Insurrection supporters do seem to like supporting a Lost Cause and proving systemic racism is a feature of the modern GOP.
"Let's call an ace an ace. This is an effort by the Left to create a day out of whole cloth to celebrate identity politics as part of its larger efforts to make Critical Race Theory the reigning ideology of our country," Representative Matt Rosendale said prior to the vote.
"Since I believe in treating everyone equally, regardless of race, and that we should be focused on what unites us rather than our differences, I will vote no," Rosendale added.
In a statement, Rosendale said commemorating the last of the slaves being told they were free is part of a "larger hard-left agenda to enshrine the racial history of this country as the prime aspect of our national story."
www.newsweek.com/...
Thomas Massie (KY)
Mo Brooks (AL)
Scott DesJarlais (TN)
Andy Biggs (AZ)
Tom Tiffany (WI)
Doug LaMalfa (CA)
Tom McClintock (CA)
Mike Rogers (AL)
Matt Rosendale (MT)
Ronny Jackson (TX)
Ralph Norman (SC)
Andrew Clyde (GA)
Chip Roy (TX)
Paul Gosar (AZ)
It is very useful for Republicans, particularly Republicans loyal to Trump and his base, to try to diminish what occurred on Jan. 6. We’ve repeatedly seen lawmakers wave away what happened that day or try to reframe it in ways that are more flattering to Trump specifically and the right more broadly. It’s useful to delineate those efforts — and to contextualize or rebut them — in defense of our collective and accurate memory of what occurred.
The “not an insurrection” argument. Bringing us to our last claim.
Earlier this week, the House voted to award the Congressional Gold Medal to the law enforcement agencies that responded to the Capitol attack. The measure passed overwhelmingly — but with a few Republican holdouts. One, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (Ga.), expressed opposition because the resolution described the attack as an “insurrection.”
Not to get all “Webster’s defines,” but Webster’s defines “insurrection” as “an act or instance of revolting against civil authority or an established government.” Nothing about weapons; nothing about violence. Just a revolt against authority or a government, which would certainly seem to describe an effort to block the final counting of electoral votes by Congress.
This is largely a semantic debate. One could present a case for or against using that descriptor and assign your freshman linguistics class a paper adjudicating it. But the point is simply to call into question the use of that term and its correlated implication of an attempt to derail the government. It’s the rhetorical sibling of saying that this was just a bunch of tourists, the claim that this was something other than an attack on government and the democratic system.
Trump announced his candidacy for president six years ago Wednesday. In the time since, the country has been through a lot and Trump himself has faced criticism for many of his actions. We’ve seen, over and over, how legitimate, clearly defined criticism has been submerged in fog just as the events of Jan. 6 have been. How isolated details have been reassembled into alternative narratives.
We’ve seen how Russian interference in the 2016 election, embraced by Trump, was reframed to focus attention on how the FBI obtained a warrant against a former campaign staff member. We’ve seen how Trump’s effort to pressure Ukraine into aiding his campaign has been reshaped into criticism of Biden. We’ve seen how hiccups in Trump’s response to the coronavirus pandemic have been pinned on government officials. And now we see how the Capitol riot has been played down as unimportant or unexceptional, something no more worrisome than, say, last summer’s protests.
But more than anything, a formal, bipartisan investigation of the Capitol attack risks cementing as fact what we saw that day and how we understood it. And if that is cemented as fact, it will be much harder to convince people that the reality was something different.
www.washingtonpost.com/...
Friday, Jun 18, 2021 · 1:37:04 PM +00:00
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annieli
An NAACP official will be attending the bill signing ceremony, however, the civil rights group said they are setting the record straight through the release of an official statement on the accuracy of the end of slavery.
“Rather than recognize the true date of the end of slavery, the authors of the current legislation have chosen to celebrate a singularly Texas event as something it is not,” states the NAACP in the statement.
“The resolution seeks to lift up the date that General Granger, representing the Union Army, read General Order Number 4 implementing the dictates of the Emancipation Proclamation in Galveston. In essence, the resolution takes a declaration that applied only to those who heard it read at the time, and attempts to give it nationwide effect. This is false history.”
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