Major league pandering

 

After long and careful deliberations and decision-making, the U.S. government and U.S. military decided that they would change the names of military bases, aka forts, which after the Civil War had been named after high-ranking traitors.

Wait -- don't get me wrong, the Civil War of the United States was an epic, bloody, fascinating, horrible, tragic, historic, ugly, noble, magnificent, devastating ... I could go on ... chapter of American history. I'm fairly well-versed on that history, and I've been to many of its battlefields.  Given where I live, some of those battlefields are just a short drive away, some even closer if you count skirmishes and conflicts around the perimeter of the Washington defense zone (some of the defense zone forts are now Metro stops).  

And there was both bravery and cowardice on both sides. But to be clear, one side broke away from the existing United States and attempted to establish a separate country. And those leaders that learned their war-making at the expense of those United States, and who then chose to lead forces in armed conflict against it, were traitors. (Several of them also were likely slave-owners or came from slave-owning families.)

So -- having made the decision to change the names, which would involve effort and expense, this process has been implemented. One of the more recent name changes was that of Fort Bragg, named after Braxton Bragg, not one of the best generals of the Confederacy, but indeed he was one.  The name of this fort was designated to be Fort Liberty, and there's a reason for that. Read on. And note that I used the same word in MY title, because I fully agree.

Even by Trump-era GOP standards, this is a base pander

"In the Fayetteville, N.C., area, near what was then Fort Bragg, there was long but inconclusive discussion of worthy alternative names — until a Gold Star mother, Patti C. Elliott, spoke up at a 2021 community meeting.

She suggested labeling the base, home to the elite 82nd Airborne Division, after the cause for which her 21-year-old son, Spec. Daniel “Lucas” Elliott, gave his life in Iraq on July 15, 2011: “Liberty.”

Her idea persuaded the special commission Congress had established to rename the bases, and earlier this month, Fort Bragg officially became Fort Liberty."

So Fort Bragg is now Fort Liberty.

But wait, there are Republican Presidential candidates.

"And yet this outcome is unsatisfactory to Republican presidential candidates Ron DeSantis and Mike Pence, who, in separate speeches at the North Carolina Republican convention on June 9, branded the name change “political correctness” and promised to undo it if elected."

That's right, ridiculous. And pandering of the highest and most heinous kind. Especially since, as the article notes, renaming the bases was a bipartisan process. Oh, not everyone agreed. But enough of Congress did, even overriding a Trump veto (but admittedly that wasn't real hard, considering that the bill he vetoed because of the base renaming provision was also a military funding bill). 

Now, you could read the rest of the article; I invite you to do so, as it is both enlightening and depressing.  But I'll finish with how the article finishes.

"The naming of Fort Liberty culminated a congressionally mandated, deliberative process whose intention, however imperfectly achieved, was to unify the country and recognize true patriots."

Right. So somebody ought to tell DeSantis and Pence what an idiotic idea it was to change the name back to Fort Bragg.

Or you could just tell them that they're idiots.

I would.