LiLSpeedy's Blog

CENTER HARBOR, N.H. – Greg Anthes laughed when he saw the “Trump” sticker on the back window of the Ford Escape with Alabama plates in the parking lot of the Waukewan Golf Club.

Anthes, a selectman from New Durham, was on his way in to a town hall meeting with Ohio Gov. John Kasich, who became the 16th Republican to announce his candidacy for president this week, and was in the Granite State for his first trip as a candidate.

Anthes’ reaction to seeing the sticker for Donald Trump, the real estage mogul and reality TV personality whose own presidential candidacy is dominating the news these days, suggested that Anthes was dismissive of Trump.

But Anthes’ reaction when asked about Trump revealed the complexity beneath the surface of Trump’s current popularity. Even people who laugh at him, like Anthes, don’t dismiss him.

“I think it’s a good thing,” Anthes said of Trump’s candidacy. “I think he’s brought forth something that needs to be discussed. So I don’t have a problem with Trump at all, other than at some times he’s a little blunt. But some business people are that way and they’re not used to being polished.”

Anthes said that Trump’s rise in the polls is largely due to his comments about illegal immigration. Of all the things Trump has said, the comment that drew the most attention was his remark in mid-June that among those who come from Mexico to the U.S., some are “rapists.”

“When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best. They’re not sending you. They’re not sending you. They’re sending people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems with us. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people,” Trump said .

Anthes said he did not think Trump’s comments were hostile toward Latinos.

“I don’t think he’s against minorities. I truly don’t believe that in his heart. I just think he says things and it just comes out, it’s a little harsh sometimes,” Anthes
Anthes implied that Trump is stirring up a conversation now, but that he will likely not sustain his current popularity. “We were big [Rudy] Giuliani fans and he was a big front leader [in 2008] and then disappeared. So a lot of the front leaders now are not going to be around in two or three months,” Anthes said.

Others at Kasich events here and in Portsmouth earlier on Wednesday also offered praise for Trump.

“He’s saying things that need to be said that everyone else is afraid to say,” said Marie Lemieux, of Portsmouth. She was particularly upset about immigration as well. “We get some people who have been deported multiple times and they shouldn’t be in the country,” she said.

And Dave Owens, in Portsmouth, said he found Trump’s brash style “refreshing.”

“He’s willing to say what he thinks. He’s not worried about being politically correct. He’s not worried about offending the media. He takes on anyone, anywhere, without holding back,” Owens said.

But there was plenty of animosity toward Trump as well at the Kasich events. Former House Speaker Doug Scamman turned the praise for Trump’s bluntness on its head.

“People respect people who say what they think. Sometimes you want to think before you say things,” Scamman said. He predicted Trump will drop in the polls soon. “I can’t believe he’s going to go very far,” he said.

John Hodsdon, a farmer from Meredith, said Trump is a “buffoon."
“He’s been a successful one though,” Hodsdon cracked.

The most visceral reaction to Trump came from veteran Dave Moorhead, who was an infantry soldier in the Vietnam War, with the Army’s First Calvary Division. Moorhead said he had been open to considering Trump for president until Trump said last weekend that U.S. Sen. John McCain (R-A.Z.) – who was a prisoner of war during the Vietnam conflict – was not a hero.

That comment, Moorhead said, was “the lowest most disgusting thing I’ve ever heard come out of some human being’s mouth.”

“I absolutely am totally disgusted by what he had to say,” Moorhead said. “I was interested in listening to [Trump]. Now I won’t even go and listen to him.”

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Yes, You're a Racist -- And a Traitor

Hulton Archive via Getty Images

While I was out jogging this morning, I passed a neighbor's house that I have passed every day for almost three years. Usually I stroll right on by without giving it a second thought. Today, though... today was different. I stopped in my tracks and blankly stared until a car honked at me to move out of the way.

This house flies a Confederate flag.

I don't live in South Carolina or even Maryland. I live in a small town in Central Pennsylvania, 50 miles north of Gettysburg -- the site of the most famous victory of the Civil War. Yet even here, a few hundred feet from my front door flies the unambiguous symbol of hatred, racism and treason.

Normally, this would elicit some fleeting contempt and I would go about my day. But with the slayings in Charleston very much on my mind, I found myself getting angry... very angry.

Angry at this person, this "neighbor" of mine. Angry at the culture that permits such blatant hatred. Angry at the media who provide cover for the ignorant. Angry at the teachers who perpetuate historical falsehoods. Angry at myself for not being angry before.

