Hekate
Hekate's JournalPresident Eisenhower, the man who forcibly integrated Southern public schools with troops ...
... (yes, that was Ike) also signed off on adding "under God" to the Pledge. You can't get everything right, and it's not his fault that idjits like Sarah Palin who have no concept of history now think we've had The Pledge since 1776 and that our money has included In God We Trust since the same time. Some of the same ones no doubt villify him for school integration.
Which is by way of saying thanks for a fairly comprehensive overview. I researched it back about 2002 after a friend sent out an email blast to her entire address book that began with a soppy picture of two golden-haired tots with prayerful hands and eyes raised to heaven, backed by a flowing US flag, and went on from there to equate patriotism with religion. My reply was well-researched, historical, and blistering, and of course I hit reply-all.
As for Eisenhower, I respect the man, now that I know more about him. I remember his administration from a child's-eye perspective, which is to say the parts I could see and I didn't necessarily connect them with him. My classmates and I had slogged through learning the Pledge back in first grade, and we all had to stumble every morning until we re-learned it with the addition.
Now I know it was related to the Cold War, which to the old general was serious in every way (it was), and he was open to persuasion that one more thing in the cultural part of the war would be to subtly emphasize that while the Commies were godless (they were officially atheist and brutally suppressed religious expression), the US was not godless.
I don't think for a minute he meant the US was supposed to be solely Christian -- post-WWII / post-Holocaust most public religious expressions on civic occasions in the US tended to be relatively generic and inoffensive to any of the three Abrahamic religious traditions. That is, God was referred to as "father" and not Jesus. Evangelicals called themselves Fundamentalists and were considered a fringe group, socially and politically, not a powerful and fearsome socio-political movement.
As for school integration using military troops -- I wonder how many people even remember that it was Eisenhower? We should. Brown vs Board of Education said "with all deliberate speed," and Ike speeded it up all right. The images coming in on our little B/W tv were absolutely searing, as were the ones in LIFE magazine. Little children like me in every way but color were being screamed at by mommies and daddies ... It was a couple of thousand miles away, yet in our living room.
Why integrate and why Eisenhower? If I had to guess, I'd have to say that to the General who liberated Europe and the concentration camps: because America was supposed to be infinitely better than that. If we were not Commies, we were also not Nazis.
Joe is going after Trump personally, *on the facts*. He is taking the heat for other candidates ....
...and carrying that burden for others so they can all talk about their pet policies instead of Trump's nasty nicknames for them. Trump is too busy insulting Joe, who doesn't give a damn what the orange madman says about him.
Joe has always been quick with a quip and a zinger -- but he's fact-based. The only one engaged in a so-called pissing contest is Trump, and he's going to end up with wet shoes while Joe walks away to do something meaningful with his time.
Trump ended up being the last GOP candidate standing in 2016 -- and the way he did it was to pick off all the others one by one by one, dragging each one down into the mud singly and disposing of them. They did not stand unified against him -- and he won. Do you want to witness that with our fine Dems in 2019? I sure don't. I Want him to be taken down by Biden, and I want Biden to stay in one piece, so Trump can't move on to Warren, then Beto, then Harris, one by one by one.
We all should know Joe's background as a Democrat by now. Do you honestly think he would do anything to harm any of the things you mention?
PS: Remember when Rudy Giuliani had stature as "America's mayor"? By the time he and Joe got on a debate stage together, Joe said, "All Rudy has is a noun, a verb, and 9-11" and people laughed like hell not because it was an insult but because by then it was true.
Well, I was concerned about Biden's age & long record *before* he entered the race...
I was looking for someone younger, and I didn't think someone of Joe Biden's stature deserved the mud about to be thrown at him from Left and Right. A public record as long as his gives plenty of ammunition for enemies to twist out of recognition.
Then he released his announcement video, and all my concerns about him went away. As far as I am concerned, he got it exactly right. I read a pundit's take on it that he was only talking to old people in that video, because you know, WWII reference.
Okay -- a question for said pundit and anyone else: since when are White Nationalism and Neo-Nazis only of concern to "old people"? If the Bubonic Plague appeared in Los Angeles (which has a serious rat problem) would that only be of interest to Medieval scholars?
Win, lose, or draw, I am SO glad VP Biden is in this race. He will tolerate no bullshit from Trump. As soon as someone explained the 2019 problem with the Hyde Amendment, he got it. He's running against Trump, not the other Democrats. He looks, acts, and thinks like a man 20 years younger than the two candidates nearest in age to him, i.e. Trump and (seriously, no disrespect) Sanders.
Yes, I have my Senator's avatar on this post. But I have Biden's back at DU, because he has earned it.
No, FIRST she floated the idea he was crazy, which allowed his mental state to be discussed on TV...
...and in the editorial pages damn near every day since then.
Oh, Mme Speaker was sweet about it. She simply came out of one of his tantrum-filled meetings and said she was "praying for the country" and "praying for him," and that she "sincerely hoped members of his family or members of his staff would hold an intervention" for the President.
How's that for making it very explicitly very public? And she was PITYING of his condition. How's that for belittling the bully who hates strong women?
Of course she's being nagged to start impeachment proceedings, but consider the additional context: that as far as we know he can't be criminally indicted while still in office, which gives him all the more incentive to lie, cheat, and steal his way into a second term. Plus the statute of limitations runs out on some crimes the meanwhile.
So in a recent private meeting she said, not that she would not impeach him in the end, but that she "would rather see him in prison than impeached."
How's that for making it very explicit and very public that she knows he has committed crimes and is a criminal? Thus making it certain to be discussed by the punditry.
And the mental deterioration conversation is still really out there.
I just realized: we are now truly in a post-literate world...
Like a librarian (your analogy), Mueller believes in the power the printed word. Like a PhD, he believes in meticulous research thoughtfully distilled into the printed word.
Like both, he believes in readers -- people who will read the printed word. He values you, the supposed reader.
Sadly, we now exist in a post-literate world. Suddenly I feel sickened, with tears in my eyes, as I realize just how true that is.
Robert Mueller, man of honor and accomplishment, wandered into a post-literate Twitterverse, a culture and time that will not read, that does not value anything not presented as clever twists and insults.
The fault, my friends, lies not in Mueller, but in ourselves.
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