Brian Beutler makes this modest proposal over at the New, Improved TNR:
This week provides an occasion for the U.S. government to get real about history, as April 9 is the 150th anniversary of the Union’s victory in the Civil War. The generous terms of Robert E. Lee’s surrender to Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox Court House foreshadowed a multitude of real and symbolic compromises that the winners of the war would make with secessionists, slavery supporters, and each other to piece the country back together. It’s as appropriate an occasion as the Selma anniversary to reflect on the country’s struggle to improve itself. And to mark the occasion, the federal government should make two modest changes: It should make April 9 a federal holiday; and it should commit to disavowing or renaming monuments to the Confederacy, and its leaders, that receive direct federal support.
This idea is not without merit, considering the number of former Confederate states that still celebrate Robert E. Lee’s birthday just to piss off the rest of us who celebrate Dr. King’s birthday around the same time.
Kevin
Good ideas. And I think Juneteenth should be a holiday as well. That it isn’t, and that when people here the name they snicker and act like it’s a made up day is some racist crap in my opinion.
Lolis
@Kevin: Juneteenth is a state holiday in Texas
gordon schumway
Also, too, appoint a de-Confederization czar by dictatorial fiat.
gordon schumway
@gordon schumway: While black.
hitchhiker
What a great idea. It’s time to encode the actual history in such a way that the Confederacy cheering squad has to stop pretending their cause was noble.
Even if the original Confederates believed with all the precious little hearts that black people were meant to serve them for all time, nobody is under any obligation to pretend that they were right.
And while we’re at it, can the Russell Senate Office Building be named for someone who did NOT block anti-lynching measures or say that black people have “appallingly high rates of venereal disease” while trying to block them from mingling with white people in the military.
I don’t care if it was considered okay at the time. The point is that we’ve moved on from having to show respect to bigots.
DCrefugee
Some Dem in the House should take this on as a project. It won’t go anywhere, of course, but it would serve as yet another reminder how fcked up Rethuglicans are…
raven
My wife is from Appo and she’s going up. I can’t go because of work but I wish I could.
raven
I’m reading this right now
Why the Civil War Still Matters
Belafon
We need a good name, and an awesome acronym (something that spells out ILOVEGOD act) to use for the new law.
jackmac
Bobby B.
Let’s have Carpetbagger Appreciation Day with Charlie Daniels as parade marshal. “The South’s gonna blew it again!”
p.a.
Nice, but I’d prefer an Election Day national PAID holiday first. Of course, no complaint about getting both.
Lee
If it is for monuments to only to the Confederacy & leaders, then it works. Otherwise Gettysburg, etc would get a bit weird with the Union fighting an un-named enemy.
burnspbesq
Improved?
Jeet Heer would not be an improvement over Mark Steyn, Hugh Hewitt, or Maureen Dowd. He is certainly not an improvement over any of the pre-blowup TNR staff.
Gin & Tonic
In this week’s Economist: “In the autumn of 2014, when control of the Senate was decided in the mid-term elections, one of the best ways to predict the outcome was to look up the results of the presidential election of 1860.”
Citizen Alan
The solution of the (sadly outgoing) Chancellor at Ole Miss was novel. He used the construction of some new buildings that changed the traffic flow as a pretext to rename Confederate Drive (since the road itself no longer existed) as Chucky Mullins Drive (after a much-beloved football player who died after an on-field injury). And rather than rename all the buildings on campus named after racist swine (which would have required approval from the Legislature), he put up big historical markers next to them that explained who the person in question was and what an awful impact they had on the state. Most notably the heavily used Vardaman Hall named after 20’s era Gov. James K. Vardaman, who I never knew until recently was an actual GENOCIDAL LUNATIC.
driftglass
What an exciting idea that will never, ever, ever happen.
I will add it to the list.
Lee
Larry Summer is unhappy.
I’m not sure if it is so doom & gloom as he makes out.
Peale
@Lee: Someone should tell neoliberal Larry that competition is good. The more “development” banks the better. LOL.
I’m sure the folks at the World Bank don’t believe that their “customers” would ever leave them.
Villago Delenda Est
We can start by wiping clean the effigies on Stone Mountain, GA.
And banning, forever, the display of the Confederate Battle Flag or the Stars and Bars by all entities, public and private.
Ben Grimm
And remember: every February 8, celebrate William Sherman Day.
Lee
Jeb Bush registers to vote as a hispanic renders his PR people speechless.
