A Speech That Will Never Be Given

Here is something I've been mulling over in my mind for about a week.  I shared some of this idea with others in an e-mail. 

Perhaps Trump should finally make a speech, to the nation on prime time television, bypassing the biased media.  He should address the protests/demonstrations that continue, directly talking to the American people.

First he should condemn the violence in no uncertain terms.  That would appeal to, I think (or at least hope), the vast majority of Americans.  He should point out the destruction being done to people's businesses, homes, and cars.  He should strongly condemn the beatings and killings of what some of the media have called "peaceful demonstrations."

Second, he should question the actions of the protesters, specifically the destruction of memorials and monuments.  Not all of the attempts to topple them are in the least bit warranted.  Do these ignorant demonstrators know anything about US Grant and the Civil War, the winning of which led to the practical emancipation of the slaves?  (I am not downplaying the Emancipation Proclamation or the 13th Amendment, nor Lincoln's and others' roles in ending slavery.)  If their goals are what they claim them to be, Trump should ask (and not rhetorically) why memorials to Lincoln, Frederick Douglass, and other abolitionists are being defaced, ruined, and destroyed?  Should ignorance be the driving force behind these demonstrations and violence?

Third, and this one would be difficult to finesse, but it's needed, he should ask the demonstrators why they have never protested the black-on-black murders in places like Chicago, Detroit, New York, Los Angeles, etc.  Doesn't/Didn't the life of Mekhi James, the three-year old who was shot in a drive-by last weekend in Chicago, "matter?"  (I know, I know.  There is a difference between police brutality and shootings by thugs.  But the end result, to the families, is the same--a wasted life.) "Why haven't the 60+ shootings in Chicago just last weekend alone, the 100+ shootings in NYC just last week alone, etc. attracted your anger?  They haven't even attracted your concern!"

Specifically,  he could then call out the hypocritical and cowardly corporations, which have become too numerous to name individually, who have sided with and financed BLM.   Also, "Hey NFL and its players!  Why haven't you taken knees for the likes of Mehki James or any of the three teen-age girls shot and killed last week in Chicago, too?"

Then he could address the college kids and their professors, you know, the ones who know everything and aren't afraid to tell us.  "Why aren't you upset enough to demonstrate against murders like Mekhi's?"  (Yeah, I'm fixated on Mekhi James, but the murder of a three-year old breaks my heart.)

Before going on national television, though, Trump should invite Barack Obama, Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, and others to sit with him as a show of unity for the black community and its lives.  I have no doubts they would decline, making up all sorts of excuses.  But then Trump could throw that back on them, asking the black community, "Why have your self-anointed black leaders," he could name them, "refused to sit in support of my anger at so many black lives lost in Chicago, New York, Detroit, Los Angeles.....?"

This is a speech that will never happen.  I think such a speech, while ticking off the left, Democrats, and the Lamestream media (as does everything "Trump") would show leadership from the President.  I'm talking real leadership, not bullying.  Too many of Trump's followers still equate his bullying and juvenile tweets/twits with leadership.

I think a problem is that Trump has been so adolescent that few people other than his die hard supporters would listen.  That is, in part, their fault.  But it's also, in part, Trump's.  Only the Trumpsters would listen--and they listen no matter what he says.  But it's not them he needs to convince.

I also don't think Trump is capable of a serious speech.  He lacks the ability to deliver one.  And he doesn't recognize the messages that need to be sent.

Just a thought or two on this:  the demonstrations and violence, the troubles in the black community, real Presidential leadership.

Razing, redux

With all of the pandering done by Democrats to garner support from the iconoclasts, when will they move to rename the Richard Russell Senate Office Building?  A staunch segregationist and bigot, Russell not only filibustered in an attempt to block the 1964 Civil Rights Act, but along with a dozen or so other Southern Senators boycotted the Democratic National Convention later that year to protest after Lyndon Johnson signed the bill into law. 

