The assassination of Lincoln and the subsequent ascension of Johnson to the presidency all but nullified the righteous goals achieved by the Union in the Civil War.
Hitler had many sympathizers in the US, and does to this day. (I had a co-worker who ,while removing a T shirt, revealed a tattoo of Hitler.)
Today’s lesson, on the anniversary of Appomattox, is as much current events as history.
Certain people would really relish the idea of a 2nd Civil War, unfortunately. & most of them are in the deep South, some in little backwater redneck areas that are stereotypically straight out of " DELIVERANCE ", as well as Atlanta, Nashville & Asheville NC & Charleston.
Racism and white supremacy is alive and well everywhere. They are funded as they have been all along by wealthier white men, many of whom we can name. This is what death star gave carte blanche to with open statements and dog whistles all the time. The party of death no longer even pretends to be democratic.
Pennsylvania can be included too. I live in the Northwestern part of the state where one can see Confederate flags flying next to Trump flags. A few weeks prior to the 2020 election, some people in the area awakened on a Sunday morning to find KKK literature in their front yards. It wasn't a coincidence that they had Biden/Harris signs displayed. There is a long standing and active branch of the Oath Keepers in my county. As disturbing as it is here, other parts of the state are worse. Pennsylvania is home to Scott Perry, Doug Mastriano, and Mike Kelly. Shameful and twisted ideology and behavior can be found everywhere.
Michele, is your name Polish? That’s my inheritance on my father’s side. He was the only Pole I knew or thought about until I came to Chicago, got to know Polish people, started learning the language, and went to Polish school in Kraków every summer 2016-19 (then Covid). What you are writing about where you are in PA (married 30 years to a transplanted Pennsylvanian who was above all other careers a musician), put together with what I have learned about the state and about Polish people generally, It seems that many Poles are racist, so wondering if you live among many of them in the situation you describe.
Virginia, I'm wondering if your response is meant for me? My name is Kamila. I do not have any Polish ancestry. My husband's father's family were/are Americans of Polish descent. Most members in this branch of the family passed away before we were married so I never met them. I can't speak to their beliefs or ideology. My husband does not hold the views you describe.
On a visit to Tolland CT last year, I was surprised to see a quite active local Republican group on the town common; quite a contrast to my town in Massachusetts, where the local Republicans have not yet filed papers to become a valid town committee after disbanding some years ago.
Oh yes. That's truly trump country in CT. It's almost scary to drive through those places. But they're also quite depressed areas, economically, so that's one of the prices we pay for the economy being so lopsided. When trump visited Hartford during his first presidential campaign, I attended a protest outside the building where he was to appear and I was shocked by the long lines of people waiting to go in. Who would have thought in such a blue state?
J Nol: ...”the prices we pay for a ...lopsided economy.” Amen. The for profit medical system is killing US; the loss of the middle class is a nightmare. We need to look at Europe and learn what is possible in a well-ordered state. Today’s HRC tells US where we have miserably failed.
Economically depressed? Tolland? Didn't appear so the last time we were there. It's redder in western and central Mass... those areas I could understand, with our Boston-centric state government.
Our rural area : Waves of Red Trumpy and “Let’s Go Brandon” and Let Live or Die or Blue and Black line and other flags. Not on my streets, condos with regulations against flags and signs except unaltered American Flags. Next door neighbor had a roommate that flew a confederate flag from back of pickup truck. And a small string noose. Not on the building. I could do nothing about it. Except freak out.
I've read that there are 4 known militia groups in Vermont, living off the grid. We've had several potential school shootings, stopped in time by red flag laws. My anxiety level increases for my grandchildren. I am grateful to Heather for her continuing US history lessons and how that relates to the country today.
This is REALLY UNNERVING. After over 4 years in Purgatory we still have to put up with unstable psychopaths carrying guns. Ain't America great ? DISGUSTING ! I'm ANGRY in a way that I'm not comfortable with.
