I for one can’t wait for the MAGA “2 Legit 2 Quit” era.

…he discussed having a ”Punisher” tattoo, which some conflate with Nazi imagery. Being a German speaker, it struck me that the CNN report noted the word “Totenkopf” in the Reddit thread and implied that word specifically indicates a Nazi symbol. But “Totenkopf” is just the German word for skull.

Okay, I’ll accept that he’s had the same argument with people on line in the past. I’ve never been a Marine, so I’ll leave it to members of the service to corroborate or contradict what he says about the tattoos. I will say that the CNN report shows only that…

He has a skull tattoo. I haven’t heard any evidence that it’s a “Nazi” tattoo. If there is some strong evidence that that symbol is used to indicate affinity for Nazi ideology, I’ll accept it. Showing that he intended to broadcast that idea would be harder. Would you watch the interview?

…used in the same oppo dump to portray him as a raging communist.

He acknowledged that he has *a* tattoo, which he and some other machine gin squad leaders got while drunk on shore leave in Split, Croatia. He notes that it’s ironic anyone would try to claim he was secretly a Nazi, since his on-line shit posting in the years after leaving the service were…

Have you actually watched that interview?

No he did not.

Oh man

8/8 For what it’s worth, I can’t think of anyone whose public writing is more reverential of our American inheritance than that of @jamellebouie.net. And yet, who would doubt his critical bona fides? I guess I’ll just end by saying everyone should read his stuff. END

7/8 . . . liberal arts education? You can’t just wield cultural (and certainly not governmental) power to silence opinions you don’t like. You engage them and fold them into a rugged but compassionate common understanding. How did we forget that? . . .

6/8 . . . and the presidency of Lincoln and Reconstruction, John Brown, Thaddeus Stevens. Inasmuch as we honored the best and acknowledged the worst parts of that heritage, we seemed healthy enough. But you know what I learned from a lengthy (and far too expensive) . . .

5/8 If any nuance is needed, then sure, maybe there were some public commentators and academics whose style came across as acrimonious or jaded. In my heart of hearts, I thought, “Gosh, I’m not ready to throw out all my reverence for the cultural inheritance of the American Revolution . . .

4/8 First of all, yes, the president damn well is whitewashing slavery, and shame on anyone who obfuscates that. To address thee argument she’s making, I’ll note that it’s basically the hammer/nail chestnut: to a hammer, everything is a nail. . . .

3/8 . . . When a panelist raised what this meant for depictions of slavery, Michaels jumped to the president’s defense, saying that he was not ‘whitewashing’ slavery and that ‘when you make every single exhibit about white imperialism, when it isn’t relevant at all, that is a problem.’” . . .

2/8 Here is the passage: “Midway through, the conversation turned to President Donald Trump’s recent directive to ensure the Smithsonian Institution ‘celebrate American exceptionalism’ and ‘remove divisive or partisan narratives.’ . . .