The Secesh category archive
Still Rising Again after All These Years 0
The editorial board of the Las Vegas Sun considers reasons why the Republican Party strives to gut out the vote and argues that the root of them lies in its decision to become the party of only some of the people. Indeed, they argue that the party is no longer in any classical way “conservative”; it’s not interested in conserving anything.
They list several factors leading to their conclusion.
- Going back decades, the GOP’s overall campaign strategies have pitted Americans against each other by dividing the population into “us” versus “them” — us being white voters, them being voters of color.
- Today, the Republican Party must suppress votes because it’s a minority — and is one by choice.
- The GOP understands that “us” is a minority group led by an even smaller minority — certain big-money interests . . . .
- The GOP’s absolute refusal to try to create a bigger tent by listening to the needs of a larger population — and therefore court them — means one thing: It doesn’t want to represent anyone other than its narrow leadership.
- The corollary of this is that the modern GOP wants to silence everyone else.
Their reasoning echoes a point that I have made many times in these electrons: Richard Nixon’s odious “southern strategy” has come full circle. The Republican Party is now the party of the Secesh.
Follow the link for a detailed discussion of each of those factors and for the Sun’s larger conclusions.
Still Rising Again after All These Years 0
Apparently, they consider riding ATVs to be uppity.
The Twiners told cops they own land on both sides of the road, pay taxes, and don’t want people riding ATVs on the road since it’s illegal.
The Twiners also rammed their truck into one of the ATVs, the sheriff said. Authorities found a 9mm handgun and believe another, unrecovered, firearm might have been involved.
Previously, the Twiners had posted slogans and memes to their social media accounts such as “Redneck Neighborhood Watch,” “You Loot We Shoot” and images of a Confederate flag.
More at the link.
Still Rising Again after All These Years 0
Still remembering Professor Shade, I wonder whether he would find irony in the Republican Party’s transformation into the party of the Secesh.
Still Rising Again after All These Years 0
Nancy LeTourneau explores Donald Trump’s intent to deny the reality of racism as part of America’s past.
Afterthought:
It is worth remark how the “Lost Cause” keeps getting found again.
Still Rising Again after All These Years 0
In The Roanoke Times, an old white man (I can identify) tells of his journey to discover the lie of the myth of the Lost Cause which he absorbed during his upbringing. It is a powerful piece; here’s a bit:
The New Secesh 0
Methinks The Roanoke Times editorial board has a point. They suggest that “social” media is not connecting persons, it’s separating them. Here’s snippet:
This process of self-isolation is hardly new. Bill Bishop and Robert Cushing wrote a book about this back in 2008. “The Big Sort: Why the Clustering of Like-Minded America is Tearing Us Apart” looked at how people have been self-segregating themselves by ideology in a way we haven’t seen before.
Follow the link for the entire article.
Facing (up to) History 0
At the Greensboro News and Record, Joanna Winston Foley, descended from a Revolutionary War hero who was also a slaveholder, struggles with a renewed awareness of her ancestry in the light of the death of George Floyd and the cascade of events it triggered. It is a sensitive and moving piece, well worth your while.
I have long believed that one of the elements that make the myth of the lost cause and of the land of gracious living so tenacious is a desire of many Southerners to avoid facing the reality of what their ancestors did so as to profit from stolen labor.
I can empathize. Both of us are Southerners, both of us had ancestors who fought in the Revolutionary War and other ancestors who wore the grey. I think my turning point–not as regards my stand on civil rights or on treating other people like people, but as regards my view of my family’s history–came when, at the Harper’s Ferry Wax Museum, we were looking at an exhibit depicting one of my forebears defending slavery.
As we looked at it, one of my children said, “. . . he was on the wrong side?”
I had to agree.
Yes, he was.
In every possible way.
Here’s a bit from her article:
This blind spot, big as a boulder, remained in place until June 2020. The word “privilege” comes to mind — the white privilege of avoiding discomfort.
As those statues came crashing down, so did that blind spot that separated my feelings about my ancestor.
______________________
*Of course, that does not explain why those whose families did not participate in the war, indeed, whose families had not yet arrived here when the war was fought, bought into the lies. For that, look to a century and a half of one of the most successful propaganda campaigns in history, perhaps best represented by that over-the-top potboiler, Gone with the Wind.
Lessons Unlearned 0
At The Roanoke Times, Robert Myers recounts how he came to realize the picture of the Old South fed to him in his Virginia elementary school was a somewhat sanitized view of the South and slavery a Confederate crock of lost cause myth-making (my words, not his).
Aside:
It is extremely likely that he and I had the same textbook.
(Misplet wrod correx.)
Heritage 0
At The Roanoke Times, Reggie Figard responds to those who protest the removal of Confederate monuments; he reminds them that their treasured “Southern Heritage” is not what they would claim it to be. Here’s an excerpt:
Still Rising Again after All Those Years 0
Arkansas Senator Tom Cotton don’t cotton to no truth tellin’ about dem ole cotton fields back home.
Misdirection Play, the Cause That Was Lost Dept. 0
At the Bangor Daily News, historian and pastor the Rev. J. Mark Worth shreds the long-standing Southern propaganda effort to protray secession as somehow a noble and worthy cause. He points out that there are not statues to Benedict Arnold ans asks why we have monuments to Confederate generals.
Here’s a bit of his answer (emphasis added):
(snip)
Did Southerners also want states’ rights? Yes, when it meant their right to enslave other human beings. But they opposed states rights when Northern states didn’t want to return black people to enslavement in the South.