Lincoln on winning the Civil War

This, and your other Lincoln meme, has helped me understand why some people have said Lincoln was not anti-slavery. His actions spoke more loudly than his words. Interesting. Hmm. There's a lot of thoughts running through my mind. I might come back to this....

And it wasn't even just say, in this letter.

Something I only learned about barely recently was that during the Civil War there were the Border States (Delaware, Kentucky, Maryland, Missouri, and West Virginia) which while being slave states, chose to stay with the Union instead of going with Confederacy.

Lincoln allowed them to keep the slavery practice going, an intended to let them do so even after the war was over.

Also with the Emancipation Proclamation, despite being totally unenforceable, along with the border states, any Confederate territory captured by the Union was also allowed to maintain slavery, so they were exempt from the EP. He too intended to allow them to keep slavery going after the war was over.

Granted, while there were some that did truly want to abolish slavery, the reason why Lincoln (& Co) changed his mind and decided to abolish it after the war was simply to break the economy of the South, hindering them from attempting to break away again in the future, as they'd be too broke to do so.

The US did the same thing to Puerto Rico after taking it over in 1898 - that is, the government dismantled Puerto Rico's sugar cane industry, which was the basis of its economy. By destroying it, Puerto Rico, like the South, would become totally dependent on the US and thus couldn't separate from it without destroying itself economically. Puerto Rico was already poor, second only to Haiti in poverty, but sugar cane was its only chance for independence.

Why haven't we allowed PC to become a state? They can't vote in the elections (only primaries) don't pay fed taxes, and have voted 3 times to become a state. Why would we care if there was an uprising when we don't care to have them as citizens?

Because they would lean Democrat.
Also, bottom line, racism/prejudice as well.
Trump actually offered to trade Puerto Rico for Greenland back in January.

I didn't hear that one! Wow...that's pretty darn rude. Hmm wonder why that wasn't all over the news.

Yeah, I only heard it once and that was it.

The problem is nobody cares and makes a fuss about Puerto Rico, including Puerto Ricans themselves.

Someone I know IRL blocked me on FB a week after hurricane Maria because I liked a comment somebody posted criticizing him not being sympathetic to Puerto Ricans and looking down on them because he was Argentinian. Thing is, he's actually half Puerto Rican as well, just didn't advertise it. (I'm half PR myself). This is somebody I went to restaurants with him and members of his family. Any blocked me over a Like over criticism of Trump.

For some reason, during the Covid Lockdown, the guy flipped. I wasn't doing FB much, so I missed out why. But I found out he unblocked me when he did a friend request. He's page used to be busy with comments from a ton of Trumpers, it was like his own personal forum. But once he switched, they abandoned him, and some got downright vicious. Which is what I told him, that he unblocked me because he needed the pitbull back to tear them apart. I used to be a bit more of a headbutter a few years ago.
Instead I blocked him.

He has a long commute from Pennsylvania to New York for his job, and even though it wasn't, it was declared essential work, so he still had to go. I don't know, but I figured that's why he switched, because everybody else got to stay at home and still get paid, and he had to take a two and a half bus ride each way every day still for a job that was not essential at all.

I forgot where I was going with this. Bottom line, a lot of PRs don't make a fuss about abuse.

I feel the same way about Mexicans. I tried to get them to see it before it happened but they didn't seem to care. Now, I've stopped receiving info from.United Farm Workers...if they didn't care about Trump before or after election, I don't really care to follow how it's affecting them now. I'm sure you and I will get over it one day but for now, I'm choosing o help those who want to help themselves. There's too much work to do, you know?

One of my mother's home attendants last year, an occasional substitute for the regular one, real nice person, but she told me she was voting for Trump. The thing is, she's from Ecuador. She's a US citizen now, but I told her, he wants to get rid of her. He wants to get rid of me too. He wants to revoke the 14th Amendment and remove people like her. Another time discussing it, she even said it was because of all the illegals that were here. So because she was lucky enough to get citizenship somehow she's ok to stay, but they're not? Does she not realize she's voting against her own interests?

