Category Archives: civil war

November 16, 2020 · 21:02

“So the Old World Slipped Away Never to Return Again…”: A Look Back at my Prediction for 2020

Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

I wrote this article on 13 December 2019. It was pretty pessimistic even then without the Coronavirus 19 Pandemic which has killed over a quarter of a million Americans and infected over 11 million more, over a million in the past week. Over course that was not included in this article. The title then was “So the Old World Slipped Away Never to Return Again…”: the Coming Disorder of 2020. Damn I hate being right, and we still have 49 days left in the year and President Trump seems intent on destroying the country using a scorched earth policy and attempting to provoke violence as the Proud Boys and other White Supremacist and self-proclaimed “militias” which are nothing more than heavily armed right wing vigilante and terrorist groups unrecognized by any law and operating outside of the Constitutional understanding of militias. Now we are ending the year with the President refusing to concede an election he lost by a lot in terms of popular vote and the electoral college, sowing discord and doubt about the American election system and our Republic, things that erode trust at home and abroad. But anyway, enough for now, and on to what I wrote last December.

Peace,

Padre Steve+

“So the Old World Slipped Away Never to Return Again…”: the Coming Disorder of 2020. 13 December 2019

It is not even Christmas and I am beginning to write about the coming year. This was provoked in part by a discussion I had with a dear friend, who also happens to be an Evangelical Christian Trump Cultist. I attempted to talk of basic middle of the road stuff and be honest about history, especially because I was a Republican for 32 years, until I returned from Iraq in 2008 and realized that we had been lied into a war that would have fit three of the four charges leveled against the Nazi War Criminals at Nuremberg.

But there was no convincing my friend of anything, even when attempting to bridge the divide using facts. To him Trump is the greatest President ever, and Obama, the worst. Of course I live in one of the “reddest” areas of Virginia and while I have quite a few liberal or progressive friends here, quite a few of the people who are also long time friends have transformed themselves from traditional conservatives who could be reasoned with to part of the Trump Cult. Such was the case with this person, every response he gave came straight from a Trump tweet, or something off of Fox News, or Rush Limbaugh. But I digress, my friend is not a bad person.

Abraham Lincoln noted:

“The best thing about the future is that it comes one day at a time.”

It is good to remember Lincoln’s words in times of turmoil. I do, and they bring me great motivation to work, believe, and fight for justice, truth, and the belief in a spark of goodness in humanity which enables me to believe the words of the Declaration of Independence:

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

The fact that those words come from a time of tumult, yet in a time where men were beginning to wrestle with and proclaim principles of the Enlightenment matters much to me, especially in times like we live today, where that principle is being attacked and undermined by the American President.

That being said, I believe that 2019 will be remembered in history as a time great turmoil, upheaval, and probably usher in a new epoch of war, economic, and ecological disaster. We are ending the year with the impeachment proceedings against President Trump, and threats of violence and civil war from his supporters if he is removed from office or loses the 2020 election.

I don’t want to sound like a pessimist, but as a historian I to look at the world through how human beings, governments, and businesses behave in times of crisis. In fact, human beings are the singular constant in history and in crisis human beings don’t always live up to our ideals.

When major powers and international systems of order break down, or collapse for whatever reason, instability, disorder, and primordial hatreds based on nationalism, religion, and racism rise. A vacuum is created, filled by other powers, but not without some element of travail. Edmond Taylor wrote in his classic “The Fall of the Dynasties: The Collapse of the Order, 1905-1922:

“The collapse of the great supranational — or at least supraparochial — authorities and the dissolution of long-accepted Imperial bonds released upon Europe a fearsome flood of conflicting national ambitions, of inflamed minority particularisms, of historic (sometimes almost prehistoric) irredentisms, of irreconcilable social aspirations and of rival political fanaticisms.“

The impending collapse of the old order today can be seen in a return to a more isolationist policy by the United States, rising populist, nationalist, and ethnocentric movements in Europe which are threatening the existence of the European Union. Those include Brexit, ethnic nationalism mixed with a bit of Fascism in Hungary, Italy, Poland, and great strains in France and Germany between right and left wing populist movements, but no one has found a way to deal with these Right Wing populist movements.

The common thread is the center which was the key to so much social progress, democracy, economic growth and stability, scientific advancement, and international security is giving way. In fact it has pretty much disappeared, There are many reasons for this, on the American side going back to the imperialist overreach of the George W. Bush administration, the inconsistent and detached method of the Obama administration towards the Middle East, especially Syria and Iraq, following that, the overtly populist, authoritarian, and isolationist policies of the Trump presidency, and his decidedly inconsistent, often irresponsible, and irreconcilable policies of isolationism on one hand, and militarism on the other.

Now a rejuvenated Russia is rushing to fill the void in the Middle East as well as working to destabilize its neighbors, Europe, and even the United States. The Chinese are attempting to make gains in other areas and to drive the United States out of Asia by using every element of national power: diplomacy, information, military might, and economics, while the United States following the Trump Administration’s withdraw from the Trans Pacific Partnership, and subsequent punishing tariffs that are hurting allies and Americans more than China the United States is now at a decided disadvantage in Asia.

I could go on, and could go into details on the causes of the current situation but they are many. What we are seeing now is the beginning of the collapse of an order that we have known most of our lives. While many people might be uneasy, most don’t view things in terms of history, in many cases because the events that led to the establishment of the current order are too distant and the witnesses to those times are few, and dying off. People today seldom study history, and even worse no longer know people, including family members who remember what happened to remind them of it.

That was quite similar to the situation in 1914. Europe had been at relative peace for a century. With the exception of the French Republic, most of Europe was still ruled by monarchies with rather limited democratic participation, if any. Barbara Tuchman wrote in her book The Proud Tower: A Portrait Of the World Before the War, 1890-1914:

“The proud tower built up through the great age of European civilization was an edifice of grandeur and passion, of riches and beauty and dark cellars. Its inhabitants lived, as compared to a later time, with more self-reliance, more confidence, more hope; greater magnificence, extravagance and elegance; more careless ease, more gaiety, more pleasure in each other’s company and conversation, more injustice and hypocrisy, more misery and want, more sentiment including false sentiment, less sufferance of mediocrity, more dignity in work, more delight in nature, more zest. The Old World had much that has since been lost, whatever may have been gained. Looking back on it from 1915, Emile Verhaeren, the Belgian Socialist poet, dedicated his pages, “With emotion, to the man I used to be.”

I believe that 2020 will the a year of multiple crises and the further erosion, if not collapse of the old order, regardless of what happens with impeachment. What will come I do not know, but I expect that at the minimum it will be unsettling and disruptive, if not catastrophic. That doesn’t mean that I am a pessimist, it means that I study history. Provided that humanity does not find a way to destroy itself, we will recover. It may not be pretty and it certainly will not be the same as it was, but we will recover.

Walter Lord wrote about this his book on American in the early Twentieth Century The Good Years: 1900-1914. In the book he wrote about how things changed for Americans as Europe plunged into war. The effects of the war were soon felt in the United States though it would not enter the war until 1917. Lord wrote:

Economics were only part of the story. Almost overnight, Americans lost a happy, easygoing, confident way of looking at things. Gone was the bright lilt of “When You Wore a Tulip”; already it was the sadly nostalgic, “There’s a Long, Long Trail a-Winding,” or the grimly suggestive, “I Didn’t Raise My Boy to Be a Soldier.” A mounting crescendo of screaming headlines… atrocity stories… U-boat sinkings… charges and counter-charges shocked the nation, jarred its faith, left a residue of doubt and dismay.

Nothing seemed simple any more. Nothing was black and white. Nothing was “right” or “wrong,” the way Theodore Roosevelt used to describe things. And as the simple problems vanished, so did the simple solutions. Trust-busting, direct primaries, arbitration treaties and all the rest. They somehow lost their glamour as exciting panaceas, and nothing took their place. But the problems grew and grew —preparedness… taxes… war… Bolshevism… disillusionment… depression… Fascism… Moscow… fallout… space… more taxes.

So the old life slipped away, never to return again, and wise men sensed it almost at once. Men like Henry White, the immensely urbane diplomat who had served the country so well. “He instinctively felt,” according to his biographer Allan Nevins, “that his world —the world of constant travel, cosmopolitan intercourse, secure comfort and culture —would never be the same again.” The Philadelphia North American felt the same way, but in blunter words: “What does this mean but that our boasted civilization has broken down?”

Perhaps it was just as well. There was much that was wrong with this old way of living —its injustices, its naivete, its waste, its smug self-assurance. Men would come along to fix all that. New laws, controls, regulations, forms filled out in triplicate would keep anybody from getting too much or too little. And swarms of consultants, researchers, special assistants, and executive committees would make sure that great men always said and did the right thing.

There would be great gains. But after all the gains had been counted, it would turn out that something was also lost —a touch of optimism, confidence, exuberance, and hope. The spirit of an era can’t be blocked out and measured, but it is there nonetheless. And in these brief, buoyant years it was a spark that somehow gave extra promise to life. By the light of this spark, men and women saw themselves as heroes shaping the world, rather than victims struggling through it.

Actually, this was nothing unique. People had seen the spark before, would surely do so again. For it can never die as long as men breathe. But sometimes it burns low, leaving men uncertain in the shadows; other times it glows bright, catching the eye with breath-taking visions of the future.

The truth is, even in the midst of crises that the spark that enables people to believe, to hope, and to labor for a better future where the possibilities of peace, justice, freedom, and progress can be realized.

2019 was a very difficult year, a year of change and turbulence, and truthfully it will probably be just the beginning; but unless we find a way to destroy ourselves before the end of the year, it will not be the end, and 2020 may be one of the most important, yet tumultuous years in human history, and I cannot say if it will end well, for the United States, or the world.

Peace,

Padre Steve+

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Filed under authoritarian government, civil rights, civil war, Coronavirus 19 Pandemic, History, laws and legislation, leadership, national security, natural disasters, News and current events, Political Commentary, racism, Religion, US Presidents

Tagged as abraham lincoln, barbara tuchman, brexit, china, Coronavirus 19, declaration of independence, Edmond Taylor, european union, History, humanity, middle east, new year, president barak obama, president donald trump, Proud boys, russia, The Fall of Dynasties, The Good Days, The Proud Tower, united states, walter lord

November 10, 2020 · 19:48

Happy 245th Birthday Marines!

Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

I will take a momentary break from all things Trump and everything else to wish all United States Marines a Happy 245th Birthday.

Honestly, after all that we have been through as a country this year, today is one of these days where I just want to wish people well. Those men and women are those of the United States Marine Corps, with whom I have have spent almost ten years of my thirty-five year military career assigned to or in support of as a chaplain. Today is the 245th anniversary of the establishment of the Marine Corps and its founding at Tun Tavern, in Philadelphia. Tonight I wish all those who have served as Marines past, present and future, especially those who I have served alongside a happy birthday. That includes my Nephew Darren stationed with a squadron at Marine Corps Air Station Yuma Arizona.

On November 10th 1775 the Continental Congress passed a resolution that stated:

Resolved, that two Battalions of Marines be raised consisting of one Colonel, two Lieutenant Colonels, two Majors & Officers as usual in other regiments, that they consist of an equal number of privates with other battalions; that particular care be taken that no persons be appointed to office or enlisted into said Battalions, but such as are good seamen, or so acquainted with maritime affairs as to be able to serve to advantage by sea, when required. That they be enlisted and commissioned for and during the present war with Great Britain and the colonies, unless dismissed by Congress. That they be distinguished by the names of the first & second battalions of American Marines, and that they be considered a part of the number, which the continental Army before Boston is ordered to consist of.

The history of the Marine Corps is one of the most fascinating of any armed service in the world. Starting out as a tiny force attached to Navy ships and shipyards the Corps has gained prominence as one of the premier fighting forces ever assembled. Flexible and deployable anywhere in the world on short notice the Marine Corps has seen action in “every place and clime” and continues to serve around the world.

In 1775 a committee of the Continental Congress met at Philadelphia’s Tun Tavern to draft a resolution calling for two battalions of Marines able to fight for independence at sea and on shore. The resolution was approved on November 10, 1775, officially forming the Continental Marines. The first order of business was to appoint Samuel Nicholas as the Commandant of the newly formed Marines.

