The Secesh category archive
The Gathering of the Klans 0
Know them by the company they keep.
Variety Homogeneity Vacationland
0
At the Raleigh News & Observer, Jai Kumar, immigrant son of immigrant parents currently attending graduate school at UNC, cuts to the essence of North Carolina’s wingnuttery. A snippet:
Read the rest.
Backfire, the Law Doesn’t Apply to Me Dept. 0
The best-laid plans of mice and militants gang aft agley.
He had expected the government to issue an eviction or ejection claim instead of arresting and indicting the occupiers on federal charges in criminal court.
The oddest bit in the story is this (emphasis added):
His (Ammon Bundy’s–ed.) lawyers assert that Bundy isn’t a member of any militia, isn’t an extremist and doesn’t hold anti-government views — underlining each contention in bold type in their 33-page motion and memorandum filled with lengthy footnotes. (The story goes on to recite wingnut babble about “Fed-rul overreach.”)
I can’t speak to the bit about “militia” (I suspect this boils down to “not having a membership card”), but, as regards the other two contentions, I fear actions doth drowneth out words.
The sky-is-purple level chutzpah, though, merits admiration.
Afterthought:
I am nonplussed at the ability of wingnuts to convince themselves that carrying miniature copies of the Constitution of the United States of America in their shirt pockets, to be whipped out and misinterpreted at the slightest provocation, magickally mystickally morphs sedition into patriotism.
There’s no delusion like self-delusion.
It’s the best delusion there is.
Still Rising Again after All These Years 0
One more time: The next time you hear someone lamenting the “Lost Cause,” ask, “What, exactly, was the cause that was lost?”
Still Rising Again after All These Years 0
The Charlotte Observer’s Taylor Batten looks at a champion of North Carolina’s “It’s Okay To Hate the Gay” law and realizes he’s seen it all before. A nugget:
Now (state senator Buck–ed.) Newton, who is running to be North Carolina’s attorney general, bellows about “how hard we must fight to keep our state straight.” He invokes the threat that those who oppose state-sanctioned discrimination against gays will “expose our wives and our sisters and our children to the sexual predators in the bathrooms.” He says that “the folks that wave the rainbow flags” need to get used to “the way things have always been in this state.” Segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever.
Read the rest.
Still Rising Again after All These Years 0
Jackie does a capsule history of the Republican southern strategy and, along the way, she decodes de code.
Still Rising Again after All These Years 0
Shorter John Cole: General Sherman was correct.
Southern Hospitality 0
I think I’ve told this story before, but it’s still relevant.
My Daddy had a friend* who was a high school science teacher and coach (yes, a high school coach who was smart enough to teach science–who woulda thunk?) and later school superintendent. During the late 60s he was amongst a delegation to an educators convention in New Orleans. They decided to carpool to New Orleans.
Remember, this was during the Civil Rights campaigns of the mid-last century.
Later, he told my father that the trip was fine, except that, when they got to Mississippi, the atmosphere was so hostile that they felt as if they had to adopt fake Southern accents, despite being white Southerners from a Jim Crow state and already having Southern accents.
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*My first baseball glove was a hand-me-down from him. He was a good and decent person, a person of integrity.
Still Rising Again after All These Years 0
Ever notice that those most eager to celebrate “Confederate Heritage” are also those least willing to admit exactly what heritage they celebrate?
Still Rising Again after All These Years 0
Tou Ger Bennett Xiong, an American citizen of Hmong descent, wonders what is happening to his country. Here’s how he starts his article; follow the link for the rest.
Lately, though, I feel that my faith in America’s great promise is being called into question again by the recent hate and animosity in our political climate.
Still Rising Again after All These Years 0
In the midst of a longer column about North Carolina’s recent codification of discrimination against members of the LGBT community, Alfred Doblin recounts a conversation he recently had with a reader.
I explained the book was fiction. She would have none of it. Then I realized she was not unique. That is why Republican candidates preaching hate and division are doing so well. For many Republicans, tea is a drink best served hot.
There can be no reasoning with someone who accepts fiction as fact.
I have nothing to add.
Cowboy Cosplay 0
Balloon Juice provides the service of keeping us up-to-date on the Bundy Bund.
“The Lost Cause” 0
Buried deep in a story about another subject in my local rag–almost an aside–are two sentences that in their off-handed casualness highlight just exactly what cause was lost.
Owners treated the workers* better after an 1808 law prohibiting new slave importation, McGill said.
“You wanted to get the longest service you could out of the ones you owned,” he said.
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*Did he really refer to them as “workers”?