RUTHFULLY YOURS

‘Certain grievances about Confederate memorials are legitimate. Others are steeped in a shocking level of ignorance. And that’s the problem evident even at this distance. Far from being guided by Lincoln’s better angels in human nature, the recent behaviour of some self-appointed moral sentinels appears more inclined to attention-seeking, stirring trouble, unsettling communities, causing division, feigning distress, staging shouting matches, and not caring an iota for historical truth.”
In New York, a church removed the plaque from a tree planted on its grounds by Robert E. Lee. That same day in far-off San Diego, the bronze dedication to Jefferson Davis was stripped from the highway which bears his name. Forgiveness and historical perspective are lately in very short supply.

They swung into hushed action in early morning a few months ago, just before 1.30 a.m. on Monday, April 24. A large contingent of New Orleans police barricaded off Iberville Street and Canal Place, temporary lighting was set up, and police snipers were stationed on a parking garage and other buildings with a clear view overlooking the Battle of Liberty Place monument.[1]

Then trucks and equipment from the demolition company arrived. On each vehicle the firm’s name and logo were concealed by masking tape and cardboard, while workers had been issued with bulletproof vests, yellow helmets and bandanas which they tied across their faces to prevent identification. A cherry-picker was carefully moved into place, with a tarpaulin positioned to obstruct view of actual work, then, at about 3.00 a.m. a couple of workmen, armed with grinders, started removing the top section of the obelisk.
This essay appears in the December edition of Quadrant.
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Once that first section had been levered away then dropped on a flatbed truck, at 3.15 a.m., the New Orleans mayor’s office issued a press statement formally announcing that the Battle of Liberty Place monument was being removed, and that another three divisive public statues—of Confederate President Jefferson Davis, of General Robert E. Lee, and of General P.G.T. Beauregard—would likewise be going in weeks to come. The statement explained that private funding from unnamed sources was paying for the work, and that “details about future statue removals will not be provided to the public” for safety reasons. The city mayor, Mitch Landrieu, emphasised that the removal “sends a clear and unequivocal message” about New Orleans’s focus on celebrating “our diversity, inclusion and tolerance”. He went on:

Relocating these Confederate monuments is not about taking something away from someone else. This is not about politics, blame or retaliation. This is not a naive quest to solve all our problems at once. This is about showing the whole world that we as a city and as a people are able to acknowledge, understand, reconcile—and most importantly—choose a better future.

The Jefferson Davis statue was whisked away on May 11, followed six days later by the equestrian statue of General Beauregard. The Robert E. Lee memorial looked like a tougher proposition. Modelled on Nelson’s Column in London, the general’s statue surveyed New Orleans from atop a sixty-foot column rising from a twelve-foot earth mound in a traffic island. The media confidently predicted a delay before complex work could occur. But only two days later the city council and police moved in a lightning operation, with a crane swinging the bronze figure free of its column on May 19.

It can be baffling for Australians to fathom present efforts in America seemingly to purge certain cities and towns of Civil War-related memorials. Why are statues being removed? Is art being censored? Are unpalatable aspects of history now to be erased? Various academics and artists here worry the trend resembles political correctness taken to extremes. Matters are not clarified by a sensationalist media which has reported contentious removals without explaining the deeper history of these memorials; because most have been the symbolic focus of bitter troubles festering in their communities for generations.

Take the Battle of Liberty Place monument in New Orleans. This commemorated an attempted armed coup in 1874 by a renegade group, the Democratic White League, which was seething at the result of Louisiana’s post-Civil War elections. Comprising former Confederate soldiers, League members deemed the elections invalid because blacks had been allowed to vote and stand as candidates.

So on September 19, 1874, the 5000-strong League rode en masse into New Orleans intending to unseat the state governor, William Kellogg, and his black lieutenant-governor, Caesar Antoine, both Republicans. In a pitched fire-fight on Canal Place, the League easily defeated the outnumbered city police and state militia, who sustained over 100 casualties. The League then occupied the state house, armoury and several nearby buildings, intent on taking control of the state and installing a white Democrat leadership. But after three days they fled the city when news broke that a sizable force of federal troops was on its way.

The unprecedented theft of thousands of likely privileged Trump transition emails by Special Counsel Robert S. Mueller’s investigators is yet more proof that the open-ended fishing expedition is continuing to move forward with its effort to reverse the results of the 2016 election.

News of the misappropriation of the email tranches comes weeks after Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) urged that Mueller quit or be fired, saying the independent prosecutor has “indisputable” conflicts of interest.

“We are at risk of a coup d’état in this country if we allow an unaccountable person with no oversight to undermine the duly-elected president of the United States,” Gaetz said, echoing earlier remarks by writer Michael Walsh who asserts the Left is engaged in a “rolling coup attempt” against President Trump.

Monday on “Tucker Carlson Tonight,” author Mark Steyn said, “I see no reason at all why a guy who is supposed to be investigating Russian interference in an election that took place on November the 8th should be able to seize, effectively, an incoming government’s entire confidential communications between each other in the period after the election took place. That seems to be entirely unwarranted by Mueller.”

Trump himself was more restrained in his rhetoric.

He said “a lot of lawyers thought that was pretty sad,” in reference to the purloining of the transition records by Mueller’s office. “Not looking good. It’s not looking good,” Trump said.

“It’s quite sad to see that,” Trump said. “My people were very upset.”

“I can’t imagine there’s anything on them, because as we said there’s no collusion,” he added. “There was no collusion whatsoever.”

