I did not see Trump's presser today, but I've read the transcript and followed the various reactions. It seems obvious that the president lost his shit. And when I say he lost it, I mean...he LOST it. If Josh Gates, Heinrich Schliemann, Vasco da Gama and Indiana Jones mounted a year-long expedition in search of Trump's Lost Shit, they'd come out of it shit-free.
Is there any justification for this "both sides" rhetoric? Or for that reference to "clubs"? Or for applying the "Alt Left" label to the counter-protestors? Some of them were members of Black Lives Matter. The term "Alt Left" usually refers to the BernieBros, and most black people did not support Bernie.
Mind you, I don't have any use for Antifa, which may in fact be a ratfucking operation, although I have not read enough about that group to formulate any hard conclusions. From what I have read, it would appear that most of those kids are self-proclaimed anarchists -- which means that, over the course of the next ten years, they'll no doubt make the traditional anarchism-to-libertarianism-to-GOP transition. How many times have we seen young people go down that well-worn path? Since most of 'em hate the awful, awful DNC more than they hate (say) Paul Ryan, they can't expect any applause from the likes of me.
My understanding is that most of the counter-protestors were locals, not Antifa imports. The NYT reports that none of the anti-Nazis lost their temper until after James Fields plowed his vehicle into a group of innocents. I consider the anti-Nazis' loss of temper to be justifiable, or at least inevitable: Human beings have their breaking points, and violence committed in self-defense does not have the same "semblance of guilt" as violence committed by an aggressor.
Of course, both Trump and the Alt Rightists (especially David Duke) are using that loss-of-temper as an excuse to pretend that both sides were equally at fault. Good Christ, what does Trump expect? Does he really think that decent citizens should meekly accept vehicular homicide committed by an acolyte of Adolf? As one wag noted: By Trumpian logic, the Nazis and the Allies were equally at fault for the violence committed on D-Day.
The Wikipedia entry on the Charlottesville incident offers no evidence for Trump's "both sides" rhetoric. Neither does it offer evidence for Trump's contention that there were non-extremists marching alongside Richard Spencer's tiki-torch Sturmabteilung.
Tomorrow, perhaps, I'll offer my thoughts concerning the knotty problem of public monuments to the so-called "heroes" of the Confederacy. There is an important example here in Bawlmer.
Kelly. You may have seen the instantly-famous photo of General Kelly looking embarrassed during Trump's Loss-of-Shit performance. A number of progressives are now saying that Kelly should quit.
No. No.
North Korea still threatens; war jitters still beset us. In such times, we can't have a White House totally bereft of grown-up supervision. If Trump keeps imitating Captain Queeg in The Caine Mutiny, then Kelly may have to stage his own version of Seven Days in May.
A scenario which liberals once considered nightmarish is starting to look attractive. Or at least less dangerous than the alternative.
6 comments:
The car murder incident has overshadowed the timeline and too many overshadows the timeline. The car murderer will get his and should not be used as an excuse to not analyze what came before.
What was the timeline. Were the intolerants allowed to protest without being physically blockaded, or not? Until that question is answered, it's mindless bullshit propaganda.
Antifa is not a ratfvcking organization, you might be thinking of the black bloc which shows up uninvited and masked to various protests and immediately began to burn things and cause damage. That had the stink of agent provacetuer all over it.
Trump was seething after his staff made him give a mealy-mouthed condemnation of the White Supremacists. Richard Spencer knew it and said so immediately.
Trump is the President no one was going to tell him what to do and with Ivanka out of town and thus unable to brush his lap with her long hair there was no one to mollify his anger. So, he went out a declared himself a Literal Fascist and made it know he is them and they are he...
Antifa---I guess that's an abbreviation of antifascist...I believe we fought a war about that.
Also, we won.
Antifa is the communists attempt to re-brand themselves after we fought a war with them... and won.
Confederate monumentalism was a product of the Jim Crow era, intended to intimidate the newly freed Blacks. Lee’s statue in Charlottesville was erected in 1924, six decades after the Civil War. It was from the outset a re-assertion of White power. It does not commemorate Lee the man but Lee the racist. Lee himself was against any monuments to the Confederation, so if one wishes to honestly celebrate Lee, taking down the statue would be the best way to do justice to him.
That said, the artistic value of such statues is debatable. Certainly the double chevaliers of Baltimore are a rarity and quite well crafted. But they would hardly be museum-worthy were it not for the historic personalities they represent. As an art genre, equestrian statues are a bit akin to national anthems in music, a mix of craftsmanship and kitsch, to which even the greatest artists have succumbed. Just consider Haydn, who composed “Gott erhalte Franz, den Kaiser” (God save Francis the Emperor). The empire was Austria, but the melody is now the national anthem of Germany (with different lyrics, of course). It is easily Haydn’s most banal invention, and it irks me to no end because Haydn is otherwise my favorite classical composer. You hear this junk ad nauseam in football stadiums, along with Queen’s insufferable “We Are the Champions”, but never in concert halls.
It is no more artistically defensible to build a (necessarily huge) Museum of Equestrian Statues than to hold a concert of national anthems by great composers.
-Brumel
Sorry, meant to post above in the Belongs in Museum thread.
-Brumel
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