Arclite
@p.a.: Election day as a national federal holiday needs to be the next one. Agreed.
Kylroy
@Villago Delenda Est: No. People should be as free to fly the stars and bars as they are the Hackenkreus, and should get the same response.
Cervantes
@Citizen Alan:
Yes, that’s Chancellor Dan Jones. And it’s Coliseum Drive that’s being re-named to honor Mullins. Confederate Drive’s new name is “Chapel Lane.”
Tree With Water
Great idea. Pick a fight over monuments. What a waste of time and effort, and to what end? It’s pretty obvious Beutler is unaware of ugly passions aroused that time someone stole the head off the Jedediah Springfield statue in Springfield (a boy was chased and nearly killed by a mob!). If that incident taught us one thing, it is that people don’t care about statues until they do, but when they do, forget about monkeying around with any proposed changes.
catclub
In spite of my being in favor of the particular unilateral action that Obama is proposing with the Iran Agreement. I think the right thing is getting Senate approval. Making it clear that not approving said agreement breaks all the international sanctions, and all blame for a breakout will then fall on the senate may be convincing. Also, let them set up large punishments for violations of he agreement, but approve the agreement, as a fig leaf, might work.
gvg
@Villago Delenda Est: “We can start by wiping clean the effigies on Stone Mountain, GA.
And banning, forever, the display of the Confederate Battle Flag or the Stars and Bars by all entities, public and private. ” I am sure that violates freedom of speech…..since we are proposing that the government do it to everyone. However maybe we can do the markers, plus if we could just get enough legislative seats we could rename things.
I was appalled to find out recently that my sons elementary school was named after a Confederate and Klansman who was elected to the Florida legislature afterwards. My Dad went to that school too so I had heard the name all my life but never the background info. I am positive few of the PTA and teachers know nowaday’s. Liberal area and he wasn’t that important so not many have still heard of him. They are having their 75th school anniversary celebration this year so that means opened in 1939…I wonder why the school board then chose to name the school that then? Most local schools are named for local education people, long term retired principals, Gov. Chiles, President Lincoln etc.
boatboy_srq
@Kylroy: Agreed, for two reasons: 1) killing that off is likely a 1st Amendment infringement; 2) the Stars’n’Bars and the battle flag are very good ways to identify unPatriots.
boatboy_srq
@catclub: The right thing would ordinarily be obtaining Senate approval: IIRC the Senate has final ratifying authority on any treaty. However, it’s 2015, and we have a Senate majority convinced (yet, unsurprisingly, unwilling to explicitly say so) that the President is an illegal non-citizen Kenyan Usurper, and any action taken by this administration is by definition fraudulent, illegal, and worthy of all-out opposition. Proposing that they be allowed to approve this agreement is an invitation to them to scuttle the entire process because Blah President and no other reason whatever. Any chance they had at proving that they were at all serious about a negotiated solution here went out the window with the Cotton Letter. Yours is an entirely sound proposal in any other age with (heretofore) any other President; as of now it’s a guarantee that the Senate will once again do everything in its power to make the US look shortsighted, malevolent and just plain stupid on the global stage just because TABMITWH.
boatboy_srq
@Citizen Alan:
Wow. I have trouble with Confederate anything, but “drive” is pushing it.
Wally Ballou
Speaking of holidays:
“There is no sports event like Opening Day of baseball, the sense of beating back the forces of darkness and the National Football League.” – George Vecsey
Tigers are leading 3-0 in the 6th. Life is good.
J
I’d like to see at least one national holiday, and preferably several, where lusty singing of the Battle Hymn of the Republic is the order of the day.
Calouste
@boatboy_srq: Iran is a market with 77 million customers and the 4th largest oil reserves in the world. If the Senate isn’t going to approve of the treaty, the Russians, Chinese and most likely the Europeans aren’t going to a crap about what the world’s most eminent
home for early onset dementiadeliberative body is throwing tantrums about and are going to get into that market while the Americans are watching from the sidelines. It’s then that we will find out whether the Likud dollars and the GOP’s hate of the usurper will outweigh the pressure put on them by Exxon etc.Mike in NC
We lived for many years in NoVA, where it seemed half the schools, parks, and roads were named for traitors. Never did get used to it.
catclub
@J: I always thought this verse of a hymn was a reference to the Cubs season:
Time, like an ever-rolling stream,
bears all its sons away;
they fly, forgotten, as a dream
dies at the opening day.
gene108
@Lee:
I think it was a good summary about how political dysfunction here has screwed up the U.S.’s ability to handle things internationally, with regards to existing international obligations let alone extend any sort of vision for the “world of tomorrow.”
