Yesterday some dumbass tied a Confederate flag to the doors of the Museum of Jewish Heritage in Battery Park in New York City. I’ve tried to find a picture of the flag tied to the doors to confirm my suspicion that the moron who did this is a Confederate navy aficionado.
Regardless, the person who did this is also historically illiterate. The only worse thing than a racist, anti-Semitic neo-Confederate is a historically illiterate one. Unfortunately, there were Jewish Americans who supported the Confederacy.
The most prominent Jewish Confederate was Judah P. Benjamin, who is pictured above. Benjamin, known as both the brains of the Confederacy and the Dark Prince of the Confederacy – the latter was, at the time it was used to refer to him, an anti-Semitic allusion by the Christian Confederates to Benjamin’s being Jewish – served as the Attorney General, Secretary of War, and Secretary of State of the Confederate States of America. That was after he served as a US Senator from Louisiana. Prior to that he was a Louisiana state legislator, a founder of the Illinois Railroad, and the owner of a plantation and 150 slaves until he sold both the plantation and the slaves in 1850. Benjamin also established and ran the Confederacy’s intelligence service, so in addition to everything else he was the Confederacy’s spymaster. After the Confederacy fell he escaped to England and became a Queen’s Coroner.
Another prominent Jewish Confederate was Raphael J. Moses. pictured above. He served in the Army of Northern Virginia as LTG James Longstreet’s Commissary Officer and held the rank of major. It fell to Major Moses to carry out the last order of the Confederacy: to take $40,000 in gold and silver bullion from the Confederate treasury to feed and provision defeated Confederate soldiers returning home from the war. Over a dozen of Moses’s family members also served in the Confederate military and his great grandfathers on both sides had served in the War of Independence. Moses, like Benjamin, was a plantation owner, though in Georgia. It was there that he was the first person to commercially grow peaches in Georgia.
There were, of course, other Jewish Confederates, as well as a small number of plantation and slave owning Jews in both the US south and in the Caribbean, though they were fortunately few in relation to their Christian counterparts. The definitive work on this topic is Eli Farber’s Jews, Slaves, and the Slave Trade: Setting the Record Straight.
America’s original sin of slavery was, unfortunately, interfaith, ecumenical, and non-denominational. And while the Confederate naval jack has largely become a general symbol of racism, hate, anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, and xenophobia because these racists are too stupid to know what flag they’re flying, it is important to remember that while most Jewish Americans aren’t proud of our religious forebears unfortunate associations with the Confederacy and slavery, it doesn’t mean that we’re historically illiterate about it either.
We leave the last word to LTG William Tecumseh Sherman!
Open thread
Kent
Strictly speaking America has two original sins. Slavery of course. But also the genocide of our native peoples. Both of them driven and inspired/abetted by the toxic twin forces of white supremacy and Christianity. And both going back to the very first days of this country. Although there were obviously going to be some fellow traveler white supremacist Jews participating in both projects.
cain
Seeing the confereate flag waving inside the Capitol was really rage inducing. Replacing the American flag with a Trump flag as well. These assholes pump themselves up with all this patriotism but are totally willing to replace the great flag with new symbols more in line with their hate and rage.
ETA – OMG! YES!! The coveted 2nd place – AGAIN! ??????
Omnes Omnibus
Um, is there any other kind?
Ken
I don’t know about the etiquette of this, but I’m reposting my comment from the thread below, because the more I think about it the more plausible it seems.
It’s not a crime if the President does it.
Um. Remember three weeks ago, when we were wondering why Barr suddenly resigned? I just thought of a plausible reason.
Mary G
They don’t think any Jewish people are their side are really Jews; “it’s just a smart ploy to get ahead in bidness.” This is an actual quote I heard a relative say before my mom cut them all back off.
Phylllis
Speaking of Judah P. Benjamin*, Mr. lecturn-stealer lives not too far from this Florida State Park.
* A phrase I’m pretty certain I never thought I’d use on this blog.
debbie
My heart is sinking. My great grandmother was a Moses, though the family lived in New Orleans. Her father and uncles fought for the Confederate Army, and after the war ended, opened a photography studio. And yeah, Jewish.
wjs
@Ken: If Barr knew there was a plot to send Trump supporters into the Capitol and resigned without doing anything to warn anyone, he’s guilty of a crime.
Is it beginning to dawn on people that the Vice President Elect of the United States of America used to put people in prison? It should.
The right is populated with half-assed lawyers and halfwits. The left is populated with accomplished people who have defended this country, prosecuted crimes, and delivered legislative results.
Alison Rose
Yeah…as a Jew, it’s not just repugnant to me that there were Jewish Confederates and slave owners, it’s also baffling. Like…………………how? How, with our history of being on the receiving end of persecution, hatred, violence, conspiracy theories…how could any Jewish person choose to do this? But every group has its monsters, I guess. Of course, I’m also baffled by Jews who support Trump, or just the GOP in general. I know for a lot of them it’s because of Israel and/or taxes, and I’m like, thanks for living up to the stereotypes!!! Oy.
Ohio Mom
And it continues…a Jewish family helped found the Cincinnati chapter of the Tea Party.
cain
Since this is an adam thread – I’m curious – I think we have shown now that with many officers and active and retired military that trumpism has compromised LEO. This gives us some fuel I think about once again having a conversation about law enforcement wrt BLM. We see now that a lot of these people indeed are not only willing to fuck over black folks, but ready to practice sedition in pursuit of their rights to do it.
The other thing is that intelligence folks like the FBI should be and hopefully embarrassed by their utter failure to protect a major branch of govt in center of their power. Surrounded by all these military and intelligence agencies – a sad 90 minutes to come to the rescue and allowed most of the perps to walk away.
