Saturday, February 11, 2017

Trump and the Confederate Flag



Before I start let me say that I am not a fan of “Ancestory.” I have never worn a pair of lederhosen and the cold air that would flow over my more tender parts caused by wearing a kilt leads me to wonder about the judgment of grown men who prance around explaining they were confused about who their ancestors were but have now been saved by the magic of genetic analysis.

Indeed.

The best I can tell, based on family stories, is that I have ancestors. Quite a few in fact. Since a generation, the average time it takes to produce children, is about 25 years, then if I go back 250 years, 10 generations, then I have 2048 great, great, great, etc., grandparents.

And since I don’t have three eyes and twitch when I walk I believe it was a diverse group.

On a more recent note the story is that one of my great granddaddies fought for the South, was wounded in the Battle of Corinth, captured, escaped, married a Indian woman and lived more or less happily ever after. There’s more to it but since I foresee your eyes slamming shut I will spare you the details.

But one of the more interesting things is that he was born and raised on a small farm in western Kentucky and, like some 90 plus percent of Confederate fighters owned no slaves. Given that standing up and shooting at each other using 58 caliber rifles, dying of diseases, starving on short rations, freezing in the cold and other assorted ways of dying is quite nasty, the question is, “Why in the world would the 90% do this for the 10%?”

That question has been asked for years by the more thoughtful among us. My great grandfather had no “skin in the game” so why did he fight?

Let me ask you people who claim it was to keep slaves. Really? He had no slaves. The answer is more complex than “slavery.” 

We can start with why did the North Vietnam peasant fight to install communism? Why did the average German fight to keep Hitler in power. Why did the Germanic tribes resist Caesar?  Why does the average Muslim fight?

The answer is so simple that all the “jerks under pressure,” aka “experts,” will reject it. Because the enemy was there.

Oh, there is more to it than that. The 10% manipulate the 90% through various methods. The radical Islamic leaders use religion. The West has been very effective in using “patriotism.”  But the base is “because they were there.” Roosevelt, even though it was obvious we had to rescue Europe, was wise enough to wait until the homeland was attacked.

On a side note Bush did nothing until 9/11 but by 2008 the surrender monkeys and America haters managed to help the Islamist enough to get us into a SOFA agreement in Iraq that Obama gratefully signed thus birthing ISIS.

Of course any dummy could foresee that. Even me. Here’s a comment I made in  2007 on the Left’s website, TalkLeft.

“tworivers (none / 0) (#47)
by jimakaPPJ on Sat Apr 28, 2007 at 08:52:16 AM CST 
Actually we could argue over the reasons, but so what.

The issue now is that when the Surrender Party pulls out of Iraq the world will see us as weak.

Weak people and lambs get attacked.”

But I digress. Let’s get back to the Confederate flag, diversity and Vanderbilt.

Just as I don’t wear lederhosen or kilts; I do not fly the Confederate flag. Never have. But, unlike the Left wingers who trill diversity’s false song, I understand why some people do.

To frame that, you’re going to have to understand that the “War Between the States” wasn’t over when Lee surrendered. In the phase called “Reconstruction” the south was overrun with Carpet Baggers with various amounts of political influence who took power and did various illegal and immoral things. This resurrected the “because they are here” base. The result? The KKK and associated pieces of trash who wanted to get their power back. That is the base reason that the leaders of the local KKK’s were the power holders and brokers in southern society.  

The results were just like the “War Between the States.”  The Yankee’s were the cause because they were, if not physically then in spirit, “there” and were the reason that Brother died at Shiloh and Uncle is crippled and we have “10 cents cotton and 40 cents meat and how in the world can a poor man eat?”

The South was devastated and remained a rural agricultural society while the North lived through the age of the Rockefeller and Vanderbilt peasant rulers and while Teddy Roosevelt had Southerners in his “Rough Riders” the reforms he preached hardly made an impact below the Mason Dixon line. It took a couple of wars and a revolution in agricultural equipment making the poor white and black sharecroppers unneeded and  forced to leave the “frosty morns” of the South and move to the soot covered  snow of the industrial north.