It's quite an honor to have one of only three Senate office buildings carry one's name.  I think there have been about 2,000 US Senators in history, going back to 1789.  Three out of 2,000!  And there was nobody with a cleaner record than Richard Russell?  

As a point of fact, if I recall, the only Senator to vote against naming the building for Russell was--Michigan's own "Conscience of the Senate," Philip Hart!!!!!!  Now, regardless if I agreed or disagreed with Hart's politics, there is a man to admire.

 

For that matter, what about the noted Klansman Robert Byrd, a long-time Dem leader honored by the party at his death.  He served in the US House and Senate for almost 60 years.  At his funeral, a certain President eulogized him as "a true champion" and "a voice of principle and reason."  Granted, maybe the man changed over the years.  But if he could change, why in the eyes of so many are others with questionable pasts not allowed to change?

 

I believe any attempts to censure either man was met with the rationale from Democrats, "He was a product of his times."  So, then, why weren't Washington, Jefferson, et al, even Columbus, "products of their times?"

 

If I recall correctly, too, aren't there statues of Lenin in NYC, LA, and Seattle?  What about the statue of Che Guevara in NYC?  Real friends of democracy there, both of them.

Of course, maybe like the British demonstrator who didn't know Winston Churchill, these American protesters don't know the history of their country either.

 

Just askin'.

 

Toppling Statues?

A recent e-mail exchange on the razing of statues and memorials, for instance, of Columbus and  Robert E. Lee, led to some thinking about history and its figures.  What questions do history and its personalities raise?  How are we to evaluate them?  What lessons can we learn, if any?  Is it "fair" to judge the past and others in the past using today's standards of morality and ethics?  (We'd better be careful with that one!)  Do contributions and "sins" carry the same weight?

Three names immediately come to mind:  George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and Andrew Jackson.  All have come under attack in recent years, if not longer.  All three owned slaves and, to boot, Jackson initiated "The Trail of Tears" aimed at Indians.

Jefferson, of course, wrote the American Creed in the form of the Preamble to the Declaration of Independence.  "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among them are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness."  He referred to the young United States as "the Empire of Liberty."  How could the man who wrote these stirring words also have owned, over his lifetime, more than 600 slaves?  And he knew it was wrong, morally if not practically.  He equated slavery with holding a "wolf by the ear...  We can neither hold him nor safely let him go.  Justice is in one scale and self-preservation in the other."  Yet he did own slaves.  Of those hundred, he emancipated but seven, five after his death.  Several others, purportedly of the Sally Hemings family, ran away and he didn't bother to chase them down.  

Slavery was legal and, in many eyes, moral--even in the North.  But there was a great deal of literature that criticized slavery and slave owners.  Jefferson, as noted, knew slavery was morally wrong ("justice in one scale", but a practical necessity for him ("self-preservation").  Yet, the Declaration of Independence is perhaps the greatest document of liberty ever written and Jefferson wrote it.

Do his achievements, great though they are (and I didn't list nearly all of them), atone for being a slaver?  The Jefferson Memorial,  The University of Virginia.  Are they legitimate targets for protests?

Andrew Jackson also owned slaves, destroyed Indian life, and was generally not a nice person.  Yet, if not personally, at least by aura of his personality, Jackson boosted participation in American democracy.  Voting, party politics (much of the work done by Martin Van Buren), the spoils system, and more grew during his two administrations.  Do we, say, take his portrait off the $20 bill, remove his statues, change the names of myriad cities named after him, etc.?  Again, sins v achievements.  I have no crystal ball, but I think I can make the argument that "No Jackson, No Abraham Lincoln" 30 years later.  And where would the US be without Lincoln??????

Washington also owned slaves and is the biggest enigma for me.  Almost certainly, there would have been no USA without Washington.  He was one of the two or three primary reasons the colonists (now Americans) defeated the British in what was undoubtedly "the upset of the 18th Century."  His mere presence and often mere tacit approval of the Constitution gave it immediate legitimacy to a people deeply divided over its ratification.  And without Washington as the first President, it is also likely that the fragile new nation would have collapsed.  Do the protesters topple the Washington Monument and more?  

