Slaying history and everything in its path

Trump's recent visit to Gettysburg is telling in many regards. While he compared himself to Lincoln, his campaign looks more like Robert E. Lee's infamous charge on Pennsylvania that ended badly in defeat, and paved the way for the Union to take back the South. Trump's campaign has come to epitomize the Southern Lost Cause, built solely on defiance with no real plan to govern if god forbid he was able to seize the White House.

We saw that with George Bush, although he at least proved shrewd enough to know how to temper his message to get crossover votes. Not Trump. He keeps charging up the same hill time and again despite the heavy casualties. You almost feel sorry for Kellyanne Conway as she tries to explain her boss to the media long after all words fail.

The most amazing thing about Trump's campaign has been the utter disregard for what we would call strategy. His advisers had to know that this election would come down to a handful of states as have the last six elections. Surely, they tried to clue Donald in on how the electoral math works and get him to focus on these states. Instead, it seems Donald goes where he wants regardless of whether he has any chance in that state or not.

Mostly, it seems he is looking for photo ops, and Gettysburg was as good a place as any to launch more broadsides at Hillary. I guess he felt hampered by the format of the Al Smith Dinner, forced to veil his harsh rhetoric in jokes, most of which fell flat. He spit out all his venom on the Civil War battlefield, vowing to erase all traces of Obama's administration within his first 100 days in office, as if we haven't heard that before.

This no doubt appeals to teabaggers, especially those with Southern roots, but falls on deaf ears to the general electorate. The only thing Trump's Gettysburg speech showed is how far apart the Republican Party today is from that of Lincoln seven score and thirteen years ago. The GOP more closely resembles the tattered rebel soldier crawling home after a series of defeats, still vowing to fight another day.

It would take a miraculous turn of events at this point for Trump to prevail in November but he continues to exhort his followers to fight, although you have to think most of them have given up hope at this point. The polls look really really bad, even Rasmussen was forced to concede Hillary holds a slight edge, when other polls have her up by as much as 12 percent.

Pennsylvania is so far out of his grasp at this point that you have to wonder what value Gettysburg has other than to try to project himself as Lincoln. However, there was nothing in his speech to indicate he had any sense of history much less current events. Lincoln might as well be a vampire hunter for all he knows.

O Pioneers!

It is hard not to think of Nebraska without thinking of its greatest writer. Here is a marvelous piece by Capote, Remembering Willa Cather . I remember seeing a stage production of O Pioneers! and being deeply moved by its raw emotions. I had read My Antonia before, and soon found myself hooked, like Capote was by the simple elegance of her prose and the way she was able to evoke so many feelings through her characters. Much of it came from the fact that she had lived those experiences herself. Her father dragged the family from Virginia to Nebraska in 1883, when it was still a young state, settling in the town of Red Cloud. named after one of the great Oglala chiefs. Red Cloud was still alive at the time, living on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota, in the aftermath of the "Great Sioux Wars" of 1876-77. I don't know whether Cather took any interest in the famous chief, although it is hard to imagine not. Upon his death in 1909, he was eulogi

The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire

Welcome to this month's reading group selection. David Von Drehle mentions The Melting Pot , a play by Israel Zangwill, that premiered on Broadway in 1908. At that time theater was accessible to a broad section of the public, not the exclusive domain it has become over the decades. Zangwill carried a hopeful message that America was a place where old hatreds and prejudices were pointless, and that in this new country immigrants would find a more open society. I suppose the reference was more an ironic one for Von Drehle, as he notes the racial and ethnic hatreds were on display everywhere, and at best Zangwill's play helped persons forget for a moment how deep these divides ran. Nevertheless, "the melting pot" made its way into the American lexicon, even if New York could best be describing as a boiling cauldron in the early twentieth century. Triangle: The Fire That Changed America takes a broad view of events that led up the notorious fire, noting the gro

Colonel

Now with Colonel Roosevelt , the magnum opus is complete. And it deserves to stand as the definitive study of its restless, mutable, ever-boyish, erudite and tirelessly energetic subject. Mr. Morris has addressed the toughest and most frustrating part of Roosevelt’s life with the same care and precision that he brought to the two earlier installments. And if this story of a lifetime is his own life’s work, he has reason to be immensely proud. -- Janet Maslin -- NY Times . Let the discussion begin!

Dispatches from Vilnius

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