May 25, 2023

2024 election will be the new Battle of Fort Sumpter

 By Hal Brown

Battle of Fort Sumpter, Currier and Ives, Public Domain

On Tuesday, Nov. 5, 2024 the equivalent of the Battle of Fort Sumpter which marked the beginning of the Civil War will begin.  The bombardment of the fort, which is near Charleston, was by the South  Carolina militia. It ended with the surrender by the United State Army. 

Not that anyone reading this blog needs a reminder, but briefly:

The Civil War remains the bloodiest war in American history with over 620,000 deaths. The war began on April 12, 1861, when Confederate soldiers attacked Union bases at Fort Sumter, South Carolina. It was fought for four years, three weeks and six days until Confederate General Robert E. Lee surrendered to Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox Courthouse on April 9, 1865. General Joseph E. Johnston subsequently surrendered on April 26, 1865, while Kirby Smith surrendered on June 2, 1865. Cherokee General Stand Watie was the last Confederate general to surrender on June 23, 1865. (Reference)

When the southern states seceded the country looked like this:

Slave and free states and territories at start of Civil War

There are several slightly different maps showing how the country looks today. Here is one of them. You get the idea.

The issue of the right of people to own people who were kidnapped from Africa (those abolitionists called accurately "slaves") and force them to work for them is what ultimately led to the Civil War.  It could be said to have started with the election of Abraham Lincoln.

The election of 1860 was one of the most pivotal presidential elections in American history. It pitted Republican nominee Abraham Lincoln against Democratic Party nominee Senator Stephen Douglas, Southern Democratic Party nominee John Breckinridge and Constitutional Union Party nominee John Bell. The main issue of the election was slavery and states’ rights. Lincoln emerged victorious and became the 16th President of the United States during a national crisis that would tear states and families apart and test Lincoln’s leadership and resolve: The Civil War.(Reference)

Today children learn to revere Lincoln as the president who freed the slaves... at least this is what they learn in school which teach history accurately.

The coming civil war could be said to have started with the defeat of Donald Trump in his attempt to win a second term and the election of Joe Biden. The beliefs in the superiority of white people which come under the general heading of MAGA have been present since the actual Civil War ended but they increased exponentially in the last century as minority groups became more and more empowered and their votes began to influence elections. 

The election of our first Black president brought American bigotry to a simmering boil but by and large it didn't blow the lid of the kettle off. These people breathed a sigh of relief and their kettle of rage and resentment was removed from the stove when Donald Trump was elected.

Trump coined the term MAGA. It was a big tent which included everyone from self-proclaimed NAZI's to Christian nationalists. His regime gave such people a sense of power they hadn't felt, well, since the Civil War.

Giving credit, or blame, where it is due I have to hand it to Ron DeSantis for turning the concept of being woke from something good and beneficial into something evil. Read about his latest bigoted balderdash here: DeSantis says he’ll turn 'woke military' away from 'gender ideology'.

The upcoming election will pit people who are woke, i.e., those with empathy and who believe in accepting everyone, against anti-woke warriors and MAGA forces. It will be a war fought  against those who believe that everyone should benefit equally from living in America and believe in the crucial sentence from The Declaration of Independence no matter whether they believe in God or not:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

I'd like to say that it is unlikely that anybody will be killed on Election Day or as a result of a win by Biden. Only one person was killed and one mortally wounded in the Battle of Fort Sumpter. Tragically I can't say that the re-election of President Biden won't be met with violence and death. Just the other day a man threatening the president tried to crash a U-Haul truck though the White House barrier gates.

The quote, rephrased in various ways* "those who forget history are condemned to repeat it" is attributed to the American philosopher George Santayana. I could turn this quote around and note that there are those who do remember history, in the case of the United States the history of the Civil War, want to learn from what they consider the mistakes of the Confederacy and try not to repeat them in the civil war they intend to engage in if Joe Biden wins the presidency.

Footnote:

  • * This famous statement has produced several variants:
    • Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it.
    • Those who do not remember their past are condemned to repeat their mistakes.
    • Those who do not read history are doomed to repeat it.
    • Those who fail to learn from the mistakes of their predecessors are destined to repeat them.
    • Those who do not know history's mistakes are doomed to repeat them.

Related:

Violence is the new Republican grift, by Chauncey DeVega

Republicans know more death enhances their power

Excerpt:

In all, violence in its many forms (which includes random violence, terrorism, hate crimes, intimidation, and vigilantism) is central to the Republican fascists and larger white right and "conservative" movement's project to end America's multiracial pluralistic democracy by gutting the rule of law and the country's democratic and other societal institutions.

Trump's greatest appeal is how he gives his followers and others in the MAGA movement's orbit permission to be their worst true horrible selves. Violence bonds members of a social group together; this is especially true of political personality cults such as the Trump MAGA movement. Healthy democracies discourage and outlaw political violence because it is antithetical to normal politics with its rules-based deliberation and collective decision-making and other ways of attempting to be legitimate sources of authority among the governed.

If you don't see the Disquis comment section below click here.  

Blogs by Hal Brown, MSW, Retired psychotherapist. More about me.


May 24, 2023

What's with the Nov. 2022 Elon Musk tweet about Trump which I decided to censor?

  By Hal Brown

I found this tweet from Elon Musk posted on Nov. 20, 2022 in this column by one of my favorite writers, Heather "Digby" Parton of Salon:

Ron DeSantis — like Elon Musk's Twitter — is really the second choice




This is the full illustration in the Elon Musk tweet . Above is the tweet with half the image edited out by me. I'm just trying to avoid Google Blogger posting an adult content warning on this story.
Click above to enlarge. I deleted the blog that led to this
 advisory but kept it on Substack here


Digby writes that "Musk begged Trump to come back to Twitter with vulgar memes like this designed to entice the libertine ex-president..."

