Exorcising Democrats' Confederate History

Why are progressives clamoring to remove many of America's mementos dedicated to the Old South? Generations later, can remnants of Civil War Democrats cause active psychological “harm”? That seems highly unlikely. However, what's real is the targeting of Robert E. Lee, J.E.B. Stuart and Jefferson Davis. If that's the liberal standard for destroying their icons, who has caused more recent and lasting damage than Barack Obama? Therefore, isn't it logical for them to purge both ancient root and modern branch? Yet, fear not, President Obama's safe from their revisionist historical pruning. It's only his antebellum counterparts who find themselves on the chopping block.

Let's pull some contextual threads from this spidery progressive web, shall we? Reportedly, Democrats in Alexandria, Virginia want to rename a main thoroughfare, Jefferson Davis Highway. Also, they want to move a statue on State Route 400 of a Confederate soldier, “Appomattox,” to the comparable obscurity of a nearby museum. Erected in 1889, is the presence of this unarmed Southerner—like the street named for the Confederacy's president—suddenly noxious to the average commuter? Do they trigger so much daily trauma that they're right to nix them? Not to be outshone, Fairfax County is embroiled in a two-year debate to strip Confederate General Stuart's name from one of its most racially diverse high schools. Their dragnet is not local however, it's a monstrosity cast widely across state lines as far as Louisiana.

As the left's revisionist hysteria is never satisfied, Stuart's famous contemporary General Robert E. Lee is targeted in both places. Atop a pillar since 1884, his towering figure was removed from its New Orleans perch last Friday after 133 years. (His was not the first to fall. On May 11th, the powers that be removed a statue from the Jefferson Davis memorial there. On Saturday, a display—the word “LOVE”—was found on its vacated platform.) Only time will tell if his Virginia likeness—mutely astride his majestic horse in Lee Park since 1924—will suffer the same “loving” fate. As the land was specifically donated to showcase this Southern soldier, is it right to unseat him after 93 years? What's more horrible here, destroying the vestiges of progressives' 19^th century past or the wasteful expenditure to taxpayers of $300,000 to do it?

Doesn't all history have a worthy place simply because it happened? How can eradicating the lessons that shaped our collective cultural experience ever be the “right” thing to do? Isn't the mind-set to wipe clean the landscape—of old dignitaries' names and harmless inanimate objects—really a fascist desire to ban ideas themselves? (Will these safe space liberal “do-gooders” advocate “Fahrenheit 451”-style book burning next?) Obviously, their predecessors' dual stains of slavery and segregation—never acknowledged or owned by them hereafter—are of lasting shame. Well, frankly, they should be. Hence, their current self-serving agenda to simply airbrush monuments out of existence.

To this end, their go-to narrative is one of distraction and manipulation. To the muddleheaded, the dishonest proclaim often repeated nonsense: America is “secretly racist”! In the same vein as “Trump Derangement Syndrome,” liberals have kind of a politically-motivated hysterical blindness. What of the widespread advancements since the 1950s and 1960s Civil Rights movements? A prominent trend—the “black is beautiful” paradigm shift of the '60s and '70s—doesn't matter? Heck, these naysayers don't even acknowledge the cultural significance of the former occupant of the White House! So, concrete facts of societal progression are meaningless to them. Only their deluded aim to erase transgenerational political sins.

Seriously, it's been 152 years since the end of the Civil War! Only misguided spendthrifts waste today's public funds to “purify” the past. Obviously, historical footnotes—like the name of a road or a school, or four statues—have no magical power to corrupt anything of the now. What relevance to the day-to-day life experience of Americans do they really have? Very little, if any. In fact, their only intrinsic value are as markers showing where America has been—and how truly tolerant she has become!

Despite these ridiculous assertions, racism is not infused in the bronze edifices resembling long-dead Southerners. Likewise, it's not found in the hearts of persons striving to preserve them either. Interestingly, only Democrats' self-hatred persists with the passage of time. That liberal malady is seen in their psychological projection of guilt upon the rest us whose ancestors never owned a slave. Clearly, that's a problem better suited to the analyst's couch then the political realm. (On a related note, can our country be correctly viewed as innately “sexist” as Hillary Clinton is the latest nominee of her party—and the winner of the popular vote?) All elements described above encapsulate the schizophrenic thinking pervading every level of the Democratic Party.

