Here’s exhibit A:
White House chief of staff John Kelly reportedly told other members of the Trump administration that if it were up to him the number of refugees admitted into the U.S. would be between zero and one. — thehill.com/...
Many of the 85,000 refugees we accepted in 2016 were fleeing wars we either started or helped fuel with weapons. John Kelly has participated in many of these wars, for several decades. He has no sympathy for the victims of the foreign wars he’s actively participated in (most of these victims are black or brown).
He also seems to have very little sympathy for the victims of other atrocities, oh, I don’t know, like slavery:
“I would tell you that Robert E. Lee was an honorable man,” Kelly told Ingraham. “He was a man that gave up his country to fight for his state, which 150 years ago was more important than country. It was always loyalty to state first back in those days. Now it’s different today. But the lack of an ability to compromise led to the Civil War, and men and women of good faith on both sides made their stand where their conscience had them make their stand.” — www.washingtonpost.com/…
Let’s get to the obvious. Robert E. Lee was not an honorable man. His father-in-law had promised manumission upon his death to 150 persons he held in slavery. When he died, they fell into Lee’s hands. Lee reneged and told these 150 people they would stay enslaved for another 5 years (the Civil War intervened). When some escaped after he violated the promise made to them, Lee had them captured and tortured. He tore apart families of enslaved persons and claimed slavery was bad for white people, but good for black people.
So no, Lee was not an “honorable man”. Unless, of course, you believe keeping people in slavery, breaking apart families and torturing people is honorable.
And let’s be clear, no “compromise” was possible with the slave-owners. There wasn’t even an opportunity for compromise, because the Southern state started the Civil War as soon as Lincoln won the election of 1860. That’s right, the war wasn’t begun because of the emancipation proclamation. Nope, the slave states of the south rebelled and fired the first shots at the prospect of Lincoln’s mere inauguration. This should not even need to be said, but there’s an all-out assault on truth in this country in many areas, so it does.
The mere fact that a person opposed to the expansion of slavery in the new Western territories was elected drove slave states to secede from the union and launch a violent, traitorous rebellion. What compromise does Kelly think would have been possible with these people? And keep in mind that any such compromise would have kept millions of Americans in bondage for several years, perhaps decades. Millions would have been subjected to torture and rape by their “owners”. Who would have paid the price of this compromise with their bodies and souls? Not people who look like John Kelly that’s for damn sure.
Hell, even after they lost the war, Southern states flagrantly violated the 13th, 14th and 15th amendments. They disenfranchised black citizens and continued a reign of terror under the Jim Crow regime. Is this the kind of “honor” and “compromise” John Kelly was thinking of?
For a hundred years, Southern senators prevented the passage of any Civil Rights bill. Their political descendants scorch the earth when there’s a proposal to raise the estate tax. If they fight tooth and nail over the prospect of losing property after their dead, imagine what their great-grandfathers would have done if faced with the prospect of losing their “property” while alive.
But we don’t have to imagine, we know. We know that the South launched the bloodiest war in American history simply because it was clear that eventually, they would have to give up slavery.
We also know now that John Kelly is either a white supremacist, or an apologist for white supremacy.
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@subirgrewal | Cross-posted at NotMeUs.org and TheProgressiveWing.com