story doesn't end with this strip angering up DeSantis or any "Lost Cause" wingnut. Because it angered up a major media conglomerate instead, as the Gannett newspaper chain decided not to run the strip as though they could hide it (via Keegan Kelly at Cracked.com):

This past Sunday, many readers whose regional newspapers are owned by the multi-billion dollar, conservative-leaning mass media holding company Gannett flipped to the funny pages to find that Doonesbury was conspicuously missing from its usual position in the printing. Former Iowa State Representative and president of the Veterans National Recovery Center Bob Krause noticed that absence and made sure to show Twitter what Gannett hid from them.

Gannett owns almost 400 newspapers in the United States, including the national publication USA Today and local papers in 44 states, among which is Krause's Iowa, where the Des Moines Register followed company protocol and cut out the above strip from circulation. Apparently, Gannett didn't want its readers knowing that seven of the states in the U.S. Confederacy explicitly cited the issue of slavery in their declarations of secession. Gannett also doesn't want comic strip fans learning about how almost 100,000 white southerners chose loyalty to their country over preserving slavery as they fought for the Union during the Civil War.

Many conservative-dominated states have passed legislation designed to prevent education about historical topics such as slavery and civil rights, but the state that Trudeau name-drops in Sunday's censored Doonesbury strip has drawn the most attention for how hilariously absurd its lengthy ban list stretches – a school district in Florida even made national headlines this past summer for banning an Arthur book from the school library...

I'd written before about how Doonesbury sits on the edge of controversy and how newspapers try to find a balance to ensure First Amendment rights aren't violated (often by putting the comic on the Op-Ed page). Here, the Gannett media corporation couldn't be bothered with that, and just straight up banned the Sunday comic. Gannett however forgot that Doonesbury is available through other sources - such as the GoComics archive - and that too many people would notice that void in the Sunday funnies.

What we're seeing here in real time is the Far Right Republican effort - led by DeSantis and a dozen-plus Republican governors - to whitewash American history to hide the "shame" of slavery, civil war, and racism from the schoolbooks in order to "protect the sensitivities of privileged Whites." They're getting help by these media empires - mostly owned by conservative rich folk, and owning most of our newspapers, radios, and local television stations - who want to pander to the wingnut Narrative of White Victimhood and the avoidance of literal centuries of racism and sexism that underlines our nation's history. (It ought to horrify everyone to realize how much control over our media that's held by so few corporations)

These history deniers, these panderers, these censors are incapable of even debating what it is they're trying to shove down the throats of our school-age children, and so they will resort to silence because they cannot convince. And this wasn't censored just in Florida: it reached as far as Iowa (a Union state) showing how far the company's - and the wingnut conservatives' - reach was on this.

All these wingnut deniers are doing is highlighting their own fear, their own ignorance, their own racism.

Shame on Gannett corporation for violating the First Amendment. Shame on DeSantis and every Florida Republican who cannot accept the racist history of our state and our nation. Shame on them for failing to recognize their sins and work to improve themselves by, you know, being less racist and less sexist.

I hope to God Trudeau sues Gannett on free speech rights. I hope to God the Republicans lose the next ten election cycles so their inept and racist legislation gets flushed out of our legal codes.

Stop voting Republican, Florida. Stop voting Republican, America. They don't want people to know the facts about our history, about our current economic and social inequalities, they don't want people to think period.

Update: I received a follow-up tweet from Ruben Bolling (aka Tom The Dancing Bug creator) on Bluesky - wait do we call them tweets there? - that he had done some digging into the matter, and had spoken to someone from Doonesbury's publisher that Gannett Media had "simply canceled" their subscription to the strip. Bolling considers it "not censorship, but a bad business decision."

I dunno. It depends a little bit on when the Gannett owners decided to drop Doonesbury. It just seems a little too coincidental that they drop the strip for ALL their papers - even in places where it's still popular - as this particular comic was getting prepped for print.

One of my core arguments remain: Florida Republicans are whitewashing our state's and nation's history, to the detriment of ALL our youth and adults who need the facts from the past to understand what needs repair in our society to improve our future. The corporate media is doing nothing to fight against that censorship, no matter how this looks.

Never the Honest Answer from Republicans

As part of her ongoing campaign to survive long enough for trump to get jailed / barred from the ballot to be the Republican presidential candidate for 2024, Nikki Haley has been making the tour stops taking questions from people so she can sell herself as presidential timber.

Of course, this means she's exposing her political, cultural, and historical ignorance when she does so, such as making a massive gaffe when quizzed about a simple fact of American history (via Ashley Lopez at NPR):

Former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley is facing significant backlash after failing to mention slavery as a driving force behind the Civil War during a campaign stop in New Hampshire.