In truth, tangible proof of America's well-established—and ever-expanding—pattern of embracing and celebrating diversity is everywhere! What of commonplace interracial marriage or the recent legalization of gay marriage? So, is it fair to automatically demonize a Republican simply for expressing a history-protecting impulse? Virginia's firebrand GOP gubernatorial hopeful Corey Stewart recently said:

“There’s all kinds of things that offend people, but that [removal] doesn’t make it right. That doesn’t make it so [fix the past]. This [the statue of Robert E. Lee] is a part of our history; if you don’t like our history, that’s too damn bad.”

Well, precisely. What's crystal clear is the Democrats have a cringeworthy history. Understandably, they're desperate to annihilate any reminders of the irrefutable and indefensible. Chief among them is their sole ownership of two infamous institutions: Virginia's antebellum past (read: slaveholding) and white supremacy (read: creating the Ku Klux Klan). As Abraham Lincoln preserved the Union, his party has a duty to safeguard the other side's artifacts for posterity. Without them as silent witnesses, falsely tarring conservatives with their own ongoing record of misdeeds becomes easy. If successful, all that would remain is a nebulous war of words for progressives to dominate. As George Santayana wisely advised: “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” Ironically, destroying America's Confederate past also diminishes her freedom-loving future.

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Krazy Kollege Kids!

“I was an unmitigated nuisance … by that time I was nearing the end of my schooldays, which I look back on as the most completely wasted and mischievous part of my life.” – George Bernard Shaw, Irish playwright, awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1925

In this generation, perhaps there's nothing more troubling than the befuddled thinking of young progressives. Unfortunately, examples are everywhere. In “Calexit” California, the state university in Los Angles embraces segregated, black-only housing. Not to be outdone, in lily-white Pennsylvania, Elizabethtown College's Democrats wear a 21^st century version of the Scarlet Letter: plain white puzzle pieces publicly proclaiming their imaginary genetic solidarity with 19^th century slaveholders. Now, at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, the left's political fun house finds expression in clown car antics there. These snowflakes demand free tuition for all black students due to their wrongheaded claim of “systemic racism”. So, are the rational to believe that prejudice is magically solved by promoting new race-based discrimination?

In America of 2017, the belief in deep-seeded societal bigotry is utter hogwash! Why do these millennials pretend to live in an antebellum time warp? Recall, slavery ended with Abraham Lincoln in 1865: 152 years ago! It's idiotic to ignore the reality that our culture has radically evolved for the better since then. Today, the celebration of diversity—and tolerance of differences—is widespread.

Specifically, this modern trend was seeded by the 1960s Civil Rights Movement. Indeed, the effects of those policies have germinated in our society for over 50 years. Don't the clear results of those strides count for anything? Apparently not to these collegians with their petulant demands and polarizing behavior.

Remember, any human society is inherently imperfect. Therefore, human conflict based upon dissimilar perceptions will always exist. Yet, these students' militant insistence on race-based unequal treatment—in the name of Orwellian fairness—is beyond bizarre. It's equivalent to proclaiming peace while actively making war. These hysterical know-nothings imagine an external enemy: a psychological projection of their own youthful ignorance.

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Liberal Losers Champion Hypocrisy

“It’s understandable liberals presumed the Rockettes were going to be forced to do something with which they were opposed, because that’s what the liberal establishment [under Obama] has been doing to everyone else.” – Tammy Bruce, author, columnist and radio talk show host

When a handful of Rockettes declined to kick up their heels at Donald Trump's upcoming inauguration—a voluntary gig—liberals wrongly assumed the dancers' employer was “forcing them” to perform against their will. Where was a similar outcry when Christian bakers were compelled by the State to produce cakes for gay weddings? Further, why were libs as silent as church mice when the big government juggernaut that is ObamaCare compelled Catholic nuns to pay for useless birth control? (These Little Sisters of the Poor successfully petitioned the Supreme Court for “protection” from Obama's fascism.) For the last eight years, why has progressive “outrage” been so blatantly selective?

Wasn't the central theme of all civil rights movements—of women, blacks and gays—based upon the intrinsic idea of equal treatment for all? Why is it that today's progressives have inverted this meaning? Why do they seek “special” rights only for their fellow travelers (like one “graceless” Rockette who stated on Instagram that President-elect Trump “stands for everything we're against”)?