@Peale:
I think is opinion piece was more about the fact that as the U.S. continues to do nothing, others are going to fill in the vacuum and in the end U.S. power and influence will decline.
For example, being the world’s reserve currency helped us during the 2008-2009 financial crisis, as U.S. dollars were seen as the safest investment in the world and people rushed to buy U.S. government securities.
It probably helps business (and tourists) that our domestic currency is accepted all over the world.
We do not need to worry about foreign reserves of “hard” money for the government to buy stuff, because international entities do not have faith in our domestic currency.
There’s probably more that went over my head.
Chris
@Mike in NC:
The “Old South” atmosphere of NoVA is what a lot of people find charming about it, but yeah, not me.
catclub
@Calouste: I agree, mostly. It appears that the US has such a headlock on the banking systems worldwide, and everyone needs the interlinked banking systems, that we have pretty substantial leverage.
Whether we have enough to go it alone, I am not sure.
J
I’d also like to see this poem become part of school curricula across the land.
For the Union Dead
Robert Lowell, 1917 – 1977
“Relinquunt Omnia Servare Rem Publicam.”
The old South Boston Aquarium stands
in a Sahara of snow now. Its broken windows are boarded.
The bronze weathervane cod has lost half its scales.
The airy tanks are dry.
Once my nose crawled like a snail on the glass;
my hand tingled
to burst the bubbles
drifting from the noses of the cowed, compliant fish.
My hand draws back. I often sigh still
for the dark downward and vegetating kingdom
of the fish and reptile. One morning last March,
I pressed against the new barbed and galvanized
fence on the Boston Common. Behind their cage,
yellow dinosaur steamshovels were grunting
as they cropped up tons of mush and grass
to gouge their underworld garage.
Parking spaces luxuriate like civic
sandpiles in the heart of Boston.
A girdle of orange, Puritan-pumpkin colored girders
braces the tingling Statehouse,
shaking over the excavations, as it faces Colonel Shaw
and his bell-cheeked Negro infantry
on St. Gaudens’ shaking Civil War relief,
propped by a plank splint against the garage’s earthquake.
Two months after marching through Boston,
half the regiment was dead;
at the dedication,
William James could almost hear the bronze Negroes breathe.
Their monument sticks like a fishbone
in the city’s throat.
Its Colonel is as lean
as a compass-needle.
He has an angry wrenlike vigilance,
a greyhound’s gentle tautness;
he seems to wince at pleasure,
and suffocate for privacy.
He is out of bounds now. He rejoices in man’s lovely,
peculiar power to choose life and die–
when he leads his black soldiers to death,
he cannot bend his back.
On a thousand small town New England greens,
the old white churches hold their air
of sparse, sincere rebellion; frayed flags
quilt the graveyards of the Grand Army of the Republic.
boatboy_srq
@Calouste: They’ve already scuttled NEW START and a couple decent-sized trade agreements, and we’re discussing a market that has been closed (to everything except arms makers and only open for them via the Iran/Contra back door) for longer than most businesspeople have been employed: the warhawks/chickenhawks don’t seem concerned with global economics, and the reality of that kind of marketplace probably hasn’t sunk in yet even with ExxonMobil. There’s a significant portion that would like nothing better than to nuke all Persia (using the classical boundaries) to a lifeless glassy plain, so the oil riches are less enticing than the warm glow of U-235. I fully expect Big Biz to try to pull them back – however, there’s been precious little obvious pressure following the recent Senate tantrums, so I’m not so convinced that the conquest of Iran by Mammon is more appealing than Greater Judea, End Times and Armageddon.
trollhattan
@Villago Delenda Est:
There’s a group experienced in such demolition. We could pit the actual Taliban against the aspirational Taliban.
dlw32
@p.a.: Have to agree an Voting Day (or days) would be my first choice. I’d give up two holidays for that one!
On the other hand, if we were to create a Civil War national holiday, one celebrating Sherman’s March to the Sea seems like the obvious choice. :)
Surreal American
I’m more in favor of making Juneteenth a national holiday.
Then again,we can always sell Nathan Bedford Forrest urinal targets the whole year ’round!
Bobby B.
@J: drifting from the noses of the cowed, compliant fish.
