Sadly, By Extolling A Treasonous Rebel Rat, John Kelly Shows He Lacks Any Honor

"Today the racist tribe is once again as paranoid and angry as it was before the Civil War. As they did then, they are cheating and lying constantly, from blatantly suppressing the vote to violating democratic norms and rules to using every lever of institutional machinery to preserve their power, such as their stunning refusal to consider a Supreme Court justice named by a president of the opposing party.

As we've seen, this isn't new. But it's as dangerous as it's ever been. The country isn't going to physically break in two this time, and the issues around racism and modernism are more diffuse. It's a different nation and a different world. But the stakes are actually much higher."   - Heather Digby Parton in salon.com 'John Kelly's Ignorance and the Dark Legacy of the Civil War'.

I already, in a previous post,  exposed John Kelly as the Trump bitch he really is, i.e.

http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2017/10/kelly-proves-hes-trumps-bitch-like.html

This was  after his performance a  couple of weeks ago,  falsely making claims about black congresswoman Frederica Wilson.This SOB has now revealed his true disgusting colors, not only as Dotard's little bitch in refusing to apologize for his calumny,  but now going on the air for the rightwing freak Laura Ingraham to babble bunkum on the cause of the Civil War.

For those who missed it Kelly was the guest for the premiere of Laura Ingraham’s new show on the Fox (as in "FAUX") News Channel on Monday night.  It was the perfect opportunity for this racist asshole to once more demagogue his  gibberish on national TV (albeit TV for the Gooprs and fake news addicts).

Kelly was asked about the decision of a church in Alexandria, Va., to remove plaques honoring George Washington and Robert E. Lee. Recall that earlier, I noted the mayor of New Orleans had properly removed the statue of Robert E. Lee from Lee Circle there, e.g.


I  already expressed my objection to the Johnny Reb nonsense spouted by a woman (Diana Belles) writing in our local Colorado Springs Independent.  Belles defended Southern monuments, stating the attacks on the Rebel flag and monuments were  “dragging Confederates through a cesspool of misinformation”,    I wrote a reply which was published a week later;  That reply can be read at this link:

https://www.csindy.com/coloradosprings/reader-what-civil-war-history-did-you-study/Content?oid=5869315

 I have not changed from that viewpoint one iota, and view the display of both Confederate flag and Nazi swastika as wrong headed attributions to defeated tyrannies and evil systems. And believe me, I don't use the word "evil" loosely.  In this case I mean  the subjugation  of large populations - viewed as "inferior"  by an entrenched and illegitimate government -  and their systematic degradation and elimination.  This was done via chattel slavery in the Confederacy and via concentration camps and gas chambers in Nazi Germany.

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The Confederate battle flag, like the Nazi swastika, is the emblem of hateful aggressive losers. After the Civil War, given the South lost, all its paraphernalia including flags and monuments ought to have been  interred at landfills or retired  to museums (like swastikas in Germany). Instead they had found their way to rise above state capitols, such as in South Carolina and Mississippi, or in church yards like in Alexandria, VA.   

As of August 2016, there were  1,503 public commemorations of the Confederacy, even excluding the battlefields and cemeteries: 718 monuments and statutes still stood, and 109 public schools, 80 counties and cities, and 10 U.S. military bases bore the names of Lee, Jefferson Davis, and other Confederate icons, according to a tally by the Southern Poverty Law Center

Anyway,  the clueless dolt Kelly responded to Ingraham's query thusly:

"I would tell you that Robert E. Lee was an honorable man.  He was a man that gave up his country to fight for his state, which 150 years ago was more important than country. It was always loyalty to state first back in those days. Now it’s different today. But the lack of an ability to compromise led to the Civil War, and men and women of good faith on both sides made their stand where their conscience had them make their stand.”

First, this bullshit shows how little Kelly knows about Lee, the  "honorable man",  who once demanded a slave be properly flogged for impudence to the slave owner. This included having brine poured into the open wounds  afterward.   What few may know is that Lee actually - by his leading the rebellion - had more Americans killed than Hitler did in WWII. While earlier I'd only suspected Kelly was a racist, Johnny Reb sympathizer and slime ball (by his dismissive, hateful swill about Ms. Wilson),  this latest spiel  on FOX proves it - at least to me. 