The Marines served on the ships of the Navy in the Quasi-wa with France, against the Barbary Pirates where a small group of 8 Marines and 500 Arabs under Lieutenant Presley O’Bannon made a march of 500 miles across the Libyan Desert to lay siege Tripoli but only reached Derna. The action is immortalized in the Marine Hymn as well as the design of the Marine Officer’s “Mameluke” Sword. They served in the War of 1812, the Seminole Wars and in the Mexican-American War where in the storming of the on Chapultepec Palace they continued to build and enduring legacy. In the months leading up to the Civil War they played a key role at home and abroad. In October 1859 U.S. Army Lieutenant Colonel Robert E. Lee led Marines from the Marine Barracks Washington DC to capture John Brown and his followers who had seized the Federal Armory at Harper’s Ferry.

The Corps served on through the Civil War and on into the age of American Expansion serving in the Spanish American War in the Philippines, Puerto Rico and Cuba where they seized Guantanamo Bay at the battle of Cuzco Wells. The would serve in China and be a key component of the international force that defended foreign diplomats during the Boxer Revolt as well as the international force that would relieve the diplomatic compound in Peking (Beijing).

In World War One the Marines stopped the German advance at Chateau Thierry and cemented their reputation as an elite fighting force at Belleau Wood where legend and myth has it that the Germans nicknamed them Teufelhunden or Devil Dogs, a name that they Marines have appropriated with great aplomb.

After the war the Truman Administration sought to eliminate the Marine Corps but the Corps was saved by the efforts of Americans across the country and Marine supporters in Congress. That was a good thing because the Marines were instrumental in keeping the North Koreans from overrunning the South during the Korean War on the Pusan Perimeter, turned the tide at Inchon and helped decimate Communist Chinese forces at the Chosin Reservoir. After Korea the Marines would serve around the World in the Caribbean and Lebanon and in Vietnam where at Da Nang Keh Sanh, Hue City, Con Thien fighting the North Vietnamese and their Viet Cong allies. The Marines took the initiative to implement innovative counter insurgency measures such as the Combined Action Platoons which enjoyed tremendous success until they were shut down by the Army high command. These lessons would serve the Marines well in the new millennium during the Anbar Awakening in Iraq which changed the course of that insurgency and war.

The Marines would again be involved around the World after Vietnam serving in the Cold War, in Lebanon and the First Gulf War which was followed by actions in Somalia, the Balkans and Haiti. After the attacks of September 11th 2001 the Marines were among the first into Afghanistan helping to drive the Taliban from power. In the Iraq Campaign the Marines had a leading role both in the invasion and in the campaign in Al Anbar Province. After their withdraw from Iraq the Marines became a central player in Afghanistan where they were engaged around Khandahar and in Helmand Province. In the wake of the ISIS gains in Syria and Iraq the Marines returned to Iraq serving to help train and advise Iraqi Army units in areas of Al Anbar Province and other areas of that country. Likewise they have participated in many humanitarian operations across the Globe where working alongside side the United States Navy, Host Countries, and countless international Humanitarian Relief agencies. If by some chance war breaks out on the Korean Peninsula, Marines will be among the first to respond.

The Marines are elite among world military organizations and continue to “fight our nations battles on the air and land and sea.” The Corps under General John LeJeune institutionalized the celebration of the Marine Corps Birthday and their establishment at Tun Tavern. General LeJeune issued this order which is still read at every Marine Corps Birthday Ball or observance:

MARINE CORPS ORDER No. 47 (Series 1921)
HEADQUARTERS
U.S. MARINE CORPS Washington, November 1, 1921

The following will be read to the command on the 10th of November, 1921, and hereafter on the 10th of November of every year. Should the order not be received by the 10th of November, 1921, it will be read upon receipt.

On November 10, 1775, a Corps of Marines was created by a resolution of Continental Congress. Since that date many thousand men have borne the name “Marine”. In memory of them it is fitting that we who are Marines should commemorate the birthday of our corps by calling to mind the glories of its long and illustrious history.

The record of our corps is one which will bear comparison with that of the most famous military organizations in the world’s history. During 90 of the 146 years of its existence the Marine Corps has been in action against the Nation’s foes. From the Battle of Trenton to the Argonne, Marines have won foremost honors in war, and in the long eras of tranquility at home, generation after generation of Marines have grown gray in war in both hemispheres and in every corner of the seven seas, that our country and its citizens might enjoy peace and security.

In every battle and skirmish since the birth of our corps, Marines have acquitted themselves with the greatest distinction, winning new honors on each occasion until the term “Marine” has come to signify all that is highest in military efficiency and soldierly virtue.

This high name of distinction and soldierly repute we who are Marines today have received from those who preceded us in the corps. With it we have also received from them the eternal spirit which has animated our corps from generation to generation and has been the distinguishing mark of the Marines in every age. So long as that spirit continues to flourish Marines will be found equal to every emergency in the future as they have been in the past, and the men of our Nation will regard us as worthy successors to the long line of illustrious men who have served as “Soldiers of the Sea” since the founding of the Corps.

JOHN A. LEJEUNE,
Major General
Commandant

I have had the privilege to have served with the Marines directly or indirectly for nearly ten of the thirty-seven years that I have served in the military. In addition to that I wear the Fleet Marine Force Officer Warfare Qualification device and I am a graduate of the Marine Corps Command and Staff College. I have been able to celebrate the Marine Corps Birthday with Marines in places like Ramadi and Guantanamo Bay. For me it is an honor to have served with so many great Americans.

So to all my Marine Corps friends, and any other Marines who read this piece, have a great night and Semper Fidelis.

Peace

Padre Steve+

The Ugly Truth: What the Election Says about the United States

Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

So much for being A City Set on a Hill, The Model Republic or an Exceptional Nation. At times we have been that, but many times we have not, especially in terms of our behavior towards own own citizens at home, especially Blacks and other racial, ethnic, or religious minorities. Whether it be the attacks of the Know Nothing’s on Irish and German immigrants between the 1830s to 1850s; the Genocide committed in the name of our Manifest Destiny; the invasion, Rape and conquest of Mexico in which we took 40% of Mexico’s territory, once again in the name of our God Ordained Manifest Destiny; the enslavement of Blacks that began in Colonial times, followed by our systematic persecution of Blacks following their emancipation, citizenship, and suffrage, during and after Reconstruction and in the Jim Crow Era. The conquest, annexation, and war against Filipino patriots following the Spanish American War, which caused Mark Twain to write:

“There must be two Americas: one that sets the captive free, and one that takes a once-captive’s new freedom away from him, and picks a quarrel with him with nothing to found it on; then kills him to get his land. . .”

Last night I was still too wiped out from my tooth extraction and jaw infection to do any writing of any kind. I was still pretty wiped out most of today but I am feeling well enough to write and probably go to work in the morning. As I was getting my wits about me today and looking over the election and COVID-19 numbers I came to realize that as a country and people that we Americans are not very good or exceptional.

While the race for President is yet to be called it looks like Democrat Joe Biden has a very good chance of winning it, but having his win stand the scrutiny of lawsuits, recounts, and court decisions to follow. That does not mean that our system of government, based on a Constitutional republic with three pillars of power, the Executive, Legislative, and Judicial, based on democratic principles and the understanding that All Men are Created Equal… is perfect, or capable of being destroyed by a man and party willing to sacrifice it for their political power. President Donald Trump and his cult of dearth, the Republican Party have proved that, even if he loses he will have succeeded in undermining every pillar of our Republic, and maybe even ensuring its destruction in the coming years.

Whether Trump loses or not, nearly half of Americans have showed that they no longer believe in our Constitution, system of government, or the rights of fellow citizens. We have found that a sizable number of people who call themselves Pro-life Christians are actually simply a party of death; yes they are against abortion, but they care not a wit about the lives of those already born. In fact the man they voted for stands against the principles that they supposedly believed in less than for years ago. The Republican Party is no longer the party life life, limited government, or individual freedom, it is the party of Trump, the party of dictatorship, tyranny, and death; even willing deaths of his followers, for 14 of the top 15 states with the highest COVID-19 infection rates per million people all voted for him, unless Georgia flips, then it will be 13 of 15.

In the early hours of the morning Trump declared victory and demanded that states stop counting legal votes. As his losses began to mount he filed suit against three states on very shaky charges to stop them counting votes already cast. But the President doesn’t care because he is nationalist, but his nationalism is worse than most nationalists, because he does it to enhance his own power. Historian Timothy Snyder wrote:

“The president is a nationalist, which is not at all the same thing as a patriot. A nationalist encourages us to be our worst, and then tells us that we are the best. A nationalist, ‘although endlessly brooding on power, victory, defeat, revenge,’ wrote Orwell, tends to be ‘uninterested in what happens in the real world.’ Nationalism is relativist, since the only truth is the resentment we feel when we contemplate others. As the novelist Danilo Kiš put it, nationalism ‘has no universal values, aesthetic or ethical.’ A patriot, by contrast, wants the nation to live up to its ideals, which means asking us to be our best selves. A patriot must be concerned with the real world, which is the only place where his country can be loved and sustained. A patriot has universal values, standards by which he judges his nation, always wishing it well—and wishing that it would do better.”

Hitler was also a Nationalist, but when his self anointed German Master Race lost the war he caused, he blamed his followers as being too weak, and unworthy. Why do I not see Trump doing the same thing when all is said and done? I think his followers should worry about that more than me.

As I get ready to finish this article Biden leads the popular and electoral vote counts, and it is very possible that hi will win Nevada where he is ahead, as well as flip Pennsylvania and Georgia where Trump is narrowly leading but the lead is diminishing every hour. By the time I get up in the morning those races may have been called. Biden could end up with over 300 electoral votes, but the damage will already have been done, and I have no doubt that Trump and his supporters will continue to do, maybe using violence in pursuit of their goal. But I do think that the courts, and other institutions will stop him and them. I could be wrong, but I don’t think they will succeed in preventing Biden’s election. But based on Trump’s words of last week I wouldn’t discount an attempt on Biden’s life before he is sworn in.

But all of that is said in realization that over the past four years, Trump and his supporters have more to destroy the foundations of the American Experiment than anything before, even the Civil War. I believe that even if our better angels prevail, that it will take more than a generation to recover from the Trump Era, if he loses now, and probably never if he remains in office.

Russian exile, dissident, and Chess Grand Master Gary Kasparov who wrote:

“First of all people here should understand that nothing is for granted. There were many warnings in the past, you know, but every time, Americans and Europeans—they believe that it’s like bad weather. It comes and goes. But the danger is real. I always want to quote Ronald Reagan, who said, “Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction.” Now, probably, it’s not even one generation. Things can happen very quickly, because there’s so much power that comes in the hands of people who have very little affection for the values that make up the core of liberal democracy and the free world.”

Trump and his supporters are those of whom Kasparov wrote. They want nothing to to with the values of liberal democracy and the free world, it is all about their grudges, hatred, and need for absolute power, which they project onto their opponents.

While I think Biden will win I take nothing for granted, and must warn others of, even if they do not want hear that warning.

So tomorrow when we know more, I wish you a good night.

Peace,

Padre Steve+

3 Comments

Filed under civil war, COVID19, culture, History, nazi germany, Political Commentary, racism, White nationalism

Tagged as 2020 election, american exceptionalism, American history, american imperialism, American racism, American system of government, city set on a hill, declaration of independence, donald Trump cult, gary kasparov, jim crow, know nothings, manifest destiny, mark twain, model republic, n, philippine war 1899-1902, president donald trump, pro-life christians, reconstruction, Republicans party, timothy snyder, united states constitution, vice president joe biden, war with mexico

November 1, 2020 · 00:03

A Warning Then, Reality Now: Trump’s Radical and Violent Supporters in 2016 and 2020

Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

I wrote this on October 12th 2016. I saw what was coming and it is now here. Back then even many Democrats did not believe that fellow Americans would continue to behave this way, even if Trump somehow won the election. Many thought is was a passing moment, an anomaly that would not be repeated.

