Yes, it's hyperbole. The "nobody" is outrageous and false. It gets your attention, and it increases the power of his fame-making machine, further inflating the importance of Juneteenth, and further connecting it to Trump, where it never belonged before.
__________________
*Link goes to Jonathan Chait at NY Magazine, quoting this WSJ interview. Chait:
... Trump has caused more people to become aware of Juneteenth, just as he has caused more people to become aware of the 25th Amendment, the Emoluments Clause, narcissistic personality disorder, “democratic backsliding,” the two-thirds threshold required for impeachment, and other concepts that had largely been excluded from daily news coverage. This has not been an era of progress. But it has been a time of enlightenment.What's "democratic backsliding"? I don't remember hearing that phrase before. I see it has a Wikipedia entry:
In political science, democratic backsliding, also known as democratic erosion or de-democratization, is a gradual decline in the quality of democracy.... Political scientist Nancy Bermeo has written that blatant forms of democratic backsliding such as classic, open-ended coups d'état and election-day fraud have declined since the end of the Cold War, while more subtle and "vexing" forms of backsliding have increased. The latter forms of backsliding entail the debilitation of democratic institutions from within....
Beginning in 2017, political scientists identified the United States under President Donald Trump as being in danger of democratic backsliding. In a 2019 journal article, political scientists Robert C. Lieberman, Suzanne Mettler, and others wrote that Trump's presidency presented a threat to the American democratic order because it simultaneously brought together three specific trends—"polarized two-party presidentialism; a polity fundamentally divided over membership and status in the political community, in ways structured by race and economic inequality; and the erosion of democratic norms"—for the first time in American history. Lieberman et al. noted that Trump has "repeatedly challenged the very legitimacy of the basic mechanics and norms of the American electoral process, invoking the specter of mass voter fraud, encouraging voter suppression, selectively attacking the Electoral College, and even threatening to disrupt the peaceful transfer of power" and noted that "Never in the modern era has a presidential candidate threatened to lock up his opponent; castigated people so publicly and repeatedly on the basis of their country of origin, religion, sex, disability, or military service record; or operated with no evident regard for facts or truth." In 2020, political scientists Alexander Cooley and Daniel Nexon, wrote that "the Trump administration has consistently de-emphasized the importance of human rights and democracy in its rhetoric and while adopting language and tropes similar to those of right-wing, illiberal movements." Colley and Nexon cited Trump's praise of autocratic rulers, his echoing of ethno-nationalist rhetoric, his efforts to deligitmize journalism and journalists as "fake news" and his policies erecting new barriers to refugees and asylum-seekers as similar to politics "found in backsliding regimes."
The 2019 annual democracy report of the V-Dem Institute at the University of Gothenburg found that the U.S. under Trump was among the world's liberal democracies experiencing "democratic erosion" (but not full-scale "democratic breakdown"). The report cited an increase in "polarization of society and disrespect in public deliberations" as well as Trump's attacks on the media and opposition and attempts to contain the judiciary and the legislation. The report concluded, however, that "American institutions appear to be withstanding these attempts to a significant degree," noting that Democrats had won a majority the House of Representatives in the 2018 midterm elections, which "seems to have reversed the trajectory of an increasingly unconstrained executive."
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107 comments:
I had never heard of it till this week.
Democrats have still not gotten over their anger at Republicans for freeing their slaves.
"a gradual decline in the quality of democracy"
It's true.
Examples: mobs tearing down statues in violation of democratically enacted laws, courts endorsing executive action like DACA that blatantly violates democratically enacted laws and egregiously reinterpreting old laws to mean new things that Congress could not agree on, deep staters trying to sabotage an election, an incoming administration, and then a sitting president.
And so on, and so forth.
It sounds like another Kwanzaa to me.
It was just a Texas thing, when I lived there 40 years ago.
And it was "racist" af, because it's when the slaves were told they had been freed. And whites still chuckled about it.
So, why the cultural appropriation of this particular tradition?
I am kind of surprised by the number of people who hadn’t heard of Juneteenth. I agree with Crack that it should be a national holiday. I think instead of creating a new one, and making our govt that much less cost effective, we should replace Presidents’ Day, since they were all scumbags.
But I think the “nobody” sense that he is using is similar to the one in “Nobody goes there anymore, it’s too crowded."
Michael K for the win!
We. could honor Lincoln on Juneteenth. I am sure he wouldn’t mind and it’s more relevant than his birthday, which is kind of un-American to be honoring the birthdays of leaders. Kind of like the King’s birthday, or King’s Day in Holland, or something they might do in North Korea, to give thanks for the blessing of the birth of fearless leader. It’s not us.
