The Pennsylvania Confederate

Doug Mastriano, left, in an Army War College photo from 2014, wearing a Confederate-style uniform

Once per week leading up to the mid-terms, I will focus on one individual member of the fascist menagerie of weirdos, criminals, wife abusers, liars, insurrectionists and conspiracy loons who have put themselves forward for high office and the life and death responsibilities that come with it.

So far, I’ve written about Herschel Walker, JD Vance, the California “Yale-billy” and Kari Lake.

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A picture is worth a thousand words. Doug Mastriano, the Republican nominee for Pennsylvania governor, is a Confederate soldier. Mastriano is a retired Army colonel, who reached the same rank as Robert E. Lee before the Virginian betrayed his country. This photo from the 2013-2014 academic year at Army War College, was first revealed on Friday by Reuters.

Mastriano is a fascist fetishist who identifies with the defeated slave autocracy that existed for four blood-stained years. It is responsible for killing 600,000 people during Civil War in a nation of 34 million.

Mastriano is accomplishing several things at once in this photo. First, he is disgracing the United States Army proximate to a site of profound importance to the institution, as well as the nation. It is a rare triple desecration. He chose to wear the enemy uniform at the sacred site of the Gettysburg battlefield where the United States Army destroyed the Confederate invaders, and began the beginning of the end of slavery for all time in this land. He chose to wear the uniform of the slave master at the site of the most important political speech by an American president in the history of the republic.

The Gettysburg address is atop the secular canon of the American republic. Lincoln’s genius as a political and moral leader is incandescent with each majestic word that forever redefined the meaning of American liberty. Lastly, the story of the Battle of Gettysburg is filled with examples of heroism that beggar the imagination. Specifically, the heroism of the United States Army under the command of General George Meade. Pictured with Mastriano are two United States Marine Corps (USMC) colonels and a United States Air Force (USAF) colonel who understood where they were. The USMC and USAF officers didn’t desecrate the memory of the US Army’s fallen. That distinction was left to the clown Army colonel playing Confederate dress up at a sacred place.

Mastriano is the man who decided to spend his retirement working in political extremism, fascism and religious zealotry. He stands atop a pantheon of corrupt politicians, grifters and weirdos that are an abundant crop in 2022. It is a staggering reality that it is impossible to assert who is truly worse in a field that contains Herschel Walker, JD Vance, Kari Lake and Doug Mastriano. Though Herschel Walker has 12 personalities — and frequently holds loaded handguns against the heads of women with whom he is involved — it is true that he has never lost a game of Russian roulette, while pulling the trigger to the gun placed against his head by him. Shouldn’t that count?

Kari Lake is embracing Nazis, while JD Vance set up a fake opioid charity that actually imported doctors to appear in front of the people with whom JD Vance grew up to tell them that OxyContin wasn’t addictive and killing them. It’s nice work if you can find it.

It does raise an existential issue though for Tim Ryan, the Democrat currently leading the race in Ohio against Vance. Ryan will soon be attacked by $30 million in advertising paid for by Mitch McConnell, on behalf of the fake opioid charity guy who sidelines as an angry fascist, and wants to get rid of the American system of government to make Trump a “Caesar” so everything can be fixed.

Once the rubicon is crossed and a person has gone into the fake opioid charity business it stands to reason that everything else they say for the rest of their lives is not credible. There is only one profession on earth that would grant credibility to a liar of such astounding achievements. It’s the same one that would pretend that what he is saying in this moment isn’t linked to that event. The only people on earth who would take anything JD Vance said seriously are corrupt scribners looking for clicks and money from conflict. It’s all nonsense, all the time.

Come to think about it, they are the same people that care not to look at MBS giving Jared Kushner $2 billion in cash for his investment fund. By the way, it’s not a pay-to- play story, and it’s definitely not a start-up story. It’s an espionage story, and it’s all connected to greed, disgracefulness and thuggery.

Each of the candidates isn’t just psychologically disordered enough to be considered public menaces, they are all disciples of the remnants of the cause that is the worst in all of American history. They are the Confederacy’s dead-enders, and they are preaching a gospel of division worthy of the Confederacy, an empire of malicious cruelty.

There is no higher duty for an American citizen than loyalty to the republic. There is no greater transgression than disloyalty and treason. The United States of America came within a few minutes of ending at the Battle of Gettysburg. During those decisive minutes, a unit of the United States Army saved the United States.

Had they failed, the country would have ended because the Confederacy would have won the war. This is a true story, and not one word of it is exaggerated. This is the story of the men who saved America during a spasm of violence that played out over five gory minutes of death.

If I had a wish, it would be for all Americans to know this story. Maybe it would help give pause in this moment of madness and gathering evils that are rising again.

William Scott Hancock was debonair, polished and brave. He was a Pennsylvania man. Coincidentally, Pennsylvania is the second state of the Union and it borders the first and third states. The second state is the birthplace of the 46th president of the United States, Joe Biden, who represented the first state, Delaware, in the US Senate. Both the first and second states border the third state, which is the “Garden State” of New Jersey. I only raise it because New Jersey is the home and residence of TV quack and Turkish citizen Mehmet Oz, who is running to represent Erdogan, Trump and fraudulence, as a US Senator from Pennsylvania. It just seems like an unseemly triangle at best. I will write about Mehmet next week.

