After Trump was arraigned he went back to Bedminster to make his big speech, and — um — this guy showed up. Yeah, this fuckerhead is real.
He glorifies the Confederacy and Secession and he knocks the “Slavery Narrative” because he claims that there were also black slave owners who ultimately fought on the side of the Confederacy as if that somehow magically erases all the evil the South ultimately wrought.
Technically, he is correct but he also misses the point. The implementation of Slavery in America was uniquely brutal and racial. The Dred Scott decision found that the Constitutional support for the slave trade and its racial components undermined the rights of All Africans, even those born here, and denied them full citizenship.
This guy really, really, seriously, doesn’t understand any of that.
And it’s also clear that his comprehensive failures it not an accident or a fluke. By the rhetoric that he uses — which smacks of Prager U and Thomas Sowell — he as been strategically disinformed. Like Dylan Roof by the Council of Conservative Citizens to believe that the poor South has been unfairly vilified. That Slavery wasn’t a racist institution.
Let’s just quote from the Articles of Secession on that point;
Georgia: 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.
[...]
While the subordination and the political and social inequality of the African race was fully conceded by all, it was plainly apparent that slavery would soon disappear from what are now the non-slave-holding States of the original thirteen. The opposition to slavery was then, as now, general in those States and the Constitution was made with direct reference to that fact.
[...]
Texas: Texas abandoned her separate national existence and consented to become one of the Confederated Union to promote her welfare, insure domestic tranquility and secure more substantially the blessings of peace and liberty to her people. She was received into the confederacy with her own constitution, under the guarantee of the federal constitution and the compact of annexation, that she should enjoy these blessings. She was received as a commonwealth holding, maintaining and protecting the institution known as negro slavery-- the servitude of the African to the white race within her limits-- a relation that had existed from the first settlement of her wilderness by the white race, and which her people intended should exist in all future time.
[...]
They demand the abolition of negro slavery throughout the confederacy, the recognition of political equality between the white and negro races, and avow their determination to press on their crusade against us, so long as a negro slave remains in these States.
[...]
We hold as undeniable truths that the governments of the various States, and of the confederacy itself, were established exclusively by the white race, for themselves and their posterity; that the African race had no agency in their establishment; that they were rightfully held and regarded as an inferior and dependent race, and in that condition only could their existence in this country be rendered beneficial or tolerable.
So, the argument that Racism had nothing to do with the establishment and continuation of Slavery — is simply put. fucking. nonsense.
Also, this guys argues with the interviewer about the details of the Indictment which he claims to have read, but he continues to deny that Trump lied to and manipulated his own attorneys in order to obstruction the DOJ retrieving the classified documents he had stolen.
And he doesn’t believe that the Neo-Nazis outside DisneyWorld protesting their LGBTQ police — the ones with the Ron DeSantis flags — were real. He says they were “Plants.”
Yeah, so there’s that.
Ok, so just to complete the point there is also this guy on C-Span.
"I have not heard one white Democrat apologize for slavery," he said. "I haven't heard any Black person say thank you to the over 300,000 white men who died to free those Black slaves."
"I just, I'm astonished," he added. "I realize we're focusing on slavery, but my descendants are from Scotland and Ireland. We never owned slaves."
On Tuesday, the U.S. House of Representatives issued an unprecedented apology to black Americans for the institution of slavery, and the subsequent Jim Crow laws that for years discriminated against blacks as second-class citizens in American society.
Rep. Steve Cohen, a Democrat from Tennessee, drafted the resolution. Cohen explains the apology's long journey for Congressional approval and the significance of its timing.
The South in the Civil War fought to preserve slavery as noted above in their articles of secession, but the North wasn't fighting to End Slavery - they were responding to having been attacking and attempting to keep the nation as a single unit.
He counts 300,000 Civil War casualties [I presume that would be from the North only], but frankly, far less than half of them died to end slavery. Most Northern soldiers were also racists, the abolitionist movement was largely part of the fringes.
Lincoln himself didn't plan on ending slavery until he decided to use his war powers with the Emancipation Proclamation as a way to blackmail the South into surrendering by threatening to take their slaves away and recruiting them into the Union Army. Any state or county that ended their rebellion would get to keep their slaves.
Now, therefore I, Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States, by virtue of the power in me vested as Commander-in-Chief, of the Army and Navy of the United States in time of actual armed rebellion against the authority and government of the United States, and as a fit and necessary war measure for suppressing said rebellion, do, on this first day of January, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, and in accordance with my purpose so to do publicly proclaimed for the full period of one hundred days, from the day first above mentioned, order and designate as the States and parts of States wherein the people thereof respectively, are this day in rebellion against the United States, the following, to wit:
Arkansas, Texas, Louisiana, (except the Parishes of St. Bernard, Plaquemines, Jefferson, St. John, St. Charles, St. James Ascension, Assumption, Terrebonne, Lafourche, St. Mary, St. Martin, and Orleans, including the City of New Orleans) Mississippi, Alabama, Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, and Virginia, (except the forty-eight counties designated as West Virginia, and also the counties of Berkley, Accomac, Northampton, Elizabeth City, York, Princess Ann, and Norfolk, including the cities of Norfolk and Portsmouth[)], and which excepted parts, are for the present, left precisely as if this proclamation were not issued.