Someone I had known from another site, it was a dating site but with a forum (the only good thing it had) and that's how we got to know each other. She was so kind-hearted, she even put "GoodGirl" in her username. She really was a total sweetheart. Turns out she was interested in me, but she lived in California, I'm here in New York, I had to stay here because of my parents, same thing with her, her parents getting older and they needed her, so forget about us getting together anytime soon.

Anyways, eventually, through Facebook, I found out she got married. (We were both no longer active on that site and kind of lost touch as I don't do FB anymore). I was happy for her, at least she found somebody. But he did look a bit straight out of the.... trailer park. But anyways, as long as she's happy.

Good grief, what a transformation. I see FB notices in my email, a lot of them of her, and they're all real hostile MAGA type comments. She was this down to earth, understanding, caring for all people type of a person, and now she's this antagonistic person gleefully mocking others.

Thing is, she's Mexican-American, born here, and I believe her parents too... Not sure how many generations back she goes here. But she still has 100% Mexican roots. And she's forgotten this for the sake of pleasing a trailer parker?

During the campaign, I tried really hard to educate rural Americans. I even joined several FB groups. But I left them when all they wanted to do was complain and not do anything. I tried to encourage the farm workers. No one would stand up. I think Americans in general believe "It will never happen to me. Someone else will always fix it." We live so isolated from the rest of the world. Have you ever travelled with a group of whities to Mexico or Ecuador? How embarrassing!! I once had to apologize to a small village by saying "I am so sorry. Now I know why we are called Ugly Americans." My God! Now, I'd be afraid to travel...the whole world probably wants us gone. This isn't like his last admin. This is worse. This could be long lasting. Why evolve if pieces of shit bottom dwellers are going to tell us darkness and algae are what we need to be healthy and happy? I know the Democrats are waiting for the MAGA group to start hurting. I imagine many are trying to make this the last time we go down this dark path. But in the meanwhile, the dems are sitting on the sidelines, having, themselves, abandoned the country.

There is no convincing anybody. It's a basic fact of psychology, nobody's convinced by arguments. They stick with whatever notions that came in with. No matter what facts people are presented with, they don't change their minds. They make excuses or simply ignore whatever is inconvenient to their 'truth'

Look at Clinton. This happened before, but to a lesser degree with him. Trump has a cult, but Clinton had groupies. The sexual harassment craze was going full strength and then stopped when the Monica Lewinsky scandal broke. That was the end of the Feminist Movement. They gave him a pass, and then they went quiet. Because Clinton was their darling.

We had to wait decades to hear some serious noise from Feminists again, and now it was as Feminazis. Sexual harassment noise came back recently as the Me Too movement. So we're talking nearly three decades that these things went dormant and then reappeared, all because of how enthralled they were with him.

Meanwhile, the Republicans in Congress hated Clinton, and kept trying to cause him problems. Yet I used to joke back then that he was the best president the GOP ever had. Even before he ran, people were saying that Clinton was a Republican in disguise. And once elected, he kept going along with what they wanted yet they still kept trying to cause him problems.

The difference is, of course, that people weren't killing each other over Clinton, and he wasn't trying to end the United States of America. That's what's happening with Trump.

In a way though, this is good for the rest of the world. That is something that Trump is right about, they're too dependent on us for everything. He doesn't mean to be right about that, he's just being antagonistic. But the fact is if anything ever did happen to the USA, how would they get on? At least now they got a warning about getting their acts together, becoming more self-reliant, building their military so they can defend themselves, and not centering their economies around ours.

I'm not trying to ignore the suffering that some people are enduring, but they become too soft and entitled. If something happened to America, that will leave them wide open to Russia or China or both. And there would be nothing to stop them.

Yes, basically, everyone has taken America for granted. World leaders have their own large agendas. Did you know they can hold secret meetings at the United Nations? What are they doing in there? It feels like Trump is stirring the mud here just to hide what he's doing behind closed doors with other leaders. He knows his MAGA groups hardly follows the local news...they don't follow world news. And what was in those top secret files he had in his bathroom? While he and a world leader were discussing the documents, Trump said something like "Isn't that interesting? Can you believe it?" I want to know what docs he had. Have you seen that detail in the media? What did he think was so important that he had to steal? We shouldn't only focus on the play being performed for us on stage...but need to know what's going on in the rooms behind the stage.