Sandy Hook

Sandy Hook

Monday, April 12, 2010

The South Shall Rise Again


I wish I was in the land of cotton,
Old times there are not forgotten;
Look away! Look away! Look away, Dixie Land!
In Dixie Land where I was born in,
Early on one frosty morning,
Look away! Look away! Look away, Dixie Land!
Daniel Decatur Emmett


One hundred and forty-five years later my southern kin are still fighting the War Between the States. Give it up, loves. We lost. Just like you, not me, lost the presidential election in 2008. An African-American is our president. Get over it.

And just like my other southern-born-and-raised kissin'-cuzzins, we've known since day one that all this shoutin' and hollerin' on  the extreme right is nothing but pure naked racism disguised as anger over taxes and
galloping socialism. We've known better when social scientists and political pundets denied the existence of racism in the Tea Party movement.

We've known better when Tea Bagger activists claimed they weren't racist. We've seen it too often. "I'm not racist," they protest looking you straight in the eye. And in the next breath, "Ain't that monkey ever gonna get me ma drink?"

Not to be outdone, elected representatives of all the people are getting into the act. Chafing at the bit since 1964, or 1865, they're gonna win that damn war once and for all.

Pulitzer Prize winning Newsweek editor Jon Meachem explains why Virginia Governor Robert McDonnell's proclamation recognizing April as Confederate History Month is a giant leap back to the days of them thar ole cotton fields.

In it he celebrated those “who fought for their homes and communities and Commonwealth” and wrote of the importance of understanding “the sacrifices of the Confederate leaders, soldiers and citizens during the period of the Civil War.”

The governor originally chose not to mention slavery in the proclamation, saying he “focused on the ones I thought were most significant for Virginia.” It seems to follow that, at least for Mr. McDonnell, the plight of Virginia’s slaves does not rank among the most significant aspects of the war.

Inadvertently or not, Mr. McDonnell is working in a long and dispiriting tradition. Efforts to rehabilitate the Southern rebellion frequently come at moments of racial and social stress, and it is revealing that Virginia’s neo-Confederates are refighting the Civil War in 2010. Whitewashing the war is one way for the right — alienated, anxious and angry about the president, health care reform and all manner of threats, mostly imaginary — to express its unease with the Age of Obama, disguising hate as heritage.


And then Meachem talks history - beginning with Lee's surrender at Appomattox. "Confederate symbols have tended to be more about white resistance to black advances than about commemoration."

He takes the reader through World War Two and into 1948, when "supporters of Strom Thurmond’s pro-segregation Dixiecrat ticket waved the battle flag at campaign stops."

Then came the school-integration rulings of the 1950s. Georgia changed its flag to include the battle emblem in 1956, and South Carolina hoisted the colors over its Capitol in 1962 as part of its centennial celebrations of the war.

As the sesquicentennial of Fort Sumter approaches in 2011, the enduring problem for neo-Confederates endures: anyone who seeks an Edenic Southern past in which the war was principally about states’ rights and not slavery is searching in vain, for the Confederacy and slavery are inextricably and forever linked.

But, "If the slaves are erased from the picture, then what took place between Sumter and Appomattox is not about the fate of human chattel, or a battle between good and evil. It is, instead, more of an ancestral skirmish in the Reagan revolution, a contest between big and small government."
 
We cannot allow the story of the emancipation of a people and the expiation of America’s original sin to become fodder for conservative politicians playing to their right-wing base. That, to say the very least, is a jump backward we do not need.

34 comments:

  1. BRAVA~! Well said. Hope you don't mind... I reposted you onto my FB...

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  2. I always thought it was "Dixie Land", not "Dixie's Land". Who is this "Dixie" anyway?

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  3. JC - I've always said "Dixie." I'll check, but I remember seeing it in seveeral places. Used to know about Dixie but it was a long, long time ago.

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  4. Dixie it is -

    Origin of Dixie

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dixie#Origin_of_Dixie

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  5. It's amazing how they can be Americans when things are working in their favor, put a black guy in the White House, and they are all Confederates again. Living in old south as I do, I get sick of listening to them. The south is rising, southern-style politics is at the heart of the Republican party.

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  6. True, Holte. And it all boils down to hate and racism.

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  7. I'm struck by the similarity of the average southerner who bought into the freedom spin and bullshit fed them by rich slave owners. And stiil do. Much like rank and file tea bagger republicans who buy into the freedom not to have health insurance and big brother is coming to take your guns crap spouted by rich corporate republicans today.


    There's a sucker born every minute.

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  8. The worst position to be in is one rung up from the bottom. The teabaggers need someone to make them feel superior. The republicans supply the targets.

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  9. Wonderful!!!

    Pure nekked racism, yes ma'am it sure in tootin' is!! But alas, they are deniers, oh well...

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  10. They had us sing this dumb ass song as little kids in the Midwest.

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  11. Just read that the Dow closed at over 11,000 - highest since 2008.

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  12. Dow over 11,000? Teabaggers and republicans will say it is in spite of Obama, not because of him. It is his fault only when the Dow goes down.

    It is easy to put the blame where you want to when you don't have to worry about little things like truth.

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  13. Have you noticed NO rethugs EVER talk about good things like the Dow?? They Don't dare say anything positive, god forbid!