Come on. We know Juneteenth, but it has never received as much attention as it has this year. Now all the virtue signalers are like, "I celebrate it every year! Never missed it!"
God Bless Juneteenth and the end of slavery, but give me a virtue signaling break.
I've known of Juneteenth for years, and I'm not a part of the AA community. (I'm not bragging about this, just stating a fact.) I've never been invited to a celebration.
But it's super important. Ask anyone!
And it'll be important four years from now, too!
When there isn't a presidential election that year, it seems to lose popularity. I'm not entirely sure why, though.
Funny how Hillary Clinton, who took hundreds of millions of dollars in donations from countries like Russia with business before her Department of State never made anybody aware of the Emoluments Clause though.
And the 25th amendment is a trap just waiting to snare Biden and make his Veep POTUS.
I never heard of "juneteenth" until last year, maybe the year before. A quick check of old calendars would quickly come to an "awarness" date. Most probably I was made aware by some leftist/dnc scribe doing a 30 second rant about President Trump giving a poor groveling performance to recognize something or other. I still don't know what event triggered the recognition, to busy with important stuff to care. Something about blacks, most likely an event where blacks feel they were slighted. If I had to guess, its the reason blacks see no need of two parents rearing the children they bring into the world.
Saying nobody has ever heard of something is almost always false in a literal sense. It's a common figure of speech though. Why is it outrageous?
Democratic backsliding is a fantasy they have. The votes that have struggled the year to get counted have been in democratic primaries.
As for Juneteenth, it should be a national holiday. It is definitely a national milestone worth celebrating.
Trump talks a lot of shit. Again. And maybe I should be bothered by how little I let it upset me anymore.
But the biggest norm he's eroding is who's supposed to be running the show. And "even threatening to disrupt the peaceful transfer of power" is pretty rich when invoked as a complaint against Trump.
Chait owned the term "cocksucker" the same way.
The Dems embraced slavery and started the KKK, They should be climbing hills on gravel roads on their knees today. While whipping their backs.
A good example of "democratic backsliding" is the development of a political "Resistance" within the leadership of the US Intelligence Community during the 2016 election race.
* This "Resistance" conspired to frame the Republican candidate and his campaign-staff members as witting agents of the Kremlin.
* This "Resistance" remained silent while Hillary Clinton declared falsely that the Republican candidate was disregarding some imaginary finding that allegedly was supported by a consensus of all 17 US Intelligence agencies.
* This "Resistence" developed an "insurance policy" to deal with the possibility that the Republican candidate might win the election.
* This "Resistence" conspired to frame and remove from office President Trump's National Security Advisor on false charges.
That is "democratic backsliding".
I had never heard of it until about 10 years ago. Amazement caused me to mention it to at least a half dozen or so very white people over the ensuing few months. Not one of them had ever heard of it either.
Well, that's a good point Mike Sylwester.
Since we've decided to cancel everything that has a legacy of racism... when do we get around to cancelling the Democratic Party?
We honor Washington on the Fourth of July. Presidents’ Day is a superfluous holiday.
To say that "no one every heard of it" is to say that he and his circle of friends had never heard of it. He dismisses the entirety of Black Americans, many (most?) of whom had heard of it, and/or celebrated it. He also dismisses the rest of us who were aware of it. Frankly- I think it's an appropriate holiday and should be a Federal Holiday. But that's me. I think it should be something we all celebrate and a day to remember that we need to keep working on things. All of us. Not just white people.
As for some of the rest of it: "... like political scientists Robert C. Lieberman, Suzanne Mettler, and others wrote that Trump's presidency presented a threat to the American democratic order because it simultaneously brought together three specific trends—"polarized two-party presidentialism; a polity fundamentally divided over membership and status in the political community, in ways structured by race and economic inequality; and the erosion of democratic norms"
I wonder if these political experts would consider ballot harvesting as something that erodes democratic norms? There's a lot of eroding going on these days and it's overwhelmingly being done by the Democrats and Socialists in our country. They seem to not like our country very much. Trump loves this country. On that alone he gets my vote.
So is it wrong to fly your flag on Juneteenth?
Just now on FOX video of 4 portraits of past Speakers of the House that served in the Confederacy. Let the healing begin.
Democratic backsliding is Democrats using the FBI, CIA, FISA, and the media to try and overturn an election.
Where is the poll, trump is correct again, I expect less than 20% of the populace know what juneteenth is. I've heard of it, but still do not know what it is.