I wish I was wrong but it is being repeated day after day during the 2020 campaign. Heavily armed White Supremacists attempt to intimidate voters at polls. Today a caravan of Trump supporters tried to drive a Biden-Harris campaign bus off the road between San Antonio and Austin, threatening the lives of the people on the bus with no law enforcement intervention, while police in North Carolina attacked a column of mostly Black men and women holding a peaceful protest while marching from a church to the polls to cast their ballots, arresting more than a dozen of them after attacking them with peeper spray and truncheons. There are so many of these incidents that they are almost overwhelming, but to see the President use his rallies and twitter to praise them is unheard of in American politics.

I knew better because I had been a Republican for 32 years. I campaigned for Gerald Ford before I could vote. Forty years ago I cast my first vote in a Presidential Election for Ronald Reagan. I finally left the GOP when I heard Republican politicians and the Right Wing radio hosts like Rush Limbaugh who I had listened to and even defended for years repeating Birther conspiracy theories, and using racist terminology and dog whistles constantly during the 2008 campaign. I had supported John McCain up until that point, but I realized that he and men like him were no longer in control of the Republican base which had been radicalized by men like Limbaugh for decades. The base was now made up by people who supported in increasing numbers openly racist politicians, like the former Ku Klux Klan Grand Master, David Duke, and radical Evangelical Christian extremists who preached a gospel of hate, including someone I knew well from church, anti-abortion leader Randall Terry. Terry once urged his followers:

“Let a wave of intolerance wash over you. I want you to let a wave of hatred wash over you. Yes, hate is good…. If a Christian voted for Clinton, he sinned against God. It’s that simple…. Our goal is a Christian Nation… we have a biblical duty, we are called by God to conquer this country. We don’t want equal time. We don’t want Pluralism. We want theocracy. Theocracy means God rules. I’ve got a hot flash. God rules.” [Randall Terry, Head of Operation Rescue, from The News Sentinel, Fort Wayne, Indiana, Aug 15, 1993]

On the day I cracked I was driving between my military unit’s facilities on two different bases while listening to Limbaugh. I had to pull to the side of the road and cry. This was about three months after returning from a combat tour in Iraq and dealing with PTSD that had not yet been diagnosed. I cried because I realized how mistaken I had been about the GOP for all of those years. I felt deceived and lied to, and I began to see the race hatred in the words and on the faces of Republicans I had known for years. I saw what was underneath the veneer of respectability shown by Republican leaders and knew that if I did not leave at that moment that I would be responsible for what came after as the scales had been lifted from my eyes.

Tonight with the fate of our republic on the line, I repeat my original warning and unequivocally state that their violent revolution is happening before our eyes. Trump is no longer simply a candidate, but the President. He has destroyed the guardrails that prevented tyrants from seizing power, the kind of man envisioned by those who wrote the Constitution and the Federalist Papers. He is a tyrant and a would be dictator whose supporters are devoted to that end. He is using all the powers of government and the courts to ensure that he remains in power. Alexander Hamilton warned us of a leader like Trump in the Federalist Papers:

“the vigor of government is essential to the security of liberty … that a dangerous ambition more often lurks behind the mask of zeal for rights of the people than under the appearance of zeal for firmness and efficiency of government. History will teach us that the former has been found a much more certain road to the introduction of despotism than the latter, and that of those men who have overturned the liberties of republics, the greatest number have begun their career by paying court to the people, commencing as demagogues and ending up tyrants.”

So anyway, most of last night and today I have been battling a severe toothache. I went to the Naval Medical Center only to be told that the on call dentists no longer came in for “routine” issues. I was given pain meds and antibiotics and told to go to dental sick call on Monday morning.

What follows is that post from October 12th 2016. The original post is titled:“Trump and His Supporters Real Threats of Revolution and Violence.” It is posted in its original form and has not been edited.

Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

The great American philosopher Eric Hoffer wrote:

“Hatred is the most accessible and comprehensive of all unifying agents. It pulls and whirls the individual away from his own self, makes him oblivious of his weal and future, frees him of jealousies and self-seeking. He becomes an anonymous particle quivering with a craving to fuse and coalesce with his like into one flaming mass.”

I have been seeing questions asked about why so many of Donald Trump’s supporters are doubling down on their support of him as he melts down and declares war on his own the Republican Party. I think that too many people simply ascribe this to frustration with the status quo but I think that there is more to it than that. Quite frankly Trump has appealed to the basest instincts of many of his supporters: he appeals to their fear, their racism, sexism, xenophobia, anti-Gay feelings, their feelings of powerlessness against real and imagined elites, and the fantasy world of conspiracy theories that have been promoted by right wing talkers, preachers, and media outlets for over two decades. He promises to make them important again, to make their twisted version of the Christian faith the law of the land, to bring retribution to their “enemies” to deport those not like them, and to ban others from coming into the country. He appeals to their desire for an authoritarian leader who will solve their problems without the niceties of acting in accordance with the Constitution or law.

His message is quite simply, to use these factors to stoke anger, hatred and rage against real and imagined devils. Hoffer noted: “Mass movements can rise and spread without belief in a God, but never without belief in a devil. Usually the strength of a mass movement is proportionate to the vividness and tangibility of its devil.” For many Trump supporters that “devil” is Hillary Clinton, Trump actually called her that during debate on Sunday night and claimed that she had a “very dark heart.” For some of his other followers it is Barak Obama, and to a growing number of his followers, Speaker of the House Paul Ryan and other GOP leaders who have denounced Trump or who have failed to endorse him. Hoffer wrote:

“It seems that, like the ideal deity, the ideal devil is one. We have it from Hitler—the foremost authority on devils—that the genius of a great leader consists in concentrating all hatred on a single foe, making “even adversaries far removed from one another seem to belong to a single category.” When Hitler picked the Jew as his devil, he peopled practically the whole world outside Germany with Jews or those who worked for them. “Behind England stands Israel, and behind France, and behind the United States.”

In place of any detailed policy, instead of a message of hope to Trump threatens and cajoles and his supporters, of whom he said during the Iowa Caucus campaign “I could stand in the middle of 5th Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose voters.”

Richard Evans in his book The Coming of the Third Reich discussed one of Hitler’s first speeches after coming to power.

“As so often in his career, Hitler, beginning slowly and quietly so as to secure the rapt attention of his enormous audience, went over the history of the Nazi Party and the alleged crimes of the Weimar Republic since 1919—the inflation, the impoverishment of the peasantry, the rise of unemployment, the ruin of the nation. What would his government do to change this parlous situation? His answer avoided any specific commitments at all. He said grandly that he was not going to make any ‘cheap promises’. Instead, he declared that his programme was to rebuild the German nation without foreign aid, ‘according to eternal laws valid for all time’, on the basis of the people and the soil, not according to ideas of class. Once more, he held up the intoxicating vision of a Germany united in a new society that would overcome the divisions of class and creed that had racked it over the past fourteen years. The workers, he declared, would be freed from the alien ideology of Marxism and led back to the national community of the entire German race. This was a ‘programme of national resurrection in all areas of life.’”

One thing you can say about Trump is that he understands his hard core supporters. Time and time again he has said and done things that would have left a normal candidate in a normal campaign sitting out the election at home, but instead his hardcore supporters, the people who now proudly call themselves “the Deplorables” respond to his threats to jail Hillary Clinton, to abandon and overthrow the GOP leadership, and his other invectives with an eagerness not seen in an electorate since Adolf Hitler’s mesmerized supporters screamed “Sieg Heil!” at Nazi Party rallies. The cult like devotion of his base is unlike anything ever seen in American politics. After two of his supporters beat a homeless man with a metal pole and urinated on him following a speech in which Trump called Mexicans “Rapists and drug dealers” Trump responded: “I will say, the people that are following me are very passionate. They love this country, they want this country to be great again.”

When his supporters roughed up opponents at Trump rallies he said: “Knock the crap out of them, would you?” and “In the good ol’ days, they’d have knocked him out of his seat so fast,” and offered to pay their legal fees. He encourages supporters to shout down the media at his events, calls out people who might be different than his supporters as he did when he asked non-Christians to identify themselves at a rally and asked his supporters if they should be allowed to stay in the room. This week he suggested that his followers go to heavily minority and Democratic precincts to “monitor” the vote. In open carry states that could well lead to his armed supporters loitering near polling places intimidating voters just as Hitler’s Brownshirts policed polling places in the elections leading to Hitler’s accession to power and the few votes held until he abolished opposition parties. Below is an image of armed S.A. Brownshirts outside a polling station on March 5th 1933, the final election for the Reichstag.

This monster is something that will not go away even if Trump loses. Some of his supporters call for violent revolution if Clinton wins, but they wouldn’t be the first. Trump himself used twitter to call for revolution when President Obama defeated Mitt Romney on November 7^th 2012. These calls for revolution and the blessing of extrajudicial violence against political enemies and minority groups have to be taken for real, especially with the rise of heavily armed so-called militia groups, as well as neo-Nazi, KKK, and other White Nationalist groups which live in a cloud-cuckoo land of conspiracy laden paranoia, and dualism.

This my friends is not normal or rational behavior for any Presidential candidate or campaign. I don’t think that I’m overly dramatic at this point. We have not seen the worst of this campaign.

Have a good night. Until tomorrow,

Peace

Padre Steve+

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Filed under civil rights, civil war, crime, faith, History, holocaust, Immigration and immigrants, leadership, News and current events, Political Commentary, racism, terrorism, White nationalism

Tagged as adolf hitler, alexander hamilton, Birther Conspiracy, david duke, deplorables, donald trump, Donald trump followers, eric hoffer, Evangelical Christian extremists, federalist papers, gop, hillary clinton, james madison, john mccain, ku klux klan, militia movement, paul ryan, president obama, PTSD, randall terry, Richard Evans, rush limbaugh, tour in iraq, trump cult, united states constitution, weimar republic

October 27, 2020 · 01:57

The Trump Administration and COVID-19: The Ultimate Death Panel

Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

On Sunday President Trump’s Chief of Staff Mark Meadows made the comment that we could not defeat the Coronavirus 19 Pandemic. It was an open admission of defeat, the moral equivalent of surrender, to a virus that President knew was coming and knew would be worse than anything we have faced. He knew that it would be incredibly deadly, and knowing that ignored warnings from multiple American intelligence agencies, and withdrew the CDC’s investigators from China. He began a very porous shutdown of air travel from China to the United States, but took no other actions.

He talked about invoked invoking the Wartime Production Act to produce ventilators, and personal protective equipment He refused to do anything until the Stock Markets crashed at the end of March. Then he announced a shutdown of the country. Businesses were closed, as were schools for 30 days. The CDC announced a reasonable evidenced based plan for states to begin reopening, but as soon as the 30 days were up the President effectively ended the lockdown and pressured governors to re-open before they were ready, and far too many complied resulting in massive numbers of new infections and deaths.

In spite of that, many states enacted measures to mandate the wearing of masks, social distancing and hand washing, and some despite the President’s pressure as well as pressure from armed White Nationalist terrorist groups who assaulted their state houses, and threatened legislators, governors, public health, and law enforcement officials.

One relief bill passed by Congress and signed by the President in April. In May, realizing the crisis to the health and safety of Americans, and the economy, the House of Representatives passed another, but the Senate refused to pass it, and the President did nothing to twist the arms of his own defiant party members in the Senate to get anything done. Instead he bragged of his success during a second spike during the summer, and despite his Treasury Secretary’s negotiation with the House to pass another relief bill to help Americans, help the states, and bolster the economy. Instead he did nothing brag about his fake successes; massive unemployment, Nearly nine million infections, over 230,000 deaths, and even more economic disaster and weakening of our national security. With the infections spiking to record levels the President claimed that we were turning the corner, unfortunately that corner is a nation aside pandemic with no reserves to fight it.

Sarah Palin was the first nutcase liar and conspiracy theorist to say that The Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare had Death Panels which wold choose who would live or die. Of course that was a bold faced lie because there was nothing in the legislation to allow it, or was simply the spiteful rantings of a deranged theocratic Christian who believed so called prophecies that she would lead the nation.

But her ranting were believed by the increasingly Christian Nationalist ans White Supremacist GOP. When Mitt Romney, whose Heritage Foundation healthcare plan for Massachusetts was adopted by Obama to ensure that everyone paid something for their medical care, including those with President-existing medical conditions got care was attempting to defend it at a campaign rally he was shouted down by attendees who cried out “Let them die!”

