Even if Trump were to choke to death on a ‘hamberder” before this day is out what’s he’s unleashed will live on, polluting our country for decades to come. Of course, the racism rooted in our original sin of slavery has always been there and has flared up but with hard work it gets tamped down to manageable levels. Trump has infused it with new life an boldness, creating a brand of WHITE and “Christian” Nationalism. If you don’t know, the KKK justified itself via Christianity and the bible. The point is that it’s not going away anytime soon and a vote just taken by a Virginia county school board proves the point.
As you can read about in this Newsweek article, the Shenandoah Valley County School Board has elected to RE-Name a couple of schools for famed Confederate Generals. Despite testimony before the vote not just from some community members and students but a descendant of one of those traitorous generals the WHITE “Christian” school board has seen fit to “honor.”
In July 2021, Stonewall Jackson High and Ashby Lee Elementary were renamed Mountain View High School and Honey Run Elementary School as schools across the country have done with names and symbols associated with the Confederacy following Black Lives Matter (BLM) protests that hit a peak in 2020.
However, the school district, which is predominantly white and Republican, became the first to reverse its Confederate name-stripping. After the 5-1 vote, the elementary and high school will go back to their previous names honoring three well-known Confederate generals—Robert E. Lee, Thomas Jonathan “Stonewall” Jackson and Turner Ashby.
Unless you’re a serious Civil War Buff you might not know the name Turner Ashby but in Virginia schools imbue students with Virginia history and as Stonewall Jackson’s key cavalry scout Ashby is a name that’s known. However this is mostly about Lee and Jackson, two iconic to southerners and racists from everywhere. In the south but particularly in Virginia they are venerated. Worshipped, right up there with Jeebus, and of course these days with the MAGA crowd Trump. I got stationed in Virginia while in the Marines, married a gal (and divorced but on good terms) and lived in the state for nearly twenty years. I know how much even people who believe it was right to abolish slavery hold Lee, and Jackson too in high regard.
Many was the time when I called them the TRAITORS they were and got puzzled, hurt and even angry responses. Being old, broken down and fat in more recent years I might not be as imposing as I once was capable of being. But at 6’4″ (legitimately) and during those years in Virginia and the eastern panhandle of West Virginia (less than thirty minutes up I-81 from Shenandoah County) even though I was referred to as a “gentle giant” I could project my inner jarhead grunt (infantryman) when I wanted to. And not even the angriest of the goobers that wanted to take a swing at me for insulting their heroes (especially Lee) dared do so.
These men were TRAITORS and be definition. They didn’t just take up arms against the United States so that they could maintain the ability to own other human beings. The effectively led large bodies of troops in a war against their country so they could form a new one that allowed them to maintain “state’s rights” by which they principally meant slavery. All those “our heritage” people absolutely HATE it when they try to use the state’s rights fig leaf and I point out that maintaining slavery was in either the declaration of the various confederate states to break away from the Union or in their Constitutions, or both. Anyway the whole Civil War was about states that wanted to do to to be able to have slaves.
And Lee and Jackson were instrumental, even key to the Civil War which cost more blood, casualties and lives than any other war we’ve had going on as long as it did. Lee was actually offered a commission in the Union Army. Gen. Winfield Scott figured Lee would wind up leading the Union forces in the east and Lincoln agreed. Lee turned it down, crossed the river to his mansion on the hill in what is now Arlington National Cemetery. From there he went to Richmond and accepted Jefferson Davis’ offer of a commission that would lead to his being in charge of things in the east.
Lee, and Jackson (Ashby too) CHOSE to be traitors. To spend so many lives and blood so that southerners who owned slaves could keep owning them. And expand that appalling practice into new states in the west and territory destined to become part of the United States. TRAITORS and for as bad a cause as any that’s existed for starting and fighting beyond all reason a war. And when they lost (in the case of Jackson and Ashby their lives before the fighting ended but both would have been treated like Lee until the day they died) were celebrated as heroic soldiers. Great leaders. And a mythical culture was created to celebrate them, including the themes of some Northern War of Aggression and The Lost Cause. Bullshit, bullshit bullshit!
