The Secesh category archive
Rebranding. It’s a Thing. 0
There is nothing new or even alternative about the “alt-right.”
It’s the same old right, only with new sheets.
Civil Rights Movement, Act Two 0
At the Ashland, Oregon, Daily Tidings, Herb Rothschild posits that we are seeing a second Civil Rights Movement. Whereas the first was directed at legally-enforced discrimination (Jim Crow laws, segregated public institutions, red-lining neighborhoods and the like), this one is directed at gaining social equality, that is, equality in deed, not just in word.*
Just as the first Civil Rights Movement engendered opposition, so too has this one, as the Republican Party has become little more than the Party of the New Secesh. An excerpt:
This year is shaping up to be for the second struggle what 1964-1965 was for the first. On one side, Republican officials at every level have been openly combative since a black person was elected president. Now their George Wallace has emerged, and this time they’ve embraced him. Hate speech and hate crimes are increasing. In April the Southern Poverty Law Center published research indicating the Trump campaign is inflaming racial and ethnic tensions in U.S. classrooms nationwide. On the other side, graphic exposure by phone cameras has made routine police violence against people of color no longer tolerable and sparked renewed grassroots activism.Do please read the rest.
Image via Michael-in-Norfolk.
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*The actual extent to which “equality in word,” as opposed to “equality in deed,” has been achieved, of course, is arguable and has been spotty, at best.
It is not just chance that, until the rise of Donald Trump, though, racists have been restricted to speaking in code since the 1970s. Now they’ve dropped the codes as they rally for racism.
“The Lost Cause” 0
Once more, the next time you hear persons wax romantic about the “the Lost Cause,” please ask them to identify what precisely was the cause that was lost.
And, yes, in case you were wondering, I’m a Southern Boy. Some of my ancestors were slaveholders. The cause that was lost was their cause. I cannot repudiate my ancestors–as Todd says, it is what it is–but I can and must repudiate their cause.
Still Rising Again after All These Years 0
Really, now, you do realize these are just innocent Civil War re-enactors, do you not?
(snip)
The Polaris had a Confederate flag attached to it and was driven by a man who allegedly approached the victim and said, “You need to leave,” followed by a slur for African-Americans. The man then repeated the slur, telling the victim that such people “get hung around these parts.”
Still Rising Again after All These Years 0
One more time, when you hear someone wax romantic about “The Lost Cause,” ask, “What, exactly, was the cause that was lost?”
Still Rising Again after All These Years 0
In Republican World, Pickett is always charging.
Still Rising Again after All These Years 0
It would appear that Reconstruction v. 2.0 needs to be installed.
One of the things that continually amazes and bemuses me, when it’s not horrifying and disgusting me, is the ability of racists to convince themselves that, somehow, their racism isn’t racist. It’s something I’ve observed since I first became aware.
Nothing better illustrates how easily persons turn a blind eye upon themselves.
Still Rising Again after All These Years 0
Imagine this: you go to a yard sale and the Civil War breaks out.
Thomas Lee Campbell, 54, is facing charges of brandishing a firearm and vandalism for confronting Cierra Mayes in his yard after he had already shoved branches through her car windshield and left a nasty note reading: “F*ck you.”
The Meaning of Trump 0
Werner Herzog’s Bear looks at the news and hazards a guess:
By embracing Trump, the GOP may finally be admitting that they are indeed the White Man’s Party.
Follow the link and find out why he says that (and, no, the Republican Party will not admit that “they are indeed the White Man’s Party”; “plausible deniabilty” will be maintained).
Rationalizing Racist Behavior–It’s a Thing 0
I say that there is no way to explain away the racism in this, but I predict they will keep trying.
I’m a Southern boy. I see through racists’ bullshit because I grew up surrounded by it.
Life on the Inside Is Hard 0
The Bundy Bund have discovered that jail is restricted. A snippet from the story at TPM:
Yeah, Bundy wants his gundy back.
Apparently, the Bundy Bund believed that they could take over a Federal Nature Preserve, trash the premises, terrorize the town, and just walk away, Renee, or ride off into the sunset, or something else ending in “get off scot free.”
These fellows must think that John Wayne movies are historical documents, much as the aliens in Galaxy Quest believed in Star Trek.
In other news of the Bundy Bund, legal stuff is taking place.
Still Rising Again after All These Years 0
Who knew that the CSA has a New Jersey brigade?
The Dispossessed 5
Werner Herzog’s Bear ain’t buying the hype. He’s fed up with the
Since the first black captives were sold off the boat in the English colonies in 1619, racism and economics have been mixed.
Chattel slavery was an economic system in which a few gained wealth from the forced labor of others. Racism is a legal-social-political construct developed largely in the late 1600s in Virginia to justify that servitude as something that was “meant to be.”
The two are consequently intertwined, even as they differ in kind.
Racism has been a powerful tool to control not only black and brown people, but also poor white people, a misdirection play to get them to look away, look away, look away from political economy. As Lyndon Johnson said,
Mr. Bear is quite correct. That many of Trump’s supporters may be economically disadvantaged, as well as racist, does not make them or him any less racist. It does, nevertheless, provide cover for media to ignore the racism.
Indeed, media in the United States are adept at not seeing racism, even when the “whites only” and “colored only” signs stare them in the face. One needs look no further back than Andy Griffith’s gentle, mythical Mayberry to see this: A Piedmont North Carolina town with no, nada, zilch, not one black person.*
There are persons running for President who speak capably and knowledgeably about political economy (you and I may or may not agree with their conclusions, but they speak neither from nor to ignorance).
Donald Trump, serial con artist and recidivist bankrupt, is not one of them.
(Follow the link for the rest of Mr. Bear’s post.)
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*It just occurred to me to wonder, was Mayberry a sundown town?