That my friends was the death of the Center-Right Republican Party that only existed before 1964 when Barry Goldwater followed by Richard Nixon in 1968 who gave the most radical White Racist and Neo-Confederates of the Democratic Party, Senator Strom Thurmond’s “Dixiecrats” a home in the GOP after passing of the Voting Rights Act of 1964, and the Civil Rights Act of 1965 bi-partisan majorities led by a Southern Democrat President, Lyndon Baines Johnson in the House and Senate, became the party of White Supremacy, though few realized it at the time. But ever since Richard Nixon swept the South in 1968, with the powerful assistance of the Dixiecrats, have become increasingly radicalized over the issues of race and religion. Now the GOP is for all practical reasons the embodiment of all the Dixiecrats could have ever hoped for, as it is no longer the party of Abraham Lincoln but that of Jefferson Davis.

And now in a time of crisis it falls back on a theories expounded on by the Southern Slave Owners, the Confederate States, the Jim Crow South and Adolf Hitler’s Nazi Party, that some races are subhuman, and other individuals because of age, pre-existing medical conditions, birth defects, or physical and mental disabilities are “Life Unworthy of Life.”

Now with an uncontrolled virus raging infecting millions and killing hundreds of thousands of Americans, the President and the GOP Senate majority do nothing to help Americans infected with or who have lost their jobs, and now are losing their homes because of their indifference for life.

President Trump and his Senate majority have become the party of death, and the ultimate Death Panel, ignoring ignoring the advice of well respected and world renowned virologists, contagious disease specialists, and public health experts at home and abroad.

Because it is late I will end with that.

Until whenever,

Peace,

Padre Stube+1

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Filed under authoritarian government, civil rights, civil war, Coronavirus, Coronavirus 19 Pandemic, COVID19, crimes against humanity, Diseases Epidemics and Pandemics

Tagged as affordable health care act, barak obama, civil rights, confederacy, Coronavirus, COVID19, death panels, Dixiecrats, Donald Trump Covid infection, human rights, jefferson davis, let the die, Mark meadows, mitt romney, neo-Confederates, obamacare, president donald trump, President Richard Nixon, sarah palin, strom thrurmomd, trump administration surrender Tom COVID19

September 18, 2020 · 02:24

Trump’s Attack on History: The 1776 Project, Racism, Nationalism, and Fraudulent Patriotism to Conform History to his Twisted Ideology

Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

Today President Trump launched a major attack on the history of the United States by announcing what he called The 1776 Project, a direct attack on the 1619 Project which aims to tell the story of how the English Colonists introduced what became the institution of slavery and entrenched racism in the United States. I know the subject well, my book which will be published sometime in the next year “Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory!” Racism, Religion, Ideology and Politics in the Civil War Era and why they Continue to Matter” deals extensive with this history, and I can say based on his actions and utterances that the President is using this to further divide the country on racial lines and to open American history as his next front of his culture war.

Trump said he would create a national commission to promote a “pro-American curriculum that celebrates the truth about our nation’s great history,” which he said would encourage educators to teach students about the “miracle of American history.”

Here is the full text of his speech release by the White House:

“Our mission is to defend the legacy of America’s founding, the virtue of America’s heroes, and the nobility of the American character. We must clear away the twisted web of lies in our schools and classrooms, and teach our children the magnificent truth about our country. We want our sons and daughters to know that they are the citizens of the most exceptional nation in the history of the world. (Applause.)

To grow up in America is to live in a land where anything is possible, where anyone can rise, and where any dream can come true — all because of the immortal principles our nation’s founders inscribed nearly two and a half centuries ago.

That’s why we have come to the National Archives, the sacred home of our national memory. In this great chamber, we preserve our glorious inheritance: the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, the Bill of Rights.

On this very day in 1787, our Founding Fathers signed the Constitution at Independence Hall in Philadelphia. It was the fulfillment of a thousand years of Western civilization. Our Constitution was the product of centuries of tradition, wisdom, and experience. No political document has done more to advance the human condition or propel the engine of progress.

Yet, as we gather this afternoon, a radical movement is attempting to demolish this treasured and precious inheritance. We can’t let that happen. (Applause.) Left-wing mobs have torn down statues of our founders, desecrated our memorials, and carried out a campaign of violence and anarchy. Far-left demonstrators have chanted the words “America was never great.” The left has launched a vicious and violent assault on law enforcement — the universal symbol of the rule of law in America. These radicals have been aided and abetted by liberal politicians, establishment media, and even large corporations.

Whether it is the mob on the street, or the cancel culture in the boardroom, the goal is the same: to silence dissent, to scare you out of speaking the truth, and to bully Americans into abandoning their values, their heritage, and their very way of life.

We are here today to declare that we will never submit to tyranny. We will reclaim our history and our country for citizens of every race, color, religion, and creed.

The radicals burning American flags want to burn down the principles enshrined in our founding documents, including the bedrock principle of equal justice under law. In order to radically transform America, they must first cause Americans to lose confidence in who we are, where we came from, and what we believe. As I said at Mount Rushmore — which they would love to rip down and it rip it down fast, and that’s never going to happen — two months ago, the left-wing cultural revolution is designed to overthrow the American Revolution.

As many of you testified today, the left-wing rioting and mayhem are the direct result of decades of left-wing indoctrination in our schools. It’s gone on far too long. Our children are instructed from propaganda tracts, like those of Howard Zinn, that try to make students ashamed of their own history.

The left has warped, distorted, and defiled the American story with deceptions, falsehoods, and lies. There is no better example than the New York Times’ totally discredited 1619 Project. This project rewrites American history to teach our children that we were founded on the principle of oppression, not freedom.

Nothing could be further from the truth. America’s founding set in motion the unstoppable chain of events that abolished slavery, secured civil rights, defeated communism and fascism, and built the most fair, equal, and prosperous nation in human history. (Applause.)

The narratives about America being pushed by the far-left and being chanted in the streets bear a striking resemblance to the anti-American propaganda of our adversaries — because both groups want to see America weakened, derided, and totally diminished.

Students in our universities are inundated with critical race theory. This is a Marxist doctrine holding that America is a wicked and racist nation, that even young children are complicit in oppression, and that our entire society must be radically transformed. Critical race theory is being forced into our children’s schools, it’s being imposed into workplace trainings, and it’s being deployed to rip apart friends, neighbors, and families.

A perfect example of critical race theory was recently published by the Smithsonian Institution. This document alleged that concepts such as hard work, rational thinking, the nuclear family, and belief in God were not values that unite all Americans, but were instead aspects of “whiteness.” This is offensive and outrageous to Americans of every ethnicity, and it is especially harmful to children of minority backgrounds who should be uplifted, not disparaged.

Teaching this horrible doctrine to our children is a form of child abuse in the truest sense of those words. For many years now, the radicals have mistaken Americans’ silence for weakness. But they’re wrong.

There is no more powerful force than a parent’s love for their children. And patriotic moms and dads are going to demand that their children are no longer fed hateful lies about this country. American parents are not going to accept indoctrination in our schools, cancel culture at our work, or the repression of traditional faith, culture, and values in the public square. Not anymore. (Applause.) Thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much.

We embrace the vision of Martin Luther King, where children are not judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.

The left is attempting to destroy that beautiful vision and divide Americans by race in the service of political power. By viewing every issue through the lens of race, they want to impose a new segregation, and we must not allow that to happen.

Critical race theory, the 1619 Project, and the crusade against American history is toxic propaganda, ideological poison that, if not removed, will dissolve the civic bonds that tie us together. It will destroy our country.

That is why I recently banned trainings in this prejudiced ideology from the federal government and banned it in the strongest manner possible. (Applause.)

The only path to national unity is through our shared identity as Americans. That is why it is so urgent that we finally restore patriotic education to our schools.

Under our leadership, the National Endowment for the Humanities has awarded a grant to support the development of a pro-American curriculum that celebrates the truth about our nation’s great history. (Applause.)

We are joined by some of the respected scholars involved in this project, including Professor Wilfred McClay. Wilfred, please. Thank you very much. Welcome. (Applause.) Thank you. Dr. Peter Wood of the National Association of Scholars. Dr. Peter. (Applause.) Thank you. Thank you. And Ted Rebarber. Thank you, Ted. (Applause.) Thank you very much, Ted.

Today, I am also pleased to announce that I will soon sign an Executive Order establishing a national commission to promote patriotic education. It will be called the “1776 Commission.” (Applause.) Thank you. Thank you. It will encourage our educators to teach our children about the miracle of American history and make plans to honor the 250th anniversary of our founding. Think of that — 250 years.

Recently, I also signed an executive order to establish the National Garden of American Heroes, a vast outdoor park that will feature the statues of the greatest Americans who have ever lived.

Today, I am announcing a new name for inclusion.
One of the 56 signers of the Declaration of Independence was a patriot from Delaware. In July of 1776, the Continental Congress was deadlocked during the debate over independence. The delegation from Delaware was divided. Caesar Rodney was called upon to break the tie.

Even though he was suffering from very advanced cancer — he was deathly ill — Rodney rode 80 miles through the night, through a severe thunderstorm, from Dover to Philadelphia to cast his vote for independence.

For nearly a century, a statue of one of Delaware’s most beloved citizens stood in Rodney Square, right in the heart of Wilmington.

But this past June, Caesar Rodney’s statue was ordered removed by the mayor and local politicians as part of a radical purge of America’s founding generation.

Today, because of an order I signed, if you demolish a statue without permission, you immediately get 10 years in prison. (Applause.) And there have been no statues demolished for the last four months, incredibly, since the time I signed that act.

Joe Biden said nothing as to his home state’s history and the fact that it was dismantled and dismembered. And a Founding Father’s statue was removed.

Today, America will give this Founding Father, this very brave man, who was so horribly treated, the place of honor he deserves. I am announcing that a statue of Caesar Rodney will be added to the National Garden of American Heroes. (Applause.)

From Washington to Lincoln, from Jefferson to King, America has been home to some of the most incredible people who have ever lived. With the help of everyone here today, the legacy of 1776 will never be erased. Our heroes will never be forgotten. Our youth will be taught to love America with all of their heart and all of their soul.

We will save this cherished inheritance for our children, for their children, and for every generation to come. This is a very important day.

Thank you all once again for being here. Now I will sign the Constitution Day Proclamation. God Bless You. And God Bless America. Thank you very much. (Applause.) Thank you.“

What he actually is saying that anything that questions his White Racist beliefs about American history is unpatriotic, or Un-American. This goes back to two things: first his primary and secondary school education where American History was still taught from textbooks derived from the writings of the racist and revisionist ideologies who propagated the twin myths of the Noble South and the Lost Cause. But the second may be even more important. It was his mentor and legal counsel Roy Cohn, the chief counsel for Senator Joseph McCarthy who made his living as a Senator by attacking the patriotism of men like General George Marshall and many other American patriots as Un-American traitors or communists. There is only one degree of separation between Trump and McCarthy.

Edward R. Murrow spoke of McCarthy in his documentary See it Now, in words that could be equally descriptive of President Trump:

“No one familiar with the history of this country can deny that congressional committees are useful. It is necessary to investigate before legislating, but the line between investigating and persecuting is a very fine one, and the junior Senator from Wisconsin has stepped over it repeatedly. His primary achievement has been in confusing the public mind, as between the internal and the external threats of Communism. We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty. We must remember always that accusation is not proof and that conviction depends upon evidence and due process of law. We will not walk in fear, one of another. We will not be driven by fear into an age of unreason, if we dig deep in our history and our doctrine, and remember that we are not descended from fearful men—not from men who feared to write, to speak, to associate and to defend causes that were, for the moment, unpopular.

This is no time for men who oppose Senator McCarthy’s methods to keep silent, or for those who approve. We can deny our heritage and our history, but we cannot escape responsibility for the result. There is no way for a citizen of a republic to abdicate his responsibilities. As a nation we have come into our full inheritance at a tender age. We proclaim ourselves, as indeed we are, the defenders of freedom, wherever it continues to exist in the world, but we cannot defend freedom abroad by deserting it at home.

The actions of the junior Senator from Wisconsin have caused alarm and dismay amongst our allies abroad, and given considerable comfort to our enemies. And whose fault is that? Not really his. He didn’t create this situation of fear; he merely exploited it—and rather successfully. Cassius was right: “The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves.”