At an event on Wednesday, a voter asked Haley: "what was the cause of the United States Civil War?"

She replied that the cause "was basically how government was going to run, the freedoms, and what people could and couldn't do."

"I think it always comes down to the role of government and what the rights of the people are," Haley continued. "And I will always stand by the fact that, I think, government was intended to secure the rights and freedoms of the people."

Haley essentially regurgitated the "States Rights" defense that the former Confederacy flew as their excuse to the historians once the bloodshed stopped. At no point did she even explain what "rights of the people" were getting fought over. Even the person who asked the question replied "you didn't mention slavery."

So let's go over this, one more time about how the Civil War was unavoidable because slavery was the dividing issue between Free and Slave states.

The Confederacy happened because most of the pro-slavery southern states would not accept the election results - both the popular vote AND Electoral College - going decisively towards the anti-slavery Republican Party in 1860. Even with Abraham Lincoln promising only to "limit slavery's spread" and not abolish it outright, the slaveowner class knew it still meant the death of their "peculiar institution" because the industry needing slavery - Cotton - consumed all agricultural land and it needed to expand.

And when slave state after slave state seceded from the Union in that period between November 1860 through March 1861 (before Lincoln would be sworn in as the next President), nearly every declaration of secession included Slavery as the motivation.

Nikki Haley's own state of South Carolina - infamously the birthplace of secession (its incubator since the days of John C. Calhoun and talk of Nullification) - put slavery - and the growing resistance to the Fugitive Slave Acts - as center to their "Declaration of the Immediate Causes" and the core argument for their attempt to break the Constitution: 

...The General Government, as the common agent, passed laws to carry into effect these stipulations of the States. For many years these laws were executed. But an increasing hostility on the part of the non-slaveholding States to the institution of slavery, has led to a disregard of their obligations, and the laws of the General Government have ceased to effect the objects of the Constitution. The States of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New York, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Wisconsin and Iowa, have enacted laws which either nullify the Acts of Congress or render useless any attempt to execute them. In many of these States the fugitive is discharged from service or labor claimed, and in none of them has the State Government complied with the stipulation made in the Constitution. The State of New Jersey, at an early day, passed a law in conformity with her constitutional obligation; but the current of anti-slavery feeling has led her more recently to enact laws which render inoperative the remedies provided by her own law and by the laws of Congress. In the State of New York even the right of transit for a slave has been denied by her tribunals; and the States of Ohio and Iowa have refused to surrender to justice fugitives charged with murder, and with inciting servile insurrection in the State of Virginia. Thus the constituted compact has been deliberately broken and disregarded by the non-slaveholding States, and the consequence follows that South Carolina is released from her obligation...

If the conflict ever was over the idea of States Rights, it was over WHICH states who have more rights over the others. South Carolina - and the other slave-owning states - found themselves in opposition to the freedman states that didn't want slavery imposed on them. Rather than accept the democratic - or  republican if you're going by the Roman model - concept of the majority having a say when the Republicans won outright control of the federal government in 1860, the slave states got upset they weren't in charge like they were in the 1820s or even 1852 anymore, and decided they wanted to take their ball and go home.

Just to show how the other slave states were taking it, here's the declaration of secession from my birth state of Georgia. They mentioned slavery right off the bat, and more often than South Carolina's:

The people of Georgia having dissolved their political connection with the Government of the United States of America, present to their confederates and the world the causes which have led to the separation. For the last ten years we have had numerous and serious causes of complaint against our non-slave-holding confederate States with reference to the subject of African slavery. They have endeavored to weaken our security, to disturb our domestic peace and tranquility, and persistently refused to comply with their express constitutional obligations to us in reference to that property, and by the use of their power in the Federal Government have striven to deprive us of an equal enjoyment of the common Territories of the Republic. This hostile policy of our confederates has been pursued with every circumstance of aggravation which could arouse the passions and excite the hatred of our people, and has placed the two sections of the Union for many years past in the condition of virtual civil war. Our people, still attached to the Union from habit and national traditions, and averse to change, hoped that time, reason, and argument would bring, if not redress, at least exemption from further insults, injuries, and dangers. Recent events have fully dissipated all such hopes and demonstrated the necessity of separation. Our Northern confederates, after a full and calm hearing of all the facts, after a fair warning of our purpose not to submit to the rule of the authors of all these wrongs and injuries, have by a large majority committed the Government of the United States into their hands. The people of Georgia, after an equally full and fair and deliberate hearing of the case, have declared with equal firmness that they shall not rule over them. A brief history of the rise, progress, and policy of anti-slavery and the political organization into whose hands the administration of the Federal Government has been committed will fully justify the pronounced verdict of the people of Georgia...

