The LuLac Edition #4,346, July 8th, 2020

WRITE ON WEDNESDAY

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I can’t even believe there is a debate about the legitimacy of the Confederate flag and the heroes of a failed Civil War. In any other country, this would not be happened. If not for the Christianity and kindness of Abraham Lincoln, those general and soldiers would have been shot and killed everywhere else.
The Times Shamrock Editorial board summed it up for this week’s “Write On Wednesday”.

IN FAVOR OF UNITED STATES OR CONFEDERACY?

Senators of both parties agreed to perfect the historical record Wednesday when, by voice vote, they included a provision in a $740.5 billion defense appropriations bill that instructs the Pentagon to strip the names of Confederate figures from all Defense Department installations within a year.
The primary targets are the 10 military bases named for Confederate military and political figures who committed treason against the United States, plus Fort Belvoir, Virginia, which is even more bizarrely named for a nearby plantation that once held hundreds of enslaved people.
The directive extends to every military base street, building, ship, and piece of equipment in the Department of Defense inventory.
Incredibly, President Donald Trump has threatened to veto the entire defense appropriations bill if the amendment remains. The bill includes pay raises and increased benefits for the military personnel Trump professes to love. And because the bill includes money for military procurement, it is crucial to aiding in the national economic recovery from the COVID-19 crisis.
Trump sees removing statutes to traitors as a perversion of history, when it was the erection of those monuments — long after the Civil War as a means of reasserting white supremacy despite the Confederacy’s crushing defeat — that perverts history.
Panicked Republican senators, who can read their own political polls if not the general public mood, begged Trump to back off of his threat. And Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, who is in a tough Senate race of his own and would like to keep money flowing through Fort Knox and Fort Campbell, Kentucky, said he might withhold the bill until after the Nov. 3 election.
This is democracy at work, but with Trump in the Oval Office, it’s not yet clear whether it is in behalf of the United States or the Confederacy.