Jack Kingston, a man whose moral compass must always point evil, made one of the most abominable statements I’ve ever heard on one of his regular appearances on Anderson Cooper’s 360. AC was speaking to his guests about Trump’s idiotic statements that 1) No one asks why the Civil War happened, 2) Andrew Jackson was very upset at what he saw going on with the civil war [despite being dead for 16 years], and 3) Andrew Jackson could have prevented the Civil War if his presidency had come later in US history, presumably close to 1860.
Instead of making the point that Trump was simply lying about 1 & 2, Cooper allowed the discussion to focus on 3. As a “what if” scenario about an alternate universe, Trump can’t be said to be lying, and here Kingston even made an effort to portray the President’s comments as something other than arrogant, ignorant twaddle. I’m disappointed, of course, that AC and the panel allowed this to become the focus, but that’s no more than I expect from cable news.
No, the bile flooded my mouth when during this discussion about whether or not some alternate-universe Andrew Jackson could have prevented the Civil War, I head this exchange:
Anderson Cooper: He was a supporter of slavery.
Jack Kingson: That doesn’t … That doesn’t mean you can’t work for peace. [Time stamp: 0:39]
Maybe I didn’t pay enough attention to Obama surrogates speaking on talk shows about the President, his agenda, his miscues, his accomplishments, and – relevantly – his bombings. Maybe in there somewhere is a statement every bit as offensive as Jack Kingston made in defense of Trump this past week. But I sure as hell never encountered anything remotely this disgusting in defense of any Democratic President and I can’t even remember anything this disgusting being said in defense of another Republican.
The only things worse than that are that no one on the panel brained him on the spot and CNN actually pays him to say these things on television.
Fuck this world.
In his subconscious, or perhaps his conscious, black people are not people. So it is not a paradox between enslaved, beaten, raped, hung and degraded blacks being treated as property and “peace”. As long as the whites are happy and free and safe, there is peace.
It could be read: “Being a proponent of slavery does not mean Andrew Jackson couldn’t work for peace among human beings, which does not include blacks any more than it does cows, or fish.”
I think this is what MLK was referring to when he talked about the white moderate’s “peace” as the “absence of conflict” rather than the “presence of justice.”
Make peace with slavery?
It’s to accept slavery
@Siobhan, #2:
Absolutely. It really is the kind of thing only a white person could (in seriousness) say about the Civil War.