If not for their military skills (tragically, West Point trained them and so many others well) the rebellion would have been quashed in six months to a year at most. Well, you don’t have to be a Civil War buff to know how appalling the cost to the country the traitorous actions of these men was. A cost that continues to have to be paid I should add.
To borrow a phrase from Lincoln’s most famous speech, it has been altogether fitting and proper that the time finally came to start stripping the names of confederate generals and leaders off of schools. Of taking, and sometimes even better tearing down statues of them. And now, thanks to a Trumpian “miracle-grow” for racism that caused an explosion of white resentment a Virginia school board has voted to again honor men who displayed NONE when it mattered most.
I’d ask anyone asking what’s the harm how they’d feel if they were in high school and a their school board got taken over by Trumpian people who loved Trump’s friendship with Boris Johnson (remember Bojo the UK Clown) and Brexit how they’d feel about having their school renamed for Benedict Arnold? With Memorial Day almost here, I wonder what they’d say at the cemetery where so many who fought in WWII would say if schools in Germany started getting renamed for Hitler, or Eichman, or Goebels, or in Japan for Tojo? Because naming schools and other public spaces and military bases too after confederate generals and leaders is the same goddamned thing!
It’s disgusting. Despicable. And TRAITOROUS. It also sends the worst possible message to young people in particular. Jackson’s great-great grandson Warren Christian joined the voices of the students at the meeting to speak against restoring the names of the schools. As the linked article describes, he cited an example of one of his fellow dissenters:
Jackson’s descendant talked of a “courageous” eighth grade student named Aaliyah “who stood up in front of the school board and she said, ‘I’m a Black student and if the names are restored, I would have to represent a man who fought for my ancestors to be slaves. That makes me feel like I’m disrespecting my ancestors and going against what my family and I believe.'”
Christian went on to tell CNN “I respect their right to rename the school, and I respect their right to do what is morally wrong.” I think in more blunt terms. TRAITORS should be vilified. It’s morally wrong and TRAITOROUS to not only fail do so but to instead honor them.
Screw these traitors. To hell with that. F**K THEM! And people like these school board members. For any of you reading this (I know we have conservative lurkers) who don’t like it I say f**k yourself with a big roll of rusty barbed wire smeared in feces from the sewer under Trump’s fake gold toilet. And when you’re done do it again. And keep doing it.
You can’t justify fighting a war for the right to maintain slavery. And you can make all the excuses you want about “heritage” and “history” but as I said earlier it was spelled out at the outset of the fight that the basis for the states wanted to secede was to maintain slavery, and also to expand it. And you sure as hell shouldn’t favor the naming of schools for traitors!
I transferred down to NC almost ten years ago. After I became disabled and it was clear I wouldn’t be allowed to return to my job I considered moving back up to where I’d moved from. Even if not back in my old position I had contacts with other outfits that served the same special needs population and could have gotten a job. Right now I’m wishing I’d done so. Because I’d have been down the road (like I said, the tip of that county is a short drive down the interstate and I’ve been in it countless times) and spoken.
What would I have said? I’d have dug out my old USMC ballcap and explained why I can’t wear it anymore – because from distance people that can’t make out the letters think it’s a MAGA hat! Something that represents ideas my father and his generation fought and sacrificed so much to stop. And that I’d been willing to fight and die for. Trump made racism, white nationalism and Hitler style thinking and action complete with his own “Reichstag Fire” on January 6 acceptable. And their intent to rename those schools was just another manifestation of such thinking. I’d have held up eight by ten pictures of Lee and Jackson and called them what they were – TRAITORS. Then spit on them, ripped them to shreds and tossed them forward at the board. And as they had security pull me out I’d have shouted you don’t honor traitors, you call them what they were and vilify them.
Keep an eye out wherever you are. Because this is only the beginning of this kind of sh*t. Be ready to organize and speak out because you can be sure other school boards in other places will imitate what the Trump anal-cysts that are the Shenandoah Country School Board has just done.
