I find it interesting and illuminating to think of these Bushite times as being a re-enactment of the American Civil War.
It is true that, in some way, the Bushite regime represents the worst of the cultures of both the North and the South. This fascist set of forces includes both the greed and heartlessness that characterized some Yankee capitalists and the false piety and false righteousness that was the underside of the former slave culture.
But predominantly, the Bushite regime is an expression of the culture of the South. (That is at least somewhat suggested by a look at the red-blue maps of the past two presidential elections. And those maps should be read with the fact born in mind that following the Civil War, the patterns of migration and settlement spread a good deal of "the culture of the South" into the new states of the West.)
That culture has its virtues. But it also has a major vulnerability at the level of moral vision. And it is at that level that the conflict going on in America today around this regime recapitulates a core element of the Civil War of a hundred and fifty years ago.
And once again, the South is wrong. Once again, it is fighting for the dark side.
In each of these American crises, the South has fought for a world in which it has the right to dominate others -- whether through slavery (at least for the ruling slave-holding class, which is the part of Southern society that wanted the Civil War), or, as in the present crisis, through imperialism or through the lauching of a crusade.
And in each, the Southerners have told themselves that they are on God's side and God is on theirs.
Every culture has its defects, and every society has had its dark episodes. These two are the biggest instances in which the defects of the South have wrought great destruction.
The South in the 1850s went crazy to the dark side. In its overreaching effort to make America a slave society through and through, the South then tried to overturn the old balances that had kept the peace. The Southerners made this bid for domination through things like the Fugitive Slave Law, the abrogation of the long-standing Missouri Compromise, and the dreadful Dred Scott decision.
They yielded to a dark impulse that ignited the bloody conflagration that previous generations of statesmen from both sides had worked hard to avoid.
And so came the terrible war.
In response to that dark impulse, there swept the North a righteous anger that we here on NSB would recognize: a battle hymn that declared, "Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord. He has trampled on the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored."
And now the dark side of the spirit of the South has risen up in the form of the Bushite drive to tear down the American structure of democracy and construct --as far as they could take it --a fascist society.
It is the white people of the South who, more than any other demographic group, have embraced these thugs. The support for this regime from Southern whites has been secured through several channels. One source has been the artfulness with which the Bushite leaders have wrapped themselves in the flag and have held high the cross. And this enlistment of the South has been accomplished through the ability of the Bushites to speak in terms that resonate with a culture that organizes value in terms of the concept of "honor." *
And it has happened because from its inception, the Southern culture of honor was also organized around the matters of race and, in particular, the enslavement of one race by another. This instilled a dark element near the heart of the Southern spirit. The combination of the belief in white supremacy (whose historical place in Southern culture would be difficult to over-estimate) and of the institution of slavery that belief justified, sowed a moral problem at the root of the culture: it involved enshrining, as God's will, some very thuglike forms of domination.
There is a beauty in the culture of honor, and there is a part of it that works for goodness and virtue. But there is another part of the Southern culture that can too readily mistake the evil for the good.
Andrew Bard Schmookler's website www.nonesoblind.org is devoted to understanding the roots of America's present moral crisis and the means by which the urgent challenge of this dangerous moment can be met. Dr. Schmookler is also the author of such books as The Parable of the Tribes: The Problem of Power in Social Evolution (SUNY Press) and Debating the Good Society: A Quest to Bridge America's Moral Divide (M.I.T. Press). He also conducts regular talk-radio conversations in both red and blue states.
Yawn... Yet another moral vilification of the south by someone who chooses to obfuscate the facts.
"In its overreaching effort to make America a slave society through and through, the South then tried to overturn the old balances that had kept the peace. The Southerners made this bid for domination through things like the Fugitive Slave Law, the abrogation of the long-standing Missouri Compromise, and the dreadful Dred Scott decision.
Andrew Bard Schmookler's website www.nonesoblind.org is devoted to understanding the roots of America's present moral crisis and the means by which the urgent challenge of this dangerous moment can be met."
Firstly, so there will be no misinterpretation of my comments; Slavery was and is Wrong. Period.
Secondly, you, (as are most Americans, due to the tireless efforts of the US northern dominated educational system since the Civil War) are sorely uneducated in American history and economics.. Various historical and archaeological evidence contra-indicate your unstated supposition that your morally enlightened and superior northern brethren never practiced, supported, or profited from Black African slavery.
I do agree there are many similarities from this period of history with the present day. The Neo-Con president/admin have and continue to take dictatorial latitudes with the Constitution surpassing what Lincoln and his party did in it's day. Habeas Corpus nullified, Due Process nullified, Posse Comitatus nullified. States Rights and Powers of Governors effectively nullified. This time though, the entire country is being raped/pillaged.
