Carpe Diem: 2017.11.02 BACK WITH THE WIND

  General John “Beauregard” Kelly 

“Robert E. Lee was an honorable man who gave up his country to fight for his state. Men and women of good faith on both sides made their stand where their conscience had them make their stand.” So sayeth Gen. John Kelly.   So much for that semper fi stuff.

Robert E. Lee, whose statues abound in the erstwhile confederate States, was a graduate of the U.S. Military Academy, and had to make a choice which side he would fight for in the Civil War. One has to wonder whether, under similar circumstances, which side Trump’s cohort of White House generals, who have never won a war, much less a battle, would choose. Some indication comes from the mouth of Gen. John Kelly, Trump’s current Chief of Staff (who earlier crapped on himself insulting an African-American war widow and a congresswoman).

Gen. Kelly John “Beauregard” Kelly opined during an opinion that it might not be a good idea to remove statues of former confederates that the Civil War “could have been avoided” if the Union and the Confederate States had been able to reach a “compromise.” A freakin’ compromise!

What compromise? Would the slave states agree to reduce slave working hours from eighty to seventy hours a week, to reduce the number of lashes they administered for punishment? How do you compromise on a principle like “all men are created equal”? So this guy has stupidity to match his racist, authoritarian personality. Wendell Pierce appositely, and publicly, called him a “racist prick.”

Can a man who has been awarded four stars and the authority to lead soldiers and advise on military matters be this fucking stupid, so out of touch with history and so oblivious to the ugly record of American slavery and racism. [Don’t trouble with it; it’s a rhetorical question.] Jesus, this guy just doesn’t get it. No wonder we can’t win a war. This jerk couldn’t win a high school debating contest.

So, you think the wind will blow back those good ole antebellum days?

Sorry Genearl Beauregrd, Suh. The South has lost the war. Haven’t you seen Gone with the Wind? That train station scene in Atlanta with all those brave Southern boys lyin’ dead and wounded. Sorry General, no more slaves, no more “house n****ers” servin’ mint juleps on the porch on those swelterin’ summer days, no more lashin’ heir bloody backs when they get naughty or uppity, or complainin’ when young “massa” rapes the scullery maid; no more big fat “mama” to pull missy’ corset strings when she dresses Miss Scarlett for the Spring cotillion. Oh, no General, those days are long gone thanks to Generals Grant and Sherman and Mr. Lincoln. Those fine days when Nigras knew their place, or they would be swingin’ from a tree in Tara’s back yard.

How would you like a nice statue of you on your horsey, right in the town square—a good place for you to rendezvous for your civil way reenactments while the pigeons shit on your empty head?

The upside of Kelly’s voicing his (and his boss’s) White guy opinions and revisionist history is that we know better what we are dealing with (although it should have been enough that the racist prick” accepted the job in the first place). Gone now is the mystique that silence afforded, that the General might be the control lever over this maniacal president, that he, along with the other generals in the military triumvirate, might be the “adults” in the Oval Office. Rather, an adult bigoted dimwit.