Transparent Men

 

Yes, he's Midas

After Jefferson Davis was forced to abandon the Confederate Capitol at Richmond, he retreated south via rail to Danville, where he put on a brave face and tried to reestablish the Confederate government. On April 4, 1865, from Danville Davis drafted a presidential proclamation to rally the tottering Confederacy and to promise that he would never give up or surrender a single inch of any Confederate state. He glancingly admitted to the embarrassment of the strategic retreat from Richmond, but then rose to a resounding defiance of Abe Lincoln and the forces of General Grant. He seemed to declare that the exit from Richmond was only temporary, and he promised "again and again will we return," a flowery way of announcing "We'll be back!" (Jefferson Davis was vastly better educated than Abe Lincoln and didn't mind showing off his fancy way with words.) But Davis's defiance actually laid bare his complete lack of self-awareness or any appreciation for irony, a character defect that infected the entire Southern project. (Rebellion on that scale took special blinders.) Davis perorated in his presidential proclamation: "We will return again and again, until the baffled and exhausted enemy shall abandon in despair his endless and impossible task of making slaves of a people resolved to be free."

Say what? You rich white people are the slaves? (Talk about bringing a pencil to a gun fight!)

Wild leap of 160 years, but my chuckling over Jefferson Davis's self-own is of a species with my outright howling over Donald Jethro Trump's public begging for a Nobel Peace Prize (cause Obama got one!). In July Trump called Norway's finance minister to discuss tariffs and just incidentally also told him he wants the Nobel Peace Prize. He's stood in front of cameras recently and said he deserved the prize. He's also said, like a TV brat, that he'll probably never get the prize, "because they only give them to liberals." He had Press Conference Barbie read an official statement demanding the Peace Prize for himself. Because otherwise he's the victim of liberals and woke folk, like poor Jefferson Davis in the final death throes of rebellion.

Lee surrendered to Grant on April 9th, 1865, five days after Jefferson Davis's proclamation that the South would rise again. May the Nobel committee for the Peace Prize stay as strong and resolved as Grant at Appomattox.