6/12/20: With the nation convulsed by
protests, the U.S. military expressed willingness to consider the renaming of ten bases. Those bases are named for heroes
of the Confederacy. For example: Fort Bragg in North Carolina, named for the
totally inept General Braxton Bragg, who lost almost every battle in which he participated.
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The “Boogaloo bois” doctrine holds that freedom-loving white
Americans must foment civil war.
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You also have Fort Hood in Texas, named after John Bell Hood, who gave up a leg in the fight to defend slavery.
And Fort Gordon, named for Gen. John Brown Gordon, one of Robert E. Lee’s most capable lieutenants. After the war he was rumored to be Grand Dragon of the Georgia Ku Klux Klan.
Naturally, Trump reacted angrily. In an appeal to the racist portion of his base – whatever fraction you think that might be – he tweeted, “Our history as the Greatest Nation in the World will not be tampered with. Respect our Military!”
This would make sense if Bragg, Hood, and Gordon hadn’t been actively involved in trying to kill and maim members of “our Military.”
(In Louisiana, some wit started a petition, suggesting one of
the bases in question be named after Britney Spears, “the TRUE hero of the South.”
At last count 14,000 people had signed.)
More than a few Trump fans are having trouble dealing with the fact that Robert E. Lee had to surrender at Appomattox, signaling the death knell of slavery. Mercedes Schlapp, a senior Trump campaign adviser, recently boosted a tweet that “lauded a man in Texas in a viral video as he yelled a racial slur and wielded a chainsaw to chase away anti-racism demonstrators.”
When Politico reached out, she retweeted a version of the video, but with the n-word muted.
Then she realized she still looked like a racist. She deleted both tweets and apologized, one would assume, for being a knucklehead.
As Politico noted, other
GOP leaders in Texas were under fire. One county chair posted a Martin Luther
King Jr. quote, next to a banana. Another commented on a third’s post,
“pandemic isn’t working. Start the racial wars.”
*
AS A LIBERAL in good standing, I don’t have much trouble deciding in most cases what is right, and what is not. Kneeling on George Floyd’s neck, till he was dead.
Not.
Ambushing two California sheriff’s deputies, killing one, and seriously wounding another?
Not.
Blue lives do matter.
Ironically, while the president has been trading insults with Seattle’s mayor, and railing about Antifa, that ambush was carried out by an Air Force veteran, and a white man, Steven Carrillo. Carrillo subscribes to the “Boogaloo bois” doctrine, which holds that freedom-loving white Americans must foment civil war. You start first by taking out civil authorities. Then you launch a race war. Carrillo was armed with – of course – an AR-15, the preferred weapon of mass murderers and nutjobs across America. He is a suspect in an attack in Oakland, California, during a Black Lives Matter protest, that left one federal protective services agent dead, another wounded.
Other Boogaloo enthusiasts have been arrested in Ohio, Texas,
and Colorado, after posting plans on social media to assassinate government
agents and/or blow up members of current crowds of protesters.
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