OH YOU YANKEE BEATNIKS
boatboy_srq
@Calouste: I should add that any hope the US has for global cooperation will vaporize the moment this Senate refuses to approve the treat; the US will have lost any future “coalition of the willing” that might do anything practical – and if the US decides to enforce sanctions unilaterally they’ll have nearly the entire rest of the planet lined up in opposition. The lost business will be nothing in comparison to the global conflict possible; given the voices opposed to the agreement, though, it’s difficult to believe that they see such a situation as a negative.
catclub
@boatboy_srq: Yep, this is what I was getting at.
gene108
@Mike in NC:
I can never get over calling Route 1 (I think) the Jefferson Davis Highway for a stretch from Richmond to NoVa.
Davis was the anti-Lincoln. He sucked as President.
I can understand naming something after someone, who at least did something with some daring-do on the battlefield or at least acquitted himself with a semblance of competence for the South, but Davis’ tenure as President of the CSA was awful.
Everything Lincoln did to unite the Union, give the war a greater calling and moral purpose and competently manage the country’s resources in fighting the war, Davis did just the opposite.
The Confederacy fragmented badly, inflation ran rampant throughout the South, there was no strategy or vision in what the CSA was supposed to achieve other than get people killed and yet folks in Virginia want to celebrate the loser by naming stuff after him.
That’s the sad part about the Civil War romanticism, they elevate the inept and incompetent to positions of reverence.
CArcin
There ain’t exactly a lot of Old South left in NoVa…
A marked improvement.
Cervantes
@boatboy_srq:
Er … how?
cmorenc
There’s a monument somewhere on the lawn of most county seats (and most old state capitol grounds as well) in every southern state that was formerly a member of the Confederacy, dedicated “to our confederate dead”, often bearing an inscription somewhere along the lines of “died defending our honor”, with the monument usually a 15-to 20 foot high obelisk located in a prominent place on the grounds. There’s usually also a confederate flag embossed into the marble or granite.
These were all put up a hundred years or more ago, often in substantial part with public money, but with the lobbying muscle of the sons and daughters of the confederacy (who were much more numerous back when these monuments were built). None of them require any federal money to maintain – most of the federally supported sites which bear some homage to the confederate side are battlefields or else sites where the confederate angle of history is an integral part of the context of why the site has bona fide historical significance.
All your suggested gesture will do is to piss off the sort of redneck southern yahoo who might not otherwise bother to stop off at the polling place to vote on his way home to drink the six-pack he bought on the way home from work. You won’t find many native southerners (even of the progressive sort) who don’t have ancestors four or five generations ago who fought for the confederacy, but the proportion of folks still feeling enough interest and connection (beyond very occasional passing curiosity about that fact of their lineage) to actually think about or join the sons or daughters of the confederacy is minuscule and diminishing further by the year.
Eradicating vestigial historical remains of the Confederacy in the south is NOT a productive project, especially toward the ends you think it would. All you’ll succeed in doing is to piss off some rednecks, without changing anyone else’s mind whatsoever about anything except dismissing the likes of you as an unbearable scold of political correctness not worth listening to about much of anything.
Cervantes
@trollhattan:
Hmm … H1B visas?
catclub
@Cervantes: via its stranglehold on the banking system.
Chris
@gene108:
This is why I love it when Confederate nostalgists try to tell me that it wasn’t about slavery, it was all about states’ rights and decentralization and autonomy and not having a Big Central Government pushing everyone around… That fragmentation screwed the South but good throughout the entire war, so celebrating it is basically celebrating one of the reasons the South lost.
RaflW
A friend posted photos of a recent trip to Charleston, S.C. Two of the pics were of a Daughters of the Confederacy meeting & building (he was tongue in cheek about them). I was sort of shocked (but also, not) that these things carry on.
150 years is a long time to carry a grudge.
Calouste
@catclub: It’s not as much that the US has control of the banking system, as that they blackmail international banks, who own the system, by threatening to impose fines on their US operations if they don’t comply to certain US “regulations”.
Shana
@Mike in NC: Ditto on the names for stuff in NoVA. Also the fact that there are developments around using the name “Plantation.” Somehow I don’t think a lot of black folks are interested in buying homes there.
Tree With Water
@cmorenc: Great minds think alike. Also, any and all historical markers are cool. Time permitting, if I spot one I’ll always pause to see what it commemorates.
