Am I the only one who remembers this line? “You’re either with us or against us.”
This was the very loud refrain endlessly pushed by the Bush Administration (as shaped by Cheney) after 9/11. As one who questioned whether we had an adequate basis to invade Iraq, I remember very well people stopping just short of accusing me of being a traitor for not supporting the impending invasion. Members of Congress were definitely cowed by such tactics.
One thing I’ve really hated to see throughout the Trump administration is this sanitizing and normalization of the Bush administration. Suddenly people who tarnished and shamed themselves with their actions during those years – people like Condi Rice, Andrew Card, John Yoo, Karl Rove, Ari Fleischer, Michael Hayden, Elaine Chao and so many others – are today accepted as legitimate, normal spokespersons.
Trump is the symptom of disease in our society. The Bush administration caused much of that disease. It’s disheartening to me that people have forgotten that.
Revisionist bullshit. The Civil War was fought over slavery. One’s loyalty to one’s state began and ended with whether that state joined the Confederacy or stuck with the Union. And many that lived in southern states were reluctantly conscripted into service for the Confederacy.
I’ve never read or studied anything about the Civil War that made a case to demonstrate soldiers joined up because of their loyalty to, say, South Carolina.
The whole point of Kelly’s remarks were to remind the bigots - in congress and in Trump’s base - that Trump is their man, so stand by him even if he is a Russian agent.
Not so much the state, but their friends and family. If all the young men in your town are going off to war, it’s going to be hard to stay home, and not just due to being shunned as a coward. If you want to live there after the war, you’ll always have to put up with the people talking behind your back about the brave boys who got killed or maimed, and all the veterans with their empty sleeves and pant legs will be around to look at you. Besides, you want to show you’re a man and have all those adventures, too, don’t you? So you’re going to join up with the rest of them.
Loyalty to the state or the region? Yeah, maybe some of that rhetoric works on a teenage boy, but it’s secondary.
I doubt he really wants a special counsel. He’s just doing like Trump; talk about crimes that were committed and the need for investigations - but then don’t actually start any investigations.
Why? Because anyone can claim that crimes were committed. But an investigation would require actual evidence - which they know they can’t produce. They want to avoid an investigation which would just end up exonerating their opponents. Instead they just keep talking and spreading rumors without having to back it up.
The really idiotic thing about this is that the regular U.S. Attorney with the appropriate geographic jurisdiction could look into this. Similarly with the other alleged Hillary crimes. What do they need a special counsel for?
The Russian collusion investigation needs an independent counsel because the persons who need to be investigated are in the current Administration, and it’s hard to impartially investigate your boss. No such impediments apply to investigating Hillary.
THEY know that. The base does not. And that is who the message is for: The ignorant, uninformed base, who need a distraction from the shit-show happening in the Trump administration.
It is a cynical, dishonest bunch of complete bullshit, and Kelly is the one manufacturing it and shoveling it out to the rubes.
He knows it’s bullshit. He knows he is fucking up the country. He doesn’t care.
I’m not sure if one really needs to. What Kelly said was so transparently stupid and horrible that it can be rebutted in fewer than a hundred words, and, really, doesn’t need rebuttal in the eyes of a decent person with a reasonably understanding of American history.
It’s as if Coates spent his talent and insight explaining why triangles have fewer sides than squares.
I remember people running right on past that. I was accused of treason and being a terrorist sympathizer and wanting to see americans die because I questioned the judgement of going into iraq at that time.