    I forgot to tell you, I love your
    sidebar lady little stitching thingy. I'm a stitcher and I think it's so cute!

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  14. Somebody put her on my FB and I accidentally deleted her and have been looking for her for over a year. Was thrilled when I came across her - Just wish I could enlarge it.

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  15. I remember being taught all that crap in junior high. Miraculously, I had a good Am Hist teacher in high school or I would have been force fed it then, too.

    Modern scholarship has exposed Reconstruction as a reign of terror conducted by southern whites against blacks the aim of eliminating them as a political force. Outfits like the Texas Board of Education will do their best to keep that out of the history books.

    For a great version of "Dixie," go here.

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  16. The song represents a hideous time, but - don't tell anyone - I like the tune and the snappy beat. I'm afraid I think Dylan drags a bit.

    I'll have to review the Reconstruction period. I do have, in my family papers, a retelling of the founding of the KKK. We think is was written by an ancestor, Uncle Hiram.

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  17. Lincoln liked "Dixie," so I guess we can.

    Growing up, how may times did you hear "I'm not prejudiced, but..."?

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  18. Anon: I see you're spending your day trolling from here to there and being a general pain in the ass. When I saw you elsewhere I thought you must be Lisa because the video has nothing to do with the subject at hand and because the only thing you can ever come up with to substantiate your arguments are silly, poorly produced videos. I know "substantiate" has more than one syllable, so look it up - if you have a dictionary.

    Thanks for stopping by but please DO NOT COME HERE AGAIN.

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  19. It was practically a white mantra!

    I watched anon's video and read some of the anti-Hillary comments. Two things struck me:

    1. It was an odd choice because she actually has a point, a point that none of the commenters on the first couple of pages bothered to refute.

    2. I have no doubt that the same people mocking her also view John Boner's "Hell No" meltdown as an act of political heroism.

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  20. Just came here from a link on K's blog. I've also addressed this attempt to stir up "group trauma," as someone on Twitter called it, on my own site. You might find a northern perspective on this issue interesting at http://bit.ly/9mVAnx

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  21. K: I'm really sure this is Lisa. If she returns I will fire up "Moderation." If you've been to Sue's, you know she's an insulting little twit who's too stupid to know she's stupid.

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  22. Paula: I'm headed back over to your lovely blog right now.

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  23. Of course today's bigots don't want to dwell on slavery, since most Americans consider slavery and bigotry indefensible. If nothing else, openly defending slavery and those who fought so hard to keep it going would be bad for tourism and other bidness.

    And, of course, today's bigots want to sanitize and romanticize their ancestors' war that was at basis: 1, treason; and 2, a criminal conspiracy.

    Keep in mind, people like ex-Virginia Gov. George Allen, current Gov. McDonnell and Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour present themselves as flag-wrapped all-American patriots who would do anything to protect the home of the brave and land of the free. Never mind that out of the other side of their mouths, they idolize those who set out to destroy the country and create one of their own made up of people half enslaved and half free.

    They never learn, never change and never let their unwillingness to do either bother them the least bit. Ultimately, they are perfectly suited to be subjects of Saturday Night Live skits — and not much else.

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  24. SW I too hold the ideals of the confederacy in great contempt.

    And then there is the inane argument where they insist that the Confederacy wasn't about slavery, it was about protecting states rights. Then it takes just one or two questions to find out that the states' right being defended is the right to have slavery.

    Geesh.

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  25. K said: "Outfits like the Texas Board of Education will do their best to keep that out of the history books."

    Ever hear of the Tulsa Riot?

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  26. Oh, McDonnell, my...ahem...illustrious guvahnah is a dipshit royale.

    Many of us virginians are wondering why the need to glorify Virginia's treason against the union.

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  27. Treason performed in in the cause of a great evil. One that in fact was treasonous itself. What is more central, after all, to the Declaration of Independence, than the idea that "all men are created equal"? Yet the Confederacy trampled on the ideals of the Declaration.

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  28. I am not supporting the South's side in the Civil War at all, but it is only treasonous because they lost. Our fight for independence from England would have been viewed as treasonous if we had lost.

    History is written by the victors.

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  29. Jerry - don't you think there are people in England who still think we're treasonous?

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  30. dmarks: actually I had heard of the Tulsa Riots but a review was in order. Pretty G0d-awful.

    Mz Bee: TN is trying damn hard to catch up with Virginny.

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  31. McDonnell keeps backing off hois racist programs when exposed. There have been three now and he blames them all on 'staff'. Well if he's that bad at staffing, he's not fit to be governor.

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  32. Howdy, yall sure do sound awfully high and mighty. Sure slavery was a great cause of the war. Yet, read the original compact of the constitution, its well covered, and yes I know about the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments, and their expost facto provisions regarding Confederates. Its funny, the war was fought because the South couldn’t leave the Union, but as soon as it surrendered all the Southern States were expelled and placed under martial law? Democracy at the point of a gun???? Consent of the governed??? And, consider this. After the war there were still two Americas. One was bustling after the war, and the other, well it became a land of poor share croppers. There was no Marshall plan for the South; perhaps mixed in the feelings of nostalgia for the lost cause is the memory of a destroyed South, wrecked economy, and the struggle of three, or four, generations to overcome the war's effects.

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