I remember it as 4 years in HELL, now getting hotter as vicious states rights advocates encourage murderous well armed nuts. Putin is still winning in America.
We have seen Proud Boys much too often here in Salem, Oregon. Part of the problem is that being white and male does not always give people a total leg up as it used to and the grievances are many. Social media has provided these people with a forum as well where they can be as awful as they want to be.
One of the main guys in the Proud Boys, Ethan Nordean, is from a small town in Western Washington which isn't too far from where I lived a year ago. These people are EVERYWHERE. It's horrible.
Actually Michigan, Wisconsin recently revealed they have risen far above the scum. Less populated portions of Oregon, like less populated regions in California may be rooted in the white superiority hypocrisy, but overall both States are way above that level. I'll grant you Idaho.
As a former upstate New Yorker who lives in Atlanta, I do not agree with the “DELIVERANCE” Comment that included Atlanta. Atlanta and its two counties were the primary reason that Biden won Georgia and the national election to become President. Our Democratic black Mayor with a graduate degree form Georgia Tech and our popular white Governor have a supportive working relationship. Perhaps you thought Marjorie Taylor Greene lives in Atlanta. She does not. She represents the Northwest Corner of Georgia.
Tom, I'm a longtime transplant, and I agree with most of what you say. However, Gov. Brian Kemp, while wisely not a Trumpie, is disingenuously cultivating an amicable relationship with Andre Dickens. This, despite the fact that after Trump's "phone call" with Brad Raffensperger, Kemp and the legislature, supported by Raffensperger, put in place a voter "integrity" law that allowed limiting the number of drop boxes for mail-in ballots, other voter suppression measures, but most disturbingly a provision that would allow legislators to take over county election boards and toss out ballots cast and commit what amounts to vote nullification. Kemp is smart enough to portray himself as an alternative to Trump or DeSantis in a future run for President.
Kemp, though resisting falling into the T***p camp, is nevertheless still a very conservative Republican. Don't forget his ads for governor where he talked about "gettin' in my pickup truck and goin' to round up sum'm'em illegals" and aiming a shotgun at one of his daughters' dates. He's not quite as unhinged as the far right, but I still wouldn't trust him. Politically, he is very savvy and is pretty good at seeing where and how the political "winds" blow that will benefit him. He also has a broad appeal to more moderate Republicans and Independents. He hasn't really allied himself that much with DeSantis, though he agrees with him on a lot of issues--I think the "person" DeSantis might put him off a bit. Kemp has good people advising him, though I personally don't think he's that smart. It doesn't help that he sounds like he "just fell off the turnip truck" with that good ol' boy country accent. As to whether he has broader national appeal, I can't say. I can't see him running for Senate, as has been suggested. I think he's been too used to being the man-in-charge and the "head CEO" to accept a more legislative position. Keep your eye on him.
Bruce, I agree with everything you have said. Kemp is very savvy - especially when he joined Geoff Duncan by distancing himself from TFG, but never criticized him specifically. I failed to mention that among his sins is the Heartbeat Abortion law and the fact that so much of Georgia's budget surplus resulted from Biden's Rescue Plan, not for his own skill, but know that you're aware of all that. I've read several times that he has his eye on a White House run at some point, but I agree that he doesn't have the intellect. His country accent is an affectation, I'm sure. He was wealthy from birth, and I'm guessing that he doesn't use the accent at the country club.
Thank you, Virginia, and we hope they'll win their next election. I'm hoping that the current abominable crop of Republicans will suffer the consequences of their obstructionism and disregard for their own constituents and will be defeated across the country. It's necessary to save our country.
All the Comments about Governor Kemp are correct. I am disgusted with his scorched earth support for loosening gun restrictions before both of his elections. However, his recent support for Mayor Dickens helped stop the disastrous Buckhead separatists state legislative initiative and sent Bill White to Lake Rabun. Also, I like our strong state economy, while being uncomfortable and ashamed of our high wealth disparity in Atlanta. I acknowledge that It’s a mixed bag at best.