I've actually heard a definition of it, and it still doesn't make sense. You want a national black holiday, the emancipation proclamation sounds about right, not some unknown event.
Well he never head of it because he doesn't know about much history or geography.
I never heard of it until now either. I don't remember Obama celebrating this holiday, and knowing how much he loved to divide us, I am very surprised!!!
Isn't "nobody ever heard about it" a colloquialism for "few truly understood its meaning or origin"?
The definition they (both the American and German institutional defenders) are using is self serving of course. It is the status quo from which they benefit.
There is no way to argue these points without seeming self-serving. I like it so, therefore I define it so.
Or, if not, it is a case of that perpetual sin of fuzzy scientists, definitionitis, that urge akin to pinning dead butterflies to cork boards, they pin words. This word means x because of my pet rationalization, and not x+1, or y, or anything else, so there, it is pinned.
It goes to what one thinks "democracy" means, and who gets to do the defining. Is it that the "people", however defined, have the ability to express their will, or is it some set of institutional arrangements? And which set of institutional arrangements?
The real world throws any number of dilemmas into this thing.
Consider the Philippines. Its had a "democracy" for over a hundred years (granting some dictatorial outages), with voting and constitutional limits and a free press etc. However, due to the local culture and economic realities actual power was always in the hands of an oligarchy that controlled the vote by various means, and hence also controlled the checks and balances.
Until 2016. Because of economic shifts, including technology (internet and universal wireless access), the globalization and sophistication of the public as many millions have now worked abroad, increase in personal wealth, etc., it had a real election, where the common man finally defied the elite and elected a president unacceptable to the 3%, as they often put it, that is, the "decent" bourgeoisie.
Now, as it happens, the very popular fellow they elected has done a great deal to weaken the checks and balances of the system, including the independence of the media, to serve his own interests. He can do this of course because he is popular; he would easily be elected again tomorrow.
Has democracy been weakened or enhanced?
I can't say, because to do so is not to argue realities but word definitions. Real things have changed, but it seems the important thing is what to say about it.
...blatant forms of democratic backsliding such as classic, open-ended coups d'état and election-day fraud
Beginning in 2017, political scientists identified the United States under President Donald Trump as being in danger of democratic backsliding...
hard to argue with that! before President Trump,
the losing party SELDOM used the FBI and the CIA to attempt to destroy the incoming President
the losing party SELDOM used its ownership of major media and MASSIVE monopolies to belittle and hinder the incoming President
the losing party SELDOM used viral scares to destroy the American economy
Juneteenth is very important to "liberals" and others of that ilk because they're so pro-liberty, you know.
Oh, for fuck's sake- Juneteenth was known to less than 5% of the population- that equates to "no one" for all practical purposes. Trump is literally correct in that he has now raised awareness of it to a new high, and all he had to do was schedule a rally, or take a shit on June 19th. When Trump is gone, Juneteenth will return to obscurity until the next Republican candidate tries to do something else on June 19th of an election year.
MayBee said...
Democratic backsliding is a fantasy they have. The votes that have struggled the year to get counted have been in democratic primaries.
As for Juneteenth, it should be a national holiday. It is definitely a national milestone worth celebrating.
******************
Sure. Let's make all state holidays federal holidays. Everybody gets paid, nobody works.
Prog nirvana.
It is amazing how every little thing the president says is psychologically analyzed and used to attack him…
Before Juneteenth it was brought to his attention, no one brought the event to his attention, which led him to say ["But nobody had ever heard of it."]. Which justifies his comment of "I did something good: I madeJuneteenth very famous". He recognized that Juneteenth is "actually an important event, an important time"
Then you psychoanalyze him:
[1] "Yes, it's hyperbole. The "nobody" is outrageous and false." Really? how many times have you hyperbolically used the expression "nobody" which we all know is too many people? Do you apply this judgement to "everybody" or just because of your animus to Trump and to those that you do not like?
[2] You get into his head and determine that the reason for what he said is "[to] get your attention, and it increases the power of his fame-making machine, further inflating the importance of Juneteenth, and further connecting it to Trump, where it never belonged before."
I do not want to do to you what you have done to the president, so I just ask you: Is this the way TDS (Trump derangement Syndrome) manifest itself? Have fallen victim to "Group Think"? Are you close to put a knee on the ground and pledge alliance to BLM?… Are you telling us that everything he said is reprehensible? How about if someone else had said those words. What a disappointment… I was under the impression that you were different. Just like you, I do not like the guy, but I think he is a great president. I voted twice for Clinton, independently of how he used his cigars and I did not liked him either.