Trump’s history it is the continuation of racist and nationalist propaganda. Yale historian Timothy Snyder wrote:

The President fits the descriptions of both Murrow and Snyder. Today’s signing of the Executive Order was yet another Orwellian move to whitewash American history of its 400 years of systemic racism, systemic oppression and enslavement of Blacks; the centuries long genocidal extermination of the people of our First Nations, more often referred to as Native Americans. But let us not stop there, let’s move on to the anti-Catholic immigrant campaign directed against Irish and German Catholics known as the Know Nothings, whose members attacked and killed Irish and Germans, burned their churches, businesses, and attacked them in the streets. On the West Coast there were the crimes committed against Chinese immigrants who though not slaves in a legal sense were treated in a similar manner to like slaves in building stone walls for landowners, and in the construction of the transcontinental railroad, and other railroads throughout the west. But let us not forget the racial and religious discrimination against southern and Eastern European immigrants in the late 1800s and early 1900s, who included Italians, Greeks, Poles, Hungarians, Romanians, Russians, Croats, Serbs, Bosnian’s, Turks, Armenians, Lebanese and too many others to name. And we cannot forget the Japanese American citizens placed in concentration camps after being forced to sell their homes and businesses for pennies on the dollar after the Pearl Harbor attack. Don’t let me forget to mention the conquest of Mexico which forced that country to surrender 40% or its territory to the United States, including what is now California, Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico, Utah, and much of Texas.

At its dark and evil heart what Trump is doing is “whitewashing” history, writing out our long history of slavery and racism. It is designed to buttress his own ignorance of American history. Trump went to school at a time time American history was written by the most successful revisionist historians of American history, those who promoted the twin myths of the Noble South and the Lost Cause.

Trump’s “Patriotism” is nothing more than that promoted by the Confederates after they lost the war but succeeded in using violence, legislation, and the courts to return freed blacks to at best second class citizenship, at worst slavery by another name.

This is not honest patriotism, especially when he intentionally quotes Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., to whitewash his racism. It is the fraudulent patriotism of a draft dodger who despises military, legal, Judicial and diplomatic personnel, calls those wounded, killed, or prisoners of war losers, who despises the ideals, the Constitution, our laws, and the truth.

Trump can only support history if it supports his views which are authoritarian, nationalist, and racist.

When Samuel Johnson said that “Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel” he was referring to men like Trump, not people who have an honest love of their country despite its flaws, and use that love to “build a more perfect Union,” and not promote division and hatred as Trump does every day.

I say damn his nationalism, damn his fraudulent patriotism, damn his racism, and damn any Executive Order that he promulgates on re-writing history to fit his warped world view, and damn anyone who mindlessly follows him into the dark and sulphuric abyss of his soul.

I can abide a lot that political leaders do, but to knowing lie about our history for his racist political gain I cannot ignore. Unlike West Germany which acknowledged its war guilt And even after reunification has continued to pursue, charge and try Nazi War Criminals, the United States only executed one Confederate War Criminal, the Commander of the Andersonville Prisoner of War Camp, a lowly Major, while allowing Confederates up to Vice President Alexander Stephens, to go unpunished and to be allowed to hold state and Federal offices which they abandoned to join the rebellion.

While I wish no harm to come to the President in this life, but I do pray that if God is just that Trump will be held accountable for all of his crimes, in and out of office. These include his infidelity to at least two wives, his other sexual assaults, affairs and infidelities; his numerous corporate bankruptcies that destroyed the lives of many of his employees and contractors; his multiple violations of the Hatch Act that prohibits any person holding Federal Office for using it for personal, financial, or political gain. The President is a yet to be convicted criminal, a serial liar, a serial adulterer, and an open, flagrant and unrepentant racist. I am sorry, if anyone claiming to be a Christian can support that, they have no right to call themself a follower of Christ.

As for me, I do not fear him. As the young Anti-Nazi German resistance leader Sophie Scholl said:

“The real damage is done by those millions who want to ‘survive.’ The honest men who just want to be left in peace. Those who don’t want their little lives disturbed by anything bigger than themselves. Those with no sides and no causes. Those who won’t take measure of their own strength, for fear of antagonizing their own weakness. Those who don’t like to make waves—or enemies. Those for whom freedom, honour, truth, and principles are only literature. Those who live small, mate small, die small. It’s the reductionist approach to life: if you keep it small, you’ll keep it under control. If you don’t make any noise, the bogeyman won’t find you. But it’s all an illusion, because they die too, those people who roll up their spirits into tiny little balls so as to be safe. Safe?! From what? Life is always on the edge of death; narrow streets lead to the same place as wide avenues, and a little candle burns itself out just like a flaming torch does. I choose my own way to burn.”

I won’t be among he millions who want to survive. I will resist, and I will embody what the German General Ludwig Beck said:

“It is a lack of character and insight, when a soldier in high command sees his duty and mission only in the context of his military orders without realizing that the highest responsibility is to the people of his country.”

And this:

“Final decisions about the nation’s existence are at stake here; history will incriminate these leaders with bloodguilt if they do not act in accordance with their specialist political knowledge and conscience. Their soldierly obedience reaches its limit when their knowledge, their conscience, and their responsibility forbid carrying out an order.”

This is were we are right now, but I am done for tonight but honestly I cannot imagine how anyone who considers themself a person of faith, especially a Christian can defend Trump’s actions and words as President. Now he and his cabinet, especially his attorney General are looking to using the police power of the government against any and all political opponents for the alleged crime of sedition.

As the German resister to Hitler, Henning Von Tresckow said: “I cannot understand how people can still call themselves Christians and not be furious adversaries of Hitler’s regime.”

As a Christian, a historian, and Priest I am a furious adversary of the President who tramples all that I hold dear.

I say the same about Christians who support Trump, Cover up his perversion of the Christian faith and repeat the conspiracy theories of QAnon, which from an orthodox Christian perspective is nothing more than a Gnostic apocalyptic cult.

As for me, I will tell the truth. Despite threats of death and violence, that I receive on a regular basis, I will speak out. For me this is a matter of my oath to the Constitution, my vows as a Priest, and my commitment as a historian committed to telling the truth. So help me I will tell the truth. I can do no other if I am to remain faithful to the Constitution, my Oath, and my vows as a Priest.

Until tomorrow,

Peace,

Padre Steve+

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Tagged as 1619 project, 1776 project, adolf hitler, American racism, Colonel Henning Von Trescow, donald Trump cult, Donald trump racism, evangelical christian subculture, faux patriotism, fraudulent patriotism, general ludwig beck, Hatch act, mine eyes have seen the glory, nazi trials, nazis, neo-nazis, president donald trump, QANAON, racism deniers, Samuel Johnson, sophie scholl, war crimes, west germany, White nationalism

September 1, 2020 · 02:45

It is Happening Again, Not in Nazi Germany: The Campaign Against “Life Unworthy of Life”

Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

I am reflecting about the present in light of the past, and how policy wise, the Social Darwinist policies of the Trump Administration, and the words of his cult propagandists about the value of human life during the Coronavirus 19 Pandemic since it first began. Throughout the pandemic President Trump and his ruthless enablers have done all tat they can to ensure that the pandemic has killed and infected more people in the United States than any nation in the world, and for a nation that represents barely 4% of the world population with one of the most advanced medical systems in the world that is saying a lot. The only answer for such a disaster is that Trump and his Cult want this to happen. Why else would he first deny the infection, then minimize it, then issue a series of contradictory guidance, leave the states to determine their own way through, and then sign a one time bill that provided some relief, but has not been followed up on. The answer to Republicans is that the people helped by it really are not worthy, while the hundreds of billions sucked up by Wall Street and major corporations is worth it. The program is so much like the Nazi economic plan that it defies the imagination.

Then there is the President’s continued resistance to testing, tracing, passive preventive measures such as cloth face masks, social distancing, and closing down the places where the infection spreads most effectively, bars, churches, discos, and sadly Schools too. He has sacked or marginalized many of the best immunologists, virologists, and public health officials in the country and has in the past few weeks appointed political hacks to key positions in his Coronavirus Task Force, who now argue for the Discredited and inhuman concept of Herd Immunity, which if it was employed in the United States would result in at least TWO MILLION MORE DEATHS, and countless more infections. That any President or Administration would even consider such measures places them in the realm of a criminal regime bent on the mass murder or American citizens without even having to fire a bullet or resort to poison gas. All they have to do is let the virus run rampant, which seems to be their plan. As of yesterday the United States reported 187,736 deaths, and 6,211, 796 total cases, 24% of the world’s infections and 22% of the world’s deaths. The American totals are no doubt serious undercounts due to the Trump Administration’s orders to minimize testing and reporting of Coronavirus 19 infections and deaths to minimize the political fallout of the catastrophe that Trump and his Cult Followers not only seek to minimize but pretend that it didn’t happen at all. Instead of reporting the truth the report the false narrative that Trump has saved the country, and the Coronavirus Pandemic was defeated by him even as it rages.

But regardless, the actions of Trump and his followers direct me to the Eugenics movement of the 1920s and 1930s in the United States, Weimar Germany, and other European nations, as well as Japan. But the eugenics movement was nowhere more malevolent, evident and active than it was in Hitler’s Germany. Likewise it is hard to believe that members of the administration as well as its supporters seem to believe, if you take them at their word that the elderly, disabled, mentally ill, and poor, especially those who are not white or Christian are a burden on the State, and are as the Eugenicists of the 1920s and 1930s, as well as Hitler’s Nazi Party believed, were ”Life unworthy of life .”

It seems hard to believe for anyone born after the mid 1960s, that government through its laws, decrees, and policies could deem certain people to be “life unworthy of life.” The most malevolent of such governments was the Nazi regime of Adolf Hitler, but individuals and institutions in the United States promoted the same ideology in the 1920s and 1930s but, in spite of actions like the the Tuskegee Experiments, could not carry it to its logical conclusion because most Americans of the time couldn’t go along with it. But the moral, social, religious and ideological barriers to its implementation then no longer exist today.

In Nazi Germany life that was unworthy of life included the physically and mentally handicapped or disabled, those with Downs Syndrome, Cerebral Palsy, Polio, and people with other neurological conditions. Likewise the mentally ill, those suffering clinical depression, schizophrenia, and other mental illnesses were considered to be life unworthy of life. Even the deaf were included, as well as veterans suffering from what we would now call PTSD or Traumatic Brain Injury. Also included were people labeled as “asocial” a very loose definition that could include almost any metal disorder or criminal act, including being a homosexual. Sadly, the President himself has made statements that show that he has no regard for the lives of such people, his policies, especially his executive orders, and the men and women he nominates to the Federal Judiciary have similar views to him.

I have been to Hadamar, I have walked it’s grounds, toured its wards, and stood in its gas chambers and crematoria. Tens of thousands people deemed “Life unworthy of Life” were liquidated at the T-4 Euthanasia centers, most located in former hospitals, psychiatric institutions, or sanitariums.

Once the Nazis decided to eliminate them the same day as they invaded Poland in 1939, most of these people gassed with carbon monoxide gas from the exhaust of trucks or Diesel engines, and their remains were cremated. Others, especially children were either starved to death or given a lethal injection while they slept. In every case the next of kin of each victim was sent a standard form letter telling them that their relative had died of influenza, typhus, or some other disease while being given the best of care. The next of kin were then given the option of paying for an urn that may or may not have contained the ashes of their loved ones for inurnment near their home town. If they could not afford an urn the ashes were disposed of in the cemetery nearest to where they were killed. At Hadamar, it was on the grounds of the institution.

But the Euthanasia program, despite Nazi lies to senior clerics and officials of neutral countries didn’t stop, it simply moved eastward as the SS Einsatzgruppen killed the patients at every mental hospital, sanitarium, old folks home, or orphanage they came across. Inside Germany at the four T4 centers over 80,000 were gassed. At Hartheim in Austria a Party was held on the gassing of the 10,000th victim. Richard Evans wrote:

“At Hartheim the staff held a party to celebrate their ten-thousandth cremation, assembling in the crematorium around the naked body of a recently gassed victim, which was laid out on a stretcher and covered with flowers. One staff member dressed as a clergyman and performed a short ceremony, then beer was distributed to all present. Eventually no fewer than 20,000 were gassed at Hartheim, the same at Sonnenstein, 20,000 at Brandenburg and Bernburg, and another 20,000 at Grafeneck and Hadamar, making a total of 80,000 altogether.”