The description of Ralph's co-worker who had a tattoo of Hitler is VERY unsettling, too. I want to ask, "Haven't they learned?" but I suspect I know the answer.
1854sailor, I'm glad you made this point. I grew up in suburban Boston, and witnessed a good bit of racism and other ills. Even now, living in Georgia, I've had to cut ties with old friends in MA whose bigotry has survived.
Rhode Island is one of my favorite places in the world, however I think it's crazy that Rhode Island passed the first anti-slavery laws in the colonies / country and there are people there that want to flag the confederate flag. Freaking shameful...
Many are here in the West, There are cells in many states waiting for the word as Jan 6th shows. MT & ID have people itching to take up their guns. If u want to find them, just post something re gun violence on Republican Congressional FB pages.
Yes. Old and young Henry Ford of Model T fame were rabid mad dog antisemites. And the wealthy Connecticut prep school, The Hotchkiss School, was their baby. That prep now has a decent Black man running admissions. Times have changed at Hotchkiss. But the fascist odor will take decades to cleanse. Grads selected Hotchkiss for exclusivity.
If you scratch beyond the surface, you'll find lots of antisemitism, racism, and broad-range hatred in many exclusive bastions and locations. There's plenty of WASP-ish behavior to go around, and it is everywhere.
And since his surname was Rabkin, I'm sure he'd experienced WASPs' "passive hostility" on many occasions. You and Dr. Rabkin have given me a chuckle this morning, although its source is not funny at all.
The waspishness is greed? We’ve got it and we’re gonna keep it attitude? That’s universal, but Trump emphasized it and got judges and tax code to prop it up. If Democrats don’t take power in ‘24, keep it for 30 years and rebuild unions and the middle class with fair tax codes and not-for-profit medical care, we’re gone. Are we up for a truly super-human effort like WWII?
I think there are many WASPs who feel that way, but my interpretation is that they consider themselves simply superior to the common riffraff, and look down their noses at "common" people, regardless of wealth. My guess is that a WASP would never fraternize with anyone like TFG - he's much too crass, and openly flaunts (and lies about) his net worth. "Class" and "breeding" are more important to WASPs, much like the English aristocracy, and they frown on the neuvo riche. All of that said, they believe that they get to keep whatever wealth or possessions come their way, while looking down on the T***ps of the world. We must vote to take dark money out of the hands of the oligarchs, regardless of their origins, or our hopes for the American Dream and less corrupt government and social programs will die permanently. First in line is overturning Citizens United, then cleaning up the Supreme Court in any way possible - expansion or otherwise.
That's the reason why the Catskills became popular and why it was typical for Jewish men to become doctors and lawyers. Antisemitism. If you could open your own practice you could get a job, if you had your own hotels to go to you could go on vacation. Golf courses etc. All exclusively WASP. This country has no business calling out other countries for human rights violations. Look in your own backyard.
Shellee, I knew that the reason the resorts were built in the Catskills was due to the fact that Jews were shunned in country clubs in New York and elsewhere, but I hadn't made the connection with doctors and lawyers. As long as I live, I'll never understand why antisemitism has existed for centuries. If for no other reason than practicality, one would think that Jews would have been welcome in all societies simply because of their potential contribution to civilization. They have strong family values, education is stressed in their culture, and apparently they are forgiving of the rest of us for their persecution - centuries of pogroms, being shunned and hated, Hitler's insane "final solution", while most of the rest of the world turning a blind eye - including the "land of the free and the home of the brave." It should be a requirement for every non-Jewish person in the world to spend a day touring the now-sanitized Auschwitz-Birkenau and other death camps to sense the horrors that have been endured there, and reevaluate the universally foul treatment of Jews worldwide.
And, the originator of America First. When Trump began using that,I thought Mango Mugabe had gone insane. Didn't he know what that meant to anyone who lived through that era?