You see, I study traditional culture. More specifically, I study the ways in which today's culture manufactures and reinforces traditions through mass media. Folklorists have a unique disciplinary perspective for this sort of analysis because there was this period of time when the field was mired in "romantic nationalism." The "true character" of a people was said to be rooted in the culture of the volk and was glorified and incorporated into more modern political movements. Like Nazism. So folklorists have a keen interest in serving as the sort-of keepers of cultural authenticity, if you will. If anyone should be highlighting the ways in which "traditions" are being manufactured, distorted and consumed, it is us... me.

In America today, the most prominent, prevalent and pernicious of these revisionist movements is the Lost Cause narrative: the idea that the Civil War was a romantic struggle for freedom against an oppressive government trying to enforce cultural change. There are scores of books on this topic, and you should check those out at your local library. But probably the most famous popular culture Lost Cause text is Gone With The Wind (both book and movie).

I hate Gone With the Wind. I hate everything about it. I hate its portrayal of the Civil War. I hate its portrayal of Southern aristocrats. I hate its popularity. I hate that it's become an iconic movie. I hate that it was ever made in the first place.

Gone With the Wind is Birth of a Nation with less horses. The movie, and its position among the American cinematic pantheon, has done more to further the ahistoric Lost Cause bull than any other single production. Because that's the fundamental problem with the Lost Cause narrative: it's not true.

Let's go one-by-one through some typical Lost Cause-tinged revisionist talking points:

The Civil War was about economics, not slavery!

• Yes, the Civil War was about the economics of slavery.

The Civil War was about states' rights, not slavery!

• Yes, the Civil War was about the states' right to maintain slavery.

That's not the Confederate flag!

• True, it's the battle flag of the Army of Northern Virginia, which actually makes your usage even worse. It's the banner under which men fought and died to enact secession.

Heritage not hate!

• Funny story: The heritage is hate. This is my favorite talking point because it sets up a false dichotomy and then tries to pretend "heritage" is a signifier for some romantic, noble culture just waiting to be recaptured. When Lindsay Graham says things like, "The flag represents to some people a civil war, and that was the symbol of one side. To others it's a racist symbol, and it's been used by people, it's been used in a racist way," he makes a mockery of the history. Yes, Senator, it does represent one side of the Civil War: the side that advocated slavery and secession. It's the flag of treason.

The savagery of slavery is offensive enough to justify any level of outrage. The disgusting post-war history of the Ku Klux Klan is offensive enough to justify any level of outrage. But what might be the most absurd part of this neo-Confederate "heritage" romanticism is that its advocates are simply glorifying treason.

Remember that time South Carolina attacked Fort Sumter? That's the literal definition of treason. And I quote Article III, Section 3 of the U.S. Constitution: "Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying war against them, or in adhering to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort." Not exactly abstract legalese that requires a ton of parsing.

The states that seceded to become the Confederacy were actively engaged in open war against the United States government. A war they started because of the election of a man they deemed "hostile to slavery." A war they fought to maintain the "heaven ordained supremacy of the white man over the inferior or colored race." A war they lost.

But it was a war based on a fundamental social conflict that is still not resolved and simmers under the zeitgeist, rearing its ugly head every so often to remind us it hasn't gone anywhere. It was not resolved in 1865, not in 1965, and sadly, not in 2015.

The "heritage" of the Confederacy, the enduring belief in Lost Cause romanticism, the invention and adoption of revisionist "traditions" and culture, has become society's Old Faithful: a cultural geyser that periodically lets off steam; a spectacle at which we ogle and wax poetic about the fragility of our condition. But one day it'll explode and it'll be a catastrophe from which we might not recover.

The tragedy of America is that this is all self-inflicted. This trajectory to self-destruction doesn't have to be the outcome. As Jon Stewart so eloquently pointed out, "Al Qaeda... ISIS... they're not on the damage we can apparently do to ourselves on a regular basis."

The troglodyte that killed those people in South Carolina wanted to fire the opening shots in a new race war. He is a Confederate in every sense of the word. He is a white supremacist. He is a terrorist. He is a traitor.

The worst part is that he is not some aberration. Oh, we want to comfort and assure ourselves that he is, that he has some mental issue, or that he's evil, or some other easy excuse that absolves us all of responsibility.

His actions were heinous, but he is the product of a media environment and culture that protects the ignorant and glorifies division. This is the "heritage" celebrated by those who fly the Confederate flag. By those like my neighbor.

And what about my neighbor? In a perfect world, I would ring his doorbell and have a reasonable discussion with him about how what he's doing is offensive and ahistoric and I'd love to correct his understanding of the entire mess. But the sad fact is, he's not alone, either.