The tolls in Poland, the Baltic States, and the Soviet Union were much higher, but were conducted outside the auspices of the T4 program which “officially” ended in 1941, but continued in a more clandestine manner throughout the war.

Now in Trump’s United States of 2020 the laws guaranteeing health care to people are being challenged, the Secretary of Education has removed funding from the Department’s funding request for the Special Olympics, programs for the physically and mentally disabled under the SSI are being cut to the bone, and even care for disabled veterans is being threatened as not being economical because none of them are economically valuable to an administration for which profit is the bottom line of the insurance industry. Likewise, most supposedly pro-life Christians have no problems in cutting such programs because many have bought into the materialistic, Prosperity Gospel, whose fawning preachers have anointed President Trump if he were King Cyrus.

To Trump’s Cult of Evangelicals no criticism of the President can be tolerated, no matter how factual it may be, even if it involves the lives of the least, and most most vulnerable members of our society. Thus, for these supposedly “pro-life Christians” the sick, the weak, the infirm, or mentally ill, who are not productive have no place in society. Inside the womb they are a remarkably powerful political issue; but once outside the womb they might as well be dead if you listen to Trump’s clique of Reichsbishofs, according to who cannot produce for the economy should not eat, get medical care, or live. They are life unworthy of life. This is even worse than the Nazis, for there is not even the Darwinistic idea of producing superior human beings, but rather to kill and let die for profit. The Nazis did that too, with the life of every human being that the considered sub-human, but the overriding the goal of the Nazi true believers, the idea of a perfect Aryan Germanic Master Race was always the ideal to be pursued.

Thus the propaganda directed at German citizens as to how much these men women and children cost the German taxpayer in order to get them to acquiesce to something they would never consider. Now today’s Republican leaders use the same arguments to justify cutting taxes and let the social contract we have with our fellow human beings collapse, because the to poor, the sick, the infirm, the disabled, prisoners, the mentally ill and the elderly simply cost more than they are worth, that also applies to infants and young children suffering any expensive chronic but treatable conditions.

You see, in the authoritarian world in which we live; a world where an uninhibited and unhinged executive backed by cult followers, profit minded billionaires, and greedy preachers, such lives; the old and infirm, the disabled, the mentally ill, the young but physically disabled, those with neurological issues, and birth defects stand in the way of profit, stand in the way of a “perfect” society. They have no value to them because they cost too much, and burden real Americans.

If you directly challenged such people may not advocate euthanasia per say, they would not advocate for gas chambers, or firing squads. Instead they would turn a blind eye to depriving their victims of citizenship, starving them, depriving them of medical care, and turning them out of care facilities knowing that their families lack the capability of caring for them. and if they have any capacity for work, work them until they die, so long as they Confess Christ before they die.

How do we know that life does not matter to them? One way is to note the many times that pharmaceutical corporations have increased the costs of previously inexpensive yet vital life saving medicines by thousands of dollars a dose all for profit with little to no pushback from the White House, or the FDA, much less the Senate GOP majority, or the Evangelical supporters of Trump.

Please understand, this dystopian future need not happen if people of any faith, or no faith at all make a stand against a twisted idea of dictatorship backed up by billionaires and corporate entities that suck billions of dollars from the taxpayer and pay almost nothing themselves. Of course they couldn’t do it on their own in not supported by a de facto State Media, and a cult like legion of followers who would follow Trump even if he shot someone on 5th Avenue. His words, not mine.

I am now 60 years old, and I have served in the military over 39 years, and this does bother me enough to speak out. As a senior military officer facing the end of my career and retirement amid multiple physical and emotional issues, it does matter. I keep two things in mind today. First is that of my own responsibility to my Oath, and to fellow citizens. In that I am reminded of the words of German General Ludwig Beck who wrote:

And like Beck’s compatriot, Major General Henning Von Tresckow stated: “We have to show the world that not all of us are like him. Otherwise, this will always be Hitler’s Germany.” Or in my case, Trump’s America.

Historian Timothy Snyder reminds of a certain truth, which should we forget, as I imagine a large number of Trump supporters have:

“The European history of the twentieth century shows us that societies can break, democracies can fall, ethics can collapse, and ordinary men can find themselves standing over death pits with guns in their hands. It would serve us well today to understand why.”

Those are all hard truths to comprehend. As Americans we always presume that we are the good guys, when in fact many times we have acted in means contrary to the ideals of the Declaration as well as the Constitution, and other laws enacted by Congress. But our republic has survived, but its institutions are both resilient and fragile. History has proven this, we have even survived a civil war, but we may not survive an increasingly vindictive and unstable President, his compliant majority in the Senate, and the 35-40% of voters who are in effect no longer Republicans, but a Trump Cult which is largely buttressed by Conservative Evangelical Churches, and inspired by a President who uses force, legal, and extralegal alike to secure his rule. That my friends is what a Fascist Authoritarian does.

We live in extraordinary times which call for extraordinary strength if our Republic is to continue in any form that resembles the intentions of the founders and their liberal enlightenment beliefs. The German Pastor, Theologian, and Martyr to the Hitler regime wrote:

“The fearful danger of the present time is that above the cry for authority, be it of a Leader or of an office, we forget that man stands alone before the ultimate authority and that anyone who lays violent hands on man here is infringing eternal laws and taking upon himself superhuman authority which will eventually crush him. The eternal law that the individual stands alone before God takes fearful vengeance where it is attacked and distorted. Thus the Leader points to the office, but Leader and office together point to the final authority itself, before which Reich or state are penultimate authorities. Leaders or offices which set themselves up as gods mock God and the individual who stands alone before him, and must perish.”

If we do not want to see the return of a full fledged government and industrial sponsored campaign to eradicate life unworthy of life, we have to fight. It is a fight that we did not chose, but if the Republic is to survive without becoming a criminal dictatorship we must speak up, and we must do so now. If we do not we have no one to blame but ourselves.

As Yehuda Bauer said: “Thou shall not be a perpetrator, thou shall not be a victim, and thou shall never, but never, be a bystander.”

The choice is ours, and the time is now. As Bonhoeffer noted: “The church has an unconditional obligation to the victims of any ordering society, even if they do not belong to the Christian community.” and also“We are not to simply bandage the wounds of victims beneath the wheels of injustice, we are to drive a spoke into the wheel itself.”

Likewise he wrote: We in the resistance have learned to see the great events of world history from below, from the perspective of the excluded, the ill treated, the powerless, the oppressed and despised… so that personal suffering has become a more useful key for understanding the world than personal happiness.”

If I as a Christian and an American officer sworn to uphold our Constitution cannot do that, I am worse than Trump and his cult. Over the past few years I have come to understand what Bonhoeffer wrote in prison:

“During the last year or so I’ve come to know and understand more and more the profound this-worldliness of Christianity. The Christian is not ahomo religiosus, but simply a man, as Jesus was a man…I’m still discovering right up to this moment, that it is only by living completely in this world that one learns to have faith. One must completely abandon any attempt to make something of oneself, whether it be a saint, or a converted sinner, or a churchman (a so-called priestly type!) a righteous man or an unrighteous one, a sick man or a healthy one. By this-worldliness I mean living unreservedly in life’s duties, problems, successes and failures, experiences and perplexities. In so doing we throw ourselves completely into the arms of God, taking seriously, not our own sufferings, but those of God in the world—watching with Christ in Gethsemane. That, I think, is faith; that is metanoia; and that is how one becomes a man and a Christian.”

“I discovered later, and I’m still discovering right up to this moment, that is it only by living completely in this world that one learns to have faith. By this-worldliness I mean living unreservedly in life’s duties, problems, successes and failures. In so doing we throw ourselves completely into the arms of God, taking seriously, not our own sufferings, but those of God in the world. That, I think, is faith.”

In the midst of all the lies of Trump and his cult. In the midst of their attempt to kill as many people as possible, and to bring about a dictatorship I can only say as did Marin Luther at the Diet of Worms:

“Since your most serene majesty and your high mightinesses require of me a simple, clear and direct answer, I will give one, and it is this: I cannot submit my faith either to the pope or to the council, because it is as clear as noonday that they have fallen into error and even into glaring inconsistency with themselves. If, then, I am not convinced by proof from Holy Scripture, or by cogent reasons, if I am not satisfied by the very text I have cited, and if my judgment is not in this way brought into subjection to God’s word, I neither can nor will retract anything; for it cannot be either safe or honest for a Christian to speak against his conscience. Here I stand; I cannot do otherwise; God help me! Amen.”

I double dog dare any Trump Cultist who calls themselves a Christian to refute that.

I am tired of the so called Evangelical Christians who damn Christ and his Gospel for their political gain and shit upon their evangelical forefathers like the great Virginia Baptist John Leland who in defense of religious liberty for all wrote:

“The notion of a Christian commonwealth should be exploded forever. … Government should protect every man in thinking and speaking freely, and see that one does not abuse another. The liberty I contend for is more than toleration. The very idea of toleration is despicable; it supposes that some have a pre-eminence above the rest to grant indulgence, whereas all should be equally free, Jews, Turks, Pagans and Christians.”

I will fight for the truth, I will fight for the rights of every American. But I will not ever concede ground to a murderous group of thugs masquerading as Christians whose only goal is the continuation in power of a man who will give them anything in exchange for his unbridled power and authoritarian rule.

So until tomorrow,

Peace,

Padre Steve+

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Tagged as Coronavirus 19, corporate profits, dietrich bonhoeffer, donald trump supporters, einsatzgruppen, eugenics, euthanasia, evangelical christians, Hadamar, Hartheim, henning von tresckow, Herd immunity, Holocaust, life unworthy of life, ludwig beck, master race, mentally ill, neo-nazis, physically disabled people, president donald trump, republican party, T4 Euthanasia Centers, timothy snyder, tuskegee experiments, weimar germany, White nationalism, yehuda bauer

August 22, 2020 · 21:57

Harriett Tubman: Warrior, Leader, and Other Women Heroes of the Civil War

Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

Over the past few days I have been going back to the theme of Women’s rights following Centennial of the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment. This is important because though the Amendment guaranteed the right of suffrage to women, but the reality remained that Black women were still denied the right to vote in the former Confederate South and many other states.

So today I am posting a section of the portion of my manuscript “A Great Civil War in an Age of Revolutionary Change” dealing with a most amazing woman, Harriet Tubman. The more I read about her the more I stand I awe. This section was originally a lot less detailed that in is now, and as I go into eliding and revising it for publication since “Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory!” Racism, Religion, Ideology and Politics in the Civil War and Afterward, and their Importance Today,” I will spend a lot of time working on this section as I edit and revise the manuscript. That being said I think that you will find it interesting, and still relevant in our society.

Harriet Tubman’s image was to be featured on the $20 bill beginning this year, replacing that of Andrew Jackson, but the Trump administration has put this off until at least 2028. I hope that if Trump loses the election to Joe Biden that this will be changed quickly. Regardless, Tubman’s story should not be forgotten. She was a courageous woman whose character, courage, and commitment could match any person alive today. Maybe after I retire I can write an in depth biography of this remarkable woman and American Patriot.

So until tomorrow, I with you peace, health, safety, and the courage to be like

Peace

Padre Steve+

The innate prejudices of many military and political leaders about the abilities and limitations of women in military service, often caused them to overlook how women could use that prejudice to their advantage, especially as spies. “African American women were generally dismissed as militarily harmless, a miscalculation that Harriet Tubman…used to immense advantage. Tubman, who had escaped from slavery in Maryland twenty years before the war and who had amassed considerable experience venturing into the south to guide runaways to the North undertook spying expeditions for the Federal troops on the South Carolina Sea Islands.” [1] The incredibly brave woman served throughout the war accompanying Union forces and securing vital information even as she worked to set other slaves free. Tubman’s “spying activities included convincing slaves to trust the Union invaders,” [2] many of whom would join the ranks of the newly raised regiments of U.S. Colored Troops.