And by virtue of the power, and for the purpose aforesaid, I do order and declare that all persons held as slaves within said designated States, and parts of States, are, and henceforward shall be free; and that the Executive government of the United States, including the military and naval authorities thereof, will recognize and maintain the freedom of said persons.
And I hereby enjoin upon the people so declared to be free to abstain from all violence, unless in necessary self-defence; and I recommend to them that, in all cases when allowed, they labor faithfully for reasonable wages.
And I further declare and make known, that such persons of suitable condition, will be received into the armed service of the United States to garrison forts, positions, stations, and other places, and to man vessels of all sorts in said service.
The Emancipation Proclamation was a BLUFF. At best, it was a half-measure. It was a demand to cease hostilities or else we make your slaves into warriors against the South. If the South had surrendered before the deadline of Jan 1, 1863 they would have kept *all* their slaves. Every. one. of. them.
It wasn't until later that Lincoln decided the entire institution of slavery needed to end and he advanced the 13th Amendment, however, that measure has a loophole that allows for slavery and indentured servitude to continue to this very day "for the duly convicted."
Some people have said "Thank you" but that is somewhat muted by the fact that Slavery continues, reconstruction failed, and the KKK rose while Jim Crow, segregation, voter suppression, discrimination and racial bias have slowed but not stopped.
We’re not done, until it stops.
Ok, here’s an additional point that happened today. Charlie Kirk opened his yap.
"So it's Juneteenth," Kirk announced at the opening of his show. "Very few people are willing to actually call this out."
"It's about a certain skin color now gets their own summertime celebration," he complained. "It is now become a racial complaining day. Now we have a full day to be able to smear and slander white America."
Kirk blamed the holiday on the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement
"And remember, BLM stands for burn, loot, and murder," he said. "Juneteenth becoming a federal holiday is a nationalized race hustle."
"Why do Blacks need their own national independence day?" Kirk wondered. "We used to have a red, white, and blue independence day on July 4th. Now, we have one based on the melanin content of your skin."
Kirk argued that Juneteenth was a "competitor" to the July 4th holiday.
"These people will not be stopped unless you say 'no' more," he warned. "Appeasement does not work."
"It's a middle finger to the promise of 1776," Kirk concluded. "You are going to have to choose."
So this is just one giant grab-bag of racist performance art. He goes to the common well of using the CRT-Hoax, then accuses BLM of terrorism even though 93% of their protests were totally non-violent, but racial bomb-throwers like Kirk just have to include that little bit of hype.
The Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project (ACLED) analyzed more than 7,750 Black Lives Matter demonstrations in all 50 states and Washington D.C. that took place in the wake of George Floyd’s death between May 26 and August 22.
Their report states that more than 2,400 locations reported peaceful protests, while fewer than 220 reported “violent demonstrations.” The authors define violent demonstrations as including “acts targeting other individuals, property, businesses, other rioting groups or armed actors.” Their definition includes anything from “fighting back against police” to vandalism, property destruction looting, road-blocking using barricades, burning tires or other materials. In cities where protests did turn violent—these demonstrations are “largely confined to specific blocks,” the report says.
I point this out again because it’s important. There are people in this nation who don’t hear any voices except those like Kirk. They hear that BLM has embezzled their funds and it’s nothing but a “scam” even when the NRA did the same exact thing only bigger. They simply don’t recognize it as the largest and strongest civil rights movement of this century.
Only a zero-sum thinking asshole would consider Juneteenth as a “competitor” to July 4th. They are not competitors. They are part of a continuum of growing freedom. This nation declared its freedom and independence from England on July 4th, but that frankly didn’t happen for everyone who was here at the time. Some of us literally didn’t gain our freedom until Juneteenth, which is both a triumph and a tragedy. It’s a fact that should be remembered because it very much could happen again if we forget.
We should be celebrating both. We should rejoice in both. Juneteenth doesn’t take anything away from July 4th, because the concept and implementation of FULL FREEDOM was never there to begin with. Juneteenth is a correction to July 4th. it’s an enhancement. A fix. It’s one more step forward to ultimately fulfill the promise that was originally made in the Declaration of Independence. A promise that still to this do day remains only partially achieved.
It’s not a matter of appeasement, you don’t have to choose. The very idea that it’s either/or is frankly offensive.
This is the kind of backlash and harsh resentment that Black people always have to suffer through when we make any progress at all. We saw it with the election of Barack Obama. We see it here. We will see it if any significant form of Reparations — and that is *steps* to correct and repair what has been damaged and destroyed in our community — are ever adopted.
But we will march on. We will march forward. And brush stupid shit like this off our shoulders like the ignorant nonsense blatantly racist that is.
Word.
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