Democrats' only true agenda is self-serving power-seeking. Therefore, they distort and exploit a trivial circumstance for their own political gain. What else explains their full-throated lip service to griping, anti-Trump dupes who also constitute their future voting blocs? Ironically, a few Rockettes popping off behind the scenes has inadvertently made center stage leftist hypocrisy.

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Resegregating Obama's America

“The amazing aftermath of Birmingham, the sweeping Negro Revolution, revealed to people all over the land that there are no outsiders in all these fifty states of America. … The bell of man's inhumanity to man does not toll for any one man [or student group]. It tolls for you, for me, for all of us.” – Martin Luther King, on racial discrimination

In 2016, hard-fought '50s and '60s social gains have been eroded at California State University Los Angeles. Leave it to deluded millennials—wholly ignorant of the meaning of Civil Rights struggles—to thumb their entitled noses at Brown v. Board of Education (of Topeka), 347 U.S. 483 (1954). In that historic integration decision the Supreme Court declared state laws establishing separate public schools based upon the superficiality of race unconstitutional. So, today that landmark determination is suddenly wrong? In Obama's America separate is suddenly equal—and preferential?

Furthermore, in violation of the Civil Rights Act of 1968—which guarantees equal housing opportunities regardless of race, color, creed or national origin—“guilty” school officials have capitulated to requests by the CSLA Black Student Union to provide race-exclusive housing (at the Halisi Scholars Black Living-Learning Community). Only in the city known for liberal nutcases could an educational institution claim “... learning experiences that are inclusive and non-discriminatory” while simultaneously promoting a blatantly exclusionary policy. Is this George “1984” Orwell's dystopian Ministry of Inclusion at work?

Will this topsy-turvy generation also come to believe that retro black-only water fountains or lunch counters are good ideas? You know, the same “white-only” facilities that their grandparents risked life and limb to undo 60 years ago? In any case, how is black-focused housing not just a variation of theme: racial discrimination to everyone else? The very inhumanity—a hurtful skin-deep consideration—that MLK railed against?

It's a little spoken of 21^st century conceit that black people can never be racists, only victims as such. This faulty assumption stems from our country's unfortunate involvement with slavery that ended in the 19^th century. Of course, given the passage of time—and the natural evolution of social attitudes—only antiquated propaganda is promoted, not causal connections. Specifically, these false narratives are built around urban myths. One primary example is Michael Brown's 'hands up, don't shoot' which never happened. In turn, the social unrest fomented—based upon big MSM lies—has spread like wildfire to the coasts (fueled by George Soros' funding of Black Lives Matter anarchy). Related specifically to CSLA, how can Los Angeles—one of the most proudly multicultural and cosmopolitan U.S. cities—also be a hotbed for armies of racially motivated “microaggressors”?

Are these malcontents afraid of their own shadows on sunny days? Such perceptions defy reality—and common sense. One reasonably assumes these aggrieved CSLA students would see racism in a bowl of cornflakes and chocolate milk. In the real world, these coddled “safe spacers” fool no one with their politically correct demands. Ironically, while they claim nebulous slights, these isolationists do actual damage that is both thoughtless and intentional. Is it right to arbitrarily demonize the rest of the collegiate community?

In truth, regardless of skin color, any person who negatively evaluates another on the basis of race is, by definition, that. One does not overcome racism by promoting the same lifestyle and mind-set that is so despised in others. Beyond introductory courses in U.S. history and law, these jaded and time warped youngsters need a serious reality check. Rare “microaggressions” notwithstanding, 21^st century America is so widely tolerant, it's quietly integrated. For additional proof, one need only consider the ethnicity of the current commander-in-chief. What of the collective character demonstrated by their faithful countrymen—in two elections—who made Mr. Obama's presidency a fact? These “sheltered” CSLA students should embrace these disregarded millions they hide from in their black-only housing.

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Sulu's Dark Side of Half Moon

“We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard.” ― John F. Kennedy at Rice University, September 12, 1962

Immortalized as classic TV, Star Trek (1966 - '69) and its optimistic opening phrase “Space: the final frontier...” was a veiled reference to JFK's New Frontier ideals of a fair and inclusive society. It was the definitive sci-fi program (stylistically years ahead of the tastes of its meager original audience). Under the guise of fictional 22^nd century space explorers, the show dealt directly (albeit subtly) with highly-charged social issues. Recall that the 1960s was the Civil Rights era. As an example, the program made commentary on evolving race relations with “Let That Be Your Last Battlefield.” In season three, episode 70, a pair of two-toned, hate-filled humanoid characters are the last survivors of their kind. One is black/white face right/left, the other is the same—colors reversed. For 50,000 years one has relentlessly chased the other. In the story their mutual journey ends in isolation—and certain death on their nuked home planet. (Produced today might the two “space aliens” be portrayed with black and blue color schemes representing Black Lives Matter and the recently slain 5 Dallas police officers?)

