Live Free or Die in MAGAdonia

     It happened, ironically, in a state whose motto is, "Live Free or Die."

     Nikki Haley was always a triangulator. 13 years ago, when she was still running for governor, Haley defended Confederate history month, saying that if it was observed in a non-negative way (and I'd be fucked running to know it could not be), then it was all good. She was all rah rah sis boom bah regarding flying the flag of a failed rebellion (the Stars and Bars) over the state house.

     That all changed in June 2015 after Dylann Storm Roof killed nine black parishioners at an AME church. Then Haley, always savvy to know when the political winds shift and in what direction, led the charge to remove the flag from the state Capitol, where it had flown since 1961. (As Eugene Robinson noted eight and a half years ago, it was flown in some impotent declaration of war over racial desegregation.)

     So, when a voter stood up and asked her if she knew what was the cause for the Civil War, she turned her back on her questioner and sarcastically muttered that that was "an easy question." She then began rambling on about how it was about "how government worked", individual freedoms (like the freedom to own other human beings) and so forth. Basically the states' rights bullshit boilerplate. She then asked the voter what he thought the answer was and he said he wasn't running for president.

     Haley then went on and on about every reason for the Civil War except the real one, which everyone not named Nikki Haley knows is slavery. Byron Donalds knew it. The president knew it. Hell, I guarantee you every black child knew it.

     Haley either didn't know or pretended not to.

     To quote Arthur C. Clarke, both are equally terrifying.

     Haley, let's not forget, was once the governor of the state in which the Civil War started. This was on April 12, 1861, nearly four years to the day before the war finally ended, when Fort Sumter was shelled for 34 hours by the newly-minted Confederacy.

     You'd think every schoolchild would know this, let alone the governor of the state in which this transpired. But no one ever accused Nikki Haley of being burdened with a surfeit of intelligence. So, maybe she didn't know about this.

     Then again, there's always the possibility that Nikki was playing to the neoconfederate base that still calls the lost cause "the war of Northern Aggression." 

     If that's her tactic, then it's a very risky one, at best. Because Haley comes from the only state in the union that has an African American majority electorate. And they're not going to appreciate her ignorance or feigned ignorance on the matter of slavery.

     So, what did Haley do the next day? Well, in tried-and-true Republican fashion, she "clarified" her remarks and, in the process, dug a deeper hole. She tried to feign a moment of clarity to say, "Of course it was slavery", tacitly forgetting to explain to the listeners why she couldn't even bring herself to list slavery as the reason for the Civil War.

     Then, and this is where her industrious digging to China continued, she blamed her gaffe on the guy who'd asked the question, even calling him a "Democrat plant". You know, because the guy's presumed political affiliation is alone responsible for Haley's every neuron to leak out of her ears at that moment.

     Then, like a right proper redneck, Sen. Tom Cotton jumped balls first into the fray to blame Democrats for starting slavery to begin with, blithely pretending not to know (or maybe he doesn't know) how the Democrats and Republicans from the antebellum era neatly switched ideologies starting around the 30s (the 60s in the south).

     Let's not forget, folks, that the only reason we didn't have an anti-lynching law on the federal law books until last year is because of the modern-day Republican Party bitterly opposing it for decades. In 2020, such a bill that passed the House was blocked by Rand Paul of Kentucky. This was just days after the very public murder of George Floyd, by the way.

     So, I think we can laugh off Tom Cotton's fallacious arguments about the Democrats of today being responsible for the slavery of yesterday.

     Nikki Haley cannot be so easily laughed, off, however. As her questioner pointed out, she's running for president. And even though she wasn't born in this country, you think she'd know a very basic fact of what started the Civil War in her country and state. Because it seems the stupidest and most ignorant among us are getting voted into the most powerful offices and this trend needs to stop because it's not funny, any more.