Second, rather than seeing him as Trump's "minder", I now see him as perfectly matched to the Swine-in -chief. "Two peas in a pod", if you will, or better, two hogs in a pig pen.  Maybe the filth of the bigger swine rubbed off on the lesser one.  For all intents, Kelly has now effectively become Dotard's doppelganger.

Third, one is prompted to recommend this pompous  idiot go back to school to take some real Civil War history classes, such as I recommended to Ms. Belles.

According to History professor Stephanie McCurry, based at Columbia University and author of “Confederate Reckoning: Politics and Power in the Civil War South.”

“It’s the Jim Crow version of the causes of the Civil War. I mean, it tracks all of the major talking points of this pro-Confederate view of the Civil War.”

In other words, Kelly is just another unreconstructed Johnny Reb. No better than the other defenders of this loathsome historical pustule - including  Nevada rancher and scofflaw Cliven Bundy. Recall Bundy's infamous words back in April,  2014:

"I wanna tell yuh one more thing I know about the Nigras! Weren't they better off as slaves, pickin'  cotton  and havin' a family life  and doin' things or are they better off under government subsidies ? They didn't get no more freedom they got less freedom"

Incredibly, Kelly went even farther with his comments, actually appearing to defend treason which is what Southern secession really was. Kelly made several specious points. 1) That Lee was honorable. 2) That fighting for state  (i.e. the secessionist traitors) was more important than fighting for country. 3) That a lack of compromise led to the war and 4)  That good people on both sides were fighting for conscientious reasons.

Bunkum item (4) ought to ring a loud bell, echoing Trump's claim back in August - after the Charlottsville mayhem  - that there were "fine people on both sides":  the Nazi side carrying their torches and swastikas, and the anti-Nazi protesters' side.

Both McCurry and David Blight, a history professor at Yale University and author of “Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory,” broadly rejected all of Kelly's codswallop.

According to Prof. Blight:

"This is profound ignorance, that’s what one has to say first, at least of pretty basic things about the American historical narrative,” Blight said. “I mean, it’s one thing to hear it from Trump, who, let’s be honest, just really doesn’t know any history and has demonstrated it over and over and over. But General Kelly has a long history in the American military.”

SO what's Kelly's excuse? Is there any way one can be generous in one's interpretation of Kelly's latest gig?  I see only two ways: 1) Kelly has Alzheimer's disease  or some other variant  of dementia. Then his fractious performances - both after his ugly remarks on Ms. Wilson and now his defense of the indefensible -   are manifest symptoms. 

Or (2) : Trump insisted he go on and adhere to a specific script under some serious threat. We don't know what that threat might be. 

Failing those options, one is left only to conclude that: a) Kelly  a know nothing like Trump, especially on American history, or b) his proximity to Trump has contaminated him right down to his essence.   There's very little else one can conclude because there aren't enough real excuses for a former military guy to know so damned little!

For example, the idea that compromise might have been possible was rejected out of hand by both McCurry and Blight.  As Blight facetiously asked :

“It was not about slavery, it was about honorable men fighting for honorable causes?”

Then answering his question in a WaPo interview:

“Well, what was the cause? . . . In 1861, they were very clear on what the causes of the war were. The reason there was no compromise possible was that people in the country could not agree over the wisdom of the continued and expanding enslavement of millions of African Americans.”

Also, Kelly appears to forget his American History that there were actually  a number of compromises on slavery that led up to the Civil War, from the drafting of the Constitution to the addition of new states to the Union.   It is particularly disturbing he couldn't reference the Crittenden Compromise,  e.g.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crittenden_Compromise

Prof. Blight explained:

“Any serious person who knows anything about this can look at the late 1850s and then the secession crisis and know that they tried all kinds of compromise measures during the secession winter, and nothing worked. Nothing was viable.”

One thing we can all conclude from this latest deplorable episode is that Kelly isn't fit to stand watch over a dog kennel, far less mind President Dotard.  He also lacks any sense of honor as well as intelligence.

If Kelly is all we have standing between us and Trump grabbing the nuclear football, then God (or the Force) help us all.

See also:

http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2017/08/yes-all-confederate-monuments-need-to.html