04-09-2021, 02:20 PM
(04-09-2021, 12:10 PM)Eric the Green Wrote:(04-08-2021, 04:27 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: Pointless death is always a tragedy. Even wartime death, however heroic, in a struggle against slavery or genocide brings to mind the question of whether slavery and genocide can ever have justification.
America had nearly ideal leaders in the worst and most dangerous years of the last Crisis Eras. Lincoln and FDR were models of decisive, resolute, wise leadership who almost invariably made the right decisions. Maybe Obama did not get quite the opportunity. His style was far more to prevent trouble than to wage war against it. So if one is on the collectivist Far Left, then Obama fails for not leading America into a struggle against the social faults of capitalism. If one is the Hard Right, then Obama fails for not accepting the idea that nothing matters except the will of economic elites that (those elites claim) society puts at the forefront of all activity lest everything fall apart. Note well: in an age in which scarcity is not the primary concern of the vast majority of people, the political system can solve almost all problems without overthrowing the super-rich. Note also: privilege, which includes great wealth for the potential of sybaritic indulgence, rightly serves as a necessary perquisite of great responsibility.
I have said enough already about the gross inadequacy of Donald Trump, someone who exploited privilege to its fullest all his adult life yet exacted every benefit of great privilege. Some people must swab the desks; some people must do KP; some people must do farm labor. The conventional three greatest Presidents were George Washington, who defined the Presidency; Abraham Lincoln; and Franklin Roosevelt. All three took a country deeply divided and in grave danger of dissolution, disintegration, or the direst possible defeat and left America far more united with the initial dangers largely gone. Donald Trump took a country with a few unsolved problems and close to being united and provoked social rifts that had not yet existed.
The inadequacy of the people in confederate America (Classic Xer's America) certainly matches that of the previous civil war era. Our new crisis leader Joe Biden certainly aims to manage the crisis well, and is doing pretty good job. He is more like George Washington; steady and practical and dignified, although not as charismatic or eloquent as Lincoln and FDR. The problem is the supporting cast. As long as our country is not split, as under Lincoln, the Republican Party (which has switched to become the confederate Party) is given too much power by our system to block progress. A few Senate Democrats are representing Republican states, so their ability to act is also limited. We may have to separate so that the blue half of the country can make progress. Only as the separate red half later sees itself falling into total ruin will it then petition to join back. Unless enough voters in red and purple states can send enough representatives to congress to support Biden, end the filibuster, pass all the voting rights in the For the People Act, give DC and PR and maybe Guam two senators, reform or abolish the electoral college, reform immigration, and if needed reform and pack the Court, stalemate will continue, and I don't think we can deal with our existential threats without separating ourselves from our retrograde half.
Slaves often voted with their feet (as Lenin described refugees) to go to the Union lines. They knew that the Union Army was not going to return them to their "owners". The Confederacy depended upon slave labor for its agriculture, and as the slaves abandoned the roles that the masters had appointed them, the economic basis of the Confederacy collapsed.
It is ironic that the right wing in the former secessionist states (except in Virginia, which is in no way Southern in its politics anymore) has become increasingly strident, corrupt, and exclusive. That is how dying machines operate, trying to hold onto power as they see their time running out. Remember well that all of the former Secessionist states have large African-American minorities that could decide statewide politics if white people would vote their economic interests instead of identity. White Identity can connect a white agricultural worker with the corporate farmer who exploits him severely and sees him as dirt. White Identity exploits the fear "you don't want mulatto grandchildren", something that most people dare not say unless they wear robes and burn crosses.
It may be hard to imagine, but the historical truth is shown in the 1976 election: the former Confederacy, except for Virginia (barely) all voted for Jimmy Carter. The "Rockefeller Republicans" still held sway in much of the North and West, and if they were liberals on racial equality they still believed in corporate domination of economic life. For a short time in the "New" (post-1964) South, the Democratic Party could win by large numbers in Southern states based upon a coalition of the white working class and the black working class.
What happened? The Religious Right took over in the Mountain South. Large numbers of white Presbyterians became "Southern Baptists" in areas in which there were still few Southern Baptists. The new Southern Baptists took the old Calvinist value of economic hierarchy seriously with a new birth of self-righteousness on anything other than straight, plutocratic, male-dominated family life and a level of faith that subordinated science to a literal reading of Scripture. (If the Bible says that the Earth was created in seven literal days, then the fossil record is perhaps a demonic trick to trap the rationalists into a descent into Hell). The Religious Right was delighted to sell out to Corporate America and accept the desirability of the evisceration of labor unions.
Dying machines do what they must to extend their power. There is just too much to lose from the loss of power, including sweetheart deals involving Big Government (the Hard Right has learned that it can use Big Government to its material advantage, and the Small-Government interests that once dominated the GOP are practically defunct) and Big Business. Just look at what the Georgia state legislature did to try to ensure that Democrats would never win any statewide elections again... even making it possible for the state legislature to nullify an electoral result that it dislikes.
Demographic trends are nearly impossible to stop except for abusive or even genocidal practices. Most of the former Confederate states have little attraction for immigrants or people from outside the South. Such population growth as the Deep and Mountain South have is largely from high birth rates (women get married and have children earlier). Florida, Texas, Georgia, North Carolina, and Virginia have such attractions and are making their own demographic shifts away from the current right-wing paradigm.
...Classic X'er seems to have stopped posting. Maybe he is banned or suspended (you probably know why, should such be so). Oddly he is from Minnesota, so nothing about that indicates that he would have any native ties to the Confederacy. His racism is something that Corporate America does everything possible to dodge. He sounds more like militia types that we have in Michigan, although his reference to "real Americans slitting the throats" of what he considers not-so-real Americans" is close to the language of those who would behead people in the name of Islam. Cruelty, and not some specific faith, is the essence of evil. I see Daniel Pearl as a martyr in the sense that I see Sophie Scholl, Medgar Evers, Steve Biko, Jerzy Popieluszko, and many devout Muslims under Ba'ath and ISIS fascism as martyrs. Conscience and tyranny are predictable enemies.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.