'Woke Military' Won't Keep Ron DeSantis, Mike Pence From Loving On Racist Traitors, Living Or Dead

They both promise to 'restore' Confederate general's name to North Carolina military base.

Republican presidential candidates Ron DeSantis and Mike Pence spent the weekend appealing directly to the primary voters they assume are outright racists. (Granted, it's not an unwarranted assumption.) When speaking Saturday at the North Carolina GOP Convention, both DeSantis and Pence vowed that they would re-re-name Fort Liberty, the North Carolina military installation formerly known as Fort Bragg. (Obviously, this received cheers and applause from the crowd.)

Braxton Bragg was a Confederate general in the Civil War, so what reasonable people would consider a traitor. He resigned from the US Army in 1856 to run a sugar plantation in Louisiana , which means he owned human beings and profited off their labor. He didn't betray his country for some high-minded ideal. He was motivated primarily by greed and racial superiority.

Rallying to the defense of dead racists is just what you do when you're waging a senseless "war on woke." DeSantis told an audience of predominately white people and maybe a few sad Tim Scott folks, "I also look forward to, as president, restoring the name of Fort Bragg to our great military base in Fayetteville, North Carolina ... It's an iconic name and iconic base, and we're not gonna let political correctness run amok."

So, apparently Donald Trump dismissed the term "woke" (sort of) last week, and now DeSantis is attacking "political correctness" like it's the mid 1990s, and Rush Limbaugh is still alive. (He's not, you know.)

“Who's this for?”

— David Frum (@David Frum) 1686354395 

PREVIOUSLY: All Our Base Are Belong To Dead Confederates 

Pence was almost murdered by white supremacists attempting to overthrow the government, but he's still trying to win a Republican primary so it makes sense that he'd embrace another Lost Cause. He said, "We will end the political correctness in the hallways of the Pentagon, and North Carolina will once again be home to Fort Bragg."

“Pence: We will end the political correctness in the hallways of the Pentagon and North Carolina will once again be home to Fort Bragg.”

— Acyn (@Acyn) 1686416976 

Again with the "political correctness"! Baxton Bragg wasn't "cancelled" because he didn't include his pronouns on his Antebellum stationary. He was an awful human being.

Not that these increasingly desperate men care about actual history, but General David Petraeus — a Republican until 2002 when he became an independent — explained in a 2002 essay for The Atlantic how naming military bases after white supremacists was not an accident but deliberately racist.

Fort Bragg and most of the other posts in question were established either during World War I, at one peak of the Lost Cause movement, or in the early 1940s, as the country was feverishly gearing up for World War II. Army leaders, to say nothing of political figures at the time, undoubtedly wanted to ingratiate themselves with the southern states in which the forts were located. They bowed to—and in many cases shared—the Lost Cause nostalgia that also sponsored so much civilian statuary, street naming, and memorial building from the end of Reconstruction through the 1930s, when the trend tapered off but did not end completely. In many cases, the Army’s sentiments simply mirrored those of the society it served.

Bragg wasn't even that good at defending slavery and white supremacy. He was elevated to command the Army of Mississippi (later known as the Army of Tennessee) in June 1862. He and Brigadier General Edmund Kirby Smith tried to capture Kentucky but Bragg retreated after the Battle of Perryville in October. A couple months later, he retreated again   in Murfreesboro, Tennessee after facing the Army of the Cumberland under Major General WilliamRosecrans (a noble family). 

The next year, Rosecrans led what is regarded as one of the most brilliant maneuvers in the war and drove Confederate troops out of Middle Tennessee. Bragg surrendered and retreated. He did defeat Rosecrans at the Battle of Chickamauga, but was criticized for not mounting an effective pursuit. Major General Ulysses S. Grant later whooped Bragg's army and pushed them back to Georgia. Confederate White Supremacist President Jefferson Davis finally relieved Bragg of command.

However, this might’ve been too late for the Confederacy’s evil cause. Historians believe that Bragg’s bungling ego-driven stupidity contributed greatly to the Confederacy’s ultimate defeat. The officers and soldiers under his command resented Bragg and criticized his lousy battlefield performance. Author Peter Cozzens wrote in his book,  No Better Place to Die: The Battle of Stones River: 

Even Bragg's staunchest supporters admonished him for his quick temper, general irritability, and tendency to wound innocent men with barbs thrown during his frequent fits of anger. His reluctance to praise or flatter was exceeded, we are told, only by the tenacity with which, once formed, he clung to an adverse impression of a subordinate. For such officers—and they were many in the Army of Mississippi—Bragg's removal or their transfer were the only alternatives to an unbearable existence.

Bragg is the bad guy but more Cobra Commander than Genghis Khan. I guess those of us who aren’t white supremacist traitors can thank him for his incompetence but there’s no reason for the United States to honor this man or his undistinguished service. However, Pence and DeSantis probably have a soft spot for unhinged, racist losers of history.

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