As Star Trek traveled the cosmos (the creative landscape of the writers' imaginations) Jack Kennedy made the real-life determination that Americans would be the first to journey to the moon. This 'one great leap for mankind' was accomplished during the Apollo 11 mission when the Eagle lunar module touched desolate terra firma on June 20, 1969. However, Star Trek did not fare so well. Its “five year mission” was cut short after only three seasons (canceled by NBC for low ratings). Synchronistically, Star Trek's TV life span mirrored the brief three years of “Camelot,” the nickname of Mr. Kennedy's presidency (due to his assassination in Dallas on November 22, 1963).

Today, finding universal acceptance of biological differences like skin color and sexual orientation seems more difficult than JFK's realized dream of moon walking. Star Trek, in its own way, was similarly groundbreaking. Specifically, the first interracial kiss on TV occurred between Lt. Uhura (Nichelle Nichols) and humanitarian lothario Captain James T. Kirk (William Shatner) modeled on JFK. Let's just say that Captain Kirk seemed to have a comely, scantily dressed new female at every port of call. And related to this “smooch heard 'round the world,” Mr. Shatner rakishly insisted on a script change so the glory would be his rather than Spock's (Leonard Nimoy). Thus, he boldly went (on TV anyway) where no man had gone before.

Warp speed to America of 2016. With interracial marriage commonplace—and gay marriage newly legalized—what's the big deal that one of the signature characters will be openly gay? In the appropriately named “Star Trek: Beyond,” the third installment of the movie franchise (re-imagined with a new cast), doesn't such a thematic change rightfully pay homage to the spirit of creator Gene Roddenberry's original show—and inclusive sensibilities? Isn't this just a simple substitution: sexual orientation for race? Surprisingly, not everyone is creatively on board. Ironically, the person opposed is now openly gay actor George Takei who played navigator Hikaru Sulu in the original series.

Mr. Takei came boldly out of the celluloid closet in real-life in 2005. Why can't today's fictional version of Hikaru Sulu do the same? Played by John Cho, his take: “This movie is going to be coming out on the 50th anniversary of Star Trek, the 50th anniversary of paying tribute to Gene Roddenberry, the man whose vision it was that carried us through half a century. Honor him and create a new character. I urged them. He [director Justin Lin] left me feeling that was going to happen.” Well, precisely. How is it that Mr. Takei has gotten everything so entirely backwards when saying, “Unfortunately, it’s a twist of Gene Roddenberry’s creation, to which he put in so much thought. I think it’s really unfortunate.” Sorry Georgie! As a Hollywood veteran, he knows very well there are no creative sacred cows—for better or worse. An example of better was the superior reboot (read: story, acting, special effects) of the brilliant “Battlestar Galactica” (2004-'09). In this update Lt. Kara “Starbuck” Thrace featured a thematically complex female (Katee Sackoff) in place of the unremarkable male version (Dirk Benedict) in the original. On the other hand, inevitably there is worse. Does anyone seriously believe that an all-female team of “Ghostbusters” is really a good idea?

The original Star Trek portrayed a fictional Kennedy-style Utopian society aspired to. Today's Star Trek feature films reflect today's reality of a widely tolerant America that has—in great measure—arrived. On screen, as in real-life, the journey to universal acceptance of difference steadily continues. Notable tragedies like Orlando and Dallas are manipulated and spun by the propagandist MSM as generalized American “intolerance.” Similarly, anarchist movements like Black Lives Matter are wrongly highlighted for a polarizing political effect beneficial to progressives who lead by social division. Yet, to any clearly thinking person, the violence and the killing remain exceptions to the rule. Optimists see the truth: the normalcy of open minds, everyday courtesy—and shared grief in the loss of innocent lives. Ultimately, love overcomes fear in the same way that light overcomes darkness. And as Star Trek aficionados well know resistance to certain things—like reaching for the stars or accepting diversity—is indeed futile.

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