It’s not a two-thirds threshold for impeachment. I’d never heard of that requirement until Chait.
Chait is making Trump’s point.
Perfect holiday for all lovers of liberty.
I don't care even one shit about Juneteenth. BFD, the Texas slaves found out about the Emancipation Proclamation. It was already a fact. Sort of like Barack, Dog-Eater One, finding out about everything in "the papers".
Oh
https://mobile.twitter.com/TrumpWarRoom/status/1273984876426006529
I first hear of Juneteeth day in 1987. I was driving from CA to WI with my sister and her two sons and we decided to take a break and spend some time at a park in Chicago on the lake to let the boys run around some. We were at a picnic table when a black man came up to us and said that we should leave because it was Junteeeth day and that we may not be safe. Prior to this I had had a number of very close friends that were black and had never heard of Juneteeth day.
A good way to observe Juneteenth would be to read the chapter on Frederic Douglass in Jim Powell's classic THE TRIUMPH OF LIBERTY, a collection of mini-biographies of the great advocates of liberty down through the centuries. And you can supplement that by looking up Douglass' acerbic critique of socialism.
Never heard of Juneteenth.....ever...... until it was a big deal that Trump was scheduling an event on the 19th of June and then decided to change the date.
- I think it's an appropriate holiday and should be a Federal Holiday. But that's me. I think it should be something we all celebrate and a day to remember that we need to keep working on things. All of us. Not just white people.
Why? If we are erasing history as we speak by destroying all monuments and literally erasing facts from books because we don't like what happened in the past or because it is currently politically expedient....why should I care about preserving this piece of history?
We need to care about ALL of history, preserve it and and learn from from it. We can't pick and choose what history we like and distort the past to suit present "fee fees". Until then....I just don't care.
I didn't know what it was. When I binged it now I typed "what is..." and Juneteenth was the first entry. I'm guessing lot of people don't know what it is.
I didn't know what it was. When I binged it now I typed "what is..." and Juneteenth was the first entry. I'm guessing lot of people don't know what it is.
More projection. Hillary refused to accept the outcome. Many Democrats eroded democracy since 2016 in repeatedly calling Trump illegitimate and a Russian stooge wholly without evidence and that has done incalculable damage to faith in our system. As they continue to project upon him the same charge for 2020. Zep has it right. The song remains the same.
I mean...Google Trends tells a story about Juneteenth..
https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&geo=US&q=juneteenth
@Tim in Vermont:
I am kind of surprised by the number of people who hadn’t heard of Juneteenth.
I'm one of them. I'd never heard of it until Trump initially scheduled a rally for June 19th. And, nearly simultaneously, Apple's Calendar app alerted me to it, which I don't recall it ever having done previously.
It should be a national holiday.
I had never heard of it until I moved to Texas in 1982. Not heard much about it since then until the last couple of weeks. And most people who have been commenting about it recently don’t seem to understand it.
Things Trump has already made very famous:
Fake News
The Deep State
The Biden Family's Ukraine and China connections
Antifa
Improper Use of the FISA Courts
The institutional nature of illegal immigration
Elizabeth Warren's lack of Native American Heritage
Capture of the Democratic Party by the Squad
The decline of Nancy Pelosi's neighborhood
The ability of the Federal Government to use Military Force to stop insurrections
How terribly our large cities are run
Selective law enforcement in blue states and cities
The opportunity for voter fraud through mail-in ballots
There are plenty of Trump things one can be critical or snarky about, but "democratic backsliding" is not one of them. His election against all the established powers was a quintessentially democratic action against oligarchy.
The sources of emocratic backsliding are the Democrats and their media and chattering class allies who want to corrupt elections and suppress free speech.
Democrat backsliding is similar to democratic gerrymandering, and equivalent to judicial overrides when it is politically profitable.
It's just Trump cat-calling to his racist phanbois. Are you people happy I used cat-calling instead of dog-whistle?
I wouldn't call these days "enlightened times". But that's just me.
As for Juneteenth? I'm an old white geezer, but I've known of Juneteenth for at least 60 years and knew of its significance. If I wanted to snark, I'd say that the African Americans near Galveston were just slow to get the word that the Civil War was over.
That said, if we, as a nation, wanted to celebrate the end of slavery, why not choose the date Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation---or the date the Army of Northern Virginia surrendered at Appomattox? I'd argue for the date of signing the Emancipation Proclamation myself but your mileage may vary.
