Over at Bloomberg, Frank Barry has an interesting post, “Racial Justice and the Long Shadow of Gettysburg”, from which I’ll extract a curious and thoroughly dispiriting snippet:
It seems that the town of Gettysburg, Pa. has a “sister city”, Gettysburg, S.D., the relationship originating purely on the basis of the shared name. Recently, the Pennsylvania town was asked to comment on the fact that its South Dakota sister’s police department was using the Confederate battle flag—the familiar stars and bars—on its vehicles and uniforms. At first, the Pa. folks demurred, thinking that, well, why look for trouble? But then they learned that 1) Gettysburg, S.D. was founded by former Union soldiers who named it after the famous battle; and 2) the Confederate insignia started appearing on the S.D. uniforms and vehicles in 2009, the year that one Barack Obama was inaugurated as the 44th president of the United States of America. Coincidence? The Pa. folks had to wonder.
I recently read an anti-Trump book, probably S.V. Dáte’s excellent study, The Useful Idiot, though I’ve read so many I’m not certain, which argued that it was the election of the shockingly black Barack Obama that sent the Republican Party careening off the rails. My own theory, discussed in some detail here, is that it was the election of William Jefferson Clinton that sent the GOP starkers, as they realized, now that the Cold War was over, they lacked any reason for being. But the news from South Dakota suggests that the Obama theory has considerable merit.