I wonder if this means that the FBI is going to be ruthless in their pursuit of the insurrectionists? The charges they’ve been leveling do not include sedition or insurrection however.. so, not sure what that means.
Omnes Omnibus
@wjs: Hey, we have half-assed lawyers on our side too. Just ask Steve in the WTF.
Punchy
I must be missing something. A Confed flag on a Jewish museum represents…..huh? Do these shitheads believe the Jews beat the rebels? Do they think General Lee fought Soros’ army?
dmsilev
Adam, would be interested in getting your take on the effects of Parler being muted for the next week or so (Amazon is booting them off AWS effective tomorrow, and Parler says it will take a week or so for them to migrate to another option). Will that have any real effect on whatever the insurrectionists are planning, or is the mostly just cutting off Internet loudmouths rather than actually dangerous people?
Mart
Made me Google the flag. Thought folks were calling it the Virginia battle flag, but it’s Naval. Remember thinking it looked cool while smoking a joint listening to Lynyrd Skynyrd, The Outlaws, Marshal Tucker, Charlie Daniels, etc. Now when I see someone displaying it I get angry. See how old white guys can grow?
cain
@Mary G:
That whole dark prince moniker reminds me of Miller.. a true dark prince.
Chetan Murthy
@Punchy: Perhaps taking a page from neo-Nazis in Germany, who use the Confederate flag instead of the Nazi flag (b/c the latter is banned). I think it’s just the fusion of neo-Nazi and neo-Confed factions, is all.
Chetan Murthy
@cain: Not expecting much until Biden takes power and installs his people. Until then, I’d expect DoJ will slow-roll everything, undercharge everybody. I mean, the Cossacks work for the Czar.
Tom Levenson
@cain: Not to be confused with Lucas, Prince of Darkness.
Feared by every British sports car owner of a certain age.
laura
Why is there no photo of Stephen Miller in this post? Is he not the individual to tie this historical antecendent to the present day?
dmsilev
@Alison Rose: I guess take heart in knowing that the fraction of Jews who lean GOP is quite a bit lower than the country as a whole.
J R in WV
Love the William Tecumseh Sherman “Heritage not Hate” poster!
A great post. Thanks !
Omnes Omnibus
What did we do to make you hate us?
Nicole
For me, too. And I don’t really care much about patriotic symbols, but these fuckers chanting USA USA while waving their fucking Confederate and Trump flags and that goddamn thin blue line abomination of an American flag really piss me off. Fuck them; they don’t have any business claiming to love the country if they’re waving that bullshit around.
Kent
Our new AG, Merrick Garland cut his teeth on investigating and prosecuting white supremacists. He led the prosecutions of the Oklahoma City bombers, the Unabomber, and the Atlanta Olympic Bombings.
JaySinWA
@Omnes Omnibus: I was under the impression that the Lost Cause history was written by well educated people that deliberately distorted the past. Perhaps they were merely self deluding, but I think it was more cherry picking and propaganda.
ETA there were a number of people miseducated in civil war history do to the losers writing it.
Gravenstone
@Punchy: Just a reminder that Jews aren’t White, regardless of how they appear. Also known as “you’re on our list too”. Subtle these fucks are not.
Steve in the ATL
@Omnes Omnibus: to be fair, I’m also a halfwit!
Tom Levenson
@Gravenstone: This. Though I always think of Jews as “brevet white.” A temporary, always revocable status.
Steeplejack
@Omnes Omnibus:
Zing! (As some would say.)
Omnes Omnibus
@Steve in the ATL: I didn’t want to presume.
ETA: After I posted the original comment, I thought I had just given you the opportunity to turn it around on me.
Steve in the ATL
@Mart: “there goes another love song” should be way more famous than it is. At least one out of every three AOR plays of “can’t you see” should be replaced with it
laura
@Omnes Omnibus: as BillinGlendale would say – You know what you did. ?
tom
@Tom Levenson: Why do the British drink warm beer?
Because they have Lucas refrigerators.
Steeplejack
@Punchy:
No, the Confederate flag now represents white supremacy and racism (and anti-Semitism). It’s that simple.
Kent
That’s penny ante stuff.
The Mercer family funded Trump, Breitbart, and now owns Parler. And then there’s Sheldon Adelson. There are plenty of modern Jewish Nazis.
JCJ
@cain:
As I posted earlier:
Q: why did it take so long for law enforcement to restore order at the US Capitol?
A: They had to leave the scene at the Capitol to go home and change clothes first.
Omnes Omnibus
@laura: Well sure, I knew. I am just surprised that you did too.
Redshift
@Punchy: I think it’s simpler than that. Something like “This is the symbol of our racist hate. Our racist hate includes anti-Semitism, therefore putting up this flag is a fine way to threaten Jews.”
Mary G
Really excellent interview in Reason (yes, the libertarian’s magazine, but bear with me) with Justin Amash’s successor, Peter Meijer.
He’s not a good guy, he hated what Obama did (not super specific about why), wants to end the endless wars, but not too fast, and of course will be a pain in the ass about the terrible federal debt that’s coming to kill us all, but he calls Twitler out in the strongest terms in response to the question of 25th Amendment or impeachment:
He says some of the Republicans who voted for the objections to the Electoral College votes did so out of fear for their families. Another thing that has to be pinned down.
Ken
Like Italians, and Irish, and Bohemians, and Spaniards — oops, sorry, they’re already out — and Poles, and Greeks, and…
Kent
I think the rectangular flag-shaped one is the confederate naval flag. And the square-shaped one was the Lee’s battle flag. Neither of them were the official flag of the confederacy. But then I’m not really a confederate symbols aficionado.
