“Our army manned the air, it rammed the ramparts, it took over the airports…”

Surely you know by now that the president’s grasp of American history is as shallow as it is narrow. When confronting our past, the man’s in a dim room and afraid to strike a match for fear of setting his hairspray alight.

Here are just a very few examples:

“Frederick Douglass is an example of somebody who’s done an amazing job and is being recognized more and more, I notice.” Douglass died in 1895.

“Great president. Most people don’t even know he was a Republican,” Trump said. “Does anyone know? Lot of people don’t know that.” Trump on Abraham Lincoln.

“People don’t realize, you know, the Civil War, if you think about it, why?” It was slavery. The Confederate Ordinances of Secession are explicit.

“No politician in history, and I say this with great surety, has been treated worse or more unfairly. [See: Abraham Lincoln.]

In a phone conversation with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau that got somewhat heated over the tariffs, Trump brought up the War of 1812, claiming that Canadians burned down the White House during that conflict. It was the British.

The Battle of Gettysburg. What an unbelievable — it was so much and so interesting, and so vicious and horrible, and so beautiful in so many different ways. It represented such a big portion of the success of this country. Gettysburg, wow. I go to Gettysburg’s Pennsylvania to look and to watch, and the statement of Robert E. Lee, who’s no longer in favor, did you ever notice that? No longer in favor. ‘Never fight up hill, me boys. Never fight up hill,’ he said. Wow. That was a big mistake. Lee attacked uphill two days in a row, July 2 and 3.

“Our army manned the air, it rammed the ramparts, it took over the airports, it did everything it had to do, and at Fort McHenry, under the rockets’ red glare, it had nothing but victory,” The president on the Revolutionary War, July 4, 2019.

Mind you, I’m not arguing that a president need have an advanced degree in American history. It would be enough if he or she could pass the old-timey California High School Exit Exam in American History. Or the New York Regents exam in the same subject. (A 65, for New York eighth graders, is sufficient.)

Of course, the man’s ignorance is complemented by cruelty. He did not know who won the First World War. And he referred to the Marines who fought at Belleau Wood in 1918—in a battle many historians see a a key turning point in that terrible war–as “suckers” and “losers.”

Here are the suckers and losers from Camp Lejeune re-enacting the Marines’ opening assault in June 1918:

I don’t necessarily regard his failure to understand history laughable. He just doesn’t care. I did not find this headline, from CNN today, funny at all.

Now, even though most of my tongue is in my cheek, I’m about to speak with some authority on how Trump’s ignorance may doom him. “Authority” because I’m named for my Confederate great-great grandfather, James McBride. My middle name comes from his staff officer son, Douglas.

Let me qualify this by reiterating that I am a Lincoln man. On the off-chance that I make it to heaven, the first people I want there waiting for me are Mom, Jesus and Lincoln. In that order.

Below: My great-great grandfather; a souvenir his boys left in the Lexington, Missouri, courthouse, his son, Douglas. (Yankee artillery shell, Arkansas, 1862).

Unlike the cannonball above, there is no history lodged in the presidential brain. There’s one more thing he does not know about history, and it bears on his messing with California. The place where the Civil War started is Fort Sumter, Charleston, South Carolina.

Fort Point, San Francisco, California is essentially Sumter’s twin.