Tubman had been fighting her personal civil war for over twenty years before the war began. As an escaped slave she returned to the South time and time again as a “conductor” on the Underground Railroad, smuggling escaped slaves out of the South and to freedom. She “successfully returned nineteen more times, bringing out an estimated 300 to 400 people…. She worked with a determination bordering on ruthlessness: if an escaped slave tarried, she pushed him in; if a baby cried she muffled the sound.as she herself said later…. “I was the conductor on the Underground Railroad for eight years, and I can say what most conductors can’t say – I never ran my train off the track and I never lost one passenger.” [3]

In early 1863, Union commanders in South Carolina decided that Tubman would be valuable as a covert operative to lead reconnaissance missions behind Confederate lines and along contested waterways where Confederate personnel had laid torpedoes, what we now know as sea mines, and she organized a small unit of nine men who used small boats to find the torpedoes and warn the captains of Union vessels operating in those streams and rivers.

Eventually, Tubman’s actives “evolved into a kind of special forces operation under Colonel James Montgomery. A fervent believer in guerrilla warfare, Montgomery was a veteran of antislavery border fighting in Kansas.” The pair developed some of the most effective operations mounted by irregular and regular forces conducted by the Union in the war. In July 1863, Tubman came up with a plan for a raid, and in it acted as “Montgomery’s second-in-command during a night raid up the Combahee River, near Beaufort, South Carolina. The Union gunboats, carrying some 300 black troops, slipped up the river, eluding torpedoes that Tubman’s men had spotted. Undetected, the raiders swarmed ashore, destroyed a Confederate supply depot, torched homes and warehouses, and rounded up more than 750 rice plantation slaves.” [4]

The Confederate report on the raid unwittingly ended up praising the work of Tubman and the freed slaves of her unit. It noted that the enemy “seems to have been well posted as to the character and capacity of our troops… and seems to have been well guided with persons thoroughly acquainted with the river and country.” Union Brigadier General Rufus Saxton wrote to Secretary of War Stanton praised Tubman’s work, noting, “This is the only military command in American history wherein a woman, black or white, led to raid, and under whose inspiration, it was originated and conducted.” [5]

Tubman continued her work for the duration of the war and after it continued to assist freed slaves and black veterans and continued her work with campaign for women’s suffrage. In 1890 she was awarded a pension for her work as a spy, nurse, and combat leader. The valiant pioneer of abolition, women’s suffrage, and combat in war who was nicknamed “the General” by Frederick Douglass, died in 1913, and was buried with full military honors.

Other women served in various roles caring for the wounded. In the North, “Dorothea Dix organized the Union’s army nurses for four years without pay; Mary Livermore headed the Union’s Sanitary Commission, inspecting army camps and hospitals….Scores of others like Clara Barton, volunteered to be nurses.” [6]All of these women did remarkable service, mostly as volunteers, and many witnessed the carnage of battle close up as the cared for the wounded and the dying which often created ethic concerns for the women nurses:

“Clara Barton described her crisis of conscience when a young man on the verge of death mistook her for his sister May. Unable to bring herself actually to address him as “brother,” she nonetheless kissed his forehead so that, as she explained, “the act had done the falsehood the lips refused to speak.” [7]

The very existence of so many women who served in the ranks during the Civil War, and their “demonstrated competence as combatants, challenge long-held assumptions about gender roles…. From a historical perspective, the women warriors of the Civil War were not just ahead of their time. They were ahead of our time.” [8]

Of the women that served in the ranks during the war, some were discovered, and many of them remained protected by their fellow soldiers. Quite a few of these closeted women soldiers received promotions and even served as NCOs or junior officers. With women now serving in combat or combat support roles in the U.S. Military since Operation Desert Storm in 1991, the stigma and scandal that these cross-dressing women soldiers of the Civil War has faded and as scholars and the public both “continue probing cultural notions of gender and identity, the reemerging evidence that women historically and successfully engaged in combat has met with less intellectual resistance and has taken on new cultural significance.” [9] As the United States military services examine the issues surrounding further moves to integrate the combat arms we also should attempt to more closely examine the service of the brave and often forgotten women who served on both sides of the Civil War.

In addition to these tasked many other women were engaged in the war as “supply organizers, relief workers, pamphleteers all aided the cause, and female journalists covered it. Dorothea Dix and Clara Barton became powerful forces helping soldiers; Anna Carroll provided the propaganda. And the Civil War boasted its own version of Rosie the Riveter, women who did the dangerous work of making munitions at arsenals, many losing their lives in awful accidents.” [10]

Likewise, the war caused many educated women to take much more interest in “political and military issues and led many women to articulate a sharper consciousness of national affairs…. The feminist paper The Mayflower commented that “nearly every letter we receive breathes a spirit of deep feeling on the war question.” The editorial added that among women, “There seems to be little disposition to think, speak, read or write of anything else.” [11] In particular one women, Anna Ella Carroll, the daughter of Thomas King Carroll, a former governor of Maryland, “was interested in political theory and practice and was a profound logical thinker as well as an effective propagandist for the Union.” [12] During the war she was in part responsible for persuading the governor of Maryland to keep the pro-secession legislature from meeting in 1861, defended Lincoln’s suspension of habeas corpus in that state, and is believed to have originated the military strategy in the Tennessee River Campaign, for which she was never given full credit even though there is documentary evidence that many leaders knew of her involvement. A recent biographer concluded that she “was a “tragic victim of reconstruction,” for if a military strategist, she was not given due credit.” [13] In the South it was often the same, the diaries of many educated Southern women show a tremendous interest and discernment of what was happening during the war, and in domestic politics, and frequently expressed their criticism of government and military strategy as the war continued.

Notes

[1] Ibid. Guelzo Fateful Lightning p.394

[2] Sizer, Lyde Cullen Acting Her Part: Narratives of Union Women Spies in Divided Houses: Gender and the Civil War Oxford University Press, New York and Oxford 1992 p.130

[3] Ibid. Sizer Acting Her Part: Narratives of Union Women Spies p. 127

[4] Ibid. Central Intelligence Agency, Intelligence in the Civil War location 481 of 991

[5] Ibid. Central Intelligence Agency, Intelligence in the Civil War location 481-482 of 9911

[6] Ibid. Silvey I’ll Pass for Your Comrade p.10

[7] Faust, Drew Gilpin, This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War Vintage Books, a division of Random House, New York 2008 p.12

[8] Ibid. Blanton and Cook They Fought Like Demons p.208

[9] Ibid. Blanton and Cook They Fought Like Demons p.204

[10] Ibid. Roberts Capital Dames: The Civil War and the Women of Washington 1848-1868 p.3

[11] Attie, Jeanie Warwork and the Crisis of Domesticity in the North in Divided Houses: Gender and the Civil War edited by Catherine Clinton and Nina Silber, Oxford University Press, Oxford and New York 1992 p.253

[12] Ibid. Massey Women in the Civil War p. 168

[13] Ibid. Massey Women in the Civil War p.169

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Filed under civil rights, civil war, History, leadership, Military, News and current events, racism, women's rights

Tagged as $20 bill redesign, abolition movement, american civil war, American racism, american slavery, beaufort sc, combahee raid, dorothea dix, frederick douglass, harriet tubman, james montgomery.underground railroad, Mary Livermore, president donald trump, Steve, underground railroad, women’s rights

August 19, 2020 · 21:25

Towards Suffrage and Beyond: The Women Soldiers, Spies, and Nurses of the Civil War

Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

Since we just celebrated the centennial anniversary of the ratification of the 19th Amendment, today, and for the next few days I am going back to a portion of my draft book “A Great Civil War in an Age of Revolutionary Change” dealing with women’s rights. This one continues yesterday’s article, and deals with some of the facts about women who masqueraded as men in order to serve as soldiers.

Since my first book “Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory!” Racism, Religion, Ideology and Politics in the Civil War Era and and Afterwards and Why They Matter Today,” I will be working on revisions to this book and that may bring additional information to the material in these four articles. That being said I think that you will find this interesting, and still relevant in our society.

I have two more articles in this series. I hope you read them too.

Until tomorrow,

Peace

Padre Steve+

When war broke out the logical end of what the leaders of the early Women’s Rights movement was should women be allowed to serve in the military. This was not legal or socially acceptable for women to serve in the military in 1861, but this did not stop some women from doing so. In the culture of that time “women were not expected to defend their country, and when they did nevertheless and were found out, they learned that they were not necessarily a welcome addition to the military. Women who returned home after the Civil War as veterans reaped few of the societal rewards for having rendered such service.” [1]

Despite women being allowed to serve as auxiliary members of the American military beginning in the First War and the Second World War, most were banned from service in the combat or line branches until the 1980s up to the first women qualifying to serve in Marine and Army infantry units, commanding combat ships and aircraft squadrons, and completing the Army Ranger School and competing for the various service special forces branches. But even today women in the military suffer frequent discrimination, and are often the victims o of verbal, physical and sexual assault, and also the targets of brutal comments by older male veterans who cannot accept women being able to compete with men in the trade of war.

During the American Civil War quite a few women on both sides of the conflict chaffed about not being allowed to fight for their countries, their families and their causes. Despite official prohibitions that kept women from serving in any capacity but nursing, a good number of women found their way to go to war. While men in the North and South “were expected to enlist, any woman actively participating in the Civil War was an oddity if not a renegade.” [2] In some cases this involved hundreds of women taking male identities in order to fulfill their desires to serve their countries.

The motives of these women varied. In some cases women wanted gain the economic privileges of full citizenship, and for others the hard earned glory reserved to only to men which would gain them the respect of men and society. In our modern parlance those that took male identities would be considered transvestites or possibly transgender, but for them “transvestitism was a private rebellion against public conventions. By taking a male social identity, they secured for themselves male power and independence, as well as full status as citizens of their nation. In essence the Civil War was an opportunity for hundreds of women to escape the confines of their sex.” [3]

During the war hundreds of women went to war, dreaming of being a second Joan of Arc, taking on the identity of men, however, their idealistic vision of wanting to serve the cause of their country, was not viewed favorably by many, men and women alike, as “they were usually viewed by contemporaries as mentally unbalanced or immoral.” [4] Their morality was questioned, their motivation questioned, and above all their character and integrity were questioned, all because they broke long held social, and religious barriers in order to fight for what they believed.

These brave and socially progressive women enlisted under male names and pretended to be men. Unless they were discovered to be women, or unless they confessed to their wartime service either during or after the war, most of their records were lost. In 1861 Private Franklin Thompson “enlisted in Company F of the 2^ndMichigan Infantry…unknown to comrades, Thompson actually was Sarah Emma Edmonds.” [5] Edmonds served in the illustrious Iron Brigade until the disaster at Fredericksburg. Well known for her courage as Franklin Thompson, Edmonds participated in some of the bloodiest combats of the war. At the Battle of Antietam she was caring for the wounded when she came upon a soldier who had been wounded in the neck. That soldier informed Edmonds that she was dying and after a surgeon came by and confirmed what the soldier said, the dying soldier told Edmonds:

“I am not what I seem, but I am female. I enlisted from the purest motives, and I have remained undiscovered and unsuspected. I have neither father, mother nor sister. My only brother was killed today. I closed his eyes about an hour before I was wounded….I am Christian, and have maintained the Christian character ever since I entered the army. I have performed the duties of a soldier faithfully, and am willing to die for the cause of truth and freedom….I wish you to bury me with your own hands, that none may know after my death that I am other than my appearance indicates.” [6]

That unknown woman was not alone, at least nine women, eight Union and one Confederate, fought at Antietam and of those five were casualties. Five women, two Federal and three Confederate took part at Gettysburg. All three Confederate women at Gettysburg were either killed or wounded, or captured, including two women who took part in Pickett’s Charge. [7]

Sarah Edmonds

Sarah Edmonds published a book Nurse and Spy in the Union Army while recovering from malaria in 1863. The book, which was published the following year, sold 175,000 copies, and she donated her earnings from it to care for sick and wounded Union veterans. After the war, Edmonds attended Oberlin College, married, had three of her own children and adopted two more. She “became a member of the Grand Army of the Potomac, the organization for Union veterans of the Civil War. She applied for, and received, a military pension, and upon her death in 1898 was buried with full military honors.” [8] She was the only women admitted to the Grand Army of the Republic.