Redshift
@JCJ: From Buzzfeed’s account from a Black Capitol Police officer:
(Police from elsewhere in the country, not his own force, in case that wasn’t clear.)
Martin
I keep seeing references to Trump saying to come to DC on 1/6 ‘it’ll be wild’ without explanation.
This is the organizing site.: Wild Protest
It was pulled down the day of the attack. The site went up on 12/23, so I think it’s safe to say there was some coordination with the event planners, and it was Trumps way of signaling his support for it.
Also, Amazon is pulling Parler’s hosting tomorrow, so they’ll need to find a new host. I’m guessing they’ll have to go overseas.
cain
@tom:
I actually like a good British ale at the temperature they have it in England. Slightly chilled, none of that super cold business!
Steeplejack
@Steve in the ATL:
Outlaws, “There Goes Another Love Song.”
One of the other plays of “Can’t You See” can be replaced with “Heard It in a Love Song.”
cain
@Kent:
I hope when they meet Yahweh they have to do some fast explaining including why the fuck they were spending their wealth encouraging nazism.
Martin
@Kent: It’s the white supremacy flag and nothing more.
Ken
Ah, so all those people entering their personal identifying information (SSN and picture of driver’s license) will be doing so on Russian servers. That should work out well.
cain
@Martin:
It’s a global symbol – they use that in Germany too.
Kelly
In other news my Congressman Kurt Schrader is now in favor of impeachment. Yesterday during a discussion amongst the Democratic Caucus he said the rush to impeach Trump was like a “lynching”. Apparently the backlash from his colleagues that sheltered while Trump’s mob raged and hunted the building for them was epic.
Damien
I used to feel like Sherman might have gone too far during his March to the Sea, but now I’ve come around the to notion that he really had the right idea, and I feel more strongly now than ever that his tactics should be dusted off and tried again.
Sister Golden Bear
@Mary G:
Flex-cuff guys 1 and 2, as well as others, including those who found Clyburn’s well-hidden office, and those who erected a gallows, say hi.
tom
@dmsilev: I think it will take Parler much longer than a week to get up and running again.
cain
That asshat deserved it. He also was voted against the $2k checks which I’m trying to understand why the fuck he would be against it. It can’t be going swimmingly in his district.
He’s going to get primaried.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Kent: I thought the Mercers, at least the daughter, were what passes for Christian in US politics
cain
@tom:
Good riddance. They could go to signal I suppose and start large groups that way.
dmsilev
@tom: Good to hear. Via the Post, this is what Parler is saying:
Take with all applicable grains of salt.
HumboldtBlue
Nothing better than a lesson on a Saturday night.
dm
@wjs: Before he was a judge, Merrick Garland used to specialize in prosecuting domestic terrorism cases (Timothy McVeigh, the Unabomber, the Atlantic City Olympics bombing).
(oops. I see Kent beat me to it.)
Omnes Omnibus
@Sister Golden Bear: How about “that few of those people deserve?”
Kelly
@cain: This district has been a Blue Dog district since before there was a Blue Dog Caucus. Schrader is worth several million dollars mostly inherited money. He’s 69. I hope he finds another hobby.
Alison Rose
@dmsilev: Oh, I know. It delights me to no end that the Republicans continue to believe they can sway the Jewish populace as a whole to their side by screeching ISRAEL all the time, when I think close to 3/4 of us are Democrats. Most of the ones who do support them are Conservative or Orthodox, I’d imagine, whereas the majority of American Jews are Reform, or what I like to call Lazy Jew. I mean, I have an electric menorah.
Adam L Silverman
@Phylllis: What’s interesting about that is the synagogue that supposedly sponsored the naming of that monument has been arguing for years it had nothing to do with it and wants its name removed.
Omnes Omnibus
@dm: And that is a bigger deal (even as a symbol) than Harris’s background as a prosecutor or Biden’s time as a public defender.
Omnes Omnibus
It’s late enough that you don’t need to use euphemisms.
Alison Rose
@Tom Levenson: It’s a part of anti-Semitism that disgusts me but also makes me laugh, because like…I’m pretty fucking white. 100% European ancestry (thanks, 23andMe!), nearly all from either a chunk of Eastern Europe or the UK, with a bit of Scandinavian thrown in. Plus I’m so pale I make Casper the Ghost look like he spent the day at the beach.
But yeah, to these fuckers, I’m one of the mudpeople or whatever.
Adam L Silverman
@debbie: Don’t be upset. What happened then isn’t on you. Remembering what happened so we don’t repeat it is on all of us.
HumboldtBlue
The GOP wants us to slow up, slow down, make peace, with this guy.
Kent
I used to tell my very racially diverse classes in Texas that it was the “loser flag”. That you can’t always tell who the losers are just by looking at them. So it’s convenient for us that they wear the flag so that they erase all doubt.
We had some interesting class discussions and I actually had some redneck Black kids who questioned whether it was actually a racist flag. For real. To which I would answer to the laughter of the other annoyed Black and Hispanic kids in earshot. “It might not ALWAYS be racist, but it is ALWAYS the loser flag.
Ken
I’ll just apply the usual rule for software estimates, which is to double the number and bump the unit one step. So since he says they’ll be offline for a week, they might manage two months.
Adam L Silverman
@dmsilev: I don’t know. I’d expect it’ll just migrate somewhere else.
dmsilev
@Alison Rose: Screeching’ISRAEL!’ hasn’t worked very well, except to make support for Israel a somewhat more partisan issue. Especially since to the GOP, Israel==Likud.
