We can learn plenty from history — and beat MAGA …
It’s 44 minutes after 7 pm on the East Coast — a bit late for an Election Day pep talk — but there’s an American Civil War story to share that parallels present and future encounters with Trump supporters.
Because you know they’re not going away anytime soon, right?
After the US Army’s July 1861 defeat at Bull Run — or Manassas, depending on which side of the war you were on — the insurgents from that rogue state most people call the “Confederacy” took command of a number of hills that not only gave them a line of sight to the Federal capital, but the insurgents’ sharpshooters can also pick off anyone on the battlefield damn-near at will.
One of the elevations was known as Munson’s Hill. The insurgents positioned an imposing Confederate flag at the top of the hill, accompanied by equally-impressive artillery pieces that could be seen from ground-level Federal troops.
After three months of fighting, Federal troops took the hill — and discovered wooden logs that were painted black to resemble the big guns they saw from the bottom of the hill. The insurgents were gone. The Union soldiers were fooled.
The federal troops could have taken Munson’s Hill long ago, albeit with casualties, but misperceptions about the insurgents’ troop size and strength prevented such an advance.
This wasn’t the first time the insurgents duped the Federal Army to evade being overrun, and then survived to fight additional battles. The spring-to-summer Peninsula Campaign of 1862 is one of several additional examples.
Some historians argue that the early judgement errors of the insurgents’ strength — committed by the Federal Army — is one of the reasons why the latter couldn’t win the war sooner, and suffered heavy losses as a result.
The parallel is clear: the US has a majority of sane citizens who want order to this chaos cocktail of pandemic, economic implosion, White supremacy, and many full blog posts of Team Trump’s other irrational and cruel acts.
But the MAGA crowds tend to conjure enough bold acts of their own — the recent Texas highway harassment episode quickly comes to mind — to make many believe the entire country has become psychotic for Trump.
Not true. The opposition isn’t trivial, but smaller than many of us may believe.
But we have to consistently show up to the polls or take to the streets in order to keep the lunatics from taking the warden’s keys.
We got this …
song currently stuck in my head: “if you wanna get to heaven” – ozark mountain daredevils
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