But more significant to me with Washington, the big enigma, reflects on his character.  There can be no doubt of his physical courage.  Perhaps the wealthiest man in the colonies, he risked his fortune  for his country.  More, in accepting the command of the Continental Army, he was, in effect, signing his own death warrant.  He exhibited great physical and, even in some sense, moral courage.

But he owned slaves and knew that was wrong.  In his will, he decreed that all of his 100+ were to be freed--not after his death, but the death of Martha.  He had wrestled with the problem of owning slaves and talked about ending slavery.  But he never did. Why not?  To maintain his plantation at Mt. Vernon, that is, his fortune?  Was he intimidated by his social and economic standing?  That is, was the peer pressure of his fellow Virginian slave owners too much to overcome for him?  Did he lack the moral courage, in the face of others in his social and economic class, to free his slaves until after his death, when he would not have to encounter what would have been their scathing disapprobation and criticism?  No, Washington was certainly not a physical coward, but morally??????  He stood up to the mightiest army in the world, but he couldn't or wouldn't stand up to his fellow Virginia slave owners.

People are imperfect.  They have flaws.  They are also, mostly, products of their times, of their times, not ours.  We might be wise in remembering that before our almost knee-jerk reactions to raze statues and memorials of the past.

Thoughts on an Early Sun AM

According to The Blogger, this is my 1200 blog post.  I don't know if that is a lot or not.  I don't recall my first blog post or even the year it was written.  It just seems like a long time, "1200" posts.

BTW, thank you Rachel G!  I don't always see the comments right away, but eventually I get to them.  Where are you teaching?

We sure live in strange times.  They seem to be out of a novel, one that is quite far-fetched.  "Defund the Police!"  Huh?  That really is stupid.  Obviously some reforms/changes are needed, but "Defund.....?"  To lump all police officers as "racists" is just like lumping all protesters as "rioters."  Why is it permissible to make one broad, inaccurate generalization, but not another?"

Of course there is racism in this country.  I don't know how prevalent it is.  Some might argue that there isn't any.  I'd say that's naive if not delusional (which is becoming one of my favorite words).  Gee, maybe they are right.  I have never heard anyone say, "Hey, I'm a racist."  I don't know if it is "systemic" or not and am not even sure what that word, "systemic," entails.  I'm inclined to believe it's more of an individual thing, though, and, in 2020, there is too much of it.  

But how carried away can we get?  I read where some university professor (somewhere) has been placed on administrative leave/suspended because he would not change his final examination schedule or grading policy following the demonstrations after George Floyd's death.  There have been people who have lost their jobs because they have uttered or written things that apparently offended others.  Why is "All Lives Matter" offensive enough to be fired?  Really, don't all lives matter?  I would hope everyone would think so.  Isn't picking and choosing whose lives matter a very dangerous, not to mention unsympathetic, thing to do?  I know what some of you are thinking (I have ESPN!) and I agree, but I'm not going there this AM.

Maybe I have this wrong, but it seems those who want to tear down statues and monuments of our not so prideful past (I'm not saying we should or shouldn't raze them, but am saying we need to discuss that--rationally.  There are more than one reason to erect or let stand a statue or monument.) are the same sort who in the past wore tee shirts with the images of  Mao Zedong and Che Guevara, mass murderers both.  OK, I realize many wear those shirts to be trendy, but they must be unaware that, say, Mao was responsible for the deaths of tens of millions of people, probably more than Hitler and Stalin combined.  Well, I hope they are unaware/ignorant, not that they are wearing the tee shirts as statements of support for Mao!

