The Latest Ahistorical Nonsense from Ron DeSantis
In his never-ending battle against the Woke Mind Virus, Ron DeSantis will always be the loser
Welcome to Moronitude! I know that I don’t send out this newsletter often enough, so I was thinking about making a little deal with y’all to keep me accountable. The first idea that popped into my head was that I’d write a newsletter every time Ron DeSantis says something so blitheringly idiotic that I can feel my brain cells liquifying as I attempt to make sense of it. Of course, a promise like that would lead to an hourly newsletter, and nobody wants that.
I’m bringing up Florida’s current favorite racist fascist because he uttered something on the campaign trail that conjured up the very same ire that launched this newsletter in the first place. Take it away, Ron!
https://twitter.com/DeSantisWarRoom/status/1667306460236087303
If you don’t feel like clicking (and we can’t embed Tweets to Substack any longer because Elon Musk is a fragile baby), here’s what he said. "I also look forward to, as President, restoring the name of FORT BRAGG to our great military base in Fayetteville, North Carolina... It's an iconic name and iconic base, and we're not gonna let political correctness run amok."
Ron’s made his bones attacking “the woke agenda” to the point where I believe he will actually die if he doesn’t claim something as woke every five minutes, sort of like how sharks have to keep swimming to breathe. [Editor’s Note: That’s not completely true, many sharks breathe perfectly fine while still. {Author’s Retort: Don’t fuck up my analogy, dude} Editor’s Note: You know we’re the same person, right?]
Today’s woke agenda involves the renaming of North Carolina’s Fort Bragg that occurred in October of last year. The massive military installation is now known as Fort Liberty, thus ending its century long association with Braxton Bragg. There are few people in all of American history who can offer up a better combination of personal repulsiveness and professional ineptitude than Bragg. I wrote all about this on my blog Irrational Anger, the precursor to Moronitude, back in 2020. You’ll find my original rant in detail at the end of the newsletter, but before launching into it I wanted to say a little more about the context of what DeSantis is trying to do here.
DeSantis has built his entire career by villainizing “wokeness.” What does he mean by that? Basically anything that isn’t exactly how white, racist conservatives want things to be. This is how you end up with the Don’t Say Gay bill or the chartered flight of migrants that were sent to Martha’s Vineyard. It’s weird to say that he’s a radical conservative since those two words should be antonyms, but he is. He’ll abuse the law in any way possible in order to drag America back into the 1930s or 1850s or whatever the most oppressive era for “others” would be. He has looked at how successful Trump was courting the absolute worst humans in our society and made it his mission to one-up him in hatred every step of the way.
So when he’s on the campaign trail he’s going to be looking around for what is in his eyes the most egregious casualty of the woke agenda and attack it. In North Carolina this appears to be the renaming of a military base. As you’ll read below, there was not a single human on the planet who believed Braxton Bragg was a good general or admirable human being during his life. If you could re-animate the entire Confederate army you’d be hard-pressed to find any of them in favor of naming a military base after Bragg, and that’s the opinion of traitors who should have no say in the matter in the first place.
The reason DeSantis brings this up, and the reason anybody pretends to actually care about it is that they see it as a personal attack, on who they are and on their values. It feeds into the white grievance narrative, a narrative that put Trump in office, so why wouldn’t people like DeSantis double down on it at every possible opportunity?
Nobody actually cares about Braxton Bragg. Nobody really cares that the fort is now named Fort Liberty. All they care about is that the evil woke liberals decided it might not be a great idea to have a base named after an incompetent, slave-owning buffoon of a general from an army of traitors, and despite not even knowing who the hell Braxton Bragg actually was, they are personally aggrieved. It’s beyond cynical and exhausting to have to suffer through the faux-outrages every other day, but that’s America in 2023.
I’m sure DeSantis and his massive ego believe that some day there’ll be some forts named after him. There won’t. In six years nobody is going to remember who the hell he is as they move on to idolize the next, more extreme Republican firebrand. But if my prediction is incorrect and DeSantis actually has some government buildings named after him, you can be damn sure no one will bat an eye when they get renamed after someone far more worthy.
Song of the Week
Four Score and Seven by Titus Andronicus
I got into Titus Andronicus way too late. I have no excuse. The album this song is on, “The Monitor,” may very well have been custom made just for me. A punkish band from New Jersey singing about the Civil War? Put it directly into my veins.
There are a few lines in here that perfectly encapsulate everything we’re talking about today:
Ever since our forefathers came on this land
We've been coddling those we should be running through
Please don't wait around for them to come and shake hands
They're not gonna be waiting for you
Those are words to hold in mind.
Braxton Bragg Revisited
Imagine the year is 1918 and you're in charge of naming an Army base. You're going over the resumes of some famous officers, trying to decide which one should be given the honor of having the base named after him (or her) when this "exemplary" resume lands on your desk.
Graduated fifth in his class at West Point.
Fought in the Second Seminole War… and by “fought” I mean claimed he was sick from the tropical weather so he would get sent back to Philadelphia. Then they got sick of him there, sent him back to Florida where he was a real asshole as a quartermaster and strict adherent to the rules. How much of an asshole, you ask? Well, his own men allegedly tried to assassinate him. Twice. He somehow was uninjured both times. Bummer.
He then served in the Mexcian-American War where he won some acclaim and fought bravely. He became friends with Jefferson Davis while there, which was pretty rare, because this guy really didn’t have friends.
After the war he decided to put his military life behind him to become a humble farmer. And by “humble farmer,” I mean a plantation owner with over 100 slaves working hard so he wouldn't have to lift a muscle. While some historians have gone out of their way to say that he didn’t have a “reputation for being a cruel slave owner,” anybody with common fucking sense knows that there is no such thing as a “caring slave owner.”