Cervantes
@boatboy_srq:
Are you arguing that every international agreement negotiated by the Executive branch rises to the level of a “treaty” in the constitutional sense?
boatboy_srq
@Cervantes: Dunno about you, but I could see a wingnutty Senate pushing to block trade with any nation that lifts sanctions, or seizing assets belonging to a multinational that sells stuff to Tehran. Every single nation on the planet would be POd enough to resist – and then the US would be in the “poor pitiful victim” role the wingnuts seem to crave – and in a position to lash out with the entire arsenal. Instant global thermonuclear war, which the Xtian wingnuts will welcome because that’s how you summon Gun-Totin’ Capitalist Jeebus.
boatboy_srq
@catclub: You’re assuming that the GOTea would accept the consequences – either of the damage to international norms or the consequent isolation of the US. I’m still not convinced that this Senate cares all that much. They’re too heavily invested in “The US is going down the tubes because of That Man” to back away from it (recall that SC voter that flat-out accused Obama of plotting against nearly every single US citizen because – um, well because bla- no, wait it was because unChris- um, no it was SOSHULIST! YEAH, that was it!)
J R in WV
@cmorenc:
Your point about stimulating interest in CSA nonsense in Bubbas across the south is a good one, yet something turns my stomach about making a reservation for a night’s stay in Forrest City, Arkansas.
I tried to look up hotels in “Forest City AR” to no avail, until I remembered it was named for the famous traitor, Nathan Bedford Forrest, who not only was a general officer in the CSArmy, but was also a founder of the Ku Klux Klan.
I sometimes drive through Arkansas to get to southern Arizona, as the shortest routes all go through there. But I can get there via I-70 to Colorado, then south through New Mexico (did you know that there are law enforcement officers who think NM is part of old Mexico? True!!!).
Or south to I-10 through TX, although that requires submitting to a full stop inquiry by the Border Control along I-10, with no respect paid to the Bill of Rights.
I’m really thinking that a PU truck bought in AZ and plane tickets back and forth would be the best solution, as I really hate that too-long drive.
Vicksburg,. MS is a hotbed of confederacy -whatever that stuff is.
I don’t know, but we need to do something about those flags and monuments. That glorification of slavery makes me want to puke on those senators and governors who promulgate that shit.
Calouste
@RaflW: In Europe, they call a 150 year grudge “recent”. A lot of Scots want independence from the United Kingdom despite having been part of that country for more than 300 years, and having the same monarch for more than 400. Spain has been united since 1516, but the Basques and Catalans still want out.
Southern Confederacy worship is going to outlast us.
Tree With Water
@gene108: “What has occurred in this case must ever recur in similar cases. Human nature will not change. In any future great national trial, compared with the men of this, we shall have as weak and as strong, as silly and as wise, as bad and as good. Let us therefore study the incidents of this, as philosophy to learn wisdom from, and none of them as wrongs to be revenged”. Abraham Lincoln
Shelby Foote finished his great Civil War trilogy by writing: “..Davis could never match that music, or perhaps even catch its tone. His was a different style, though it too had its beauty and its uses: as in his response to a recent.. visitor, a reporter who hoped to leave with something that would explain to readers the underlying motivation of those crucial years of bloodshed and division. Davis pondered briefly, then replied: “Tell them-” He paused as if to sort the words. “Tell the world that I only loved America,” he said.
Betty Cracker
@cmorenc: Exactly right.
ruemara
@Citizen Alan: I had to research this fellow. Wow is all I can say. Fun fact, the Mississippi history k-12 site completely whitewashes his history with the most mild terms for his views and soft restatement s of his views. No wonder the south of old is not too far from the south of now.
raven
@Betty Cracker: Most people don’t give a shit. It’s like you and me and the Gators ands the Dawgs.
trollhattan
@Cervantes:
The B stands for “boom!”
Cervantes
@catclub:
I’m not following the argument. Even assuming this “stranglehold” exists, over the decades has it prevented China, Russia, India, and others from not only trading with Iran but actually growing that trade?
dww44
@Citizen Alan: This is the way to win this particular culture war;not by in your face taunts (which so many here are all in favor of) but by rear-guard and somewhat subtle actions which, will, over time, actually be far more effective.
Brachiator
@boatboy_srq:
The Senate could “push” for whatever nutty stuff that it wants, but this scenario would never happen, not even under a Republican president.
The Obama proposal is actually not a very good deal, but the Republicans are only hurting themselves in their stupidity. The Iranians can’t lose. Let’s say that they don’t want the deal either. They can sign it and continue to cheat outright. The GOP will latch onto this and probably use it to cruise to a presidential victory. Or the Iranians sign it and follow the protocols. If the GOP wins in 2016, they will likely cancel the deal, and the Iranians can continue to pursue a bomb and blame the US.