I'd quote more but good lord do my Peach State peeps go on and on about this.

You can tell from the Georgia declaration more than the South Carolina one how the slave states were framing the argument: That they were the ones under attack, that the poor slave states were getting pressured to change a perfectly legal and constitutional institution as human slavery, and that it's the fault of the abolition northern states who refuse to accept the natural order of things.

That view got spelled out by the Confederate Vice President Alexander Stephens, who bluntly makes slavery the Cornerstone of what the rebelling states wanted:

...Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite idea; its foundations are laid, its corner-stone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery subordination to the superior race is his natural and normal condition. This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth...

...The errors of the past generation still clung to many as late as twenty years ago. Those at the North, who still cling to these errors, with a zeal above knowledge, we justly denominate fanatics. All fanaticism springs from an aberration of the mind from a defect in reasoning. It is a species of insanity. One of the most striking characteristics of insanity, in many instances, is forming correct conclusions from fancied or erroneous premises; so with the anti-slavery fanatics. Their conclusions are right if their premises were. They assume that the negro is equal, and hence conclude that he is entitled to equal privileges and rights with the white man. If their premises were correct, their conclusions would be logical and just but their premise being wrong, their whole argument fails...

Spoken like true Far Right conservatives convinced of the righteousness of their side, which back in 1860 were the slave-owning Whites of the Southern Democratic faction. Today, the Far Right conservatives are the immigrant-bashing civil-rights-denying anti-woke anti-women Whites of the modern Republican Trumpian Party

These declarations were not only their excuses for giving up on the American Union, they were the foundations for the Lost Cause mythos that built up in the post-War Reconstruction and Jim Crow eras where the Southern states - even after slavery was abolished for good with the 13th Amendment - refused to accept the sins of slavery and tried to rewrite history to make themselves the victims of an aggressor North. In order for that Lost Cause to work - in order for the southerners and Klansmen and Confederate sympathizers to paint themselves as tragic heroes "betrayed" by abolitionists - the revisionists had to argue the fight was never about slavery.

So you get modern-day Confederate sympathizers - who are now all camped with a Conservative Republican Party that flipped from being the Party of Lincoln to the Party of Jeff Davis during the Southern Strategy of the 1960s-80s - who keep parroting that Lost Cause narrative as "vice signaling" to their fellow racists.

People should ask Nikki Haley about her assertation that the Civil War was about "the freedoms" for the people. Where was the "freedom" from an intrusive government when it came to the African-American slaves still in bondage when the Civil War started? Because according to the slave states like South Carolina and Georgia and Florida and Alabama and Mississippi and Louisiana and Texas and Arkansas and Tennessee and North Carolina and Virginia, their idea of government was making sure the Blacks had no freedoms at all.

The American Civil War - the first one, which by some measures never really finished because it's fueling the coal-burn of the second one we're in - was about slavery, Republicans. Stop feeding yourselves the Lost Cause myth that your party founders abhorred back in the day, because those slaveholders they fought weren't the heroes of that war, and neither are you when you keep plotting to reset our nation back to 1850. You're lying to yourselves, and you keep getting caught in spite of your denials.

Gods help us. This is how 2024 is going to be.

Thoughts On Gettysburg and on American History

We are again at the first of July, the anniversary of the three-day Battle of Gettysburg.

It's been ten years - on the 150th anniversary - since I started blogging about this day, which kind of scares me how long I've been blogging in some respects the same things over and over.

I think I keep linking the same YouTube clip of Buford railing about the high ground.

I'm a little sad that some of the other clips from that movie keep dying out, either to copyright restrictions or the YouTube provider quitting. My blogger history is full of dead links anymore.

Anywho, on this day 160 years ago, the Union army held the high ground and General Lee was too stubborn, prideful, and unwell from an untreated heart attack in March of that year to pack it up and relocate his army somewhere safer like (checks map) Daytona Beach Florida. C'mon Rebs, it's summertime, get some surf in!

I shouldn't joke about the Civil War. In some respects we're still fighting that war over basic human rights for Blacks and for our society as a whole. There's this deliberate step backwards into our nation's darker eras as Republican conservatives push to whitewash history and reject the constitutional liberties their more liberal predecessors created for the United States to make us a more diverse, democratic nation.

We're at a moment in American history where we are called - each of us - to wage battle for equal rights in education and the workplace and our communities and even in our own homes.

