Democracy dies in dumbness
Parsing naming rights, rotting food, post-mortem interviews, and other nonsense.
Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth has renamed Fort Liberty, formerly Fort Bragg, Fort Bragg. This time, though, the fort is named for Roland L. Bragg, a World War II enlisted man and hero of the Battle of Bulge from Maine. Before, the army base was named for an obscure and mediocre Confederate general named Braxton Bragg.
I actually love it. It disses the neo-Confederates who wanted to keep the old name to preserve their heritage and it satisfies the normies who didn’t like the name change because they basically don’t like change. Most people didn’t know who Bragg was until recently anyhow.
The Biden administration renamed the base Fort Liberty to comply with a law that would rename all bases named after members of the Confederacy. There were a lot of them across the South. Fort Bragg became Fort Liberty. Apparently, nobody had any imagination.
When Biden renamed the base, a howl went up from the right. They claimed the change was just more woke nonsense. After a period of uncertainty, the base became Fort Liberty, probably because the name couldn’t offend anybody.
While I don’t think the government should be naming anything after traitors, especially military installations or ships. I generally think naming fights are stupid, offering opportunities for performative outrage. But I like naming the base after some random enlisted man. That’s a worthwhile tribute. Roland Bragg is like the millions of other men and women who left civilian life to serve their country and then went back home to build a life and family. That’s patriotism in a nutshell.
In other news, the Inspector General of USAID, Paul Martin, says that Trump’s orders to freeze foreign aid leaves almost $500 million of food rotting in warehouses while the people who were to receive it starve. Martin was fired for telling the truth on Trump. Dissent will not be tolerated.
In Congress, Republican Representative Anna Paulina Luna of Florida says the recently released Kennedy files indicates some suspicious activity in the investigation of the assassination of JFK. She’s determined to get to the bottom of it and she’s planning to “bring in” members of the Warren Commission, the investigators who determined Kennedy was killed by a lone gunman. Unfortunately, the members of the commission are all dead. With Republicans like Luna in charge, democracy dies in dumbness.
Over the next days and weeks, we’ll find out if Trump is going to ignore judicial rulings. JD Vance and other conservatives are making the case that the executive branch can’t be constrained by the courts. The Republicans in Congress have already surrendered their power to Trump. We may be heading for an imperial presidency cheered on by people who once called themselves conservatives.
I appreciate a wry humor coming through this and other recent dispatches, and it does feel as Mills says that "dumbness" rules the day. As an observer by nature and someone whose hearing is actually like a superpower--I can overhear conversations from a fair distance without trying--I cannot help but chuckle when I keep hearing people talk about political goings-on as if thug-in-chief is finally getting our nation back together.... Rather than be surprised by much anymore these days I note a devotion toward mindlessness seems to have taken hold. I'm also picking up on a particular version of "out and out weirdness" that I've not yet been able to name as long as we're talking about the naming and/or renaming game afoot. "Back to back chicken shack. Son of a gun, better change your act. We're all confused, what's to lose? You can call this all the United States Blues" (G. Dead 1974).
I saw in the NYT today that the Associated Press was banned from a White House event because of using the original name of the Gulf of Mexico, and not "Gulf of America," as the orange man wants. Democracy does indeed die in dumbness.