I don’t know what “heritage” Doug Mastriano is defending but it isn’t his state’s
It’s bad enough that Republicans in the South are still celebrating the civil war over slavery. In fact, it’s pretty sickening. But a Pennsylvania politician — the home of Gettysburg — celebrating the confederacy is outrageous. WTF?
In one of his regular Facebook livestreams, Doug Mastriano in 2020 approached armed men next to a Confederate flag and thanked them for “being vigilant” in supposedly protecting Robert E. Lee’s statue at Gettysburg. He also praised someone for wearing a half-American, half-Confederate flag, saying he “can’t think of a better cape.”
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Mastriano’s view of the Confederacy has been in focus in recent days after Reuters reported that in 2014, “Mastriano posed in Confederate uniform for a faculty photo at the Army War College. … Mastriano is the only one wearing a Confederate uniform.”
Following that report, Media Matters found 2020 video showing that the Pennsylvania Republican, who serves in the state Senate, has an apparent fondness for people who associate with the Confederacy.
On July 4, 2020, as The Washington Post wrote, “armed militia members, bikers and white nationalists turned up at the grounds of the Gettysburg National Military Park … to defend against a supposed burning of the U.S. flag by leftists.” In reality, the scheduled flag burning was an internet hoax. The Post wrote that the “episode at Gettysburg is a stark illustration of how shadowy figures on social media have stoked fears about the protests against racial injustice and excessive police force that have swept across the nation since the death of George Floyd in police custody on May 25.”
The Post added that “less than a mile away, at the Virginia Monument, hundreds of bikers and armed men gathered around a statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee.” Mastriano filmed a livestream in which he visited the Virginia Monument and thanked pro-Confederate armed men for standing guard.
Mastriano’s senate district includes Gettysburg.
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During the first part of his Facebook video, Mastriano approached a car with a Confederate flag and thanked people with firearms for being there, stating: “Friends, thanks for being here. I’m Sen. Mastriano. … It’s good to see you guys.” He then spends time making small talk with them and tells them, “Thanks for being vigilant.”
I have to admit that this one is a shocker. Seeing a Pennsylvania politician who represents Gettysburg supporting confederate extremists at Gettysburg is something I never thought I’d see. 51,000 Americans died on that battlefield and you’d think that a man who served in the military for years would have a little more respect.
Remember that the population in 1863 was one-tenth of what it is now. If one were to translate the death toll from the Civil War into today’s population figures, it would not be in the thousands, or the tens of thousands, or the hundreds of thousands. It would be 7.5 million men dead.
This essay about the Gettysburg address came to mind. An excerpt:
The Gettysburg Address is emphatically a war speech — a speech designed to rally the North to stay the course. Many college students today do not pick up on this fact. Not knowing much history, but aware that Lincoln is beloved for his kindliness and his summons “to bind up the nation’s wounds,” they tend to read Lincoln’s Second Inaugural back into the Gettysburg Address. They assume that he is commemorating all the fallen (and they like him for his supposed inclusiveness, especially in contrast to the bombast and arrogance of Pericles). Perhaps their misreading might be excused, since a most unusual war speech it is.
Lincoln never mentions the enemy, or rather he mentions them only by implication. When he speaks of “those who here gave their lives that that nation might live,” his audience then would have been acutely aware that there were others who gave their lives that that nation might die, that it might no longer be the United States. The cemetery that was dedicated at Gettysburg was exclusively a Union cemetery. In fact, in the weeks before the dedication, the townspeople had witnessed the re-interment process, as thousands of the battle dead were exhumed from the shallow graves in which they had hastily been placed by those same local citizens back in the sweltering days of July. As they were uncovered, Union bodies were painstakingly identified and separated from Confederate bodies. While the rebels were simply reburied, coffinless, deeper in the ground where they were found (to be reclaimed later by their home states), the loyal dead were removed, further sorted into their military units, and placed in coffins and tidy lines, awaiting honorable burial in the new cemetery.
Lincoln’s abstraction from the enemy highlights the very abstract character of the entire speech. No specifics are given. There isn’t a proper noun to be found, with the single exception of God. Thus, there is no mention of Gettysburg, just “a great battle-field.” There is no mention of America, just “this continent.” There is no mention of the United States, just “a new nation” and “that nation” and “this nation.” There is no mention of the parties to the conflict, no North or South, no Union or Confederacy, just “a great civil war.” Lincoln speaks of “our fathers,” but no names are given. And although the opening clause, “four score and seven years ago,” does refer to a specific date, Lincoln has obscured it by giving the lapse of time in Biblical language and then by requiring the listener to subtract 87 from 1863 in order to arrive at the date of 1776.
The tremendous abstraction or generality of the speech is part of what explains its ability to speak to people in different eras and cultures who have no connection to the events at Gettysburg, and yet feel, as Lincoln might say, that they are “blood of the blood, and flesh of the flesh” of those spoken of there, or more accurately of those spoken to there. The addressees of the speech are identified simply as “we,” “the living.” Refusing to dwell long among the dead, since words are inadequate to the act of consecration, Lincoln redeploys his words, turning them from mere saying into their own form of deed. He summons the living to “the unfinished work” and swears them to “the great task remaining.” He turns an elegy into a call of duty.
The abstraction of the Gettysburg Address is in marked contrast to the impromptu speech that Lincoln gave on July 7th, right after the victory, when residents of the District of Columbia assembled outside the White House to serenade him. This was before the era of the Secret Service and massive barricades around the White House, when interaction between presidents and ordinary citizens was much more intimate. In his brief remarks, Lincoln prefigures points he will make at Gettysburg; however, he does so in very different language — informal and highly specific. After thanking the visitors, he says:
How long ago is it? — eighty odd years — since on the Fourth of July for the first time in the history of the world a nation by its representatives, assembled and declared as a self-evident truth that “all men are created equal.” That was the birthday of the United States of America.
After mentioning by name Thomas Jefferson and John Adams, Lincoln goes on to describe the significance of the victory:
and now, on this last Fourth of July just passed, when we have a gigantic Rebellion, at the bottom of which is an effort to overthrow the principle that all men are created equal, we have the surrender of a most powerful position and army on that very day, and not only so, but in a succession of battles in Pennsylvania, near to us, through three days, so rapidly fought that they might be called one great battle on the 1st, 2d, and 3d of the month of July; and on the 4th the cohorts of those who opposed the declaration that all men are created equal, “turned tail” and run. Gentlemen, this is a glorious theme, and the occasion for a speech, but I am not prepared to make one worthy of the occasion.
Four months later, he was ready.
The first Republican president would roll over in his grave at the idea of a Pennsylvania candidate for Governor supporting the confederacy. It’s appalling.