If we didn’t know better we’d think guilt is what drives the entirety of the Democrat Party How far should one go to assuage his or her internal guilt? It's a soul-searching exercise some folks are undertaking these days. With the Democrat National Convention (in whatever form it will take) set to commence on Monday and liberal nominee-to-be Joe Biden’s running mate choice -- ultra-leftist California Senator Kamala Harris -- announced a couple days ago, there’s a heck of a lot of reason to focus on the concept of guilt. Every political watcher realizes Biden struggled mightily with his own guilt while vetting his vice president choices. Look who he ended up choosing. And then there’re the recent -- and ongoing -- nationwide protests over alleged “systemic racism” and “social justice” and “raising awareness” and various other feel good (or feel bad?) notions that lean largely on feelings and perceived snippets of reality rather than cold hard facts. If you’re a Democrat, guilt is built-in to your being. If you’re a Republican, pride in America’s history and vaunted position as the world’s bastion of freedom are a source of pride. Perhaps for that reason, President Donald Trump announced earlier this week that he’s planning to deliver his re-nomination acceptance speech (on August 27) from either the White House or a place where bitterly divided armies bled the ground red -- at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. Regardless of Trump’s final choice of venue, there will be opposition. Mike Brest reported at The Washington Examiner the other day, “President Trump declared that he'll accept the Republican presidential nomination at one of two locations. The president said his options are Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, the location of a bloody Civil War battle and President Abraham Lincoln's famous address that followed, or the White House. “’We have narrowed the Presidential Nomination Acceptance Speech, to be delivered on the final night of the Convention (Thursday), to two locations — The Great Battlefield of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, and the White House, Washington, D.C. We will announce the decision soon!’ the president shared on social media Monday.” Democrats and the media immediately launched a hissy-fit when Trump once again floated the possibility of delivering a political speech from the grounds of the White House, asserting that it would be against the law to use the executive mansion as a campaign prop for his MAGA agenda, round two. They’re all into griping about holding events and rallies where citizens might mix together and spread the dreaded CCP virus plague, but they’re just as agitated about the suggestion of staying home and doing it. Trump does live there, right? Isn’t it like teleworking? Why don’t they just come out and say it? Trump is not allowed to campaign for reelection -- period! Or maybe they’d be okay with him speaking from the earth’s orbit aboard the international space station? White House, yes, but Gettysburg? Upon hearing this I envisioned the president standing atop a carefully constructed platform adjacent to the veterans’ national cemetery on the historically hallowed ground and then deliver a two-minute speech that every American middle school student used to be required to memorize to pass their social studies class. Yes, the Gettysburg Address. Granted I’ve devoted much of my free time over the years to studying the great war between the states and have visited and walked the G-burg battlefield about three dozen times, but this one was surprising. But what a stroke of genius! No matter what your opinions of Trump happen to be, there’s no doubting he knows how to stage a great show. Just the Gettysburg backdrop alone adds gravity to the circumstances and the allegorical comparisons between then and now are earth-shattering. I’m not a speech writer, but Trump could easily quote from Lincoln’s most famous address, and if he were Joe Biden, he’d plagiarize the whole darn thing (and withhold attribution, too)! “Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a great civil war testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure….” With many commentators and political observers having already suggested the nation Lincoln spoke so pointedly about almost 157 years ago is once again on the verge of civil war, Trump can drive home the gravity of the upcoming choice between worldviews while also laying the groundwork for what will be the monumental task of healing America’s psychological wounds. Who knows, speaking with the multitude of Gettysburg battlefield monuments and memorials all around could be just the right scenario to steer the conversation back to where it needs to be -- on policy -- instead of the personality driven nonsense that the establishment media fixates on. Shocker: history ignorant idiots equate Gettysburg with white supremacy Needless to say, not everyone was wild about the notion of Trump speaking at Gettysburg. As would be expected, guilt-driven liberals tagged the president with their usual labels of white supremacy and racism. Joe Concha reported at The Hill, “CNN anchor Erica Hill argued... ‘To think that now we’re looking at Gettysburg, where the president has in recent weeks really taken it upon himself to do his best to shore up the Confederacy, right, that we keep Confederate flags and monuments to Confederate generals going. That, too, leaves you scratching your head.’” That anyone could say something so ludicrous and not immediately be called out by her peers as an idiot is puzzling to the extreme. Head scratching? These people are so non-sensical it’s like they all have a severe case of dandruff with no Head & Shoulders within reach to alleviate the itching. Or an affliction of psoriasis that is resistant to ointments. Actually, the only real scratching of heads going on these days is pondering how it is that Democrats and liberals are so honked off by the notion of preserving America’s history, warts and all. Facts don’t matter a lick to these poor, guilt-ridden souls, but anyone who’s actually been to the southern Pennsylvania civil war battleground knows the vast majority of the monuments there are to union soldiers and regiments -- you know, the men in blue who won the dang thing. The South was bled dry in all respects during the war, so much so that it couldn’t afford to decorate the field with markers in the same manner as the victorious side. As I recall, each southern state with a regiment that fought there erected one monument. One. There are national park signs delineating C.S.A. unit positions, but those aren’t monuments. Besides, how is it “defending” the Confederacy to speak from a place that literally epitomizes the beginning of the end of the “lost cause” and with it, slavery? It might help these history-challenged dunces to realize there’s a monument on the field called the “High Water Mark of the Rebellion,” which sets the approximate spot where