“So is it wrong to fly your flag on Juneteenth?“
Only if it’s a Confederate flag.
This story reminds me that William F. Buckley had supposedly never heard of Harriet Tubman until fairly far along in life. I know I had never heard of Sacagawea until maybe 20 years ago, but now all the schoolkids seem to regard her as a keystone figure in early American history.
'Democratic backsliding" reminds me of "nuclearism", a concept common in academic psychiatry in the 1980s. The idea was that if you did not accept that the world was close to nuclear annihilation and that things were being made worse by that warmonger Ronald Reagan, you were mentally ill, suffering from denial of reality.
Once again, it's politics masquerading as science.
Juneteenth is not a significant holiday in my neck of the woods. I've only heard it in passing and had to look it up to see what it was about. It's like Patriots Day, a holiday that is very popular in Massachusetts and celebrated in a few other places but is otherwise obscure. That said, I would support making it a national holiday.
From the virtue signaling I see about it, it appears that many of the people who suddenly think Juneteenth is a very important holiday also do not seem to have any idea what it is about other than either (a) it involves slavery or (b) they can use it as a cudgel against someone they don't like. Using an end-of-slavery celebration as a political weapon does not seem to be in the spirit of the thing and in some cases appears to be profoundly racist. You do not get to use freed slaves as props for your mundane hatred.
For the record, Juneteenth is the day that the Union general in Galveston, Texas declared all slaves were free in Texas. They had technically been freed a couple of years earlier by the Emancipation Proclamation and the Civil War was already over at this point, but Texas was out in the middle of nowhere so it was necessary to communicate that, yes, we really did mean that thing about freeing the slaves. Furthermore, slavery would not be abolished throughout the country until December with the passing of the 13th Amendment, as there were still slaves in the border states that were not covered by the Emancipation Proclamation.
Most important, Jonathan, Trump has exposed the corruption and sedition of the secular trinity, Democrats, Deep State and mediaswine. Even if the mediaswine are successful in choosing our next President for us, their credibility will never be restored. Media influence is now a product of saturation, not credibility.
Trump’s Presidency has hardened the resolve of 40+% of the population to resist the destruction of our nation by the unholy trinity. It has also exposed the inexplicable ignorance and tolerance of another 40% for the corruption and criminality of the ruling class, the final 20%.
Unfortunately, as pointed out by St. Luke and Lincoln in other contexts, “A house divided against itself cannot stand.”
it's just the way he talks. Polls show more people getting tired of it every day. I was tired in 1985.
Again, notwithstanding the Tim Kaine School of History --
“Juneteenth” is the day that the Emancipation Proclamation, effective January 1, 1863, was enforced in Texas in 1865.
It was not the end of slavery throughout the U.S. since slavery continued in Delaware and Kentucky until December 1865 when the 13th
Amendment was ratified by other states. Delaware did not vote to ratify
until 1901. Kentucky ratified in 1976.
Here, Arlington was effectively emancipated with the occupation by Union troops in 1861. The rest of Virginia followed with the forfeiture of slaves and thus legal end of slavery on January 1, 1863, under the Emancipation Proclamation.
DC Emancipation Day is April 16 & is a holiday. DC’s enslaved people were freed in 1862.
The Maryland state constitution abolished slavery in November 1864.
You all can figure out when slavery was abolished in your state. Unless you live in Texas, it certainly was not June 19, 1865. And there is no reason that anyone outside of Texas should know that date -- or should consider it especially significant to the nation as a whole.
On June 19, 1865, slavery still legally existed in Joe Biden's Delaware, and would for several more months.
Yeah, well good for Trump. I guess he's "Touting" and "Promoting" Juneteenth or whatever it is. Everyone thinks its incredibly important, which is why no one talked about it before.
Basically, no matter how bizarre or nonsensical anytime any minority group or "protected class" pushes some historical event or demands something, the rest of society in supposed to metaphorically "wash their feet" and go along with it. First, we can't use triangles because the ADL says so, now we all have to care about Juneteeth or whatever, because ending slavery 165 years ago is suddenly VERY IMPORTANT.
I suppose it shows how little real news there is, and how good life is for everyone that we can focus on such trivia.
I'd heard the term before, but had no idea what it meant until reading an article about it this morning, actually.
Its hilarious how all the white-bread liberals rush out to show us how they love black folks unlike those bad-whites. Before they could do it by supporting something important like civil rights, but now they're reduced to babbling about the anniversary dates and talking about how "Disgusting" those Confederate statues are, y'know the statues that have been around for 100 years, and never bothered them before.