Kelly
https://balloon-juice.com/2021/01/09/the-only-thing-worse-than-a-neo-confederate-is-a-historically-illiterate-neo-confederate/?updated=1610254086#comment-8033117
cain
Regarding Schrader’s vote against $2,000 checks. There is of course the economic disruption from the pandemic. On top of that his district had 4 of the Oregon Labor Day wildfires. Almost 2,000 homes burned in his district. This is dump money from helicopters time.
SFAW
@Omnes Omnibus:
What are your thoughts on the term “conservative intellectual”
ETA: Or its variant: “conservative thinker.”
Kent
Honestly I don’t really know. I thought they were Jewish but now nothing pops up in google profiles except that they are ultra secretive and have also funded ultra right wing stuff in Israel too.
We can always swap them out for Jared Kusher and family if we run short of Jewish Nazis.
Martin
@wjs: We need to go back and look at what happened between Dec 15 and 23.
Barr resigned on the 15th, and by the 20th he’s meeting with Flynn and Powell and wants to make Powell Special Counsel. On the 23rd the Wild Protest web site goes up.
I don’t think it’s a stretch that by the 15th Trump is asking increasingly inappropriate actions by Barr, Barr resigns, not willing to stay through the 6th. Within a few days, hes exploring a special counsel that almost certainly would have sought to disrupt the certification of the election.
Why is recently pardoned Flynn there? Flynn was advocating for invoking martial law at the time. Was Trump seeking some advice on how to stay in power by force?
Omnes Omnibus
@SFAW: Since Edmund Burke died?
dm
@Alison Rose: I think all those shouts of ISRAEL are for the Evangelical Christians. Re-establishing the Kingdom of Israel is a pre-requisite for Armageddon.
Another Scott
@wjs:
JuanitaJean:
B-J lawyers are much, much better. Much. They understand the meanings of words and stuff.
Cheers,
Scott.
Adam L Silverman
@Kent: Mercer isn’t Jewish. He’s a prominent and well known anti-Semite.
Alison Rose
@Omnes Omnibus: LOL, if you knew me better, you’d know just how inapplicable that joke is :P
Quinerly
@Ken: ?❤️???♥️
counterfactual
@dmsilev: Over on Ars Technica, the web developers and Amazon Web Service ops are having a good laugh at “we’ll but up in a week.” It will be much longer before they’re fully back up.
Kent
@HumboldtBlue: I watched that and wondered how the hell such a racist Nazi got elected mayor of Newark. Then I looked closer and realized he is the mayor of Newkirk
OK then….
Adam L Silverman
@Kent: There’s a link in the post to my post on Confederate flags. It explains everything. Everything…
SFAW
@Punchy:
Worse than that: Soros was pretending to support the CSA, but actually tricked them into losing. Or something.
And the “interesting” part of the above “theory” is that I would wager some good beer that some RWMF would read it, say “Hmm, that makes sense” and post it on QAnon sites (if such things exist).
Zelma
@JaySinWA:
I know everybody here understands the importance of history, but if you want to understand its power, there is no better place to begin than with the Dunning School of Reconstruction historiography. While the myth of the “Lost Cause” and the evil nature of Reconstruction was created by Confederate dead enders, it was given intellectual respectability by a group of historians at Columbia who shaped the way it was understood and taught for generations.
When I was in high school in the late 50s and even, to an extent, in college in the early 60s, Reconstruction was portrayed as an era of corruption with the evil Radical Republicans and the corrupt Grant betrayed Lincoln’s generous vision of reunion. There was little taught about Jim Crow and violence directed against the freed slaves.
This view only began to be challenged in the 1960s and by now it has been completely repudiated in the history profession. But still it lives.
I did a field in 20th century American history in 1966-67 and frankly the issue of race was hardly discussed at all. Woodrow Wilson was one of my professor’s heroes. My view of him has certainly changed.
Kent
@Adam L Silverman: All right. I stand corrected. You can swap him out for the Kushners then.
Adam L Silverman
@tom: Oracle’s co-CEO – Safra Catz – is a close confidant of Trump.
Alison Rose
@dm: True, and that’s who it works on, but many GOPers do seem to think that all of us see Israel as our true homeland or something. I want Israel to exist (without its current government and the neverending settlement building and all that bullshit) but I’ve never been there and have zero desire to go. But I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had right wingers tell me I shouldn’t support Dems because they “hate” Israel. (Where “hate” translates to “Would like Israel to stop being so murdery all the time”)
Omnes Omnibus
@Alison Rose: Hey, I am open minded. But I’m not the one with the electric menorah – whatever it is an* euphemism for.
*Hi Steve in the WTF.
ballerat
@Omnes Omnibus: William F. Buckley Jr.? Shelby Foote?
But since they’ve been dead a while I guess your point stands.
J R in WV
@Alison Rose:
OK, really funny.
Cameron
There were also Quaker slave holders.
Phylllis
@Adam L Silverman: I’ve always found the place downright confounding. So….it’s a memorial to a guy who never lived here & had no connections here & maybe spent the night here that one time?
Adam L Silverman
@Phylllis: Something like that.
prostratedragon
But then these folks also seem still to be ignorant of the fact that, despite a mobilization of the Union that some historians have described as well short of maximum, they got their asses soundly kicked last time.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Omnes Omnibus:
No.
Kent
Another example is Texas History which all Texas middle school students must pass as a state requirement. I paid attention to the curriculum my daughters went through in 7th grade when they covered Texas History. Not one single mention of slavery as a contributing factor to the Texas Revolution. Not one. The whole subject was erased to this day. They cover it during the civil war, sure. But not at all in the context of Texas history and the Revolution.