southern General George Pickett’s charging troops were turned back by forces under the command of Union General Winfield Scott Hancock. That was it in a nutshell. Game over with no more quarters to feed the Pacman machine (does this date me?). From that point on the war became a battle of attrition, the Confederacy no longer able to muster the manpower and resources to wage an offensive campaign. Less than a year later, the armies that engaged at Gettysburg were dug in at Petersburg, Virginia, a siege lasting nine months and concluded with Lee’s army abandoning nearby (the Confederate capital) Richmond and surrendering in early April, 1865. General Ulysses S. Grant correctly figured he could wait out the rapidly deteriorating other side -- and he was right. To make the claim that Trump would choose Gettysburg as a backdrop for his acceptance speech as a dog whistle-type subliminal message to hate groups and “deplorables” is pure fantasy. In a day and age where establishment media members will do and say anything to savage Trump, this is perhaps the most preposterous blather of all. Anyone remember the scene from the 2000 movie “Remember the Titans” when black head high school football coach Herman Boone (wonderfully played by Denzel Washington) brought his racially divided team to Gettysburg to train for the upcoming season and took them to the battlefield cemetery to symbolize racial healing and to honor the men who gave their lives to begin the journey? (Note: Boone’s speech wasn’t exactly historically accurate, but the greater point was taken.) A good case could be made that there’s no better venue to talk about unifying the nation than Gettysburg, no matter what the guilt-laden Democrats say about it. If Trump were truly interested in highlighting the triumph of the Confederacy, he wouldn’t have to go as far as Gettysburg to do it. All he’d need to do is set up a stage on Marye’s Heights in Fredericksburg, Virgina, about fifty miles from Washington DC. There, in December, 1862 (about seven months before the Gettysburg campaign), Robert E. Lee’s entrenched forces turned back wave after wave of attacking federal troops in one of the most futile and bloody assaults of the Civil War. It was the equivalent of the union’s Pickett’s Charge. Here’s thinking if the Trump campaign is able to pull it off -- staging his acceptance speech at Gettysburg -- it would be brilliant. Since liberals are largely responsible for fanning the flames of fear over the Chinese Communist Party (or Wuhan, if you prefer) virus -- and forcing the cancellation of the traditional party conventions -- then it opens wide the book of possibilities for a showman like Trump to select the most appropriate piece of ground to conceptualize his campaign. And there’s nowhere more apropos than Gettysburg. Democrats hated the possibility of Trump speaking at the White House, so they’ll peck and groan about anywhere the incumbent president chooses. The GOP nominee could opt to speak from the middle of Fifth Avenue in New York City in front of Trump Tower, but then his haters would complain that he’s treading on the “Black Lives Matter” mural that Mayor Bill de Blasio put there. There’s no pleasing the guilt-ridden Democrat lot. Why try? Kamala Harris, slavery reparations and the real consequences of Democrats’ white guilt No discussion of authentic Democrat guilt would be complete without an examination of slavery reparations, because there’s no greater demonstration of contemporary pandering to one classification of voters in hopes of obtaining high electoral office at any price. During the primary campaign, every Democrat presidential contender more or less paid homage to the idea of cutting federal checks to African-Americans (and others, too, such as Native Americans) as a means of saying “I’m sorry” for the scourge of slavery well over a hundred and fifty years after the peculiar institution was constitutionally done away with. As one of a handful of minority contenders for the nation’s top job, newly coined Democrat vice president candidate Kamala Harris is on record favoring the idea. Since Harris couldn’t make up her mind what she was for and against on the campaign trail, her views on slavery reparations were equally wishy-washy. But it doesn’t end there. Harris’s own history suggests she might have to pay herself on the matter, since she’s got slave-owning ancestors. It’s true! Sound weird? That’s only the beginning. Jonathan Leaf wrote at Spectator USA, “Consider the case of Kamala Harris. Should her Indian mother pay reparations to her Jamaican father for his partial ancestry from slaves? Should she foot half the bill? Or should her father, whose ancestors also owned slaves, be taxed based on his degree of descent from slave-owners? Or should he, born a Jamaican, pay reparations to Native Americans, or take his reparations suit to the Spanish and British governments, as Jamaica was never American territory? “To determine my debt to Kamala Harris, will we first calculate her slave-owning ancestry and then subtract her enslaved ancestry? Should my assessment be based on the year when my ancestors arrived? None of my ancestors lived in America in 1861. Neither did her ancestors. Should I be asked to recompense Kamala Harris, the daughter of recent immigrants?” It should be noted, as I recall, most of the Democrat candidates limited their approval of slavery reparations to the notion of “studying” the issue, affirming the efforts of a few party members in Congress to create a commission to delve into possible payments. At the same time, with identity politics being what it is these days, is there a Democrat in high office who would seriously stand up and object to it? Not a chance. They’re far too consumed with guilt to welcome common sense. It's sad to see how much the concept of guilt -- real or imagined -- drives the agenda of the Democrat Party today. From Joe Biden feeling obligated to choose an African-American female as his running mate to ripping President Trump for the possibility of delivering his acceptance speech at Gettysburg, liberals are consumed with shame. Where will it lead them? UPDATE: President Trump announced yesterday that he would deliver his acceptance speech from the White House lawn and visit Gettysburg at a later date. From The Hill: “Gettysburg is special. I will be doing something at Gettysburg, it may be something different, not for the convention,” [Trump] said. “We’re going to be doing something terrific at Gettysburg, but when it gets a little bit cooler because now it’s, you know, it’s August 27, so that’s pretty hot out there,” Trump added.
#BlackLives Matter
2016 election
2020 campaign
2020 Election
Bernie Sanders
CHAZ
CHOP
Conservatives
defund the police
Democrats
Donald Trump
Drain the swamp
Elizabeth Warren
Establishment Republicans
George Floyd
Hillary Clinton
Joe Biden
Kellyanne Conway
Mike Pence
monument defacing
police brutality
police reform
Republicans
riots
Tim Scott
Trump administration
violence