All this "virtue signally" seems to be class warfare by other means. Or perhaps its just the tiresome boomer game of "You're a racist, and I'm not". Anyway, if Mitt Romney or George Bush posts a picture of themselves washing a black man's feet, I wouldn't be surprised.
I'd heard the term before, but had no idea what it meant until reading an article about it this morning, actually.
And almost certainly the article you read this morning was inaccurate and false in asserting that this is the day that slavery was abolished in the U.S.
I don't give a single shit about Juneteenth and am sick and tired of being expected to swoon over everything related to black-Americans.
Ironically, one of the things the wikipedia article presents as a defense against "democratic backsliding" -- the civil service protections -- I view as the single most important instance of democratic backsliding today. The dynamic, as I see it, is the democratically accountable pieces of government (elected officials and legislators) don't want to be held responsible for anything if they can avoid it. Because if you take responsibility for something and it goes wrong then voters will punish you. So the obvious solution is to structure everything to diffuse responsibility. If everything is decided by executive commissions and committees, no one democratically accountable is solely responsible for either the decisions of the committee or appointments to the committee, and no one democratically accountable has the authority to fire people from the committee, it's pretty much perfect for a politician who wants to weasel out of responsibility. The committee does what it does and you shrug your shoulders and say there's nothing you can do. Nothing is ever your fault. You just defer to the bureaucrats and if it all goes horribly wrong, hey, you can't fire them thanks to civil service protections and their victims can't sue them because of qualified immunity.
This is the kind of setup, with vague lines of responsibility and a total lack of real accountability, that often gets promoted by "good government" types, but in fact it is a profoundly broken and anti-democratic governance system. It's deeply terrible.
Better would be something like ministerial accountability, where in theory, an elected official is responsible for every act performed by the government unless it can be shown that the bureaucrat or civil servant in question acted contrary to government policy, as set by the elected officials. If the official screwup is bad, the minister has to take responsibility and resign. Ministerial accountability has never been rigorously adopted and of course it isn't popular with politicians (see above). It's basically dead in the UK today is my impression. But that's what democracy looks like, and the further we drift from that level of democratic accountability, well, that's democratic backsliding.
I don't like the term "Juneteenth", but I do think it should be a major holiday near in importance to the 4th of July, which celebrates something that was incomplete until emancipation, and like the 4th, it should be an inclusive celebration for us all. I can dream.
It is true that before the controversy over the Trump rally originally planned for Juneteenth, I had never heard of that holiday.
It’s not a two-thirds threshold for impeachment. I’d never heard of that requirement until Chait.
This is because everybody confuses "impeachment" (to be charged) with "conviction" (actually getting kicked out of office). You need 50% + 1 for impeachment, 2/3rd for conviction.
Chait is making Trump’s point.
Yep.
The Emancipation Proclamation didn’t free slaves in the slave states that didn’t secede, like Delaware.
So it makes no sense to celebrate it. It was a tactical move during the Civil War.
Part of the inherent power emanating from the Commander-in-Chief Clause.
I'd never heard of Juneteenth until this week, but now that I have, I don't think it's "black" holiday.
As Glenn Reynolds said, "why not celebrate a holiday where a Republican president’s general ordered Democrats to free their slaves?"
It seems to me the date is worth celebrating as a major milestone in the history of individual liberty. It seems like something Republicans especially should be celebrating and calling attention to.
Ima take Inga's word for it and fly my flag.
“Yes, it's hyperbole. The ‘nobody’ is outrageous and false.”
Seriously, Ann? “Outrageous”? I had heard *of* it, but not due to frequent discussions of the topic. I don’t ever remember reading stories about Juneteenth every year in the news. I never heard black friends discussing it. Certainly, *some* people had heard of it, but probably not more than 15 or 20% of the population—certainly not most people in the US.
Trumpgrammar is getting to be like Trumplaw. I never (and that’s not hyperbole) witnessed any politician’s words get parsed the way TDS sufferers parse Trump’s words.
The funny thing is that if Lincoln had had todays' laws and judges, the Emancipation Proclamation could be set aside because it didn't follow the Administrative Procedures Act.
Yes to a comment above- Patriot's Day is a similar thing- I didn't know it was a holiday of any sort until I moved to Connecticut and learned that April 15th fell on a Monday or the proceeding weekend, your tax return didn't have to be postmarked until that following Tuesday.
Just more evidence-free argument by assertion.
An annual holiday to remind everyone that black people are free and have been for over 100 years?
