Fighting for an unjust cause just doesn’t cut it. Neither does ignoring the fight for a just cause

The nation is living through a debate on whether or not to remove statues and names from schools honoring Confederate generals. Did I say debate? I meant to say, free-for-all.

Blacks, and many whites, say they are offensive. Other whites say they are a part of our heritage, and that to remove them is to deny that heritage.

On August 17, 2017, the president said "You can't change history, but you can learn from it."

This past Wednesday, June 24, he scolded states for allowing "roving gangs of wise guys, anarchists & looters" to remove statues, saying "all represent our History & Heritage, both the good and the bad," proving he was wrong in 2017. He hasn’t learned a damn thing about history or our heritage.

History is both good and bad. There is no denying that. In general, though, we build monuments to highlight the good aspects of history. The bad aspects should not be forgotten, but they shouldn’t be exalted.

In a 1964 decision, Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart famously refrained from defining pornography, but suggested, “He’d know it if he saw it.”

Offensive seems to have fallen into the same category in that it means all things to all different people. Some can’t define pornography, but most people agree that it is bad. 

Defining offensive doesn’t appear to carry the same stigma or sense of urgency, although it should.

Not everything that’s offensive to someone is necessarily offensive to someone else. That said, no one is suggesting we put it up to a vote. What’s needed are guidelines, universal guidelines that don’t change as political norms change.

Republicans Hoping for a Flag

 Republicans running out of way to defend Trump - NBC  News

Congressional committees continue to expose bad, corrupt, and often illegal behavior by the president and his cronies. Just to be clear, illegal means criminal.

President Trump’s effort to withhold military aid from Ukraine until they provided him with dirt on his potential political opponent, Joe Biden amounted to no less than inviting a foreign entity to interfere in an American election. This is a crime.

This crime was committed in part during a phone call between Trump and the newly elected Ukrainian president. It was made worse because the Mueller Investigation, just a few months earlier and Robert Mueller, himself, just a day earlier speaking before Congress had condemned Russia’s involvement in the 2016 election.

No one in Trump’s circle, no Republican in Congress has made any effort to refute the accusations. The case appears to be very open and shut.

While not condoning his behavior, they are questioning the Democratic Congress’s method of investigating him—essentially attack the process. Questioning the motives of the whistle-blower, the closed hearings, and anything else.

This is not new. Crooks have been crying foul for as long as crooks have been committing crimes.

So what are they hoping to accomplish?

Muddy the waters is a common defense maneuver on par with comparing apples and oranges. It is not, however, a legal term although it is often a legal strategy. Attacking the process is the Republicans strategy to muddy the waters so to speak.

In a court of law, no judge would allow this, but impeachment is not a legal procedure. It is government’s answer to government misconduct. In fact, muddying the waters, comparing apples to oranges is practically the definition of how government works. In government, it is always about this with that in the background versus that with this attached. Politics is nothing if it is not muddy waters.

This still doesn’t tell us what Republicans hope to accomplish by arguing process in their defense against substance. To better understand what is going on in Washington, it would be helpful to look at what goes on in a football game.

President Trump Throughout History—2nd Installment

President Trump announces the Louisiana Purchase

 

“Today, I am happy to announce a really big deal—one of the biggest deals I have ever made and I’ve made some pretty big deals. Those of you who know me well and I can’t think of anyone who wouldn’t know me well because I’m always out there for everyone to see. I’m not one to shy away from the spotlight. Maybe I don’t know everyone but I’m pretty sure everyone knows me...anyway, before I get too far off track, like I said, today I’m announcing a really huge deal. It’s so huge—and people know I only do really big deals, but this deal is so huge I’m not even going to call it a Trump deal because I really don’t have to. People are going to call it a Trump deal anyway.

“Besides, there are plenty enough deals to call Trump deals, so I ain’t worried. But this deal is so huge that I’m going to call it—and you have my permission to call it this too...no hard feelings. I’m calling this deal the Louisiana Purchase.

“No one in the whole history of deal making has gotten so much for so little. By the way, I certainly didn’t start the history of deal making but I did write the book on it. I will say this. Deals have been going on forever but they didn’t start getting huge until I started making them.

“I love you too. Someone out there just couldn’t help himself and I appreciate that.

“So I know people will want to know how a deal this huge went down and I’m going to tell you. The simple truth, without throwing a lot of gobbly-gook details out there that even I would have a hard time explaining—or understanding for that matter—if I didn’t have the best deal makers in the world working for me. I simply told them to go out and make the best deal ever and that’s usually all anyone has to hear if they know what’s good for them.

“No huge deal is easy. If they were, they wouldn’t be huge. To make this deal a reality, I had to go up against one of the most powerful men in the world. He’s not as powerful as me and I’m sure he knows that now, but he still has a lot going for him. I don’t want him to feel too bad because I might need to make another deal with him in the future.

“I have to say this Napoleon feller probably thinks a little bit more highly of himself than he should because he has all those medals hanging from his shirt, which I’ve been told, most of them he gave to himself. Frankly, I don’t believe in medals because if you have to go around tooting your own horn, how good can you really be? I’ve always said, you do something, you put your name on it so everyone knows who did it and that should be all the credit anyone needs. You don’t need medals. If someone sees something with my name on it and they like it, that’s not tooting my own horn because that’s someone else tooting my own horn. I will say this, I hear a lot of tooting everywhere I go.

“In fairness to this Napoleon, he does seem to have a lot on his plate right now and many would say this is a good thing. Many of them would sometimes be right. But maybe he has too much going on. I’ve been making deals, usually unusually huge deals, since before this Napoleon guy was a whore’s son scavenging around the streets of Corsica for his next meal. It didn’t take me long to figure out that he seemed a little bit tired...I don’t know if overwhelmed is the word, but what the heck, I’m just putting it out there. He seemed a little bit distracted by everything going on and it didn’t take me long to discover he was also pretty cash strapped. The third strike he had going against him was he didn’t have a clue about what he had in the first place.

“He had half the empires in Europe under his thumb and must have decided he didn’t need something as insignificant as a territory.

“Once I recognized this, I said to Napoleon, ‘Come on down.’

“To his credit, and I believe in giving credit where credit is due—the opportunities just don’t come up that often—Napoleon answered my call.

“Before he knew what hit him, I had bought the richest piece of landscape this side of Fifth Avenue for nothing more than chump change, which is almost as good a deal as when we got Manhattan for a handful of trinkets, which I suppose I could have done better but even I can’t do everything.

“Anyway, talk about a deal, and believe me, people will be talking about Trump’s purchase—oops, my bad—about this Louisiana Purchase for years to come.”