Think I overstate? Well, drive south on US 61 from Memphis into what was once the poorest county in the US, Tunica…that also had the highest number of millionaires per capita.  What you will see now is monster tractors tilling thousands of acres while the grand children shoot and kill each other in Chicago. But the millionaires are mostly still there along with a new set. Casino types making a living off welfare money from the Memphis area.

But I’m getting ahead of myself.

Starting in the 50’s, business being business, factories followed the Mississippi river down to the cheap labor and started locating in the south. In the small town and surrounding county I live in by the mid 60’s there were 5 factories employing some 7000 people. And compared to chopping cotton these were good paying jobs. Some were union some not. New homes were being built. Downtown’s were thriving. Businesses were opening. Population was expanding.

But by the mid 70’s the trend was starting.  Stores in the city core were closing in the face of competition from the big department stores in the expanded shopping center 15 miles away. A factory closed because it couldn’t match the lower price from foreign competition and by the end of the 70’s the largest employer closed and merged two divisions into one. Again foreign competition. 3000 jobs just gone.

And the Republican leadership didn’t do a damn thing. Nothing. Zero. Nada.

Oh, wait. They did managed to get together with the Democrats and open the immigration floodgates

In between times we fought the Vietnam War and the Democrats surrendered while the Republicans wrapped themselves in the flag. When communism collapsed the radical islamists hopped up to become the villain of the day and Bush declared a “War On Terror “ that had been started by members of “The Religion of Peace.”

Yeah. I also find that confusing.

And the immigrants just kept on coming. Eleven million illegal and about a million a year legal.

Before long the “trades” were wiped out along with meat packing, yard care and almost any service type work that didn’t require good English and was mostly out of the public’s eye.

The WOT continued and Obama was elected and the economy collapsed and it was all the Republicans fault and don’t say Merry Christmas and we now have more genders that Carter had Little Liver pills and the jobs kept on disappearing while the unemployment rate kept on rising and Obamacare helped some and hurt many but don’t mention Universal Health Care because it doesn’t work in Canada and the rest of the world.

We even lied on our Presidential Approval Poll.  I mean when everyone says the country is going in the wrong direction but the President is at a 55%.....they gotta be lying…one way or the other.

So with everyone but our Dear Leaders recognizing that we have more problems than a pregnant nun the election comes and they offer us more of the same.

And they can’t understand why Trump won. Or why some folks fly the Confederate flag.

It is simple.

Let me educate you.

It is because “they” are here. And we are damn well tired of them.





 "Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them." - Karl Popper

No judge, you're wrong.



And Lefties try to justify anything to hurt the country.

“WASHINGTON (AP) -- The federal judge who halted President Donald Trump's travel ban was wrong in stating that no one from the seven countries targeted in Trump's order has been arrested for extremism in the United States since the 2001 terrorist attacks.

Just last October, an Iraqi refugee living in Texas pleaded guilty to attempting to provide support to the Islamic State group, accused of taking tactical training and wanting to blow himself up in an act of martyrdom. In November, a Somali refugee injured 11 in a car-and-knife attack at Ohio State University, and he surely would have been arrested had he not been killed by an officer.”

snip

“He asked a Justice Department lawyer how many arrests of foreign nationals from the countries have occurred since 9/11. When the lawyer said she didn't know, Robart answered his own question: "Let me tell, you, the answer to that is none, as best I can tell. You're here arguing on behalf of someone that says we have to protect the United States from these individuals coming from these countries and there's no support for that."

Now isn’t that sweet. He asks a question that has nothing to do with law and appears to be looking for motive and/or evidence. Yet Appeals courts are supposed to look at the law only. They cannot consider evidence or motive.

And then we have the family thing.

“All told, Kurzman said, 23 percent of Muslim Americans involved with extremist plots since Sept. 11 had family backgrounds from the seven countries.”








"Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them." - Karl Popper “