I don't think Democrats are going to like that very much...
Several above have made the point- Juneteenth is applicable only in Texas, a local holiday.
July 4 1827 was the end of slavery in New York.
I'm still amazed that 3+ years after his election, people are surprised that a blowhard NYC businessman talks like a blowhard NYC businessman. I never understood this, being from the Midwest. He acts and talks EXACTLY like my stereotype of a NYC businessman. I never thought that was something to hold against him, and it's certainly refreshing in light of all the slick politicians who sound good in public but ARE EXACTLY THE SAME in private.
Especially that corrupt harridan from Arkansas via Chappaqua.
An annual holiday to remind everyone that black people are free and have been for over 100 years? I don't think Democrats are going to like that very much...
Yeah, the audacity of the abor... abolitionists, the Pro-Liberty, the diversity has no place in civilized society, people... persons.
Why don't we go back just one year on this date and look at all the Tweets from the woke folk.
Think we'll find anything about Juneteenth? Yeah. That's what I thought.
I should add, the reason we never heard about Juneteenth until this year is because certain people used to spend the entire month of June screaming about Pride.
Imagine how they must feel being relegated to second fiddle on the Woke Scale.
The better Day to celebrate freeing slaves would be August 31. That day in 1864 Sherman defeated Cleburne at Jonesboro assuring the surrender of Atlanta thus assuring the Republican Lincoln kept the Presidency from the Democrat McClellan who promised a quick peace treaty letting the slave states go and keep their slaves.
The better Day to celebrate freeing slaves would be August 31. That day in 1864 Sherman defeated Cleburne at Jonesboro assuring the surrender of Atlanta thus assuring the Republican Lincoln kept the Presidency from the Democrat McClellan who promised a quick peace treaty letting the slave states go and keep their slaves.
The better Day to celebrate freeing slaves would be August 31. That day in 1864 Sherman defeated Cleburne at Jonesboro assuring the surrender of Atlanta thus assuring the Republican Lincoln kept the Presidency from the Democrat McClellan who promised a quick peace treaty letting the slave states go and keep their slaves.
I'd heard of Juneteenth before from relatives in Texas. I think big observances may be more a Southern thing -- I had never heard it mentioned in California or New York. Or Virginia, actually, but I'm in NoVa which is increasingly culturally disconnected from the South.
Juneteeth is sort of silly since it celebrates a date where in Texas the slaves were informed of their emancipation. Better to celebrate as an added day to the federal Christmas holiday the 13th amendment or July 5th as a second day of celebration of freedom for the slaves. As for Trump's hyperbole, Chait is really an ass. Trump's hyperbole is bush league compared to Gore's claim to invent the internet or Obama's fatuous remark that on his nomination the seas stopped rising and the earth stopped warming.
I only heard about it when we were stationed in Texas in the early 2000’s. They always had a write up in the paper every year (oh the days when I got a newspaper delivered to my door), but I don’t remember anything other than that happening.
narcissistic personality disorder
Sorry, but that's whole-and-entire Barack Hussein Obama's claim to fame. Trump was very late to that psychotic disorder.
If you are going to have an emancipation holiday, have it on the day the 13th amendment was ratified, Dec 6. Why ignore the northern slaves not covered by the emancipation proclamation.
Inga: "Only if it’s a Confederate flag."
LOLOLOL
Looks like our russia collusion truther is going to keep pretending its only confederates her pals are going after.
But we all know Ingas marxist pals are coming for Lincoln, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, Winston Churchill, Gandhi (!), etc etc etc.
No Inga. You and your pals are coming to destroy western civilization and now there is too much evidence and openness about that for even you to continue pushing the confederates only lie.
June 19 is my parents' wedding anniversary. They had a 60 year love affair with each other and raised four boys who remain good friends. They were wonderful people.
We already have a national black holiday. Its called MLK day, we don't need another one. If you just want to be "inclusive" and start a new holiday, just make Cinqo De Mayo a USA nation wide holiday. Honor Hispanics. Of course, it would be weird to celebrate another nation's holiday, but then is the USA a country anymore?
What we really need to do is make Christmas Eve a holiday and the day after Thanksgiving a holiday. Nobody works on either day. Lets just make it official. And lets get rid of Presidents day. Or go back to just celebrating George Washington's birthday. The founder of our country. Celebrating Lincoln was just a knee jerk reaction to the South celebrating Lee or Jefferson Davis' birthday.