Lindberg was not a Fascist; he was a leader of America First, which only wanted to keep America out of the European war. But he was an antisemite, blaming Jews for wanting us to prepare for war. FDR wanted us to prepare for war, too. My father was a member of America First, and he disrupted Nazi meetings and co-founded the Houston Bill of Rights Foundation.
HCR is great at just putting the historical facts out there and letting us connect the dots and see the parallels. It goes without being said we are seeing things now which do, more or less, bear similarities to events in our past. But, we are also on new terrain in regard to the palpable threats we are experiencing to this country's system of laws and governance. It's a different playing field because of technology, and the fact that a major political party has been taken over by zealots and is turning into a autocratic, fascist entity. That's not hyperbole anymore. HCR keeps reminding us of history. Sometimes there are stark parallels--human beings still haven't changed in many ways from 150+ years ago--but there are also some scary aspects to today's situations that we HAVE to stay aware of. "Everything old is new again...", or "plus ça change..." are still apt, but with some caveats.
Thank you for your thoughtful response. I heartily agree, except for one minor point.
“…a major political party has been taken over by zealots…”
The Republicans gave themselves over to zealots, willingly. In my view, the GOP Fox News/AM radio propaganda industrial complex created the zealots, who are now grown beyond control, thanks to the best con man this country ever created.
Point taken, though I think I basically said as much, just with different wording. The fact remains: the party has become what it has become, whether willingly or not. The salient point is what it now is: a threat to this country. I also implied "because of technology", which infers, among many other things, the influence of television and social media. T***p is the end result of myriad factors that have been brewing for decades. I concur with what Robert Reich said this morning: "I don’t believe Trump alone is responsible for the birth of modern Republican fascism, but he has legitimized and encouraged the vicious rancor that has led much of the GOP into election-denying fascism."
Verbal swings. That day and every day thereafter whenever we were on the same job site. When other members of the crew found out about the tattoo, they joined in as well.
As a teenager growing up in Orange Co., CA I saw the Fascist Party alive and well in many local and national Republicans. It made me a life-long Democrat...
I maybe "get" some of why some people admire sociopaths, but not why such great numbers worship them. We seem to need smarter approach to discouraging that.
"That" was the subversive intent and execution of 'the plan', or plot Ralph. The enemy now is much the same as then... Different 'uniforms and badges' but still the same. The imposition, or actually insistence of the will of a tiny minority of the 'haves' vs the laws of the majority. I know who's behind today's 'uniforms and badges'. The 'who' behind these new uniforms and badges is the fundamental need to widely broadcast across the land today, tomorrow, forever if we are to remain the community at the core of our national intent. To force us to stray is the mission of those fervently opposed, who would and have taken up arms (1/6th) in opposition and they do have a name - It accurately is the AFP, aka, the gop wearing false flags and badges; the AFP is correctly the American Facist Party. Check out the reveal over at Bob (Robert Reich's) Substack, under the title of his proposition statement, * "Is the GOP becoming the American fascist party" ? I'll post a link with HCR's permission which I dare to presume. > see > https://robertreich.substack.com/p/what-happens-when-supermajorities/comments
**.. And more.. > I've lived, accepted, and insist that The "Democracy" I swore allegiance to, is Not a spectator sport to merely observe. When I of my own volition, signed over my life to the still existing Draft Board to be a military conscript (aka "cannon fodder") so very many years ago, I 'lived' that allegiance. Again, when I flipped a coin for party selection to vote. Again, so very many times I not only served, but volunteered for jury service, and executing that service in numerous ways I 'did not' personally want, such as to serve as foreman on soul wrenching trials. I will do it again in the face of the bitterest rotten harvest in the current, to become a history of my country - the rise of posers who are in fact the AFP, aka, the American Facist Party, hiding under the cloaks and badges that were once owned and worn by those of common purpose as myself, and they are rightly known by their 'actions' and intents, revealed in evidence for any to see, or 'will' see. Today I swear / renew that oath again, if need be as it seems, to do what must be done as my responsibility in defense vs enemies within and without, even to the end of my means. Bring it facist bastards - I very clearly 'see' you, and am clearly standing opposed.