Anyway, Twitter is dying so that particular battlefield is turning to ash, just wanted to let you know before the Confederates try to outflank everybody to Mastadon.

(psst, I'm on Spoutible at @paulwartenberg doom me at your peril)

My Trip to Appomattox Court House

As part of my vacation last week, which was in a nearby state park, I took the opportunity to visit the historic American Civil War location of Appomattox Court House. The place where Grant forced Lee to surrender. The place where the Confederacy pretty much lost their fight to keep slavery.

As much as my visit to Gettysburg, this was something as a student of American History I wanted to do. So, with camera in hand, I took a quick break from my group's park activities to enjoy myself for a few hours.

First off, I visited the nearby American Civil War Museum. Not officially a part of the Appomattox Court House National Park (I think), they had a few galleries on display: One about the Civil War and the lead-up to what happened at Appomattox, and one about Black Emancipation.

After the visit, I drove down the road to the National Park

And into the Court House neighborhood that had been refurbished back to how it looked in 1865:

Appomattox Court House was a relatively small community on a major road between
Richmond and Lynchburg.

The McLean House from a distance

The Courthouse that gave the small community its name

This is it. Where the surrender terms were signed on April 9, 1865

Had to switch to my smartphone for the selfie...

The Room Where It Happened!

If you read up the history, most of the furniture in this room were either purchased or pilfered
by the Union officers who attended the signing, knowing full well how impactful
this moment was. What we see here are replicas based on what ended up at
the Smithsonian or private collections.

When I entered the McLean house as part of the tour, the guide warned me to duck my head a lot. Damn, people must have been short back in the 19th Century.

There is little evidence remaining from the momentous actions of April 1865. No sign of the two armies that gathered on the town's dirt road to witness Lee's armies surrendering their rifles to the Union army receiving them. All that remains are the quiet forested hills and the brick buildings preserved to document where and how it happened.

All that's left has been the troubled efforts of this nation to build the arc of history towards a pure justice for ALL Americans...

Anniversary: Looking Back Again at Gettysburg

On this day in 1863, General Lee ordered Pickett's Charge across the wide-open fields of Gettysburg, into military infamy. So important was this battle, our nation maintains a national park surrounding the city of Gettysburg itself. So it is vitally important to remember, as you read the maps of the national park, that at no time did the Confederate forces reach that McDonalds' drive-thru right off of Business US 15!

...what? 

They didn't have McDonalds' back then?! How historically inaccurate is THAT!!! Damn the man. No wonder Pickett was pissed afterwards, he wasn't able to get any Shamrock Shakes!

I blame Time Lords the Time Variance Authority.

Seriously, I wonder sometimes what it would have been like for the locals to grow up in the middle of a national monument.

(Note: I had originally inserted a You Tube clip about the battlefield preservation, but the more I watched it the more I worried it was a big-ass advert to sell memorabilia, so I deleted it. I will insert instead a better, more honorable You Tube clip)

Appomattox Surrender Day 2021

Every April 9th ought to be a national holiday in the United States.

This is the day Robert E. Lee surrendered the main armed force of the Confederacy to U.S. Grant's Union Army.

While the Civil War itself would continue on a few more weeks, for all intents the southern slaveowner insurrection attempting to keep slavery in the United States was over. The Thirteenth Amendment had just gotten passed in Congress and the antebellum world the Confederacy struggled to continue would be no more.

So to all of the Lost Causers/White Supremacists/"Slavery Wasn't All Bad" Far Right apologists:

SUCK IT, LOSERS.

YOU GOT YOUR ASSES KICKED.

THE CONFEDERATE BATTLE FLAG SHOULD HAVE THE WORD "LOSERS" SEWN ONTO BOTH SIDES OF THE FLAG SO WE CAN MAKE IT HISTORICALLY ACCURATE.

WE PLEDGE ALLIEGANCE TO THE STAR-SPANGLED BANNER, YOU SEDITIONIST FREAKS.

WE GOT THE RED WHITE AND BLUE ON THE MOON, DOUBLE SUCK IT YOU HATERS.

Seriously though, we need to make Appomattox Surrender Day a national holiday, during which we all point at anybody still gleeful about the Confederacy and laugh and laugh and laugh. It'll be like Guy Fawkes Day, but with more humiliating putdowns towards the segregationist assholes.

Thank you.