Another of the women to serve was Frances Louisa Clayton. Fighting for the Union as a member of the Minnesota State Militia Cavalry and 2^nd Minnesota Battery, serving under the command of Ulysses S. Grant she was wounded at Fort Donelson. Like many other women soldiers, Clayton mastered the art of behaving as a man. She “became “a capital swordsman,” but also commanded attention with her “masculine stride in walking” and “her erect and soldierly carriage.” [9]

However, most women were more discreet during and after the war regarding their true sexuality. Private Albert Cashier hid his sexuality identity for his entire term of service. He enlisted in August 1862 as a member of the 95^th Illinois Volunteer Infantry. Cashier was born in Ireland as a woman named Jennie Hodgers. He fought in forty battles and was discharged with the regiment in August 1865. At Vicksburg he was briefly captured by the Confederates while conducting a reconnaissance “but managed to escape by seizing a gun from one of her guards, knocking him down, and outrunning others. Comrades recalled Private Cashier climbing to the top of their fieldworks to taut the enemy into showing themselves.” [10]

After the war “Albert” returned home and lived as a “farmer and handyman and served as a caretaker in his church. He never married.” In 1890 he applied for and received a military pension and in 1911 the now elderly “man” was struck by a car and suffered a broken leg. The doctor treating him discovered that Albert was not a man, but a woman. But the doctor kept his confidentiality and without revealing “Albert’s” secret had the Union veteran admitted to the local Soldier’s and Sailors’ Home at Quincy, Illinois.” [11] A few years later the elderly “man” began to exhibit erratic behavior and was “committed to a public mental hospital and the word was out.” [12] With her story now sensational front page news and “old comrades in arms came to her defense.” [13] Her comrades had never known that “Albert” was not a man during or after the war. the news was a surprise to them they came to her defense. To combat some of the sensationalism in the media Albert’s fellow soldiers testified “to Albert’s bravery in combat and public good works in later life. Albert/Jennie died at Watertown State Hospital in 1915 at age seventy-one. The local post of the Grand Army of the Republic arranged for her burial. Her headstone reads: “Albert D.J. Cashier, Company G, 95^th Illinois Infantry.” [14]

There are similar accounts of women who served as soldiers in the Confederate army including Mrs. Amy Clarke who enlisted with her husband and continued to serve until after his death at the Battle of Shiloh. Her gender remained secret until she was wounded and captured by Union forces. As “soon as she had recovered they gave her a dress and sent her back into Confederate lines; but a short time later she was seen in Mississippi making plans to re-enlist.” [15]

Wartime records are sketchy but as a minimum it is believed that “between 250 and 400 women disguised as men found their way into either the Federal or Confederate armies.” [16] A more recent estimate is that in the Confederate army alone there were some 250 women who served as soldiers during the war. [17]Casualties were high for the women that are known to have served as soldiers, they had a “combined casualty rate of 44 percent” including the fact that fully “eleven percent of women soldiers died in the military.” [18] Some of those women are now well known but many others are lost to history. Most women tried to keep their sexual identities secret, even to the point of their death on the battlefield, and many women who served in the armies returned home to resume relatively normal lives after the war.

Other women would serve as spies for both sides, often rendering valuable assistance to their countries. The women who served as spies often took their lives into their hands; however, they often provided vital information to the Union or Confederate officers that they served. Pauline Cushman “parlayed her acting talents into a series of elaborate ruses that allowed her to pry information out of admiring and complaisant Confederate officers; Belle Boyd used an equal measure of talent in as a northern Virginia coquette to elide the same kind of information out of Federal officers.” [19]

Elizabeth Van Lew

Even those women who were successful often suffered for their service during and after the war as they learned “that few people completely trusted or respected a spy, not even a “friend.” [20] Many, especially Southern women who spied for the Union were ostracized and persecuted in their communities after the war, and found little support from Northern politicians. Rebecca Wright, a young Quaker schoolteacher in Winchester, Virginia provided information that “enabled him to defeat General Early’s forces” in the Valley of 1864. She lost her job, and her former friends and neighbors boycotted her family’s businesses. Rejected for a pension, Sheridan helped Wright obtain “an appointment in a government office, remaining there for the rest of her days.” [21] Elizabeth Van Lew was a lifelong resident of Richmond and daughter of a wealthy businessman. She helped Union prisoners escape from Richmond’s notorious Libby prison and when Grant besieged Petersburg, Miss Van Lew “supplied him with a steady stream of information” [22]

To be continued….

Notes

[1] Ibid. Blanton and Cook They Fought Like Demons p.209

[2] Silvey, Anita I’ll Pass for Your Comrade Clarion Books, New York 2008 p.9

[3] Ibid. Blanton and Cook They Fought Like Demons p.5

[4] Ibid. Massey Women in the Civil War p.79

[5] Ibid. Lowry The Stories the Soldiers Wouldn’t Tell p.119

[6] Ibid. Silvey I’ll Pass for Your Comrade p.68

[7] Ibid. Blanton and Cook They Fought Like Demons pp. 15-16

[8] Ibid. Silvey I’ll Pass for Your Comrade p.90

[9] Ibid. Blanton and Cook They Fought Like Demons p.58

[10] Ibid. Blanton and Cook They Fought Like Demons pp. 16-17

[11] Ibid. Lowry The Stories the Soldiers Wouldn’t Tell p.121

[12] Ibid. Lowry The Stories the Soldiers Wouldn’t Tell p.121

[13] Ibid. Silvey I’ll Pass for Your Comrade p.90

[14] Ibid. Lowry The Stories the Soldiers Wouldn’t Tell p.121

[15] Ibid. Massey Women in the Civil War p.81

[16] Ibid. Guelzo Fateful Lightning p.394

[17] Ibid. McCurry Confederate Reckoning p.87

[18] Ibid. Blanton and Cook They Fought Like Demons pp.206-207

[19] ibid. Guelzo Fateful Lightning p.395

[20] Ibid. Massey Women in the Civil War p.87

[21] Ibid. Massey Women in the Civil War pp. 103-104

[22] Ibid. Massey Women in the Civil War p.102

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Filed under civil rights, civil war, History, Military, News and current events, Political Commentary, women's rights

Tagged as albert cashier, Amy Clarke, battle of gettysburg, Battle Of Vicksburg, belle boyd, elizabeth van lew, Frances Louisa Clayton, franklin thompson, Jennie Hodgers, National Women’s Rights Convention, nineteenth amendment, pauline cushman, pickett's charge, Rebecca Wright, Sara Edmonds, transgender military personnel, women in the civil war, women in the military, women's rights

August 18, 2020 · 02:53

I Rejoice, I have a Publisher for “Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory!” Racism, Religion, Ideology and Politics in the Civil War Era and After and Their Importance Now

Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

There I was attempting to enter my analytical data at the end of a long day when suddenly my iPhone rang with my default ring tone the great Kenny Rodgers and the First Edition “I Just Dropped in to see what Condition my Condition was In” which was also featured in one of my favorite cult classic films, The Big Lebowski. But I digress…

I answered and found it was my literary agent, Roger Williams. He let me know that he resubmitted the book to a publisher who turned it down two years ago. They liked the changes I made to it and want to publish it. I am grateful to Roger who believed in this book and kept pushing it for the past three years. I finally realized that despite all the good history it had in it that I had quite a bit of material I had worked on in those three years that would make it a much better book that would grab the reader’s interest I went back to work, nearly doubling it in size within two and a half months. Of course I had already done much of the research and writing so it was a matter of making the book flow from the introduction to the epilogue, keeping it in the realm of history but reminding the reader that the the sad consequences of America’s Original Sin are still afflicting us to this day. I sent the completed manuscript to Roger a bit over two weeks ago and I told Judy that I was not going to hassle him about the status of the book.

The publisher will be Potomac Books, a subsidiary of University of Nebraska Press. They publish a lot of good books dealing with history, political, military issues, and current events. Judy looked them up as I was thanking friends for their congratulations, and told me that she thought this was an excellent publisher for the book.

I have to thank Professor Doctor Rick Herrera of the U.S. Army Senior Leadership School who was my classmate in the UCLA Army ROTC program from 1981-1983. He is a fine historian, and not just military. He has published a number of books on Early American Military history and recommended Roger as an agent.

Then there is Judy, who has reviewed, edited, and punctuated many of my papers, articles and manuscripts since I was in seminary some 30 years ago. None of this is possible without her. Then there were my college, seminary, and other history professors, among them Delmar McComb and Charles Bloch at San Joaquin Delta College, Dr. Helmut Haeussler at California State University Northridge, and Dr. Doyle Young at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. I also have my many colleagues at the Joint Forces Staff College where I taught ethics and led the Gettysburg Staff Ride. It was there, when writing my syllabus for the class which became a nearly 1,000 page tome, that this book began. I realized that one cannot separate the battles from the men who fought them, especially when it comes to a war like our American Civil War.

What began as a 20 page second chapter of the staff ride text took on a life of its own, when the “chapter” grew to over 100 pages I realized that it needed to be its own text. This is the result.

To my faithful readers here, you have read much of it in earlier and less polished forms. But with every revision, every addition as Roger worked to market the book, it became more focused, more documented, and more powerful so that instead of struggling through two very heavily academic and theoretical chapters, the were led in by an strong preface, and opening chapter, several beefed up chapters, and several new chapters with an epilogue that pulled it all together.

I wish John Lewis or Elijah Cummings were still alive to right a forward to this. I am going to look up some of the still living members of the civil rights movement or other Black Americans who lived through the discrimination and segregation of Jim Crow, to become great American Leaders. Wish me luck, I have some in mind, including one whose story is featured in the book to humbly ask if they will do so.

My goal is to write history and tell the truth the best that I can knowing that future historians may find out more than me, and do better, even if they show my wrong at some points, I don’t think that will happen because this is not a history of current events of which documents remained sealed, or eyewitness accounts turn out to be wrong, or assumptions are made which turn out to be false, though repeated for decades as if they were absolute truth. Such is not always the case, quite often new evidence comes to light and has to be dealt with, not be disregarding it because it doesn’t fit the accepted narrative, but because it is strong enough to challenge the narrative on its own merits. This is why the twin myths of the Nobel South and the Lost Cause have been debunked, because new generations of historians were willing to challenge them.

However, in the case of racist myths like these, which have much in common with Holocaust denial, don’t go away simply because they are factually discredited and destroyed. The remain because at their root they have a nearly religious like flavor, adhering to myths and rejecting facts like any religious cult would do.

That is the reason these debunked myths have not died and people, even otherwise intelligent, decent, and thoughtful people believe them, because they soothe their consciences and allow them to preserve their prejudices, by pretending to be history. Sadly, that school of thought dominated American history from the 1880s to the 1970s. Those who scour the archives, read the letters, study the documents, and examine the lives of the people involved and find the truth are attacked as Revisionists when in fact what they fight is the original historical revisionism promoted by defeated racists and lapped up by the citizens who defeated the Confederacy on the battlefields, in order to strengthen the economy, reduce newly freed Blacks to a condition that was akin to slavery in all but name.

Historian Jill Lapore wrote:

“History is the art of making an argument about the past by telling a story accountable to evidence. In the writing of history, a story without an argument fades into antiquarianism; an argument without a story risks pedantry. Writing history requires empathy, inquiry, and debate. It requires forswearing condescension, cant, and nostalgia. The past isn’t quaint. Much of it, in fact, is bleak.”

That is why I wrote Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory! For in every generation there are those who seek to return to a mythological history that never existed. When those people are backed up by the President of the United States over 150 years after their cause was defeated on the battlefield, then the fight for truth must be renewed.

So until tomorrow,

Peace,

Padre Steve+

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Filed under books, books and literature, civil rights, civil war, Gettysburg, History, News and current events, racism, Religion, Teaching and education

Tagged as american civil war, American racism, american slavery, charles bloch, civil rights movement, delmar mccomb, donald trump, donald Trump cult, dr doyle young, dr Rick Herrera, helmut haeussler, History, i just dropped in to see what my condition was in, Jill Lapore, jim crow, Kenny Rogers and the first edition, mine eyes have seen the glory, potomac books, racism, reconstruction, roger williams, the big lebowski, university of Nebraska press

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I Rejoice, I have a Publisher for “Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory!” Racism, Religion, Ideology and Politics in the Civil War Era and After and Their Importance Now

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