TPM "Ta-Nehisi Coates Schools John Kelly On History Of Civil War And Compromise

[NRaleighLiberal]

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/ta-nehisi-coates-john-kelly-civil-war

By CAITLIN MACNEAL Published OCTOBER 31, 2017 8:02 AM

After White House Chief of Staff John Kelly on Monday night said that the Civil War was the result of “the lack of an ability to compromise” and called Confederal Gen. Robert E. Lee an “honorable man,” author Ta-Nehisi Coates tore into Kelly on Twitter.

Coates (pictured above) argued that in the years leading up to the Civil War, as well as after the Civil War, American leaders made several compromises in an attempt to win over slave owners.

Regarding John Kelly's creationist theorizing on Lee and the Civil War, its worth pointing out a few things.

— Ta-Nehisi Coates (@tanehisicoates) October 31, 2017

Notion that Civil War resulted from a lack of compromise is belied by all the compromises made on enslavement from America’s founding.

— Ta-Nehisi Coates (@tanehisicoates) October 31, 2017

I mean, like, it’s called The three fifths compromise for a reason. But it doesn’t stand alone. Missouri Compromise. Kansas-Nebraska Act.


snip - read the rest of this incredible thread at the link above

[comradebillyboy]

1. The bloom is off the rose where Kelly is concerned.

[Thor_MN]

2. Twitter - Is there a dumber place to carry on a discussion of history?

140 character pieces of crap with intervening garbage. It's hard to take something seriously when every other sentence is broken by the name, tag and date. If every twitter server in the world were to simultaneously melt down to slag, the world would be a better place.

[AngryAmish]

4. Twitter makes everyone seem like a moron.

It has ruined the press.

[Blue_Adept]

5. It doesn't work for you, great. Don't use it. It works for a lot of other people

in very different ways. Though you hear of the crap, you never hear of the good stuff.

Sorta like your news channels as well. You never hear of the good stuff. The friends made, marriages that exist because of meetings there, discussions that illuminate new lines of thought for people, exposure to people far outside your circle, etc.

Plus a lot of us actually use it for work and connecting with readers, so we'd rather it didn't melt down to slag.

[Thor_MN]

7. The artifical limit of 140 characters is what makes it silly.

There's no significant reason for 140 characters, it's utterly made up. Being able to spew bite sized chunks of crap to the entire world doesn't solve any problems in my mind.

It's an inappropriate medium for anything other than broadcasting what otherwise be sent in a text message. I personally don't fawn over the random thoughts of celebrities.

If you can do your work with 140 characters, great. If you need more than one tweet to get something done, you are using an inefficient medium that obscures what you are trying to say.

I don't use twitter because it's a ridiculous concept. If you like it, bully for you.

The world would be a better place without an inefficient piece of one way crap loudspeaker.

[NRaleighLiberal]

9. I can't say I am terribly fond of it, but it is out there and gets used - so

as long as it exists and gets used as a news feed, it can't be totally ignored.

[SweetieD]

3. The culture and demographics of the US would have never allowed for a "compromise".

[unblock]

6. as coates said, we had compromises from the founding of the country right up to the civil war.

it wasn't compromise that was lacking.

it was the south's insistence on spreading slavery into western territories and on denying the states' rights of northern states to make it difficult for slavers to retrieve black people who escaped slavery.

in the end, it was the south's refusal to compromise that led them to start the civil war.

[Ninga]

8. Thanks for posting this stunning retort- Coats is a master of the English

Language....and a very special person in his own right.,

History matters.

[NewJeffCT]

10. great responses from Coates

decades of compromise with White Supremacy is what brought us to the civil war