 

A Second Chance To Restore the Long Arc Towards Justice

I just want to post a link here to an important, must-read essay by Adam Serwer at The Atlantic, regarding our nation's poor civil rights history, and the chance we face today of making good on the promises of the post-Civil War Reconstruction Era:

Trump was elected president on a promise to restore an idealized past in which America’s traditional aristocracy of race was unquestioned. But rather than restore that aristocracy, four years of catastrophe have—at least for the moment—discredited it. Instead of ushering in a golden age of prosperity and a return to the cultural conservatism of the 1950s, Trump’s presidency has radicalized millions of white Americans who were previously inclined to dismiss systemic racism as a myth, the racial wealth gap as a product of Black cultural pathology, and discriminatory policing as a matter of a few bad apples...

The conditions in America today do not much resemble those of 1968. In fact, the best analogue to the current moment is the first and most consequential such awakening—in 1868. The story of that awakening offers a guide, and a warning. In the 1860s, the rise of a racist demagogue to the presidency, the valor of Black soldiers and workers, and the stories of outrages against the emancipated in the South stunned white northerners into writing the equality of man into the Constitution. The triumphs and failures of this anti-racist coalition led America to the present moment. It is now up to their successors to fulfill the promises of democracy, to make a more perfect union, to complete the work of Reconstruction...

You need to read the whole thing. It's arguably one of the most important works on modern racism - and its long deep roots to a failed Reconstruction - since Ta-Nehisi Coates' tenure - especially his brilliant argument "The Case For Reparations" - at that magazine.

Anniversary: Gettysburg

I dread the possibility of a time traveler going back to July 1 1863 and warning Union troops that if they win the battle then in another 154 years some jackass becomes President. I know there's no causality between one or the other, but the specter of trump becoming President would scare any honest patriot into fleeing for Canada.

Anyway, in memory of the troops who died and lived on the battlefield:

I Award You No Points trump, And May God Have Mercy On Us All

So this happened (via The Atlantic via other sources):

In an interview with Salena Zito for Sirius XM radio, Trump discussed the nastiness of the 2016 campaign... He was told that the 1828 race between John Quincy Adams and Andrew Jackson was the most similar, he said...

Direct quote from trump: I mean had Andrew Jackson been a little later you wouldn’t have had the Civil War. He was a very tough person, but he had a big heart. He was really angry that he saw what was happening with regard to the Civil War, he said, “There’s no reason for this.” People don’t realize, you know, the Civil War, if you think about it, why? People don’t ask that question, but why was there a Civil War? Why could that one not have been worked out?

Give me a second.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

"There's no reason for this?" Actually, there was. SLAVERY. The Southern states did not want to compromise on the issue, and confronted with the Northern states dominating the 1860 national elections they freaked out and declared civil war.

I've discussed this before: The Civil War wasn't really avoidable. The cultural, economic, and political divisions over slavery made it a certainty.

Andrew Jackson, by the way, knew it was coming. When he fought with John C. Calhoun and South Carolina over the tariff issue and Nullification, he noted "the tariff was only the pretext, and disunion and southern confederacy the real object. The next pretext will be the negro, or slavery question."

And Jackson was a slaveowner, and a nasty one to boot.

And Jackson had no heart (save for his wife Rachel and his profane parrot). Andrew Jackson was a sonofabitch. He made so many enemies they formed a political party (the Whigs) to oppose him. He left thousands of Native Americans to suffer and die. He charged into duels to the death so often he had a f-cking body count even Generals (and he was one) couldn't match before he got into the White House.

trump's statements on this showcase a level of idiocy, failure of knowledge, and outright ignorance that even this movie scene cannot be harsh enough:

My mom was a history teacher. I had her for AP European and she was disappointed I only scored a 4 on the exam. She also hated that I fell asleep in class: dammit Mom, the air conditioner was busted, I kept passing out! Even with me sleeping through half the class, I learned more history than this imbecile pretending to be the President Loser of the Popular Vote.

If trump had been in one of Mom's history classes, she would have flunked him out.

And this idiot is in the White House. And 62 million of you voted him there! How idiotic were YOU?!

God help us.

Anniversary: Battle of Gettysburg Day Three, and The Real Cause of the Civil War

I have, right here, the actual Honest To God reason for the Civil War:

DONUTS WITH RED WHITE AND BLUE SPRINKLES are SERIOUS BUSINESS, ROBERT DOWNEY JR!!!!!!!

...okay, back to the history lesson.

On this day at Gettysburg, General Lee decided on an all-out attack at the Union center. Believing the Northern forces would be too spread out and reinforcing the flanks he had attacked on Day Two, he wanted to send as massive a number of troops he could - three divisions - to break the Union line altogether.

Problem was distance. It was pretty much a half-mile march across open terrain, and there was no damn way any army would last long crossing that space.