And there ain’t gonna be any instant global thermonuclear war over this. Not even Ted Cruz is that crazy.
boatboy_srq
@Cervantes: No; but major things like arms limitation agreements generally take the form of a treaty, over which the Senate would normally have review authority. The trouble here is 1) the Iran agreement isn’t exactly a treaty and 2) the GOTea is not especially likely to approve it (or anything like it) because TABMITWH. So yes, it’s reasonable that the Senate should have the opportunity to review it; but no, not THIS Senate because they’ll vote against anything Obama sends them with no reason better than niCLANG.
Kevin
@Lolis:
So…49 states to go?
boatboy_srq
@Brachiator: Between the chickenhawk GOTea that wants more money for more weapons to be used in more places, and the FundiEvangelist GOTea that’s gearing up for imminent End Times, there’s good reason for more than a smidgeon of apprehension. They’ve already killed NEW START, they’ve pushed for “boots on the ground” anywhere EXCEPT where Obama has suggested sending them, and they have a hardon for bombing the BLEEP out of Tehran (which won’t end there in any reality beyond their feverdreams of butch gun-totin’ he-man heroism). I don’t expect war from this, but I’m not about to discount the potential for something far too many Teahadis want.
Peale
@gene108: Good. Seriously. I really am not interested in listening to Larry Summers complaining about this situation. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the US has placed economic foreign policy demands on its allies and it does not surprise me at all that our allies are going to start looking for ways to play both sides in the emerging world order that is going to be centered in the Far East.
From where I am sitting, the MNCs headquartered in the US opted to chase Chinese labor China should use that cash it is sitting on to fund its own alternative to US foreign policy vision. I see no reason why the US should not have to compete for hegemony including the loyalty of its own citizens. Labor took a lot of hits since the 1980s so that the MNCs could play around the world. I don’t see any reason why our high up foofah poobahs should have easy lives controlling the world.
Sure, China doesn’t have the best environmental and human rights record, but our elite knew that going into the “offshore it to China” phase. It didn’t bother them then and it doesn’t really bother me now that China can set up its own development bank and have people around the world listen to its policy pronouncements.
dww44
@gene108:
Exactly why any countering actions will result in even more of this sort of romantic elevation of the evil and incompetents. For 40 years I’ve driven a 2 lane rural highway between my home and the small town where I grew up. For the last 20 years or so, beginning shortly after the renaming of all those streets in towns and cities as MLK Jr. Boulevards, the 2 lane highway with no prior name other than its Highway Number now sports signs attesting that it is the Jefferson Davis Memorial Highway. Ironically, a portion of it runs through an actual Jefferson County, which was named for the other Jefferson, and is a minority-majority rural county, given that cotton was once king.
Nothing will be gained by forcing the state to undo that action.
Betty Cracker
@raven: True. The article you linked above accurately traces how the meaning has changed over time. I’ve seen the true “Confederacy worship” aspects of white Southern identity fading away all of my life, and good riddance to it, but let’s not attempt to sandblast history away. Clarify it, balance it, and add voices that weren’t heard before, but don’t eradicate it.
Peale
@boatboy_srq: LOL. I can just see us doing that. Seizing, say, 50 billion of Chinese assets in the US while they seize the $500 bn we’ve invested in China.
Brachiator
@boatboy_srq:
I respect the blogger rhetoric here, but this has nothing to do with what is actually happening in the Middle East, or the interests of various parties. Nobody gives a rat’s ass about what fundamentalists think, and hey will never determine actual foreign policy. Apart from John McCain, who wants to put boots on the ground anywhere and everywhere, most of the GOP leadership is wary of the “more military is better” nonsense. And at the end of the day, even Netanyahu will find that he is being manipulated by a GOP leadership that wants to use him to attack Obama, but which will not necessarily give in to his demands.
There are reasons to be apprehensive, but not because of what you have laid out here.
Tree With Water
@Brachiator:
“..most of the GOP leadership is wary of the “more military is better” nonsense”. Really? Point to a few examples that bears that out. Because I don’t think you can. And you certainly don’t think very highly of Netanyahu’s political political expertise if you honestly believe that he’s being manipulated. I for one give him full credit in knowing what he’s doing.
Patricia Kayden
@Kevin: Not sure if it’s a state holiday, but I do recall celebrating Juneteenth in Minnesota back in ’96. Had never heard of it before then.
burnspbesq
@Wally Ballou:
The forces of darkness were beaten back by the Wisconsin Badgers on Saturday evening.
kc
It is utterly without merit.