If you are truly a man of your professed word; to glean an actual understanding of this period of American History and how it relates to present day situations, you need to do your homework. You should have at least some of the researched facts, especially before passing moral pronouncements on an entire culture ( as your ilk is so fond of spouting ) and or pretending to understand the economics of the institution of African Slavery in the US.
If however, after more research you refuse to adjust your uneducated suppositions, you not only continue to labor in ignorance, but openly espouse cognitive dissonance, in direct opposition to your professed intent.
Here's your homework.
DiLorenzo's Archive A Northerner by birth, apparently a Southerner by choice...
Thomas J. DiLorenzo: professor of economics at Loyola College in Maryland and the author of The Real Lincoln: A New Look at Abraham Lincoln, His Agenda, and an Unnecessary War, (Three Rivers Press/Random House). His latest book is Lincoln Unmasked: What You’re Not Supposed To Know about Dishonest Abe (Crown Forum/Random House).
Most of your supposed corrections of my supposed historical errors are really beside the point. The complicity of aspects of the North in racism and slavery, for example, does not alter the picture of the what were the salient characteristics of Southern culture.
About the idea that the telling of the history of the Civil War period has been Northern dominated: perhaps it is not I who should do more homework.
A comparison of both the circumstances under which Lincoln suspended habeus corpus, and of how he sought to handle that with respect to the Constitution, with how the Bushites have proceeded helps to underscore how fundamentally lawless the latter are in comparison with the former.
I've lived in the South, and I know well about "The War of Northern Aggression."
The reign of propagandistic dogma is difficult to penetrate in that culture.
by
Andrew Bard Schmookler (314 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 146 comments)
on Tuesday, August 21, 2007 at 10:53:23 AM
whatever disingenuousness you prefer, it would seem to be a "salient personal characteristic".
My legislative/archeological facts document that the behaviors and practices of black slavery you vilify as "salient characteristics of southern culture" were all too present within the "salient characteristics of the northern culture" as well. Your essay's allusion/insinuation that these "salient characteristics" were not present in both cultures, amount to the proverbial pot calling the kettle black. Logically, if the behavior is vilified and ascribed as a cultural characteristic or defect for one group, it must be for the other also. You give the north a moral pass, in mere complicity as "some Yankee capitalists" or "the north abused their power plenty" while holding the entirety of the south guilty of moral turpitude for two entire pages, and I'm calling you on it.
Facts are funny things. Funny how your essay disregards them. Funny how the institution of slavery had existed in the north since the colonies began, is absent in your essay. Funny how long it took for the "righteous angered response of the north against that dark impulse of slavery and domination" to rise to collective consciousness, and be adopted as cause for the war, after it was begun. Funny how, not until 1863 did the Emancipation Proclamation free ONLY the slaves in the South, and funny that the 13th Amendment to the Constitution wasn't ratified until 1865. Sure took the morally righteous yankees quite a while to become angry and proactive on piety, righteousness and stored grapes of wrath; which you attribute as the impetus and instigation of and for the war.
As one example, do tell me how Lincoln "respected" the First Amendment to the Constitution by jailing northern editors critical of his actions, and shuttering their publications?
As to the "idea" that the telling of the history of the Civil War period has been dominated by Northern interests, who won the war? Who has had control by proxy of the education system and its published curriculum before and since?
Victors write the dogma that comes to be accepted as truth, not the vanquished.
The wheels of civilization turn as the money masters wish. Religion and politics have ever been tyrannies used to enslave the mind and soul of man.
As to the masters' latest goon squad; the Carpetbagger Bush's and their Machiavellian ilk's success, it's no mean feat considering the generational dumbing down of the middle and lower classes at the hand of government public schooling. Gatto's book, ( link provided in my prior post) The Underground History of American Education, details it quite nicely. The plan was by design.
On rolls the game for the gold, while (to quote Poppy) "The fodder units" are bombarded with distractions of bread & circuses from the government and the media. Not content to loot our treasure, we are patriotically admonished to offer our very blood to grease the wheels of their machine.
It matters not which preening, hubristic party was voted for or by which segment of the population, they are both members of same team, the scrimmage game is acted out simply to maintain our illusion of choice while they continue their business unabated. The sooner more Americans realize this fact, the better off we'll all be.
by
k kelly (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 1 diaries, 182 comments)
on Thursday, August 23, 2007 at 11:01:41 AM
and was impressed that something like 30, 000 men died in battle there in the civil war.
I don't see our society heading that way.
Still your scenario is interesting.