I thought for certain you would mention the book "Caste" by Isabel Wilkerson when you wrote "In the 1930s, Nazi leaders, lawyers, and judges turned to America’s Jim Crow laws..." Ms Wilkerson does a superb job of describing how impressed the Nazis were of our caste system.; calling it "Jim Crow" obscures the vile nature of the system of segregation and discrimination based on race in the USA.
Isabel Wilkerson also wrote “The Warmth of Other Suns” about the great Northern Migration. It was a wake-up call for Americans who believed the Civil War ended and racism was a Southern issue. Both of her books are not only wake-up calls, but courageous writing in a country that still is divided. https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/190696/the-warmth-of-other-suns-by-isabel-wilkerson/
I read Wilkerson's book six years ago and it totally changed my life. For the first time I understood the origin of the northern slums. How racism was endemic throughout the United States. How powerful violence was sponsored onto blacks in the south.
Finally, I understood why I worked in three corporations that were all white.
America is a fundamentally a white supremacist country.
The First Americans found that out as well. My maternal grandfather did a series of articles about the Trail of Tears that nearly crushed the spirits of the Cherokee nation.
The insistence that First Americans should speak English ONLY, dress in European - style clothing, adopt Christianity, etc., reads like ethnic cleansing, culturally.
Daniel , thank you for the reminder of the first Racism in America. We need to know history and that is one more part of American History that is likely erased by banning CRT. Critical Race Theory. A Genocide of a people who lived on this land for thousands of years before the white man stepped on this soil. Another “Never Forget” part of History. The First Peoples. https://www.history.com/news/native-americans-genocide-united-states
Irenie - I'm a quarter Cherokee on my mother's side so I felt like I was OBLIGATED to point out our treatment of the First Americans, my responsibility to do so. THANK YOU.
I try to consolidate these issues into a sense of entitlement. Europeans believed they were entitled and that theme touches almost every problem you can point to.
Irenie, thanks so much for the link! What a frightening series of revelations put so well documented and presented together. The best listen from the history channel I've had in a long time. it took me back to my school days when history was taught with accuracy instead of agenda.
This type of forced action, to bend others to the so-called leaders' will, is of course based on fear. Fear of losing their foothold, their power, which is why admitting their thinking is wrong is unthinkable. These days tech continues to trail a healthy moral conscience, which has been moving in reverse. The right's stand against CRT, which they insist puts a target on their backs, is a smoke screen for admitting many of our ancestors took wrong action in institutionalizing racism. Anti-CRT laws are its very definition.
Indoctrination. My cousin has been programmed by evangelicals. No Critical Thinking or questioning allowed. Just mindless acceptance, become a robot sheep. Oh, & criticize / condemn whatever doesn't fit neatly & smoothly into your new software package download.
This aspect of our history is equally disgusting. My husband has Lakota ancestry and we did not know much, but are now in the process of learning about the treatment of Native Americans. We do have a set of military orders from another part of his family who fought Native Americans. I have mentioned this before, but the orders are about a war in southern Oregon where the soldiers were told to pursue Native Americans (Indians in the orders) using every means possible including eating horses and then dead Indians if necessary. If the soldiers did not, they would be mentioned unfavorably in the records. I have had to stop reading a couple accounts of both the treatment of Native Americans and cotton slavery because they made me sick. I am taking a break by reading a bio of Catherine de Medici which of course, has plenty about the religious wars in France.
small pox, I think. The Lakota in the 19th century was vaccinated and so they did not have the huge population drop. Two books I recommend, Lakota America and Indigenous Continent. The author is a Finn who is an Oxford don and I can't spell his name.