That’s not old Jim Crow history books. That’s today.
Adam L Silverman
@Alison Rose: Is it a sustainable electric menorah at least? Solar? Rechargeable? Geo-thermal?//
Inventor
Fun fact about the Southern Cross motif commonly referred to as the “Confederate” flag: the original design was a vertical cross, rather than the “X” shaped one ultimately adopted.
It was changed because they didn’t want the flag to too closely represent the Christian cross, and thereby offend Jewish Confederates.
The preferred symbol of white supremacist anti-Semites is a politically correct compromise designed not to offend Jews.
History is an ironic son of a gun.
tom
@Adam L Silverman: I didn’t know that, thanks. Even so, if they migrate to Oracle it’s going to take a while – much longer than a week – to get their software running on Oracle’s platform.
Kent
There were also black slaveowners. Shrug. Bad people will always find ways to profit in any system of racial inequality.
Phylllis
@Adam L Silverman: What it really demonstrates is the power of the Daughters of the Confederacy back in the day.
Adam L Silverman
@Phylllis: That too.
mali muso
A little OT but tangentially related, we watched “I Am Not Your Negro” last night, and if you haven’t yet seen it (it’s on both Netflix and Prime), it is must-watch viewing. James Baldwin’s frame of understanding and talking about white supremacy and racism is so current, even some 60+ years on. Photographs of the jeering mobs menacing black kids integrating schools and the grinning ghouls under lynched corpses…it was eerie in how exactly it maps onto the “this is OUR house” chanting insurrectionists from this week.
Martin
@Kent: Made easier by their firm grip on textbook approval statewide.
Kent
@Inventor: Yep
https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-factcheck-confederate-flag-colors/fact-check-the-origins-of-the-colors-and-symbols-of-the-confederate-flag-idUSKBN23P2U2
J R in WV
I think there were free blacks and native Americans who owned slaves, actually. So a nearly universal sin, the world around, sadly.
My paternal grandmother’s family were Virginia frontier farmers, surely Confederates, and probably owned a few slaves, though I avoid knowing that for certain…
Ken
You make it sound like a New England bed and breakfast that offers the “Franklin Room”, because he’s rumored to have stayed there in 1783 when his coach broke down.
O. Felix Culpa
@Omnes Omnibus: Glad to see you. I just got back from watching a grim German police procedural. But I repeat myself.
Omnes Omnibus
@O. Felix Culpa: And I am about to bail to watch “Arsene Lupin” on Amazon as a warm up for “Lupin” on Netflix. The French are less grim.
Adam L Silverman
@Kent: Here you go:
https://balloon-juice.com/2020/06/01/a-point-of-personal-pedantry-fun-with-flags-edition/
O. Felix Culpa
@Omnes Omnibus: Enjoy!
Citizen Alan
@Damien: My favorite Sherman quote, from a letter he wrote in 1864:
Granted, Sherman was a bastard in many ways, and repulsively racist against Native Americans. But he understood the Confederacy better than many others. IIRC, he recommended that after the war, all Confederate state lines be dissolved and the whole region reduced to a territory until they earned the right to be readmitted to the union as completely new states. Would that we had listened.
Chetan Murthy
@Kent: @Zelma: I can attest to what Kent wrote about Texas History from my time in Texas schools in the last 70s. Ditto what Zelma said about Civil War History. The Dunning school was everywhere. I didn’t know at the time of course.
Interestingly, at the local community college I took a History course, where the teacher directly called it out for the bullshit it was; that’s where I started getting my real education in American History. Local community college in the same town, too. I was too young and uneducated to see the vast chasm between “Harvard on the Hill” and my high school down in the valley.
Adam L Silverman
@J R in WV: It’s a huge problem with the Cherokee Nation. A lot of the Cherokees today, by actual familial descent, are part African American because their ancestors were slaves to the Cherokees that were relocated to Oklahoma. However, because their ancestors were slaves, they’re not on the Dawes Roll and therefore aren’t considered Cherokee, have no tribal membership, and receive no tribal benefits. There’s ongoing litigation about this.
Phylllis
@Ken: Or all the places that once made hay off the fact that G. Washington visited on his grand tour of the US. And by visited I mean he waved as he rode by on his horse.
mali muso
@Omnes Omnibus: Just went through three episodes of Lupin on Netflix. It’s very well done! And a great refresher course for my French (turned the subtitles to French as well as the audio for extra fun).
Viva BrisVegas
@J R in WV: My understanding of that is that it was possible for free blacks to buy relatives and friends out of slavery, but many southern states made it difficult for those slaves to be freed by their new black masters.
Which is not to say that this was universal in black slave ownership.
Adam L Silverman
@Citizen Alan: His advice after the war should have been taken.
prostratedragon
@Kelly: I’d wondered what kind of twilight state he was in when he said that earlier. The DailyKos spreadsheet has been updated, his new comment being, “I will be voting yes on impeachment when brought to the House floor.”
Martin
@tom: I think it depends on how cleanly they wrote the back-end. I’ve been able to migrate my stuff between services in a day or two, but it’s very clean. Now, getting it running doesn’t include the deployment scripts which would take a while – that’s deploying it manually. For me it’s spinning up instances, getting them patched and installing dependencies, setting up load balancing, setting up DNS, pulling the code, then running through the testing.
Mind you, I have stable running at that point, but there’s no automation, and there won’t be for some time because that’s where learning all the new service stuff comes into play. But if my stuff is just a REST API for the apps to hit and a web interface of of nginx or something, that all comes together quite quickly.
