Hawley history

Josh Hawley pretending not to be a neoconfederate is like a 10-year-old trying to dress up in his father’s suit:

For white people, June 19th is a great day either to read and amplify Black voices and Black history and consider the racist underpinnings of this nation, or at least shut the fuck up if you’re uninterested in doing the aforementioned. Unfortunately, many white people—particularly Republican white men—find themselves incapable of any kind of self-reflection on this day and instead vomit their fragile, defensive feelings on main. Exhibit A: Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.).

“Today is a good day to remember: Christianity is the faith and America is the place slavery came to die,” the Missouri senator tweeted, managing to fail at both grammar and a basic grasp of history.

In reality, as Jeet Heer and many others pointed out in response to Hawley’s inane commentary, the United States lagged decades behind most other countries in the Western hemisphere in abolishing slavery. England, Mexico, France, and Denmark had all ended slavery before we adopted the 13th Amendment in 1865.

And while it’s unclear from a logical or even syntax perspective what “Christianity is the faith” is supposed to mean in that tweet, Hawley also seems to be whiffing on the irony that Americans used Christianity to justify slavery in the first place.

As Bassett observes, another former next-big-Republican-thing could similarly use some — not even Critical Race Theory, just history that doesn’t come from Bill O’Reilly:

The idea that slavery could coexist with the Declaration of Independence is almost as crasy is that idea that it could coexist with Christianity!