I am a very small part Native American. My great-great-great grandfather was Choctaw in MS. It shows in the faces of my great grandpa and my grandmother & all her siblings. I always wondered how marriage to a white woman in the Segregated South in the 1840s was accepted, but it seems quite common as many black & white ppl from there have Choctaw ancestry.
There is another aspect of this that was also quite common. I too have an ancestor from that period who was purportedly Cherokee. Her anglicized name was Lucy "Bear Paw" Proctor. I've seen her Cherokee name that she gave up on marriage. That said, 23andMe assures me that I do not have any Amerind or Asian DNA segments, but I do have some that are of Congolese origin (tied into the Bantu expansion on that continent). That means that almost without a doubt that Lucy was actually a refugee from slavery living among the Cherokee, and then through her marriage "escaped" a little more by moving into the Melungeon communities in the mountains of eastern Tennessee and Kentucky. In digging into this, I discovered that it was standard in the South, and probably the North as well, for descendants of mixed race couples to either claim they were purely of European descent if their skin color was light enough (e.g. many of the Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemmings descendants) or if their skin tone did not permit that, to claim that they had a Native American ancestor, which was often culturally but not genetically true. Apparently, the tribes and bands commonly provided refuge to people trying to escape slavery, which may shed a little more light on the sentiments that led to the exclusion acts and the trail of tears. There seems to have been a strong continuity between the Civil War and the wars against the Native Americans.
"Ancestry" did not find any Native American in my DNA, which was quite disappointing considering my great-great-great grandfather was known Choctaw - even the family lore that they would not sell him liquor and that my grandmother & siblings had those facial features. I read that the Tribes do not share their DNA with these groups, probably to keep out claims to the tribal gambling fortunes. Central & S. American native DNA is known.
And in the end, speaking English, adopting Christianity, and dressing "European" didn't save the Cherokees - they still got removed when the "real" whites found gold on their lands.
Mike S, your comment here highlights the journey so many of us have made these past 6 -8 years. By reading more broadly we discovered so much that was left out of our history lessons “back-in-the-day”. Life makes sense when you have all the information. And you cannot go back to unknowing it. I have absolved to not be angry or disgusted with the citizens who don’t know - or wish to not know- this history. They are being mislead for purposes not helpful to “The Greater Good”. I pity them though. And I continue to work to push back against their ignorance, listen to their fears with compassion, and work to change their ability to exist in America without knowing all the history. I view our current moment as a besiegement of our minds. Social medias’ tools for persuading outcomes not for the Greater Good, by questionable characters, as well as outright ill-intentioned characters, is so dangerous to Democracy right now it’s chilling.
Yes, for the last two years, after I was outsourced and, then, at age 61, did not find another engineering job and did not want to do contract stints, I had time to read.
NPR had run a segment of Wilkerson's The Warmth of Other Suns" so I checked it from the library (all of our local libraries here have it).
MLRGRMI - "listen to their fears with compassion, and work to change their ability to exist in America without knowing all the history." So powerful for me! First post I've seen that does not have an underlying forecast of civil war in it. How can we change the trajectory of this country? Thank you
I don't forecast a civil war because we are actually in it... the battlefields are not the same, more diverse, even subtle and we retreat to our trenches to compare notes. It's ground down to the law and the ballot box and education where possible.
That is the goal. But it is so hard sometimes, so soul-draining, to be met with the obdurate insanity of the Republicans, and to not be able to budge them from their wrongful beliefs.
As a MIchigander, I am surrounded by family and friends who remain Trumpers and Fox News viewers. I find it so difficult to talk to these people, because it seems their minds are made up long ago. It’s very hard on the soul to even lose contact with family members. Quite despairing sometimes.