In my time here I've seen scores of Confederate bumper stickers, license plates, and even other flags. Neo-Confederate revisionism is everywhere. It's not confined to "dumb rednecks" or red-state voters or Nascar fans or any other easy stereotype we use to deceive ourselves and dismiss painful realities. It's not even confined to older generations. The killer in South Carolina is 21. He's a Millennial. He's one of us.

And every day that we don't react to that information, every day we don't internalize this conflict, every day we tell ourselves nothing is wrong, every day we claim we can't be racist because we have black friends, every day we share some viral cat video instead of watch the news, every day we don't knock on our neighbor's door... is another day nothing will change.

Steve Peoples and Brendan Farrington, Associated Press‎ June‎ ‎15‎, ‎2015

Jeb Bush has optimistic message, faces challenges in ‘16 bid

MIAMI (AP) — Jeb Bush launched a Republican presidential bid months in the making Monday with a vow to get Washington “out of the business of causing problems” and to stay true to his beliefs — easier said than done in a bristling primary contest where his conservative credentials will be sharply challenged. “I will campaign as I would serve, going everywhere, speaking to everyone, keeping my word, facing the issues without flinching,” Bush said, opening his campaign at a rally near his south Florida home at Miami Dade College, where the institution’s large and diverse student body symbolizes the nation he seeks to lead.

The former Florida governor, whose wife is Mexican-born, addressed the packed college arena in English and Spanish, an unusual twist for a political speech aimed at a national audience.

“In any language,” Bush said, “my message will be an optimistic one because I am certain that we can make the decades just ahead in America the greatest time ever to be alive in this world.”

Bush enters a 2016 Republican contest that will test both his vision of conservatism and his ability to distance himself from family.

Neither his father, former President George H.W. Bush, nor his brother, former President George W. Bush, attended Monday’s announcement. The family was represented instead by Jeb Bush’s mother and former first lady, Barbara Bush, who once said that the country didn’t need yet another Bush as president, and by his son George P. Bush, recently elected Texas land commissioner.

Before the event, the Bush campaign came out with a new logo — Jeb! — that conspicuously leaves out the Bush surname.

And in his speech, he took on critics in both parties, particularly Hillary Rodham Clinton, the overwhelming favorite in the race for the Democratic presidential nomination.

“The party now in the White House is planning a no-suspense primary, for a no-change election,” Bush said. “The presidency should not be passed on from one liberal to the next.”

He later called out Clinton by name, and indirectly jabbed fellow Republicans, including his political protege Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, who welcomed Bush into the 2016 contest earlier in the day. “We are not going to clean up the mess in Washington by electing the people who either helped create it or have proven incapable of fixing it,” Bush said.

Bush joins the race in progress in some ways in a commanding position, in part because of his family connections.

He has probably raised a record amount of money to support his candidacy and conceived of a new approach on how to structure his campaign, both aimed at allowing him to make a deep run into the GOP primaries. But on other measures, early public opinion polls among them, he has yet to break out.

While unquestionably one of the top-tier candidates in the GOP race, he is also only one of several in a large and capable Republican field that does not have a true front-runner.

In the past six months, Bush has made clear he will remain committed to his core beliefs in the campaign to come — even if his positions on immigration and education standards are deeply unpopular among the conservative base of the party that plays an outsized role in the GOP primaries.

Tea party leader Mark Meckler on Monday said Bush’s positions on education and immigration are “a nonstarter with many conservatives.”

“There are two political dynasties eyeing 2016,” said Meckler, a co-founder of the Tea Party Patriots, one of the movement’s largest organizations, and now leader of Citizens for Self-Governance. “And before conservatives try to beat Hillary, they first need to beat Bush.”

Yet a defiant Bush has showed little willingness to placate his party’s right wing.

Instead, he aimed his message on Monday at the broader swath of the electorate that will ultimately decide the November 2016 general election. Minority voters, in particular, have fueled Democratic victories in the last two presidential elections.

Of the five people on the speaking program before Bush, just one was a white male.

Bush is one of 11 major Republicans in the hunt for the nomination. Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker and Ohio Gov. John Kasich are among those still deciding whether to join a field that could end up just shy of 20.

Bush’s critics in both parties have criticized him as aggressively as they would if he were the clear Republican favorite.

Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul said Monday there’s “Bush-Clinton fatigue” in America. “I think some people have had enough Bushes and enough Clintons,” Paul said in an interview with The Associated Press.

After touring four early-voting states, Bush quickly launches a private fundraising tour with stops in at least 11 cities before the end of the month. Two events alone — a reception at Union Station in Washington on Friday and a breakfast the following week on Seventh Avenue in New York — will account for almost $2 million in new campaign cash, according to invitations that list more than 75 already committed donors.