Today is a day I miss being in grade school. Sure the weather around this time in Illinois sucked because February is Winter’s last big push to be awful but there were two things to look forward to.
First was getting the day off to “celebrate” Abraham Lincoln’s birthday, something my dad also received as a state employee. Looking back, I’m surprised parochial schools agreed with this since we skipped what used to be George Washington’s birthday before the two ex-prezes got consolidated into one holiday. Dollars to Donuts turd-eater Grover Norquist is scheming to get St. Reagan into this since that horrible person was born several days ago in the early 20th Century…before the dark times.
Nobody really made any major plans around Lincoln’s B-day. The day would get spent watching cartoons, loafing around, not doing our homework (probably), playing board games or with toys and conclude with our return to ‘prison.’
Valentine’s Day was the second thing. A good chunk of the school day would get wasted exchanging ‘cards,’ and/or making a mailbox with a conclusion of eating cupcakes! Today’s school-appropriate Valentines don’t even come with envelopes now, quel dommage!
The latter holiday can wait though. It’s all about Abe today and although it’s not a landmark occasion as 2009 was (his bicentennial with Charles Darwin), I want to ask friends/readers if he’s getting shit on in your state or region? In Texas, it’s amazing the crap you hear from even educated people who’ve chosen to swallow the Neo-Confederate propaganda. Funny, he was the first Republican POTUS which is always overlooked. Most Neo-Confederate bile tends to be “Lincoln was a tyrant, a dictator who was promoting Federal overreach.” It’s the same bullshit they say every other day but replaced FDR with Lincoln in their uncreative half-truth. I won’t deny Lincoln did some pretty unlawful things while leading the US through the Civil War but dissent in those days wasn’t always peaceful, thus, responses were harsh to make sure it didn’t spread.
My point is that Texan apologists are guilty of Whataboutism in a naked attempt to distract us from their acceptance of slavery, an illegal secession (being a sore loser isn’t a lawful excuse), Robert E Lee’s treason and Confederate crimes against humanity, see the Nueces Massacre or the Fort Pillow murders. Lost Cause and honor my ass! Lincoln was an amateur compared to Jefferson Davis and his thugs.
So if Lincoln is getting trashed like former president Ulysses Grant (a post for another day and here’s the short version, he wasn’t a drunk or incompetent prez as NeoConfederates lie)…stand up, speak up and fight back. I know I will as I remind the liars time and time again, you assholes started the war by attacking Fort Sumter, Lincoln didn’t do anything. I have also read the majority (or maybe all 11) of the secession statements. They all said their state was leaving over slavery. Not states’ rights (they were against them because the North used it to disobey Federal pro-slavery laws). Not tariffs (already resolved a generation earlier). Not Federal overreach (the South wanted this to get its way). They made it absolutely clear it was slavery for they claimed that Lincoln would abolish “their way of life and economy.”
And one other little thing. Don’t call Lincoln’s side the Union or the Union Army. We need to call the USA’s side by its correct name, America, the USA and/or the American Army. The 23 states which stayed together were America, not some aberration called The Union. Using “The Union” creates a false equivalence and legitimacy the Confederacy didn’t and never had. In the Civil War, the US fought an insurgency and terrorist organization called the Confederate States of America which resurfaced as the KKK while it spent decades infiltrating the two mainstream political parties until it took over the GOP.