Look at that: that's what 14,000 men had to cross facing 10,000 guns in a near-perfect defensive position...

Lee planned on a massive artillery barrage as a means of softening up the Union lines before he sent his divisions across. It didn't work: Confederate artillery overshot the Union defensive positions along Cemetery Ridge leaving most of those troops and their own cannons intact. And the South didn't have enough artillery to ensure they could take enough Union positions out.

And somewhere before 3:00 PM, Pickett's Charge - along with Trimble and Pettigrew's divisions - marched across that open field.

It ruined the Confederate army: over 60 percent of those divisions were killed, wounded or captured. Generals like Lewis Armistead were killed. Troops and officers Lee could not replace were gone forever.

Instead of a decisive Confederate victory - and one that could garner European recognition and support - it was a decisive Union victory. Combined with the loss that same day of the key city of Vicksburg - which meant the Mississippi River was under full Union control - it signaled that the Southern states would not, could not win their war to preserve their way of life (i.e., agrarian plutocracy driven by slave labor and King Cotton).

And yet they kept fighting for two more years of civil war... and a hundred years of Jim Crow segregation and lynching... and another fifty years fighting the civil rights laws of the 1960s and today... /headdesk

Anniversary: Battle of Gettysburg at Little Round Top

Fighting would continue for the remainder of the day, but Little Round Top held. The bayonet charge saved the Union flank, and in its own way the Union itself.

Colonel Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain of the 20th Maine received the Medal of Honor.

Anniversary: Battle of Gettysburg

First three days of July in 1863, our nation witnessed one of history's most important, epic battles of all time.

...I think I got the wrong channel, hold on...

Oh, here we go.

That was General Buford, the first highest-ranking officer on the Union side to get to Gettysburg and realize how important the high ground was going to be there. He did what he could to prevent the Confederate forces to get that high ground first, and thanks to the arrival of General Reynolds' division they were able to deny the Confederates the hills on the eastern side of the battlefield.

On the Confederate side, General Longstreet realized exactly how bad the terrain was and argued against General Lee fighting for it, suggesting instead a flanking move towards DC to force General Meade to come off those hills. But Lee still wasn't sure where the entirety of the Union army was - his cavalry scouts under Jeb Stuart failed to report back, sowing confusion - and he wanted to fight, needing a victory on Union soil to convince Europe to recognize the Confederacy at last or else force the North to parley for a truce.

For the Union army, they were battered on that First day but held the high ground, giving them the advantage for the Second day...

Anniversary: Appomattox Surrender Day

April 9th.

We need to keep remembering this day as Appomattox Surrender Day until the rest of the Dixiecrat/Far Right/Confederate Dead-Enders realize they LOST, THEY GOT THEIR ASSES KICKED...

RIP Republican Party 1856 - 2015

(Update: Hello to the Crooks and Liars readers!  Hope you enjoy reading my blog!  Check back in, I should have a Drinking Game rules for the September GOP Debate up this weekend...)

What we once called the Republican Party here in the United States is officially dead.

Oh, the dying has been going on for some time, and in public view for the world to see.  It's just nobody did anything to stop it, and indeed far too many people within the ranks of the party encouraged and hastened the demise.

The structure and body of the Republican Party still remains, of course: however, the soul and spirit that once animated this august body has now departed.  What we have left is a shambling ghoul, with enough brain power to endlessly loop the same one-liner bursts of outrage but unable to perform more recognizable human traits such as empathy, adaptability, and long-range planning.

The Republicans began in the mid-1850s to fill the vacuum of the dying Whig Party at the most tumultuous period in American history.  While the party took on many of the Whig traits - a federalized Union, pro-business merchant/industrial class which required increased education and improved transportation networks (aka massive construction projects) - it also rallied around a radical agenda opposed to chattel slavery.  This became the singular trait of the party as the threat of slavery - driven by the southern states led by the upper class Democratic Party slaveowners -  spread to all states including ones that had been Free states for generations.

The fights between the Democrats and the Republicans in the 1850s revolved around: whether slavery should spread into Western territories, whether Northern states should assist Southern states in detaining any Blacks that Southerners accused of being runaways, whether slavery should even exist as it violated various concepts of religious and social decency.  To the Democrats, led by rich Southern slaveowners who could not comprehend a world without cheap labor to fuel their cotton empires, the call to end slavery came across as a call to their destruction.  To the Republicans, led by religious and civil rights leaders who could not accept the evils of physical and spiritual abuse, the push to spread slavery was a horror akin to war.

