I know my point of view is out of step with much of the right, but I am not happy with some of the choices Trump is making for his cabinet. They seem decidedly politically correct to me.
At first glance it might seem that Jeff Sessions was a sound choice, but given how he is leaning over backwards to prove he is ‘not a racist’, citing his bona fides as a champion of desegregation/civil rights activist, we’re going to be seeing a lot more of the ‘mainstream’ right posturing and marginalizing of the traditional South. It’s already happening, with the usual ‘Democrats are the real racists’ articles.
Sessions was born in 1946 so he is old enough to have grown up amongst unreconstructed Southerners. Truth be told there were very few Whites back in those times who broke rank with fellow Whites — even in the North — to make common cause with blacks; usually only the most liberal would do so. Did he really have an epiphany then or is he just being a typical politician and going whichever way the winds blow? He is also a Methodist by faith and it does seem that Methodists today are a very liberal denomination, given to ‘social justice’ crusading.
Surely, also, Sessions must know something of that certain ‘taboo’ organization, which he ‘broke the back’ of in his state; that at least at its inception it was not a terrorist mob, but a self-defense organization, made necessary by the fact that there was no law and order or justice for the disenfranchised Whites in the South. They were preyed upon by carpetbaggers from the North, traitor ‘scallywags’ from amongst their own, and by the newly-freed slaves, who ran rampant. That now-proscribed organization was at first made up of respectable men, of the upper classes, who simply wanted to protect their families and lives in a lawless situation, that of Reconstruction. There is no excuse for a man like Sessions not to know that history, and I am certain he does know it. He chooses to participate in the anti-White, PC interpretation of the past.
The organization of that same name is apparently not the same now, being mostly composed of agents and operatives, according to what I’ve heard. Even so, how much violence have they committed, such as they are, as opposed to BLM? Or foreign terrorists?
Will anyone ever step forward to try to correct the popular delusions about that era of history? Trump, according to some of the faithful, has destroyed PC — but from where I stand it looks to be as entrenched as ever.
Maybe Sessions will be ‘good’ on immigration. Maybe. But I’m not taking that on faith.
Then there’s Nimrata “Nikki” Haley, who presided over the removal of the Confederate Battle Flag in South Carolina. Trump was aware of the CBF controversy, and I thought he had said something that vaguely indicated support for ‘free expression’ where the flag was concerned. But why, then, pick this woman?
Surprisingly quite a few Southrons, because of what I see as unwarranted blind faith in Trump are giving him a pass on this.
This evidently makes me a ‘purist’ or ‘hard-liner’ in some people’s eyes because I don’t have that kind of faith. So be it; I’m used to this being the case. Despite the amount of time and space I devote to these political things, I have less and less belief in our political system, or in politics per se; everyone these days says politics is all about compromise and dissimulating if need be to trick the enemy (and the constituencies). If so, then there’s no hope of real solutions there. If lying and dissembling is intrinsic to politics, necessarily, then it won’t save us. I have thought more and more that the culture is where the battle is to be fought. As long as the edifice of lies that is our society is still mostly unchanged, politics won’t be the solution. It only reflects the wider world, corrupt as it is.
As far as the endless defenses of moves like this by Trump, I get a definite feeling of déjà vu, taking me back to the ‘W’ years, in which everything G.W. Bush did was rationalized as ‘he’s gaming the system‘, or ‘it’s strategery‘, or ‘it’s rope-a-dope.’ Everything was a brilliant move shrewdly disguised as blundering. No one wanted to admit that his actions were exactly what they appeared to be, rather than some clever, cunning maneuver. I expect that kind of pattern with Trump; the true believers are so invested in him that there will be literally no end of the rationalizations.