Related, why are professors who do something, for instance, that offends the Black Lives Matter supporters maligned and even fired, while those who still espouse the views of communists (and the hundreds of millions of deaths that lay at their feet) protected by "freedom of speech" or "academic freedom?"  As much as I hate some ideas, I believe that's what freedom of expression entails, protecting the ideas we hate.  We really don't need to protect ideas with which we agree, right?  Although this is misattributed to the French philosophe Voltaire, "I may disagree with what you say, but will fight to the death your right to say it," I concur wholeheartedly.  

The Protests

There is a lot I don't understand about the current protests occurring daily in the US and apparently now in much of the world.  I'm trying to get my head around them, but some aspects of the marches and demonstrations are illogical, if not stupid.

I certainly understand the racial injustice.  There is still far too much bigotry and discrimination in this country.  (I'll save "affirmative action," "self-destructive practices," etc. for later.)  Anyone who denies that is, in a word I have come to enjoy, delusional.  Of course, nobody will admit to being a bigot.  "I have black friends," they'll say.  I don't really know how widespread it is, but it's there.  Although slavery has been abolished for more than 150 years, I still hold that blacks today wear "the badge of slavery," something that holds them apart, not in a good way, from whites.

But that's not what is troubling me this day.  Why are others in the world staging protests?  Don't they have their own problems to fix?  Yes, racism in the US is troubling, very much so.  A lot of those people should take a good, hard look at how minorities, racial and ethnic, in their countries are treated.  But, for instance, why haven't there been extended world-wide protests over the murders of Christians, gays, etc. by fundamental Islamists?  Where are the mass gatherings to protest the filthy rich oil sheikhs while the rest of the population of their countries live in squalor?  Why did Russia's takeover of Ukrainian land meet with mostly silence?  Where are the global protests over how the commies in China treat their people?  The list goes on.  Oh, there are some actions/protests.  But they don't seem to be anything like what is occurring after George Floyd's murder.  Plus, we really don't need to have the likes of Putin and Xi lecture us on "peaceful protests," do we?

Again, to harken back to one of my posts of a couple of weeks ago, I don't know who to trust, what "facts" to believe.  According to one study, 16 unarmed black men were shot and killed by police officers in 2019.  Of course, that is 16 too many.  (But I don't know the circumstances.  I wasn't there.)  But as a percentage of the black male population, those 16 compose about four/one ten millionths of a percent.  That's six zeroes to the right of the decimal for a percent, which is two more places to right of one.  (Double check my math; my calculator is broken.)

And how does burning, looting, beating, and killing honor the memory of George Floyd?  What sympathy is that going to achieve?  For that matter, what protesters are stupid enough to defile memorials such as that honoring the 54th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry Regiment, an all black unit that included the sons (both of them if I recall) of Frederick Douglass, and Abraham Lincoln, you know, the man who the emancipated former slaves referred to Biblically as "Father Abraham?"

Why has "all lives matter" become something so terrible to say?  People have even lost their jobs over it.  I guess freedom of speech actually means speech which the anointed approve, that which feeds the agenda.  BTW, did those almost 20 million black babies who were aborted since 1973 "matter?"

Are all those "Black Lives Matter" people going to Chicago next?  Last weekend, there were more than two dozen murders, with twice as many other people wounded in shootings.  After all, if "Black Lives Matter," shouldn't those twenty-five dead be shown the same respect as George Floyd?  What about the families of those murdered people?  I wonder if they are asking, "Hey, didn't my son [daughter, husband, wife, father, mother, brother, sister......] matter, too?"  I guess not.

For that matter, there are political leaders--esp at the local level, where they should really know better--called for disbanding or defunding police departments.  Hmmm...... With the police there were a couple dozen murders in Chicago last weekend.  Without the police that number will surely go down, right?  Heh Heh Heh.

People have replied to me, "Not all of the protesters are violent......" or something akin to that.  Well, guess what?  Not all police are racists and bigots.  Not all of them follow the path of racial injustice.  I know, I know.  If we can't lump all of the protesters with their violent cohorts, why can we lump all police officers together?  "But that's different."