The southern states have African American populations ranging from 25 to 40 per cent.
Almost all of the African Americans vote Democratic, so for a GOP candidate to be competitive requires 2/3 support among whites.
Obviously, someone who appeals to 2/3 of whites should have strong appeal to African Americans as well... unless something else is going on.
So I think there is some validity to Mr. Schmookler's view that the Southern GOP has a racist tinge, and that it is therefore morally suspect.
But as always the question is what to do?
Coalition building seems to be the order of the day.
The GOP seems to have been successfully in building a strong coalition around racial EXCLUSIVITY.
It is our challenge as progressives, leftists and moderates to build a governing coalition around the principle of racial inclusivity.
Such a coalition will change the complexion of Southern officialdom, quite possibly move Dixie left and change the electoral and governing dynamic of the entire nation.
by
Robert Chapman (28 articles, 0 quicklinks, 2 diaries, 556 comments)
on Wednesday, August 22, 2007 at 5:49:58 PM
There's a pattern here, but it isn't necessarily about race
"So I think there is some validity to Mr. Schmookler's view that the Southern GOP has a racist tinge, and that it is therefore morally suspect."
The GOP has indeed played a subtle race card since Nixon's Southern Strategy and since Reagan launched his 1980 campaign in Philadelphia, Mississippi.
But my point about the South is not about race, but about a deeper structure that race also fits into.
Just to illustrate, but not fully flesh out, something about that deeper structure, here's a quote from an essay I wrote a couple of years ago, and that's appeared here on opednews, called "The Concept of Evil":
"When I saw... how that manipulative genius, Karl Rove, effected his seduction of many traditionalist Americans, I recognized an old pattern—one used a century before to seduce poor whites in the Jim Crow South.
"In the Jim Crow South, and now again in Karl Rove’s America, the leaders inflame passions around peripheral issues to distract their supporters from what the leaders are really doing with their power. A century ago, the hot-button distraction was racial purity. Now, the leaders whip people up about issues of moral purity. In both cases, unjust leaders use deception to exacerbate divisions useful to magnifying their own power and wealth.
"Dark patterns lurk in the system, like some dormant virus, ready to erupt when the culture’s immune system weakens."
by
Andrew Bard Schmookler (314 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 146 comments)
on Wednesday, August 22, 2007 at 6:18:07 PM
The Bush Era Actually Has, Some Important Differences
The author's references to the U.S. south, as the political stronghold, of the once all-powerful "slave power", are essentially correct. On the other hand, what's occurring today, entails some important differences. During that era, the U.S. was engulfed, by the struggle, between powerful pro-slavery, and anti-slavery political factions. Like today, it was a contest to see whether the Federal Government, would bow to the will of the majority of Americans, or continue to bow, to the will of the slave power. Ironically, it was the rise of the GOP, led by Abe Lincoln, that signaled the political coalescence of a united anti-slavery, polical force. By wresting control of the presidency, from the "slave power", the GOP prompted the secession from the union, of the slavery dominated, southern states. This of course eventually led to actual hostilities, and the ultimate defeat of the south.
Today, we have a completely different scenario, whereby a resurgent "slave power" in the form of the military/industrial complex, ironically, now fronted by the GOP, has managed to gain control of the whitehouse, the congress, and the media. There is no comparable "anti-slavery' or anti-military/industrial/media, political force today, as it was during the civil war era. The GOP led faction, is now pro-military aggression, against the constitution, and even the bill of rights! Like the old "slave power" it is bent on empire, lawlessness, and zealously crushing liberties at home. Even the Democrats are now firmly in this anti-constitutionalist, totalitarian camp. The majority of the American people, now have virtually no representation in congress, and lack the potent media agitators, and political savvy, of their civil war era predecessors. Americans at that time, were able to come together against their common foe, and bring the new Republican party to life, at the expense of the Whigs. The GOP went on to fight, and win, the civil war, thereby maintaining government for, and by, the people, over the most powerful special interest, of the day.
Today, the "military/industrial/media complex, threatens to roll back the people's victory, of the civil war era, as well as their victory, during the revolutionary period, as well! The nation is now experiencing a level of government corruption, despotism, and lawlessness, that is unprecidented in U.S. history! This is a not only a staggering political reversal, for the U.S. public, but also for the constitution, and the rule of law! Never before, has a generation of Americans, been so politically unprepared, to preserve their liberty. Never before has a generation of Americans been faced with such devious, domestic enemies. Never before in U.S. history, has government for, and by, the people, been is such real danger, of a pre-mature demise.
by
Rasoul Acheh (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 122 comments)
on Thursday, August 23, 2007 at 11:38:07 AM
6 comments
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