"if you are going to have an emancipation holiday, have it on the day the 13th amendment was ratified,"
Except the only slaves freed in the North by the 13th amendment, were the slaves in Kentucky. Maryland got rid of slavery in November 1864, and WV and Mo. got rid of it in Jan 1865. BTW, the emancipation proclamation only freed those slaves under Confederate Control in Jan 1863. Of course, the Union army freed slaves in the occupied South, but some parts LA - under Union control - still had slavery as late as Jan 1864
"I don't give a single shit about Juneteenth and am sick and tired of being expected to swoon over everything related to black-Americans."
What percentage of the American population do Black people constitute? It used to be about ten per cent; maybe now it's fifteen percent? Certainly television and movies want you to think the percentage is much higher than the reality; but I think it's fair to say that people of African ancestry still constitute a minority. That doesn't mean they have fewer rights than other Americans, but it makes one wonder why the rest of us are supposed to do handstands and cartwheels or anything else the media dictate to keep Black folks happy, or constantly "swooning" over everything related to them.
Re: rcocean
Wasn't Delaware a slave state right up to the end too? I thought Delaware was the very last place in the US where slavery was legal, since it had never joined the Rebellion and thus was outside the scope of the Emancipation Proclamation, but maybe it was a tie with Kentucky.
A: According to the Orange County Register, it is estimated that every federal holiday costs taxpayers about half a billion dollars in wages paid to the country's 2.7 million federal employees.
I've heard of Juneteenth but only in the last dozen or so years. I'd not paid a lot of attention to it. My impression was that it was a made up holiday mainly for students from segregated colleges (Morehead, Howard etc) to party. Sort of a black spring break analog.
Looking it up, I find that it is a Texas holiday, celebrating the freeing of Texas slaves. Also, that it goes back more than 150 years in Texas
Good on President Trump for moving his rally to respect it. Not surprising he was only vaguely aware of it. The same as 80% of all non-black Americans.
So why should it be a holiday? If there should be a holiday, it should probably be December 6 when the 13th Amendment was ratified and ALL the slaves were freed.
Or even January 1 when Lincoln freed some of the slaves. Not the ones in Biden's Delaware, though.
Since the slaves that Lincoln freed were not in the US, it was mainly a symbolic gesture, though.
Nobody cares about Delaware. I didn't mention them because they are too small, and too boring.
Blacks make up 13% of USA population.
We constantly endlessly talk about them because (1) Old Boomers still think its 1969 (2) Lots of blacks live in the DC metro area and NYC - where the cultural/political elite live (3) The white bourgeoisie loves to talk about racism as a way to express its hatred for poor/working class whites (4) the democrats need to keep the racial pot boiling so as to jack up Black voter turnout (they vote 90% D) and finally (5) blacks are over-represented on TV, sports, and the music.
There are probably more other minorities (Asian, Hispanic, etc.) in the USA than blacks but you rarely hear about them.
You fools are all a rudderless ship without me.
Mass refusal to pay racist taxes is the only answer for America.
Racist taxes support the systemic racism, there can be no doubt possible.
Taxes and their attendant racism END NOW.
DEFUND RACISM, cut to the F'ing chase for C's sake.
BTW, Mark Levin was going on and on today about Sen Byrd, Woodrow Wilson, Margaret Sanger, etc. Lots of Democrat racists. This approach NEVER works. The D's just don't care about being called hypocrites and the media is not going to call them on it.
In any case, if the D's agreed to erase Sanger and Byrd from history in exchange for Washington, Jefferson, and Lincoln getting trashed - why is that a good thing? Counterattacking with "The Democrats are the real racists" is a loser, because blacks have shown they will vote for Democrat Racist (cf: Fritz Hollings, George Wallace, etc) over a Republican.
I hereby confess I was mistaken when I criticized Michelle Bachman for answering in a debate the question What should the tax rate be ideally*? and she answered "zero."
Feds, state, county, and city ought be paying Guild taxes (to) by God.
I down with BLM since '97, where you been?
*Pphrase, copyright it
*Oops, I meant copy it right if you want, I won't bother to quote
I wrote the president to say yes, he made Juneteenth more famous than any other holiday in American history, and now it's a symbol - not only of what is possible - but of all the great things to come.
Then I explained how to spell "reparations".
I’ve known about Juneteenth for years but that was because of discussions about how stupid Kwanzaa is as a totally made up “holiday” and that Juneteenth would have been a far better “black” holiday.
As it is, both are going to end up being primarily WOWP “holidays” while the vast bulk of black people keep celebrating Xmas and the 4th of July.
Reparations won't help.
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