Put another way, if my motivation is to keep my coordination tool for an insurrection planned for a week from now up and running, I could get it moved pretty goddamn fast. It’ll be a bitch to keep running and I’m in no position to push new versions, but it’ll get me to the day of the event and I can deal with all of the properness of a migration after that.
Alison Rose
@Adam L Silverman: Sadly, no. It’s cheap plastic plug-in crap I bought at Bed Bath and Beyond, of all places. But I do also have a lovely carved wooden one!
Inventor
@Adam L Silverman: One point of extreme pedantry: The Confederate Naval Jack, or at least a flag with the same proportions and a somewhat bluer blue, flew as the flag of the Army of Tennessee late in the war.
BR
I think Josh Marshall is right:
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/crisis
Geoduck
@Damien: But not through Georgia this time, because they saved the Senate for all of use.
Omnes Omnibus
@mali muso: I watched the first episode and loved it. I had read some of the Arsene Lupin stories when I was younger, but had forgotten some of the overarching backstory. So when I noticed that there was a French movie on Amazon, I decided to “refresh my recollection” plus I can’t really resist a movie with Eva Green and Kristin Scott Thomas. Then I will get back to the series.
ellie
@cain: Yes, it was. I am still angry.
mali muso
@Omnes Omnibus: Thanks for the heads up re the other movie. I’ll make a note to check it out.
Kattails
@Kent: I did not know that (rubs hands together in glee).
gene108
@Adam L Silverman:
Hopefully getting Trump and right-wing plotting off the major social media sites will reduce the numbers attending these things.
Folks like Elizabeth from Knoxville and the lawyers, and CEO’s won’t know enough to find these new places.
You’ll just have a smaller number of hardcore neo-Nazis.
CaseyL
@Chetan Murthy: I went to High School in South Florida, back in the 1970s. Florida politics even then was heavily weighted to GOP-led dumbitude, so one requirement for graduating high school was taking a class called “Americanism v. Communism.” The class curriculum was required to show that Americanism was better.
Well, I took that class in 1973 – just as the Watergate Scandal was gathering steam. And the class was being taught by a very cool young woman who wasn’t about to waste her own or our time talking about vague ideological generalities when there was a real live political shitstorm happening.
She assigned watching the news, reading newspapers, and coming to class ready to discuss what we saw and read. Naturally, most of what we talked about was Watergate.
A nice subversion of the required curriculum – because, if anyone had complained, she could with total honesty say we were exploring one major advantage the US had over the USSR: we were not stuck with corrupt leaders, but had a democratic process for getting rid of them.
Steeplejack
@O. Felix Culpa:
Tell us more. What show?
Damien
@Geoduck:
Definitely not through Georgia. I say we start with Arkansas, Alabama, Oklahoma, North Dakota, South Dakota, Missouri and Idaho. Then if there’s time, Florida.
Joe Falco
@wjs:
Rose Twitter can’t stop talking about that part ever. So yes, in certain segments of the populace, they know all about that.
CaseyL
@Damien: I am intrigued by your ideas and wish to subscribe to your newsletter.
Another Scott
“Germany wants US, EU to forge ‘Marshall Plan for democracy'”
https://p.dw.com/p/3njME
Sounds like a great idea.
Cheers,
Scott.
Martin
@BR: We had a longish family conversation about this. The kids are worried. I didn’t mince words. They’re adults, voters.
By all indications there is nobody running the country. No security briefings, multiple agencies with minimal to no leadership, or compromised leadership. No effort being put forth to address any problems that are surfacing.
The status of the VP is uncertain. The President does seem to be okay if he’s assassinated, which you’d think would affect his loyalty, yet there’s no 25th amendment move.
It’s possible the President is organizing an insurrection from the White House, with various degrees of support from his appointees and members of Congress. The lack of briefings from the FBI suggests that FBI/DHS is to some degree compromised, or at least afraid to stick their head up.
We have roughly 25% of Congress supporting the president which is thankfully few enough to do too much harm, but too many to get them expelled.
The president still has the authority of his office. He can declare martial law. He can potentially launch nukes. He’s clearly in mental crisis. Congress is trying to remove him, but without luck. He’s been called on to resign, which he probably is unwilling to do, and instead is increasingly desperate for a ‘win’, making him increasingly dangerous.
If we make it through the next 12 days, things will stabilize quite a bit, apart from the effort thats going to be needed to unwind all of this. Hopefully there are no national emergencies, attacks on US forces, etc. during this period.
Oh, yeah, 4,000 people a day are dying of Covid. Our hospitals are completely overwhelmed, so nobody get sick.
Kent
Our current divide is not north vs south. It’s urban vs rural in every state. A modern day Sherman would need to turn northwest and head through the Dakotas, Wyoming, and Idaho, which are more MAGA and white supremacist than any southern state because they are both more white and more rural than any southern state
The urban southern states are trending blue. First Virginia, then Georgia, and North Carolina is coming along too.
Doc Sardonic
@CaseyL: Maybe in parts of South Florida. Where I grew up in the more central part of the state in the 70’s if you wanted a sighting of a Republican you had to go far afield to the wilds of Orlando.
BR
This is crazy — it really was a matter of maybe a minute in the senate on Wed where they could have been taken by the mob:
Kent
@Doc Sardonic: Florida is a strange state. I visited Tallahassee on a college visit road trip with my daughter a few years back. It seemed more like “Baja Alabama” than anything else.
BR
@Martin:
Yeah, the layers of crisis the country is in right now are really — just wow.