Of course we know that Ron DeSantis is announcing that he's running for president on some sort of Twitter broadcast with Elon Musk. It appears that Musk has given up on Trump and is all in on promoting DeSantis.

The tweet shows what Musk thought of Donald Trump back in November. It is juvenile and gross but also seems nonsensical. Again, you can view it here or this won's make any sense to you.

What struck me about the image Musk posted wasn't how it was supposed to depict Trump being tempted into a lascivious encounter with a woman perhaps representing Twitter, or perhaps not, it is difficult to say. 

One thing that struck me as weird is that Trump is depicted looking, if not like Jesus, at least like a monk. Why would Musk think this was funny? Then again, Musk has a convoluted sense of humor but still why would he promote the idea that Trump is Divine? 

The other thing I wonder is why he decided to place the image with the Twitter bird where he did? I can see him deciding not to make the illustration too graphic since it might run afoul of Twitter's guidelines about adult content but it is abundantly clear what the Trump monk is planning to do.

Is the the new way Twitter plans to censor adult images?


On the other hand, maybe he believes entering the realm of Twitter through his tweety bird is akin to revealing in the garden feminine earthly delights over where he rules supreme. 

Foreground public domain Garden of Earthly Delights by Hieronymus Bosch

Update:

I discovered that the Milo Manaro, the artist who drew the picture in the Elon Musk tweet was not pleased with his using his art work:
 
Click above to read article

This is what he posted on Instagram:

“I wish Elon Musk would be forced to tweet a thousand times:
“I will never use Milo Manara drawings again without permission. I will never again use Milo Manara’s drawings without permission. I will never again use…”

How about I sue him, asking for $44Bn in compensation? Then I could buy back Twitter and give it back to someone else to manage!

In the illustration in the same place that Musk had the Twitter bird Manara had the following:



May 23, 2023

Florida AG wants to outlaw weird orgies, wild weed parties, and unleashed passion

 I read the Raw Story article 

Florida AG — wife of a DEA agent — accused of 'not standing with the people' as she vows to fight legal pot

and was inspired to post this in the comments section:


The poster above, like some of the propaganda shown below, mixes the salacious and lurid with dire warnings of misery (above in a syringe). Notice the pointy fingernails on the hand, presumably of the Devil, holding lust, crime, sorrow, hate, shame, and despair. 


Whoever made this poster thought that nobody would be intrigued by this part:

I wonder how many people were more tempted to try marijuana by this propaganda than were scared by it. These warnings might have been about as effective in their intended purpose as the well-known "This Is Your Brain On Drugs" frying eggs public service ads.

Who knew that John Wayne was in a marijuana movie with James Arness?

Even though Lady Gaga (“The pot leaf is the new peace sign”) proclaims “Baby let’s get high, John Wayne” in her song John Wayne (2016), it is highly unlikely that the actor would have accepted her invitation to smoke a joint together. John Wayne (1907-1979), who still holds the record for the Hollywood actor with the most leading parts (142), was known for his conservative, anti-communist and anti-drugs political view. A clear example of this is his movie Big Jim McLain (1952), where he hunts down communists in Hawaii. The version released in Italy and Germany was retitled Marijuana and has John Wayne chasing drug smugglers instead of communists. From The Hash Museum
Back to Florida...

The campaign to stop the pot legalization ballot petition is the latest, and possibly the most likely to backfire shot in the Florida culture war. It makes more sense politically to fight the initiative than to rail against all the woke issues DeSantis is hysteria hyping. He is going on the assumption that the alleged horrors of children been lured into changing their gender orientation by being dragged into drag shows by their Commie parents will lead to mobilizing voters to help him win the GOP primary. Obviously other Republican governors and legislators are buying into this assumption as the recent Montana ban on gender affirming care shows.

Fred Grimm wrote this in Florida GOP would like pot amendment to go away “Republicans don’t want pot as a running mate to Joe Biden on the Florida ballot because marijuana can do what Joe Biden can’t — rouse the apathetic wing of the Democratic Party... The GOP’s faux populists know ballot questions like these would have coattails long enough to blow up an election.”

The marijuana issue seems to currently be a Florida issue without national implications. If DeSantis wants to beat Trump in the primary he could lose in Florida and if he wins in enough other states he could end up as the GOP presidential candidate.

What will be interesting to see is how robustly DeSantis supports his attorney general in fighting the demon weed ballot measure. If he adds fighting pot to his culture war it could make his fight against Disney look like a minor blunder. Consider the following:

An overwhelming share of U.S. adults (88%) say either that marijuana should be legal for medical and recreational use by adults (59%) or that it should be legal for medical use only (30%). Just one-in-ten (10%) say marijuana use should not be legal, according to a Pew Research Center survey conducted Oct. 10-16, 2022. These views are virtually unchanged since April 2021. From Pew Research article
So far Donald Trump, either out of political savvy or just because he really doesn't care, has not gone all-caps manic on an anti-woke crusade. He may observe what DeSantis is doing and realize that the anti-woke act does not play well on a national stage. 

I think Trump is reading the sentiment of GOP voters accurately in that he knows his route to victory is to keep doing what he always has done. He basks in knowing that he is the potentate of personality politics and he sees DeSantis in being as bland as unsalted butter. I think Trump thinks the anti-woke DeSantis deluge is dumb.

Assuming Trump is the GOP candidate I'd like to see him include the war against woke in his repetoire since it is a loser.  He's already come out and blamed DeSantis for Disney's cancelling its expansion in Florida. I doubt becoming a DeSantis style anti-woke warrior would give him any more votes than he already has. 





This blog has moved to a new address

  This website is migrating Due to a problem with this platform, Google Blogger, I have moved my blog to WordPress and given it a new addres...