Those opposing views - intractable, uncompromising - led to war, the bloodiest our nation had ever seen.  The results of that war solidified the Republicans as the political power of the nation well into the 20th Century and kept the Democrats as a secondary yet stabilizing political presence that held onto power at a regional level through populist efforts and reactionary (Jim Crow) fervor.  By 1900, we as a nation were stuck with a two-party system, which keeps the balance.

There's another thing to mention called the Iron Law of Oligarchy: that any organization in a democratic/republican form of government will evolve into a group that serves its "oligarchic tendencies" (that is, it serves the needs of the elites rather than the needs of the lower-rung members).  A variation on that Law is that any party or organization reaches a moment where that group must either compromise on its founding principles to survive as an organization, or else collapse upon itself.

In the American system of governance, compromise was built into the process in the first place: the entire system of checks and balances is supposed to ensure that the three branches work in harmony, and when the factions of party emerged the rules were tweaked and re-enforced to ensure the checks and balances would make the parties aim for bipartisanship.  It becomes an issue of which oligarchs hold sway over other oligarchs to maintain a balance, through which they keep the lower classes mollified with reasonable laws and policies.

Most of the times, this worked: whenever needed, a shift in the political paradigms allowed one party to gain favor and enact reforms.  The Progressive Era of the early 20th Century, for example, was when reformer factions in both parties were able to direct legislation that fixed most corrupt practices in business and politics and also led to serious reforms such as the women's vote.

But something changed.  A restructuring of the parties after the Civil Rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s led to a realignment of party ideologies.  Where conservative and liberal values were split between Republican and Democratic as social, religious, and economic agendas - Republicans were economic conservative and social liberal, Democrats were social conservative and economic liberal - in 1968 the Republicans made the conscious decision to court all conservative thought into their own ranks.

It was called the Southern Strategy, because the Democrats had gone in on passing civil liberties laws that alienated their Southern factions left over from the Civil War.  Rather than let those Southern votes alienate themselves into a regional third-party element (the Dixiecrats of 1948), the Republicans realized they could count on those voters as a cohesive bloc that would secure state and legislative powers and even the occasional Presidential win.

As a result, the Republican Party became more conservative on ALL issues, and those issues began to intermingle to where economic policy blended into religious policy and overwhelmed social policy.  Where there were points of moderation, of seeking common ground between ideological poles, the Republicans shifted Hard Right on all gears and kept going Right.

The conservative media keeps calling the strategy a "myth" or a liberal lie - and like to point out that it used to be Democrats who relied on such a strategy during the New Deal era - but the evidence is pretty strong (Hi, Lee Atwater!) over the decades that the Republicans made the moves to court and hold such voters, and to pander to them to win elections.

The Republicans keep priding themselves on being "The Party of Lincoln" yet it's been the Republicans since the 1990s who have actively sought to suppress voting rights for Blacks.

The Republicans keep pushing their own goalposts, resetting the ideological purity for their party so far Right Wing that the party no longer respects the very concept of bipartisanship, no longer considers the need for checks and balances within government to promote compromise and acceptance of issue resolutions by the majority.

As a result, we're seeing the proof of that Iron Law of Oligarchy.  Where a party must choose between survival by compromise or else self-destruct by adhering to dogma.  Rather than survive by compromise as parties did before to continue onward, the Republicans are now choosing self-destruction much in the same way the Southern Democratic leadership did back in 1860 when they chose secession over dealing with a Lincoln-led Republican victory.

The Republicans are openly choosing to nuke from orbit any much-needed immigration reforms.  The drum-beats by Trump and now pretty much the whole Presidential primary field - which will dictate the entire party's platform going into 2016 - has been one of racist demagoguery of Hispanics.  The party is pretty much burning down every bridge to a voting bloc the party was desperate to win over after their losses in 2012 proved that ethnic group was needed for elections at the national level.

The Republicans are openly running against immigration reforms that a majority - or at least a plurality - of Americans want to make it easier for immigrants to come legally to the U.S. and apply for citizenship.  The only thing the Republicans take away from that polling is just the "enforcement" part of border security, which they want to implement by building Trump's Wall (and creating a black market on high ladders and tunnel diggers) as a costly boondoggle (and no, Mexico WILL NOT pay for your damn wall, Donald).

And now the Republicans are making a mockery of our Constitution by openly calling for repeals of the 14th Amendment and its citizenship clause.  They want to end "birthright citizenship" at the expense of alienating hundreds of thousands of existing citizens - four of whom are primary candidates! - and also threaten the very concept of citizenship for millions of Americans those conservatives would well seek to purge as "Un-American" if they ever got the chance.

