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Lincoln's Generals

Lincoln’s Generals

Very much in Lincoln’s pattern, it’s clear that Obama will be fighting an economic war with less than the best. Many a McClellan will be tasked to fight, but will only waste time doing techno with the deck chairs – shaping them into pretty patterns that, of course, should work. Our Grant will come, if we are lucky, after we grind meat off bones and litter the landscape with ruined, but strangely stoic, children of the sort of well to do.

Grant won by sending hundreds of thousands of men directly to their death, and that’s what it took. The generals before him tried everything they could to avoid what had to be done, but half measures availed them nothing – it only delayed and made worse the inevitable choices. To save the nation, it had to be destroyed with the hope that from the ashes something better could be built.

The stimulus is not enough.

Compromise is not possible with slave traders or republicans – there is no middle ground to meet them at. Both have shown that they will take compromise as a weakness and use it like a stick to beat you with later.

I see bad things for the republic coming – I can only hope that Obama can raise himself above the disappointments that are sure to follow what’s been done today, to find his Grant when the time comes, when all hope seems lost to the rest of us.

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