President Reanimated Corpse of Andrew Johnson
By 
You know, I very rarely agree with David Petraeus, but I agree with him on renaming our military bases named after traitors 1865%:
Fort Bragg and most of the other posts in question were established either during World War I, at one peak of the Lost Cause movement, or in the early 1940s, as the country was feverishly gearing up for World War II. Army leaders, to say nothing of political figures at the time, undoubtedly wanted to ingratiate themselves with the southern states in which the forts were located. They bowed to—and in many cases shared—the Lost Cause nostalgia that also sponsored so much civilian statuary, street naming, and memorial building from the end of Reconstruction through the 1930s, when the trend tapered off but did not end completely. In many cases, the Army’s sentiments simply mirrored those of the society it served.
For an organization designed to win wars to train for them at installations named for those who led a losing force is sufficiently peculiar, but when we consider the cause for which these officers fought, we begin to penetrate the confusion of Civil War memory. These bases are, after all, federal installations, home to soldiers who swear an oath to support and defend the Constitution of the United States. The irony of training at bases named for those who took up arms against the United States, and for the right to enslave others, is inescapable to anyone paying attention. Now, belatedly, is the moment for us to pay such attention.
It gives me considerable pause, for example, to note that my alma mater, West Point, honors Robert E. Lee with a gate, a road, an entire housing area, and a barracks, the last of which was built during the 1960s. A portrait of Lee with an enslaved person adorns a wall of the cadet library, the counterpoint to a portrait of Grant, his Civil War nemesis, on a nearby wall.
Lee’s history is, in fact, thoroughly woven through that of West Point and the Army. Before he was the commander of the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia, Lee was an outstanding cadet, a distinguished chief of engineers in the Mexican War, and later the West Point superintendent. I do not propose that we erase his role in this history. We can learn from his battlefield skill and, beyond that, from his human frailty, his conflicting loyalties, and the social pressures that led him to choose Virginia over the United States. If we attempt to repress the fact of his existence from our institutional memory, we risk falling into the trap of authoritarian regimes, which routinely and comprehensively obliterate whole swaths of national history as if they never happened at all. What distinguishes democracies is their capacity to debate even the most contentious issues vigorously and in informed, respectful, deliberate ways and to learn from the errors of the past. But remembering Lee’s strengths and weaknesses, his military and personal successes and failures, is different from venerating him.
What’s more, the military is completely open to this! Except that Scumbag Don has interfered, channeling the reanimated corpse of Andrew Johnson again. I imagine it will happen as soon as a Democrat is president again.
And we are winning these battles. Even NASCAR is banning the Confederate flag!! Not only has Cops been cancelled, but its reruns have been taken out of syndication. HBO Max is pulling Gone With The Wind. All of this is making vile racist Andrew Sullivan very sad.
These radical critical theory books, written by people deeply opposed to the foundations of liberal democracy, are being mainstreamed. Companies are making them must-reads for employees. We. All. Live. On. Campus. Now. https://t.co/KFwVPAIuqk
— Andrew Sullivan (@sullydish) June 9, 2020
Remember when people thought Andrew Sullivan was smart and a voice you should listen to, even though he was openly racist then too? It’s not even that long ago! Now he’s down to retweeting Michael Tracey furious that people would read Ibram Kendi, who is obviously destroying western civilization by urging people to fight the racism within them.
Also, this is happening right now in Minnesota:
A group of people, led by AIM twin cities chair Mike Forcia of the Bad River Band of Lake Superior Chippewa, are at the State Capitol to tear down the statue of Christopher Columbus. A state trooper is here too with paperwork needed to remove the statue @MPRnews pic.twitter.com/54K7xnTGS6
— Evan Frost (@efrostee) June 10, 2020