Is this article typical of what the “new, improved” TNR is putting out these days? Because it sounds like complete trollery.
kc
@cmorenc:
Yes. Thank you.
catclub
@Tree With Water:
Just like Othello loved Desdemona
burnspbesq
Try explaining Monument Ave. in Richmond to an Australian some time. That was challenging.
Patricia Kayden
@Villago Delenda Est: I don’t think banning the confederate flag would pass the First Amendment challenges it would generate. People have the right to fly any flag they want on private property but hateful symbols (in my opinion) shouldn’t be state sanctioned. Here in Southern MD, whenever I see a confederate flag sticker on a car, I just roll my eyes and keep it moving. Doesn’t bother me knowing that where I live is 40% minority and overwhelmingly Democratic. I assume anyone with a confederate flag around here is a loser and provocateur.
Cervantes
@boatboy_srq:
Sorry, my mistake — your position was clear enough before I asked.
I had meant to ask about the following:
Which is not something you said.
Cervantes
There are a number of suggestions here. One has to do with the proposed federal holiday. Another involves existing “monuments to the Confederacy” — which can, perhaps, be “disavowed” by the simple expedient of not committing federal funds to their upkeep. And possibly a third — and possibly moot — suggestion is about not funding the construction of new monuments.
Whereas the federal government re-naming or destroying existing monuments isn’t going to happen — not for a long time, if ever — and I doubt anyone should be trying to advance such a proposal at this time. The desire to “get real about history” is an acquired taste.
tones
@gene108: like the modern day GOP!
Brachiator
@Tree With Water:
My point is that the GOP can talk shit because they know that they cannot actually deploy any troops. And after a few rounds of the Sunday shows, they do not continually push for any troop deployments. They don’t even do as many dog and pony shows with a general or admiral who might be willing to demand troops (that general or admiral would soon find his or her career at an end). It’s political theater, but not more than that. And apart from Gramps McCain (who is largely a fraud), there are no GOP leaders who can claim any deep military experience. Which leads us indirectly to Bibi (or Boehner’s Baby).
Netanyahu is pathetic. And let me note that I am a strong supporter of Israel. His “what about me” whining ignores the hard reality that the major issue in the Middle East right now is not defense of Israel, but the destabilization of countries from Libya to Pakistan (and let’s throw in major parts of Africa) and the intensification of Sunni/Shia conflicts.
And when Netanyahu claims that Iran is the major player in supporting terror, he is as wrong headed as earlier fools who falsely claimed that Saddam Hussein was the primary leader of the axis of evil.
So called friends of Israel attack Obama using friendly media and strongly imply that the good old days of authoritarian rule in Egypt, Iraq and elsewhere was good, because it was good for Israel. But those days are over. The destabilization in the region make it almost impossible for a leader to emerge who will be a faithful US or Western puppet. And even if Israel backs the chaos and tries to play one side against the other (as they do with the Palestinian leadership in Gaza and the West Bank), they risk the rise of a zealot fundamentalist force which won’t give a shit about being paid off by someone’s intelligence service, and will intensify terrorist attacks on Israel itself.
Everything about Bibi’s strategy is the thinking of someone who foolishly believes that the Middle East is what the region was like in 1980, or that those days can be brought back again. On top of all this, he is relying an a GOP and neocon foreign policy wonks whose greatest foreign policy achievement was sinking the US into the insane Iraq folly. And yes, if the GOP wins the presidency in 2016, they may sink us into another war in the region. But there is not a chance in hell that the results would be good for either Israel or the United States.
This is why Bibi is a fool.
Tree With Water
@catclub: Ah, but Davis didn’t act alone…
“..Neither party expected for the war the magnitude or the duration which it has already attained. Neither anticipated that the cause of the conflict might cease with or even before the conflict itself should cease. Each looked for an easier triumph, and a result less fundamental and astounding. Both read the same Bible and pray to the same God, and each invokes His aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God’s assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men’s faces, but let us judge not, that we be not judged. The prayers of both could not be answered. That of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has His own purposes..”.
.. and that less fundamental and astounding result Abe referred to is still a work in progress.
Cervantes
@boatboy_srq:
I see what you mean, thanks, but I disagree that the Senate, as currently constituted, would adopt this approach.
Ol'Froth
There are FAR too many military bases named for traitors. Fort Hood, Fort A.P. Hill, eitc.
different-church-lady
We could call it the “Poking Sleeping Bears With Sticks Omnibus Bill”.
