Homage in Metal and Stone to an Ignoble Cause

Imagine if half a dozen states out west decided they ought to be allowed to imprison homosexuals and deny women the right to vote, and said they wanted to secede from the United States and form their own country so they could do that. And then imagine that when their right to secede was challenged by the United States, they raised an army and attacked, say, Ft. Riley, Ks., thereby igniting a war that resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of their people and hundreds of thousands more on the “union” side – a devastating, years-long conflagration that left unimaginable death and destruction in its wake.

I think it is safe to say that after it was all over, we wouldn’t be erecting any statues honoring the leaders of this movement.

With regard to the subject of statues and memorials in Forest Park, it helps to take a look back at the Gettysburg Address, a dominant theme of which was the deaths that resulted from the Civil War – 10,000 at Gettysburg alone.

“We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives…”

“The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here…”

“…that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion…”

“…that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain.”

The message that Lincoln’s words conveyed so elegantly and eloquently, and, above all, sorrowfully, was that so many people died in this awful conflagration, and for what? What cause was worth such upheaval and carnage? What principle was the confederacy defending that justified the unutterable misery, destruction, and death the Civil War brought? What was it all for?

Answer: It was for the defense and preservation by southerners of a system by which they enriched themselves through the use of free labor to produce their goods and services – free labor they availed themselves of by enslaving millions of their fellow human beings; a system that treated blacks as a sub-human species, to be bought and sold as if they were cattle or furniture, to be kept in chains, to be capriciously and forever separated from their kith and kin, to be understood as possessions, not people, to be whipped, shot, beaten, maimed, and slaughtered; to be not cared for and loved but owned; to be literally worked to death.

And we should have statues and monuments honoring this movement and its leaders?

As for the argument that most of the soldiers in the Confederacy had no real understanding of what they were fighting for and should be honored not for their commitment to a cause but for their sacrifice -- for having fought and died in battle: Well, there are no monuments in Forest Park or anywhere else in America honoring soldiers who died attacking and fighting against the United States in other wars. And let there be no doubt that the Confederate army attacked and fought against the United States.

Nor is this about preserving history. The history of the Civil War will be preserved quite nicely without these items which are not themselves Civil War artifacts deserving of preservation, but ex-post-facto metal and stone objects that point to, but are not part of, the history of the war. Their disappearance will not make us forget the war and doesn’t constitute a denial of its existence or meaning. It is simply an acknowledgement that there’s no good reason to be paying homage to an ignoble cause by maintaining statuary that is a sickening affront to the descendants of the millions who suffered so terribly under the institution of slavery.

Lies and Audiotape

James Comey, testifying under oath and under penalty of perjury, is lying, and Trump is telling the truth? Can that possibly be Team Trump’s defense? Apparently. They are denying that Trump said anything to Comey about loyalty or about dropping the Flynn investigation, and by way of that denial they are accusing Comey of committing perjury. True, we can’t know with absolute certainty what was said without audio recordings, the existence of which Trump darkly hinted at. But the idea that Comey simply made all this up – wrote a piece of fiction replete with invented dialogue – is possible to believe only if one is absolutely determined to do so and is immune to facts and reality. Which Trump’s core supporters have proven over and over again is exactly what they are. Team Trump’s characterization of the Comey testimony as “vindication” shows the fantasy world into which they have retreated.

But there is one huge Trump lie that was highlighted via Comey’s testimony that doesn’t need audiotape verification – one that he admitted to in front of Lester Holt and the world -- when he said Comey’s firing was over the Russia investigation. By acknowledging that, he admitted in front of tens of millions of witnesses that the other reasons he cited for the firing – that the FBI was in disarray under Comey and that Comey had mishandled the Clinton matter – were lies. When he and his team said those things, they lied. Comey did not lie about why he was fired. Trump did.

Speaking of the Russia investigation, the thing that underpins all of this, Trump has repeatedly tried to muddy the waters and has resisted that investigation at every turn, even as he and his people have belittled it and characterized it as a distraction cooked up by sour-grapes Democrats. (We’re talking here about Russian interference in the 2016 election, leaving aside for the moment whether that interference was abetted by any Americans.) Here is what Comey had to say about it:

“The Russians interfered in our election during the 2016 cycle. They did it with purpose. They did it with sophistication. They did it with overwhelming technical efforts. And it was an active-measures campaign driven from the top of that government. We’re talking about a foreign government that, using technical intrusion, lots of other methods, tried to shape the way we think, we vote, we act. That is a big deal. And people need to recognize it. It’s not about Republicans or Democrats. They’re coming after America, which I hope we all love equally. It is a high-confidence judgment of the entire intelligence community, and – and the members of this committee have – have seen the intelligence. It’s not a close call. That happened. That’s about as un-fake as you can possibly get, and is very, very serious.”

Committee Chairman Sen. Richard Burr, R-N.C., asked Comey whether he had “any doubt that Russia attempted to interfere in the 2016 elections?”

“None,” Comey responded.

Neither did anyone else on the committee, Democrat or Republican. Nor does anyone else in government, Democrat or Republican, with the apparent exception of Trump and at least some of the people who surround him.  Yet to be determined is whether any Americans were involved.  The betting here is that they were and that it will all come out soon.

The other line of defense being mounted by the Trump folks is attempting to focus everyone’s attention on leaks, something they’ve been at for a while but are now apparently redoubling their efforts on. They say Comey is a leaker, and they spit that word out in a way that suggests it’s the same as, say, slimeball. What this focus on leaks really says is, in effect, we’re not nearly as concerned about lies and wrongdoing as we are about the American people knowing about the lies and wrongdoing. But, hey, maybe if we distract everyone with feigned concern about leaks as being somehow treasonous, they won’t pay close attention to the horrors that are being revealed by way of the leaks. In any event, Comey’s handing over to the press an account of his thoughts about and reactions to his meetings with the president is not a “leak” at all, and something he is perfectly entitled to do. There is no privileged communication here and certainly nothing that is “classified.”

And, finally, there’s the laughable discussion about the meaning of “hope.” Trump’s expressing the hope that Comey would back off the Flynn investigation, his apologists contend, was nothing more than a supplication – to the gods, I guess – that what he wanted to happen, would happen, if fortune were to smile on him. An idle musing. The fact that this wish was expressed in the presence of the person who could make it come true should not be interpreted, Trump people say, in the way Comey did, in fact, interpret it –as a directive-or-else. Wags around the globe lampooned this view in various ways:

“I hope you hand over your wallet,” said the gun-brandishing robber to his victim.

“That’s a nice pair of legs ya got there,” said the Mafia torpedo to the beautiful dame. “I hope nothing happens to mess them up.”

“I hope you can get me that report by the end of the week,” said the boss to the underling.

Anyone who watched James Comey’s testimony in the Senate hearings and still thinks highly of Donald Trump is clearly beyond redemption. When he said he could shoot somebody on 5th Ave. and not lose any voters, it is them he was referring to. A more blatant expression of the contempt he has for these folks, and for the American people in general, you couldn’t find.