As we noted yesterday, Trump may accept the GOP nomination for president at Gettysburg battlefield. Manisha Sinha, a historian who is no stranger to followers of The Way of Improvement Leads Home blog and podcast, shares her thoughts at CNN.
Here is a taste:
Yet, Trump aspires to Lincoln-like greatness, clumsily suggesting to the pliant Republican governor of South Dakota that he would like his likeness on Mount Rushmore, which he used for his highly partisan and forgettable Fourth of July speech this year. That this is a desecration of sacred ground of the Lakota people, who protested his rally, predictably does not cross his mind.
Trump’s potential choice of Gettysburg for his acceptance speech is even more offensive given his fondness for Confederate leaders and generals like Robert E. Lee. He has defended the Confederate battle flag and “beautiful” Confederate statues and has included neo-Confederates and White supremacists among “very fine people.” So much so that a few political commentators have called him the last Confederate president.
Gettysburg, site of one of the biggest Confederate debacles of the war, is a standing monument to the defeat of a despicable cause. If Lincoln consecrated Gettysburg with one of the most famous speeches in American history, Trump would just as surely desecrate it by his proposed Republican convention address.
Agreed.
Read Sinha’s entire piece here.