I hope Pence has better lawyers on his staff than the rest of the admin, because they need to have everything on hand from him and the cabinet. Otherwise if something goes bad and they start moving to do the 25th, what if the whole cabinet gets fired and lackey actings get put in place?
piratedan
@Steeplejack: I would offer Ozark Mountain Daredevils If you Wanna Get To Heaven as an additional alternative
DCA
Not to excuse him, but Benjamin sounds pretty impressive (or else the Confederacy was pretty short of executive ability).
A slight derailment perhaps, but also because this is an Adam thread: what about the claim that escorting insurrectionists politely out of the building and not arresting them was because the priority was to get the building empty, rather than having people say “I’m not coming out” and having to go in and get them. The “go in and get” sounds like the toughest part of urban combat and an invitation to have a lot more damage (NB I have zero expertise on this). Thoughts?
Doc Sardonic
@Kent: We in the center of the state refer to the stretch of the panhandle from Panama City to Pensacola as either the Redneck Riviera or Lower Alabama.
Brachiator
@Another Scott:
Unlikely as long as Boris Johnson is prime minister and the Tories are in charge. British conservatives are an odd bunch with their own bundle of bigotries. One MP had to walk back insulting Biden because of his Irish ancestry, and insulting Harris because of her Indian heritage.
Kent
@DCA: Sounds reasonable to me. Also we’ve only seen the cell phone video and the few media reporters who followed in with cameras. But I suspect the Capitol Building has among the most up to date high definition security camera system of any place. I expect they have top quality imagery of every single person who entered that place and probably video of everything they have done. We just haven’t seen it on social media yet.
Kent
Didn’t the British just Brexit themselves straight out of the EU? I’m not sure what Boris Johnson and the Tories would have to say about a US-EU coalition to build and support democracy around the world.
Lyrebird
@BR: Thanks, I was just coming to link to the same story.
The leadership has plenty of blame,
but wow some of the officers, like this one, risked everything to thwart the Trump revolt even while badly outnumbered. Sounds like the group that got the Representatives (incl Rep Crow) out of the gallery should also get some recognition.
Yikes.
Kattails
@Martin: The status of the VP is, in my opinion, that he’s a limp-dicked coward who claims to be a Christian but has not got the courage of values, the moral fortitude to see that his hero is a charlatan, nor the faith that if he did the right thing his God would protect him. He actively aided and abetted the dogs of war being let slip on the nation and now is too chicken shit to lift a finger to stop them.
I’m debating how much to put into a letter to the editor of my local paper due to some safety concerns. But this guy has money, protection, and wanted the fucking job. He swore an oath.
Ruckus
@cain:
Most beer that is served super cold is actually crap, they serve it very cold to deaden your taste buds so you won’t know.
sanjeevs
@Brachiator: U.K. is not in the EU so it doesn’t matter what Boris thinks.
Emma from FL
@Brachiator: And what does Boris have to say about it? UK is out of EU. Period.
Kattails
and oh BTW I was just reminded that the Traitor in Chief has not ordered flags to be lowered to half staff in respect for the officer who was murdered by the mob he incited.
Sister Golden Bear
Chetan Murthy
@Sister Golden Bear: They’ve all read _How to Win Friends and Influence People_. Clearly.
RobertDSC-Mac Mini
Adam, is there a unit patch/flag or icon for General Sherman that we could use against these Confederate scum? Just a visual identification and/or meme to use?
Ivan X
Speaking as a Jew, I’ve always wondered what plantation Passover dinners were like (you know, where we expressly celebrate being freed from slavery). What was going through their heads?
Chetan Murthy
@Ivan X: maybe this one?
https://www.zazzle.com/gen_sherman_heat_a_peach_tour_1864_shirt_light-235515826151588940
Eolirin
@Brachiator: UK isn’t part of the EU anymore so what do they have to do with it?
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Sister Golden Bear: Hmmm, sounds a bit like a terrorist threat. Maybe they should get a visit from the FBI.
Kent
Men and women wearing and carrying the US flag defeated and buried both Nazi Germany and the Confederacy. We shouldn’t need any other than that.
I think this was Sherman’s XV Corps emblem: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XV_Corps_(Union_Army)
There is this one (but the Buffalo Soldier thing maybe problematic)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/92nd_Infantry_Division_(United_States)
This is a good one:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/761st_Tank_Battalion_(United_States)
Lots of choices
Ken
In an earlier thread, it was reported that to join Parler you have to give them your SSN and driver’s license photo. Was that correct? Because talk like that on a system with that much data to identify you seems remarkably stupid.
Though come to think of it, the earlier thread did note how remarkably stupid it is to reveal that information on-line…
Geoduck
@Kattails: That’s the problem. Protected? He almost literally got lynched by a bloodthirsty mob in the Capitol Dome.
But yeah, he’s also a spineless coward.
dimmsdale
@Kent: yeah, and don’t forget all the smeared blood and feces contain DNA. If we make it thru the next 12 days, somebody’s going to get crapped on by their own sh*t.
RobertDSC-Mac Mini
@Kent:
Thank you. The first one will suffice.
I’m looking for something that would refer to General Sherman and his unit in a specific way just to make the Lost Causers mad.
sanjeevs
New footage showing a group of militia moving up the Capitol steps. Look way more organized than what I’ve seen before
https://mobile.twitter.com/JesseDamiani/status/1348140297205780482
Chetan Murthy
@sanjeevs: It took a couple of viewings before I noticed that they’re each holding onto the backpack of the guy in front. Maintaining order/cohesion as they climb thru the (screening) crowd.