Back to Hancock. He was a West Point graduate and a career soldier when the war came. He was married to Almyra Hancock. Shortly before the outbreak of the war, Allie, as she was called by her friends, hosted a party that was later remembered as a farewell party by many of the participants. It took place in California. One of the men there was an army officer from Virginia named Lewis Armistead. He had been a close friend of Hancock’s for 17 years. Armistead’s life was filled with suffering. Hancock helped him endure through the deaths of spouses, children and other accumulations of grief that plagued Armistead. Six of the men who raised glasses to each other, their families, their friendships and each other as they toasted and sang together around a piano at that party, would be killed by US Army forces under the command of Major General Hancock at Gettysburg. It was a violent place. Lewis Armistead would be among them.

Dan Sickles was, by many accounts, a buffoon, as well as a pioneer. Certainly the New York Congressman was ahead of his time. He shot his wife’s lover in broad daylight in Lafayette Square. This occurred 160 years before Trump asked General Milley to shoot peaceful protestors and security forces to attack the same square, using tear gas, so Trump could simultaneously desecrate the Bible and the US Constitution.

Sickles was seemingly immune to scandal. He was censured by the New York legislature for bringing a known prostitute into the legislative chambers. Sickles impregnated her, and brought her on a trip to England, where he introduced her to Queen Victoria. Much time has passed since Sickles asserted America’s first insanity defence, and got away with killing writer of “The Star Spangled Banner” Francis Scott Key’s son.

During the intervening years, society’s sensibilities have changed. 1859 America wasn’t particularly upset with Sickles for killing someone. They were outraged when he got back together with his wife after the trial. It seems the old approbations around sex work have continued through 2022, while there has been a vastly increased tolerance for whoredom. If the presence of a single prostitute could produce such ire in 1859, imagine the astonishment of those members if they could only see today’s MAGA party of whores wearing member pins. There is a whole movement of whores, and yet not a peep of outrage in our day.

At any rate, the incompetent Sickles was among a legion of political generals who were put in command of army divisions, despite being completely unfit, ill-prepared and inexperienced. It was the 19th century version of giving Jared and Ivanka security clearances and responsibility. Both turned out to be very deadly. Though stupid and inept, Sickles, unlike Kushner, was no coward. Though he was a blowhard and flatterer at Kushnerian level, his missing leg would say something about his willingness to fight from the front.

During the second day of the battle, the ludicrously commissioned Major General Sickles was in command and far out of position. The Confederate Army was coming. They were on the attack. Thousands of Confederate soldiers were aiming and running towards an opening that would place them on the high ground. It would mean the battle — and likely the war — would be over. It would mean that there was nothing between Washington, DC, the White House, US Capitol and all of the US Government and the Confederate Army. The person who saw everything playing out was the professional soldier. He knew what was happening. It was the most urgent moment of Hancock’s life.

Hancock, the Democratic vice presidential nominee of 1880, galloped at full speed towards the end of the Union line. He asked a single question, and gave a single command before he ordered a suicide charge to save the United States.

“What unit is this?” roared Hancock.

“The 1st Minnesota.”

“Fix bayonets. Attack that line,” Hancock commanded.

The 1st Minnesota was the very first state regiment that volunteered for the Union cause after Fort Sumpter. It was battle hardened, and it surged forward. Two-hundred and fifty men attacked 1,250. They fought hand-to-hand in a spasm of violence that resulted in the greatest percentage (82 per cent) of unit casualties in the history of the United States Armed Forces. Hancock was awed by what he witnessed. He later said that he would have ordered the death of every man if necessary to buy another few moments to reinforce the line. The stakes were that high.

Doug Mastriano didn’t choose to wear a Union uniform because he detests the American cause. It’s that simple. He venerates the cause that killed the men President Coolidge — no woke socialist — called the “saviors of the Union.”

The American flag fell to the ground five times during the battle. Each time another soldier of the 1st Minnesota picked up that flag and carried it forward until they were killed. That flag is in the Minnesota State Capitol, along with another one.

The survivors of the 1st Minnesota were sent to a portion of the Union line that history would record as the “Bloody Angle.” The Bloody Angle held a great distinction in the American story that was undisputed until January 6, 2021. It represented the high-water mark of the Confederacy until their battle flag finally breached the Capitol on that later day.

It was the place where Lewis Armistead was killed. The brigadier general was killed at the front, mortally wounded with his hat atop a sword, advancing to death at the Confederacy’s apogee. Before he died, he asked that his personal effects and his Bible be sent to Allie Hancock.

During that fight, a Confederate battle flag was captured by a Medal of Honor recipient on a Pennsylvania field. Occasionally, Virginia demands its return. Minnesota’s answer has always been no.  That’s the right answer, and it applies to Doug Mastriano, the five-star wacko who wants to be governor of Pennsylvania, the state that produced Ben Franklin.

Loyalty to America is the preeminent qualification for office. We stand at another hour of choosing. Doug Mastriano has helped make the clear choice that much clearer.

He is a dangerous, venomous extremist. He’s a Confederate. He’s a faithless American dressed in the uniform of treachery calling himself a champion of freedom. What a delusion. Again though, what would anyone expect from someone who would drape themselves in the cloth of slavery and treason — willingly — on some of America’s most hallowed ground?

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Keep Pennsylvania in Democratic hands: Josh Shapiro, Pennsylvania’s attorney general, is running against Mastriano for governor. Shapiro needs your help. Take some initiative, volunteer, donate here, and get other people involved.