The Secesh category archive
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”?
Cowboy Cosplay 0
Republicans in Congress want to play with their Fanner 50s too, by taking take the “Federals” out of Federal lands.
Is It an Implosion or an Explosion? 2
Brian Greenspun, publisher of the Las Vegas Sun and ex-Republican, marvels at the trajectory of the party that he once supported as it comes apart at the seams. Here’s a bit:
In its place appeared a mishmash of disparate groups that came together in such a way as to assure the party of Abraham Lincoln . . . would collapse of its own weight.
(snip)
By that I mean that the politics of 2016 have exposed the fault lines among the evangelicals, libertarians, statists, economic conservatives, xenophobes and all kinds of supremacists. The folks who kept the party of Lincoln burning bright for so many decades have all but disappeared or, at least, been marginalized as “the establishment.”
Cowboy Cosplay 0
Balloon Juice has the latest on the Bundy Bund.
Still Rising Again after All These Years 0
Solomon Jones looks at the violence of Trump’s supporters and finds that it’s deju vu all over again. Recalling the man who sucker-punched Rakeem Jones, he writes in part:
“The next time we see him we might have to kill him.”
Such was the price of dissent.
And in Trump’s America, that could very well be the price again.
Read the rest.
The Chicago Riots 0
Chauncey Devega was at the Chicago rally for Donald Trump, the one that was purportedly canceled for “security concerns.” He says it has been grievously misrepresented. An excerpt:
(snip)
At Friday’s rally in Chicago, the members of the “silent majority” that Trump speaks for were made, at least for a few hours, to realize that other Americans actually have a voice too. Of course, this moment will only encourage their right-wing politics of racial resentment, hatred, nativism and revanchism. The Trumpeteers now have a story to tell of black and brown savagery in the evil “Democratically controlled” Chicago. This distorted version of events will resonate throughout the Fox News right-wing disinformation machine. Those Trumpeteers at his planned Chicago rally will spin tales of being imperiled by “Mau Maus” and “Commies.” In reality, they were never in any real danger. And like Trump’s other events, the fights and scuffles that did take place were mostly instigated by his supporters.
Follow the link to read (or listen to–he also made this into a podcast) the full report.
No End in Cite 0
At Above the Law, Elie Mystal mulls over whether Donald Trump can be charged with “incitement to violence” in connection with one of his supporter’s “sucker punching” a protester and concludes “no.” Mystal applies the Hollywood super villain standard to illustrate the reasoning:
He’s not throwing cash in the streets and watching people fight over it, like Jack Nicholson’s Joker. He’s giving middle class people the moral authority to blow up some undesirables, like Heath Ledger’s Joker.
Follow the link for the details.
Kicking It 0
All That Was Old Is New Again 0
Petula Dvorak considers the “Trump effect.” A snippet (emphasis added):
It’s like all of those horrible school integration photos of screaming crowds surrounding black students in the 1960s are being reenacted.
She’s quite correct, you know. I was there. It’s the same mobs, the same hate.
In related news, Der Spiegel looks at Trump and is not amused.