Sometimes when I write these pieces, I feel like the evening DJ for Banana Radio 4BA 1080am, playing classic hits and memories and the songs you love. This week on our radio rewind, we wind the clock back to 2016 , were we play non-stop Number Twos from DJ Trump. This week on DJ Trump's "Make America Great Again Again Again Again" tour, not only did he return to a classic steam of conscious schnibbity-nibbity-schnick-knuck-neigh nonsense, but he also returned to trying to break people's brains through unreality.
The one thing that can be said that is true about Mr Trump is that he does speak his mind, no matter how undetached from reality, history, or facts, that it is. This week we got what you might call, a 'doozie':
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pq4xSuiueUc
Where our Union was saved by the immortal heroes at Gettysburg. Gettysburg what an unbelievable battle that was. The Battle of Gettysburg. What an unbelievable... I mean it was so much, and so interesting, and so vicious, and horrible - and so beautiful in so many different ways. It it represented such a big portion of the success of this country. Gettysburg, wow!
I go to Gettysburg, Pennsylvania to look, and to watch, and, uh... the statement of Robert Lee - who's no longer in favour - did you ever notice that? No longer in favour? “Never fight uphill, me boys. Never fight uphill.”
They were fighting uphill. He said: “Wow, that was a big mistake”. He lost his great General and, uh, they were fighting. “Never fight uphill, me boys” but it was too late.
- Donald J Trump, 15th Apr 2024
As far as I have been able to determine, the Battle of Gettysburg which was fought in July of 1863, was the single bloodiest battle which the United States has ever fought in. If we assume that the soldiers of the Confederate States of America were in fact still Americans as Texas v. White (1869 - SCOTUS) ruled, then between the 43500 reported souls that were lost (23,049 Union, 20,451 Confed) and the 12,709 additional souls that went missing, then the number of bodies that were chewed through by gunshot and sword was between 14,000 and 18,000 per day.
But then again, as an Australian who lives on the other side of the world, what the heck do I know? I can assume that I know more about this than Mr Trump does. I am not even sure that Mr Trump knows that the Battle of Gettysburg was a Union victory and arguably a major turning point in the Civil War. I am reasonably sure that Mr Trump does not care that Pennsylvania was invaded by the Confederate army in late June 1863, that thousands of black people were forced to flee, and that those that were unable to flee were captured and then sent back south to be returned to slavery (or made slaves for the first time if they were free). I am reasonably sure that Mr Trump's audience does not care about any of this either. Furthermore I am reasonably sure that Mr Trump's audience does not care about anything that Mr Trump is actually saying, much less bothering to listen to him while he speaks. I have no idea who this guy is but fair play to him. He is acting the clown in what is already a circus.
What I find truly strange about this is why Trump would want to invoke his imagined words of General Robert E Lee, immediately after having said that the "Union was saved by the immortal heroes at Gettysburg". Its not very often that you want to glorify the words of the loser; who in this case literally fought a war and this battle against the country that you want to be President of (again).
History generally reports the Battle of Gettysburg was a battle that General Robert E Lee lost, rather than one which Major General George Meade, Commander of the Army of the Potomac, won. Lee who had his headquarters in a house to the north west of Gettysburg, would have had a view over relatively flattish fields; which means that he should have been able to see all of Union positions fairly easy. Even just a cursory glance over the general area with Google maps gives you the impression that this was Lee’s battle to lose.
If nothing else, Lee should have taken basic instruction from the military treatise on how to conduct war, from ancient Chinese military strategist and philosopher Sun Tzu:
CHAPTER 10. TERRAIN
2 - Ground which can be freely traversed by both sides is called ACCESSIBLE.
3 - With regard to ground of this nature, be before the enemy in occupying the raised and sunny spots, and carefully guard your line of supplies.
4 - Then you will be able to fight with advantage.
- The Art of War, Sun Tzu, c.500 BC
There's so many things wrong with Mr Trump's imagined fantasy of the Battle of Gettysburg that it is almost like trying to play Pass The Parcel by unwrapping all of the layers to discover that there's nothing actually at the centre.
“Never fight uphill, me boys. Never fight uphill.”
1 - I can not find any citation for this quote before 3 days ago, much less in any account from 1863.
2 - You can't actually "fight uphill" on flat terrain.
3 - At any rate, Trump's quite idiotic depiction of Lee is one of a great General, who was betrayed by his troops. This is actually a far cry from the actual military engineer who took responsibility for the campaign and battle.
https://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Gazetteer/People/Robert_E_Lee/FREREL/3/8*.html
Pickett was too nearly frantic with grief to remark Lee's language.
"General Lee, I have no division now, Armistead is down, Garnett is down, and Kemper is mortally wounded."
"Come, General Pickett," said Lee, "this has been my fight and upon my shoulders rests the blame. The men and officers of your command have written the name of Virginia as high today as it has ever been written before."
Some of the survivors crowded around the riders then, and Lee repeated, "Your men have done all that men could do; the fault is entirely my own."
- Chapter VIII, R. E. Lee: A Biography, Douglas Southall Freeman (1934)
4 - Fighting uphill could and did work; including in the context of the Civil War. Ulysses S. Grant who would eventually lead the Union Army to victory in the American Civil War, was in command in the field at the Battle of Chattanooga in November of 1863; when he ordered Union troops to charge uphill at Missionary Ridge, supported by rifle fire shooting upwards as cover.
As for why Mr Trump is trying to play this kind of game by aligning himself with a kind of forgotten dream that literally nobody can remember, it makes reasonable political sense. These were the kinds of tactics and rhetoric that gave him the Presidency in 2016 and I guess that he thinks that he can claim underdog status somehow. It doesn't need to make any logical sense, because clearly the people who vote for him, if this kind of rhetoric is anything to go by, honestly do not care.
And therein lies a crux as to why this is so very strange: "the statement of Robert Lee - who's no longer in favour - did you ever notice that? No longer in favour?"
There is a good reason why he's "longer in favour"; namely that General Robert E Lee was a loser, that the Confederate States of America lost, nor that the Confederate States of America were an entity for less time than Bluey has been a TV series. Yes, I am making that comparison: Bluey is more successful and has lasted longer than the Confederate States of America. Does Mr Trump want to paint himself as some kind of "hero" like Robert E Lee? Maybe.
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