Robert Mueller's indictments were huge news.

Not only did we have Paul Manafort and his assistant indicted on twelve counts, but we also found out there has been a guilty plea. George Papadopoulos, a junior level foreign adviser to then candidate Trump, has pled guilty to lying to the FBI and has been working as a "proactive cooperator". Of course, the Trump administration is trying desperately to distance themselves, calling him a "low, level volunteer." Papadopoulos was in contact with a London-based professor with extensive ties to Russia, who said he had "dirt" on Clinton. Papadopoulos was then encouraged by another Trump staffer, Sam Clovis, to "make the trip" to Russia, "if it is feasible." This story is very exciting and fascinating, and It has the Trump White House scrambling and frustrated. There is another story, however that I think is being buried, and it is an important one. One that involves Chief of Staff John Kelly.

John Kelly was on Fox News the other night giving an interview to Laura Ingraham. When asked about a church in Virginia that had recently taken down a statue of Robert E. Lee, John Kelly praised Lee as "an honorable man who gave up his country to fight for his state." Kelly, who is a retired Marine Corps. General, also stated in the interview that the Civil War was caused by "the lack of ability to compromise." So, let's dissect the statement about Robert E. Lee first. Lee, along with the confederate army, decided to rebel against the United States. How is this honorable?

The second statement is what infuriates me the most. If we look back through history, the issue with slavery began with the founding of our country. While writing the constitution, our Founding fathers were split on the issue of slavery, as a compromise they came up with the infamous " slaves would count as three-fifths of a person for purposes of representation and taxation." It also, in not so many words, allowed Congress to ban the international slave trade, but not for 20 years. Most Northern states had already passed abolition laws by 1800, but the national debate intensified as groups debated over the expansion of the U.S. and if slavery would be allowed in new states. In 1820, we got the Missouri Compromise, which allowed Missouri to enter the union as a slave state but forbade slavery above the 36th parallel line, which set up the battle lines for the war to come. The Kansas-Nebraska act of 1854 mandated that any state, no matter geography, was permitted to decide the question of slavery by "popular sovereignty." Lincoln tried to compromise with the Southern states by a proposed constitutional amendment that would allow slave states to continue slavery but prohibit slavery in new states. “It reflects a very old set of ideas about the meaning of the Civil War,” David Blight, a historian at Yale University said. “Everybody was right, and nobody was wrong. Everybody was noble, everyone fought for their conscience, you don’t have to worry anymore about what they fought for.”

What infuriates me the most is that everyone thought John Kelly was going to be the “normal” one in the Trump administration. It turns out he is just as crazy as the rest of them. This is what they do. They take history and they distort it into a narrative that suits their agenda. Keep your eyes up and your ears open. Don’t get distracted from what they are doing. Resist.