Or maybe the “Hey, After 150 Years We Don’t Need No More Stinkin’ Healing Anymore” movement.
April 9th could be National We Triumphed Over Our Other Half Day.
Keith G
I’d rather folks like Brian Beutler spend energy writing about increasing wave of housing insecurity among the working poor or any number of other issues that are making the USA most likely the worst state with an advanced economy to be poor in.
Whether or not we polish Traveler’s brass balls is utterly beside any point that I can imagine.
Cervantes
@Brachiator:
By what analysis?
The topic probably deserves a discussion thread of its own, so if you’d prefer just to summarize here, or cite something, that would be great — thanks.
different-church-lady
@Keith G:
Wouldn’t something like that involve actual work? Why would he do that when he could simply continue to have deep public thoughts?
Cervantes
@different-church-lady:
@Keith G:
That “I” may be significant, right?
Whereas those still seeking acknowledgement and justice may have an only-too-real interest in our collectively facing up to the relevant history.
Keith G
@Cervantes: Well if your relevant history can feed hungry kids or address the disparity between the demand for affordable housing units and the supply, I will sign up for that class in relevant history in a flash. We all have historic pains and scorns that would be tre cool if addressed. In my history alone I could reflect on pogroms, forced migration, and systematic economic oppression.
Here and now there is gut-wrenching impoverishment that we can address. We can, at least, lessen. I love slagging on Confederates as much as any true son of a Northern state, but there are many more important fish begging to be fried.
Brachiator
@Cervantes:
Mine. There is a pretty good piece that touches on this indirectly in the current issue of the New Yorker (page 17. Sorry I forget the title of the piece and did not bring the magazine in with me).
A lot of heavy work related stuff just came down. This is a fair challenge. I will save this reference and hope to give a reply soon, for what it may be worth.
Cervantes
@Keith G:
You don’t say?
But the problem, again, is that first-person pronoun. Who is your “we”? You may want to address gut-wrenching poverty, but could it be that’s partly because you don’t need the history lesson being discussed here?
Sherparick
Time to call my senators and my neo-confederate congress creature. I suggest “New Birth of Freedom Day” is what we call it.
Cervantes
@Brachiator:
That’s the “Talk of the Town” piece by Steve Coll, dean of journalism at Columbia, in which he concedes right up front (third paragraph) that the “precise details of Obama’s offer are unknown,” which raises an obvious question.
But never mind that; most of Coll’s critique is devoted to matters non-nuclear that are not directly covered by the plan. Easing up on sanctions makes him anxious about what the Iranians might do with more money. That’s an interesting point, certainly, but if not the easing up of sanctions, what leverage does he think can be used in nuclear talks?
As Coll himself concludes re Obama’s diplomacy: “It is the best of bad options.” He does go on to add: “but it could be better still” — which is a fantastic standard met by no real agreement ever, anywhere.
Thanks. No particular hurry — but you said elsewhere that you are a strong supporter of Israel, and that’s the perspective my question to you is about.
BubbaDave
@different-church-lady:
How about the “We didn’t kill enough of you treacherous swine but at least we can belatedly piss on your graves” act? I’d vote for it!
Ben Cisco (onboard the Defiant)
@BubbaDave: Every officer above the rank of LT. EVERY legislator. And a FULL Reconstruction. Had it been done then, we wouldn’t be dealing with this BS now.
As it is, we’ll be lucky if we manage to avoid having to do it all over again.
different-church-lady
@BubbaDave: No no no, that should be the name of the holiday itself.
Bill Arnold
@Brachiator:
That’s never been clear, though it’s reasonable as a worst-case assumption. The opinion of many is, and has been for many years, that they have been pursuing a short breakout capability (the terminology finally making its way into the press and political rhetoric), and also pursuing uncertainty as to whether or not they already have a weapon or two, the uncertainty itself being a deterrent. Also, they know full well that a not-invisible nuclear program or worse, actual weapons, would make an expensive and extremely dangerous regional arms race unstoppable.
What I’d like to see is a spin-analysis of the Iranian fact sheet about of the framework agreement (unpolished English translation), preferably translated from Farsi. Probably too much to ask for. :-)
See also Cheryl Rofer’s interesting piece (she hasn’t mentioned it yet here?) The Iran Framework Agreement: The Good, the Bad, and TBD.
Cervantes
@Bill Arnold:
Trace back from this for the prelude.