July, 2014 archive
Regressive Politics 0
Facing South explores similarities and one glaring difference between Teabaggery and the Southern Populist movements at the end of the 19th Century. A nugget:
Tea Partyers know this, but much of their anger is misdirected. Unlike the Populists of the 1890s, they despise organized labor. Their benefactors — the Koch brothers and the Club for Growth — would have it no other way. The old Populists wanted government to serve the people. The Tea Partyers want government to go away.
Myth-Makers: How the South Won the Civil War 0
The North may have won the war, but the South won the peace.
The myth of the nobility of the Lost Cause and of its proponents was part of its winning strategy. The tales of gracious Southern hospitality, of kind masters and happy slaves, were essential to building the myth. Gone with the Wind was the myth-builders’ apotheosis, their master-stroke, myth-making on the grandest scale. Even more corrosively, it was a myth devotedly believed by its proponents in their desire to absolve themselves and their ancestors from the evils they had perpetrated.
I’m sure that my ancestors, many of whom wore the gray and some of whom held slaves, were mostly good people as best they knew how (except for Henry Alexander Wise, who may have been single-handedly the most important individual in convincing Virginia to secede), but Southerners’ romanticizing slave-holders, slavery, and those who fought to perpetuate slavery and “Our Way of Life” must end before the South finds redemption.
A way of life built on blood and torture and rape and theft of labor must be no longer romanticized, no longer admired, no longer remembered with wistful tears nor with misty water-colored memories. It was not romantic when it happened to the sound of whips and the clank of chains; it warrants no wistful tears, no water-colored memories. Until Southerners confront and admit this, their–our–sin will not be purged.
But it’s not going to happen, is it?
Far too many of our countrymen want “those days” back. For sake of economy, we’ll call them “Republicans,” as Nixon’s odious Southern Strategy, by which he expected to entice bigots to support the Republican Party, has come full circle, so that bigots now control the Republican Party.
So long as some of our fellow citizens look wistfully to the Old South as a promised land, America’s original sin of slavery will continue to soil the polity and America’s soul.
Afterthought:
If you want to walk back into the myth of genteel racism, try watching Disney’s Song of the South. Except for the cartoon bits, it’s little more than racist propaganda, full of kind masters and smiling happy darkies singing in the fields.
My friend and I watched it a while ago. The “live action” scenes took all the fun out of the cartoons. It was, quite frankly, to gag.
“An Armed Society Is a Polite Society” 0
Proselytize for politeness.
“There’s evidence that he took offense to the issue that there were signs posted at Mercy Fitzgerald Health System indicating that it was a gun-free zone,” Whelan said. “That’s the only motive we have been able to determine at this point in time . . . he was upset about that policy.”
National College Exploitation Association 0
Bob Molinaro cuts to the quick:
More quick cuts at the link. (His Saturday columns always delight.)
Exploratory 0
Dan Simpson searches for America’s heart. Read it.
Great Moments in Rationalization 0
Twas ever thus: Plutocrats skillfully convince themselves that flaunting ostentatious greed is a sign of their benevolence.
“. . . Nor Any Drop To Drink” 0
Industry is poisoning, well, just about everyone and everything.
Scientists at the U.S. Geological Survey tracked the toxins called neonicotinoids in six states and nine Midwestern rivers, including the portion of the Mississippi that drains southern Minnesota, and found that they were universally present throughout the growing season in every watershed tested.
“An Armed Society Is a Polite Society” 0
Parent politely.
His daughter was shot in the arm and taken to Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center. She was treated and released.
Droning On 0
What happens when remote-controlled robotic death rains from the skies?
Droning On 0
Innocent out-of-town yahoo plays with his new toy, gets remonstrated with.
Seattle police continue to frown upon people using private drones for their own kicks.
Space Needle security called police just before 8:30 p.m. Tuesday after guests reported seeing a small drone buzz the top of the tower, according to police reports.
Witnesses claimed they saw the white drone, equipped with a camera, fly back to a hotel two blocks east of the Space Needle and land inside a fifth-floor unit.
I sympathize with the cops.