The governor of Louisiana appointed this fella in charge of creating a 5,000 man state militia, and even though he was “opposed to secession” he went and did that anyway. Then he showed up with his militia and overthrew a federal arsenal, which must have really been difficult since he was so opposed to secession. Then he became a general in the Confederate Army, despite this great handicap of supposedly believing the Confederacy shouldn't even exist.
At the Battle of Shiloh, he led a corps in a surprise attack against the Union. On the first day, he kept attacking over and over without breaking through, as he became stuck in what would come to be known as the Hornet’s Nest. It took somewhere between eight to 14 charges over seven hours for the Confederates to break the Union line, suffering massive casualties to do so. The next day, he and his men went up against General William Tecumseh Sherman and things went… poorly. After heavy fighting, the Confederates retreated. Not a great victory, eh? Don’t worry, your boy got promoted for his efforts.
This guy got to be in charge of the Army of the Mississippi, which he renamed the Army of Tennessee since they were fighting in Tennessee. Which, I guess makes sense. I digress, he went to Chattanooga to join forces with another Confederate army and eventually fight and attack the Union troops under Gen. Buell. He did not cover himself in glory during this campaign, all of the other Confederate leaders bristled over how he communicated with them and then at the Battle of Perryville, he had the Union on the run. And did absolutely nothing about it. Then he retreated. He got called to Richmond for a tongue lashing from his old pal Jeff Davis, but wasn’t demoted.
At the Battle of Stones River, our dude had a very good first day. A victory, if you will. Then he launched an attack that did little, gave up and retreated. His fellow officers were pissed at how things had gone and criticized him. He responded by writing up a letter that said it was their advice that he withdraw from the battle, but don’t worry, not that many people signed it since so many of them were wounded. No, seriously, this happened. They didn’t sign his bullshit letter because they were recovering from wounds sustained under his shoddy leadership. This is a bad look.
By the time of the Tullahoma campaign, our dude had three commanders under him as his army swelled to over 65,000 men. By now I’m sure you can guess how those commanders felt about our boy—they hated him. I’m going to skip most of the rest of this because all that happened was our boy sat around in Chattanooga, actively avoiding actually fighting until he eventually had to abandon Chattanooga. This is a REALLY bad look.
Chickamauga! An actual victory! Our guy won a battle! But what he’s remembered for here is squandering an opportunity to crush the Army of the Cumberland. They were able to escape as Gen George Thomas’ men became the ‘85 Bears defense of warfare. Thomas was known as The Rock of Chickamauga from there on out. Pretty cool, right? What was the aftermath for our hero? Many of his subordinate generals were irritated at his inability (or lack of desire) to pursue the Union army. So they put together a petition to get rid of him. And Gen James Longstreet said the following about our dear general’s leadership, "nothing but the hand of God can save us or help us as long as we have our present commander." Daaaaaaaaamn.
With the Army of Tennessee on the brink of a full-on mutiny, Jeff Davis came to save the day and relieve our general of duty. Nah, just kidding. They hung out, had some cigars and our guy got to just keep failing up.
With the Union army trapped inside Chattanooga, our general had them besieged. Things might just work out for him. Then the Union army got a new general, a dude who had just finished whooping Confederate ass at a little place called Vicksburg—Hiram Grant. Well, you probably know him as Ulysses S. Grant. I just wanted to throw in the little fact that his first name was Hiram and the S. didn’t stand for anything, it wasn’t even in his name. When he was registered at West Point, a letter of recommendation screwed up his name. Instead of fixing the glitch, Hiram Ulysses Grant just rolled with it and became U.S. Grant. Which was an amazing glimpse of things to come as he would earn the nickname Unconditional Surrender for the way he made Johnny Reb his bitch. Then, when he ran for president he had just about the most convenient initials a politician could ever desire. I’m sorry, I went off on a tangent talking about a general who actually deserves honor.
At the Battle for Chattanooga, Braxton Bragg, our heretofore nameless general, commander of the Army of Tennessee, had his ass handed to him. He was routed. Shortly thereafter, Grant took some troops and went after Robert E. Lee while his buddy Billy T. Sherman grabbed some troops and went on to make Georgia fucking howl. This would be the end of Bragg’s army career.Don’t worry, this story has a happy ending. While Bragg was off losing battles, his beloved plantation was confiscated by the Union army and turned into a shelter for freed slaves. After the war, Bragg floated around and had a couple of different jobs. One of these was as superintendent of the New Orleans Waterworks. He held onto it for two years… until he was replaced by a former slave, which is pretty fucking rad if you ask me.
Then, in 1918, an Army camp was named after him. Fast forward 102 years and we're back home.
Now, after reading about Braxton Bragg, I ask you, why the hell would the United States Army name the largest military installation in the world after this bumbling, slave-owning, universally loathed traitor? It makes zero sense. There is nothing to be proud of when you look at the legacy of Bragg.
Even if you were going to excuse him for being a racist piece of shit and slave owner (which I don’t), and even if you were going to excuse him for being a traitor to the United States (I’m not giving him a pass on this one either), he was a lousy soldier. Shouldn’t we be naming our military bases after men who, oh, I don’t know, were good at their fucking job?!
Although, when you consider everything that I’ve just laid out, it sorta makes sense why Trump would like the guy. They’re actually pretty similar. Racist? Check. Hated by damn near everybody they know? Check. Horribly unsuccessful, yet their privilege lets them keep moving up the ladder? Check. Of course Trump is going to defend him.
And now, three years later, DeSantis is doing the exact same thing Trump did. Cool.
Thank you for reading Moronitude. If your friends hate Ron DeSantis or Braxton Bragg even a fraction as much as I do, I’m sure they’d love this little newsletter. Go ahead and mash that share button below! Until next time…