The Pale Scot
@Steve in the ATL:
Hurry Sundown on the live album is their best cut
sanjeevs
@Chetan Murthy: I think they have radios too
Mandarama
@Citizen Alan: I’m a fellow Mississippi native and I approve this message! If only.
dimmsdale
@sanjeevs: apparently they’re Oath Keepers: mostly (but not solely) ex-military. Supposedly cell service was truncated when the pipe bombs were found at DNC/RNC (to cut possibility of accidental detonation), but with their radios, these guys could still communicate. They need to be put under a hot lamp at FBI headquarters FAST, every last one of them.
Comrade Colette
@Damien:
Funny, this echoes my take on appropriate replacements for our present, thoroughly unsatisfying national anthem. I used to think it should be Woody Guthrie’s “This Land is Your Land,” or maybe “America the Beautiful” if you’re set on something a little more traditional, but now I’m pretty much “Battle Hymn of the motherfucking REPUBLIC,” motherfuckers!
the pollyanna from hell
@Comrade Colette: Battle Hymn unfortunately christocentric
Chetan Murthy
@the pollyanna from hell: I’m atheist, and certainly wasn’t raised in any sort of Christian environment. But just growing up a child of the Western Enlightenment, honestly I wouldn’t have any problem with The Battle Hymn. I mean, our language is suffused with memes and thoughts that derive from Christianity. And I’m about as -rabid- an atheist as you’ll find: I think people who believe in some Great Sky Father (or Mother, or Parents, or whatever) have a mental defect. I was watching Colbert from last night, and he was interviewing celebrities, asking what they thought happened after they died, and their answers were “oh yeah, there’s an afterlife” (with different twists, of course). All I could think was “what idiots”.
And yet, I’m OK with The Battle Hymn.
OTOH, if others would find it offensive, not like I care that much.
Martin
@sanjeevs: And I don’t remember seeing them on the other video. Either they didn’t enter the building, or they were off doing something else.
I’m thinking the latter. They don’t look like the kind to decide that entering the building is a step too far.
the pollyanna from hell
@Chetan Murthy: “Lift Every Voice” mentions god, but even so would totally satisfy me as our national anthem.
Chetan Murthy
@the pollyanna from hell: I thought of that, too. Best choice, overall.
Tony Jay
@Brachiator:
As has been noted, Brexit and the shrinking of Britain means that the only connection Tory Britain will have with any future ‘Alliance for Democracy’ is as a target for liberation broadcasts and a pointed example of how illiberal propaganda can warp an open society.
On the wider topic of the thread, as a card carrying member of the British Labour Party I’m officially forbidden from engaging or agreeing with any of the comments on pain of expulsion. One of the many reasons the Party’s current leadership needs binning sooner rather than later.
Gvg
@Ken: It is supposed to be against the law for any non Federal agency to require your social security number, including hospitals and pharmacies. I don’t argue with those because it really is the best sure identifier, but other agencies it’s a no no. Your employer and bank are authorized for tax reasons, but service providers cannot legally even ask for this. They are breaking the law.
Matt McIrvin
@the pollyanna from hell: I kind of prefer the original version, the marching song “John Brown’s Body,” which starts with John Brown’s immortal soul marching on, describes what he’s wearing, then there’s an adorable bit about his pet lambs coming to meet him, then they all go hang Jefferson Davis.
Uncle Cosmo
@Another Scott: “Thankful to be suffering for farrighteousness and freedumb.” Deelightful. It would be altogether fitting and proper if he were made even more thankful by making him suffer as much as possible (within the bounds of the law o’course).
Chief Oshkosh
@Tom Levenson: Oh, I don’t know. I find Lucas systems to be at least as reliable as those in Fords and Chevys of the era.
Chief Oshkosh
@Damien: Georgia just voted in two Democratic Senators and a Democratic President. In many, maybe most, of the states that went red, though, nearly 50% of the voters voted Democratic. When you factor in the baked-in voter suppression in many, maybe most, of these states, it’s likely that the majority of voters in nearly every state at the very least lean Democratic. Even in the reddest states, there are sizable percentages of Democrats, non-crazies, and just plain old good people.
I’ve been guilty of painting with state-level broad brushstrokes, too, but I think it does more harm than good.
The Fat White Duchess
@Alison Rose: Yes. I feel the same way. And then I think of Israeli West Bank settlers, and bulldozing Palestinian homes, etc. (My feelings about Israel are…very complicated, as IMO the situation is. And I don’t even pretend to be fully educated about it.)
Dragging it back on topic: does anybody know whether Jared has any Confederate ancestry?)
Chief Oshkosh
@dimmsdale: Not really how that works, unfortunately. First, clean-up crews don’t appear to have been gathering samples. Second, even if they did, I doubt that they did it in a way the preserved chain of custody. Third, and even if they did, the level of contamination from other human sources will likely make an actual identification of a single human impossible.
But, I could be wrong.
evodevo
@Chief Oshkosh: CSI would know how to do that, but that would have taken a superhuman effort to get that many crime scene techs/equipment in there fast enough to do it. PLUS you would have to seal off the bldg for several days, and they needed to get that congressional business done fast, in case the mob (whose members they allowed to get away) decided to come back…
Richard
@Ken: and Mexicans and Guanches and…. etcetera. Anyway, i enjoyed this interesting article. My family literally believed that Jews have horns on their heads. When i protested they said shut up.
Richard
@RobertDSC-Mac Mini: no there are not because reasons.
The Fat White Duchess
@Adam L Silverman: Words cannot sufficiently express my delight at seeing heraldry geeking here.
But it is strange to read, now, the comments from last June…
The Fat White Duchess
The Fat White Duchess
@Comrade Colette: Phil Ochs’ “The Power and Glory” is my choice.