Until somebody delivers a coup de grâce to this disgraceful coup attempt, the push could last the entirety of Donald Trump’s presidency. The end of the investigation is nowhere in sight. Although White House lawyers had said Mueller’s probe would conclude by year’s end, members of the independent prosecutor’s team reportedly said recently that the investigation will spill over into 2018 – at least.

Commissioned to investigate the Left’s ridiculous Trump-Russia electoral collusion conspiracy theory, Mueller, with his scorched-earth, shock-and-awe tactics, remains the Left’s best hope to drive the 45th president of the United States from the White House. Democrats still refuse to accept that the irretrievably corrupt Democrat Hillary Clinton was flattened by Republican Trump in the election 13 months ago. Working with the Deep State, former President Obama launched his own insurrection against the Trump administration even before it came into being.

The Trump team is probably not going to seek to fire Special Counsel Robert Mueller. To do so would be to provoke Trump’s crucial supporters in Congress. Instead, they seem to be seeking to discredit him and his investigation. This is apparently designed to achieve two possible results: the first is to put pressure on the Special Prosecutor to lean over backwards in order to avoid any accusation of bias against Trump and his team. Mueller cares deeply about his reputation for integrity and will want to emerge from this process with that reputation intact. Accordingly, he may err – consciously or unconsciously – in favor of Trump in close cases so that the public will regard him as unbiased and fair-minded.

This is a classic tactic used by lawyers, athletic coaches, business people and others in how they deal with decision makers. The great Red Auerbach, former coach of the Boston Celtics, once told me that when he screams loudly at officials, he generally gets the next close call in his favor. I have heard the same from baseball managers regarding balls and strikes.

This is a somewhat risky strategy in the context of law, because attacking the decision maker could also backfire. Whoever thinks about using this tactic should understand the particular decision maker against whom it is directed. Mueller seems like an appropriate target because of his concern for his reputation for fairness.

Even if this tactic were not to work, the attack on Mueller gives the Trump team some legal weaponry in the event of an indictment or a recommendation for impeachment. If a significant portion of the country believes that the Special Counsel was unfair, this could help in legal proceedings before judges or jurors.

So attacking Mueller may appear to be a win-win tactic for the team – certainly a lot better than firing Mueller. Fortunately for the Trump team, Mueller has played into their hands by his sloppiness in conducting the investigation. He has been incautious with his choice of personnel – too many of them seem biased against Trump, not only by their backgrounds, but by their tweets and messages. When you go after a President, you must be Caesar’s wife – above suspicion or reproach. Mueller seems to be failing the Caesar’s wife test. Moreover, the manner by which he acquired emails and other documents from the Trump transition team may raise some legal questions. The same may be true if he used the questionable dossier against Trump as a basis for securing warrants.

It says much about the state of America that the fatal train derailment in Tacoma, Washington virtually overshadowed the unveiling of President Donald Trump’s “America First” national security strategy in Washington, D.C. Trump opened his speech with condolences to the families of the three people killed and dozens wounded in the Amtrak crash. “It is all the more reason why we must first start by repairing the infrastructure of the United States,” Trump said, referring to the devastating crash.

Indeed, a “complete rebuilding of America’s infrastructure” is a key ingredient of one of his new strategy’s four pillars—“promoting American prosperity.” As Trump spoke, firefighters in California were battling blazes in Ventura and Santa Barbara. In Atlanta, at the world’s busiest airport, hundreds of stranded passengers were struggling to reschedule flights after a total power outage grounded flights and plunged the airport into darkness for hours. Large sections of Puerto Rico remained without reliable power months after a deadly hurricane. And federal officials from the National Transportation Safety Board were en route to Tacoma to investigate the cause of the crash of the Amtrak train on its inaugural trip.

President Trump’s remarks contained few specifics about how he intends to pay for his total infrastructure rebuilding, or implement his other three national security pillars—protecting the American people and homeland (by building a wall and restricting immigration); preserving peace through strength (by rebuilding the military and constructing a missile defense system); and advancing American influence abroad (through economic growth via creative diplomacy, using “all tools of statecraft”). But the president’s 55-page national strategy document, at least ten pages longer than President Obama’s 2010 opus, reads in many ways like a document that most of his predecessors could have written.

That came as a relief to foreign policy guru Peter Feaver, among others. “One of the major concerns about President Trump is that he has at times seemed so bent on breaking with establishment precedent that he has failed to appreciate just how much of what has made American great has been the produce of these core establishment ideas and institutions,” wrote Feaver, a professor of political science and public policy at Duke and coeditor of Foreign Policy’s “Elephants in the Room” blog.

In some ways, Trump’s speech, and especially the administration’s first strategy document, seem to backpedal from some of his earlier, more abrasive policies and utterances. The policy statement and especially the speech introducing it reflect the Trump foreign policy’s inward, sometimes isolationist focus and the importance it places on projecting power by rebuilding economic strength at home and defending the nation’s physical, intellectual, and cyber property and borders. The document calls Russia and China “rival nations” that “seek to challenge American influence, values and wealth.” While neither Trump’s speech nor his national security plan mentions alleged Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election, the strategy document accuses Russia of “using information tools in an attempt to undermine the legitimacy of democracies.” This criticism was only partially undercut by Trump’s reference to a call that he received Sunday from Russian president Vladimir Putin to thank him for having shared CIA intelligence that Trump said helped Russia foil a terrorist attack in St. Petersburg. “That’s a great thing,” the president said, “and the way it’s supposed to work.”