And there's even spokespersons among the media conservatives openly calling for slavery (!) - effectively ignoring the 13th Amendment - imposed on illegals as though that would be a good thing.

What had been two of the signature achievements of the early Republican Party -back when the Republicans were those who championed civil rights - are now sitting targets for Republican ire and proposed destruction.

And I haven't even touched on how the Republicans are calling for an end to women's right to vote.

All because the Republican Party isn't the Republican Party anymore.

It's the Southern Slaveowner Party.  Back from the ashes of 1865 and hoping to tear the United States apart again.

This is what you are now, people.  You aren't the Party of Lincoln or Grant or Teddy Roosevelt.  You're the Party of John C. Calhoun.  You're openly calling for an end to voting rights for people not from your tribe, you're openly race-baiting anymore, you're openly calling for a return to slavery as a means of social and economic dominance.

The Republican Party is dead.  All that's running in its place now is an imposter force looking to con more voters.

At Gettysburg

I've mentioned before I wanted to come in person to Gettysburg National Park so I could bask in the history.  So this year I did.

Went to the park with my older brother - who lives in the area - and we spent most of the day there.  We did the film and Cyclorama (a wraparound massive painting depicting the final engagement of the three-day battle), walked about the Visitor Center - which had some special activities going on due to the anniversary of the battle - before driving out by car to the key points of the battlefield.  It is spread out at such distances that going by car is the quickest way to see it all (although biking it or riding Segways are options: hiking is for masochists).

What follows is a pictorial travelogue depicting the horrors of letting your older brother try to parallel park everywhere.  Oh, and the national park.

Arriving at the Visitor Center

Hanging Out With my Brother From Another Statue, the inventor of the chokeslam,
the Sage of Springfield, the Ayatollah of RockanRolla, Abraham Lincoln!

With my real-life brother Eric, checking out the historic firearms used in the war, outside the film
and Cyclorama studios.

Scenes from the Cyclorama

Signage from the Cyclorama

In the back porch of the Visitor Center, they are drilling the new recruits.

All along the Auto Tour - the road path circling across all the key parts of the battlefield -
there are memorials to every brigade, every division, every Corps, every state.

General Reynolds memorial

The Macpherson farm, along the first part of the tour, where the fighting began.

The memorial for the Eternal Light Peace... which was surrounded by cannons and
signs of battle.  Irony?  Sad?  Human, I suppose...

Some of the artillery positions along Seminary Ridge, where the Confederate Army
lined themselves during the Second and Third days of the battle.

The stone wall of Seminary Ridge.

North Carolina's memorial

Part of the North Carolina memorial overlooking the open field between the two armies.

I am pointing at the horizon.  Over there is the Union position.  Across this field Lee will order
two massive divisions to charge on the Third Day in an all-out attack.  Just look at how open that field is,
how far that is to march...

General Robert E Lee's memorial.

The Florida memorial

Florida Memorial

General Longstreet's memorial, which is kinda in a hidden spot and not as
popularly visited...

General - and President - Eisenhower's farm 

The Georgia Memorial

For mom: the Alabama Memorial

 And here is me at Little Round Top, at the far left flank of the Union line, where Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain and the 20th Maine held their position under furious attack.

The stone wall used by the 20th Maine to hold the line.

Along Little Round Top, overlooking Devil's Den, where some of the bloodiest fighting took place.

Re-enactors, I think, walking along the memorials atop Little Round Top.
The actual re-enacting is going to take place on Saturday (on the 4th),
which I figure will have a big turnout (weather permitting).

 And one of the last stops of the tour: the Union line of the Third Day.  The Angle.  Pickett's Charge.

General Lewis Armistead's memorial. Of Pickett's Charge, his brigade reached this far before being overwhelmed.
Known as the High Watermark of the Confederacy, this is the closest the Confederates would ever get
to a major victory that could have won foreign support and convinced the Union to end the fighting.

The Copse of Trees

The other side of the open field that Pickett's Charge went across.  It seems almost
maddening to send 12,500 troops across such open fields, up towards a heavily defended line,
towards an army waiting for you.  Did Lee think numbers alone would work?  Did Lee
believe the legends already building about his success, about the determination of his soldiers?
Either way, Pickett's Charge broke the Confederate Army.

Also, there's a video clip of being atop an observation tower overlooking the Peach Orchard (some cursing involved, so NSFW).

Sickles was really an idiot.  Buford would have done better.

So I've made my pilgrimage to the battlefield.  As it goes, my vacation is going well, hope to visit Fort McHenry and to stick around for the 4th of July celebration in DC.