It's Juneteenth! Let's Blame Someone!

“If someone is able to show me that what I think or do is not right, I will happily change, for I seek the truth, by which no one was ever truly harmed. It is the person who continues in his self-deception and ignorance who is harmed.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

The year was 1969. America had a crucial air base in Libya called Wheelus AFB. At its height, roughly 15,000 troops were stationed there. It was a significant base for the Military Air Transport Service and the Air Force's Strategic Air Command.

The base commander was a colonel named Daniel "Chappie" James. There had just been a coup in Libya, and the new leader was a Libyan Army Colonel named Muammar Gaddafi. He opposed the American presence in his country, and, though we had agreed to remove the base, it wasn't fast enough for the new dictator. So, he took a convoy of military vehicles to the base to force it's surrender and to leave the country.

He was met at the gate by the Base Commander, both men wearing sidearms. Here's how Air Force Magazine described the old west standoff...

Gadhafi was a thin six feet tall, not a small man, but was dwarfed by James' 6-foot-5 athletic frame. As they began to speak, Gadhafi's hand started to move toward the grip of the "fancy" pistol strapped to his hip. James told him to move his hand away.

"If he had pulled that gun, he never would have cleared his holster," James said.

Gadhafi wisely backed down and removed the half-tracks, leaving James and the Air Force to complete the orderly withdrawal of American personnel and materiel from Libya. 

Chappie James was an original Tuskegee Airman trained in 1943. But he remained stateside to train others. He later flew over 100 combat missions in Korea and Viet Nam. In the latter conflict, he was for a time, the wingman for the legendary Col. Robin Olds, where they were affectionately known as "Black Man and Robin."

He became the first black 4-star General in US history and his photograph hung in a prominent place in the gallery of famous and honored members of the US armed forces at the Pentagon.

That is until 2025.

That's when the newly appointed Secretary of Defense, and former TV talk host Pete Hegseth, decided honoring a black general was just too darned "woke" for his taste, and despite James' accomplishments, smacked of the dreaded DEI, Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion programs, which is another way of saying "affirmative action" to members of the MAGA movement.

So he took it down, leaving a blank space in the gallery. It was later re-hung at the Air Force Museum in Dayton, Ohio, but only after a public hue and cry.

Given that the US military is 40% minority and 18% female, honoring a true hero would seem a no-brainer, but no-brainer also describes Hegseth. So James, along with other accomplished minority or female members of the armed forces, will just have to sit in the back of the bus.

The American Battle Monuments Commission (ABMC) even removed two plaques/panels honoring Black World War II soldiers from the visitor center at the Netherlands American Cemetery in Margraten, Netherlands. The displays were quietly removed following a series of executive orders dismantling diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives.

You know, WWII, the last one where black and white soldiers couldn't serve together.

Hegseth seems to think that if you are honored by the military, and are a minority man or a woman, it must have been tokenism. There is a word for that and that word is racism. There is simply no other way to frame it.

And this attitude has sadly filtered down to the local level. MAGA folks have discovered, as I wrote about a while back, that cultural issues like Islam and gay people are an effective tool for generating hate...and votes.

The gay or transsexual issue has been blown up to Godzilla proportions. I don't pretend to know why some folks are gay, or especially why some want to change genders. I can't say that I don't have religious compunctions, but this is America. In short, it's none of my damned business.

And while the transsexual percentage of the population is about 0.8%, the outrage on the right would have you think there is some guy in drag waiting outside every ladies room in the country. It has gotten so silly and heated that in Idaho, another bathroom bill is up for consideration, wherein you can only use the bathroom that is of your actual birth sex.

When asked how that would be enforced, the legislator who proposed it says that could possibly use a DNA test. Results from DNA can take up to two weeks to be returned.

That's a long wait to pee.

And of course, the creeping menace of Sharia Law is gripping Texas Republicans. In fact, the State GOP convention in Houston last weekend took on the fervor of a Protestant revival. Well, OK, except for the live elephant that relieved himself in front of the crowd, leaving a giant puddle for various officials to tiptoe around.

Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick proclaimed from the pulpit at the George R. Brown Convention Center, that Democratic Senate candidate James Talerico is definitely going to hell. I question his judgment on this score since I know Dan and was actually in business with him for a time. I wouldn't recommend it, but trust me, he wasn't always this judgmentally evangelical either.

To paraphrase the great Oscar Levant who said he knew Doris Day before she was a virgin, I knew Dan before his apparent Damascus Road experience. But that was just the silly half of it in Houston.

Now I have a handful of Muslim friends. One of them is a successful businessman in a town where I used to work. He came to the US as a child with his family, who are all successful professionals. He is devout in his faith and leads a Muslim community that has a great relationship with the local Jewish Synagogue. Both congregations exchange homemade food to share with each other when the Passover or Ramadan fasts are ended.

He is also a dedicated Republican. But I wonder how he is handling the current state of things in our beloved Texas?

The state GOP led by Greg Abbott, Ken Paxton and Dan Patrick, have managed to latch on to the chimera of a Sharia takeover of Texas and fanned the flames of hatred and prejudice.

As I wrote recently, Sharia can't do that as the Constitution prohibits anything but American jurisprudence from being practiced in courts. Sharia, like Talmudic law or even Catholic doctrines on divorce, abortion or homosexuality, is a religious precept for believers and not to be used in any legal sense. They are religious rules of the road. If you aren't a member of any of these faiths, they have no application for you.

Eat pork, get a divorce, or forget to pray 5 times a day and no cop will stop you.

But they make a great political issue because nothing succeeds politically like hate.

At the convention in Houston, there were apparently four Muslim attendees who were called out, publicly, from the podium. they were told essentially to convert or leave.

I know, nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition, but here we are.

The Texas Tribune reported...

On Saturday, outgoing GOP chair Abraham George addressed two Muslim delegates from the stage, whom members tried to expel from the convention because of their ties to the Council on American-Islamic Relations.

“I would strongly advise you to leave our caucus,” George said. “There is a Democrat convention happening in a couple weeks. Join them.”

“There’s no place in America for you”

They even tried a political alter call...

By the way, according to the Trib, Mr. Hussein left the building in tears.

So, to my Republican friends, and I do have many, this is where we are. Does anyone remember the Republican "big tent" that was popularized by President Ronald Reagan in 1967 to describe a broad party welcoming all races and creeds and diverse conservative viewpoints? Where did that thing go? Did it fold up like Barnum and Bailey, along with that elephant last week, and leave town?

I'm writing this on Juneteenth, and I have seen all the online posts about how slavery was all the Democrats' fault and others pointing out how the parties have evolved and swapped places over the years. We can't just celebrate together the ending of an evil institution?

When the word racist is thrown around willy-nilly, it loses all power. It just becomes what the other guys try to tar you with.

But this week, we have seen a man at a Presidential event accuse a former First Lady of being trans, and Muslim conservatives thrown out of a Republican convention, only for their faith.

So, please tell me how to describe that.

“It's an universal law– intolerance is the first sign of an inadequate education.”
― Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn