The run-up to the GOP 2024 presidential nomination is already exhausting. It makes me long for the “Binders full of women” days of Mitt Romney because, at least then, prominent, mainstream Republicans kept the quiet part mostly quiet and didn’t talk quite so openly all the time about honoring racists as a fundamental part of their campaign.
Despite being charged with crimes in multiple states, Donald Trump is still leading the pack of rabid shitweasels trying to become the Republican nomination for president. So what’s a craven, amoral, power-hungry, interchangeable white guy to do in this case?! Well, if you’re Mike Pence or Ron DeSantis, it’s honoring a racist loser as part of your campaign promises. Per CNN:
[T]wo 2024 GOP presidential candidates, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and former Vice President Mike Pence, are attempting to take our nation backward by vowing to rename a military base in North Carolina in honor of Braxton Bragg, a slave-owning, former Confederate general.
Bragg was a traitor and, just as importantly, a loser (as all Confederates will be for the rest of time) who his men hated, and he only kept his appointments because he was buddy-buddy with the head loser in charge, Jefferson Davis.
Until earlier this month, there was a military base named after him, which was renamed Fort Liberty. Obviously, the racists among us are big mad about stripping the base of its overt racist heritage. Per the above article:
Vowing to revert back to the name of Fort Bragg, DeSantis declared June 9 at North Carolina’s GOP state convention: “It’s an iconic name and iconic base, and we’re not gonna let political correctness run amok in North Carolina.” At the same Republican gathering, Pence echoed that pledge a day later, stating, “We will end the political correctness in the hallways of the Pentagon, and North Carolina will once again be home to Fort Bragg.”
I’m sorry, what?! How does it make sense to name a military base after a loser who fought against The United States of America?! It’s asinine to have ever named this base after Bragg to begin with. He lost. The Confederates were traitors who wanted to have their own little racist shithole country, so they fought a war over it, and got their asses handed to them as a result. Also. Bragg was not good at anything except being an a-hole. Per CNN:
As Bruce Levine, an emeritus history professor at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and author of several books on the Civil War, explained to Politifact.com, “Bragg enthusiastically, if poorly, helped lead an armed insurrection against the United States government that tried to break up the Union and preserve slavery.”
Naming a military base after Bragg is like naming a movie theater after Rob Schneider. It doesn’t make sense and only placates people with no values and terrible taste. Of course, I’m not surprised—that is exactly what the Republican Party is.
(featured image: Win McNamee/Getty Images, Scott Olson/Getty Images)