I always look for your comments as a fellow MIchigander. Thank you
Yes, Mike. I read it in my book group, too, when it was first published. 2011. Not only is it a life-changing book, it revealed how ignorant many of us are about racism and white supremacy. Still some people believe it all ended with the Civil War. Back to U.S. History and Reconstruction. And Today. https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/190696/the-warmth-of-other-suns-by-isabel-wilkerson/
The book certainly "revealed" my own ignorance. The way the book personalized the Great Migration through the lives of three people was simply brilliant.
I grew up in northern Indiana (Elkhart) and I can tell you that racism was and still is everywhere. When you delve deeply into the history of Indiana or Oregon, you find plenty of racism. On my book list is a new book by Timothy Egan, Fever in the Heartland, about the KKK in Indiana.
Tim Egan says his original intent was to write about the Klan in Oregon but his research lead him to Indiana. He was the author presented (interviewed) for our paper's Northwest Passages. He tried to answer questions without giving away too much of the book.
If there is anything we can thank tfg for is uncovering & making us aware of how racist we are & the menace of white male privilege racist we are .I had a very difficult time with all the Easter greetings. To me it was white dominance pushing down & not acknowledging the multi culture that is the US. Working in the schools, at Christmas & Easter time all the kids got pictures to color that did not necessarily reflect their culture or religion. It is more heinous now with CN being legislated into our personal decisions
Mike S, Daniel, Privilege and power, and not willing to give them up, may fit in here somewhere too to some degree, my thought this morning. Love reading our compatriots thoughts.
I would not say we a a fundamentally white supremacist country. I don't know the numbers if there are any that can be had but there are plenty who think feel and vote this way. I would say though that we are a fundamentally divided country along those lines and that the Civil War has long legs.
Mike S: okay, correct. Changed your life, totally? And the historian that willingly and willfully ignores the incredible and increasing pain of today is a cause of this. Tim Snyder: Silence enables. America is sick. Passive aggressive kills. Being nice may not be nice. Truth triumphs. Dialect deals.
Thank you to both you & Bruce for recommending both “Caste” & “The Warmth of Other Suns” by Isabel Wilkerson. I remember how shocked I was when I learned in “Caste” that the Nazis based their Nuremberg Laws on our own Jim Crow Laws.
The 1619 Book Project, with multiple authors and organized by Nicole Hannah Jones also notes that the Nazi's studied the Jim Crow laws to incorporate the racist laws into place.
However, the book notes that Nazi's found the Jim Crow laws too harsh: Only one drop of blood of a past relative was used to define a person as black man. Nazi's ended up defining a Jew as having one grandparent as Jewish instead.
Nicole Hannah Jones’ became controversial with the publication of “The 1619 Project.” While she graduated from University of North Carolina, Master of Arts in Mass Communication, their board of trustees didn’t want to give her a tenured position, only offering a five year contract, an insult to an author and graduate. Too much Truth? After much publicity and controversy, she now has a professorship at Howard University. Racism lives on.
Howard University recognized Nicole Hannah Jones for her outstanding scholarship and capabilities. She will thrive at Howard. The mega donor, who gave $25 million to name the journalism school, rather objected to Nicole Hannah Jones work in the 1619 Project. He made those objections known. The radical Republican legislators keep messing with the UNC Board of Governors, undermining higher education in NC. They are hurting NC in the long run, but only care about power and lining their pockets.
The Board of Governors had too much power. Nicole Hannah Jones would have added tremendous academic excellence, perspective and Truth to UNC. The students are the losers and the board caused pain and suffering, a wake-up call, not only to Nicole Hannah Jones but to all who falsely believe racism is over.
Yes, I bought the original pamphlet from NY Times and the .pdf of that pamphlet.
Ms. Hannah Jones was only controversial with male, southern, white historians who "took issue" with her adding slavery to America's origin story.
However, the real controversy is white men historians becoming upset at adding truth to history.
So, whenever I refer to Hannah Jones/Wilkerson I say: "The Warmth of Other Suns/1619 Book Project are books that cast light on the controversy of American history books written by white men that leave out slavery".
Another great historian is Lerone Bennett who wrote a book entitled Before the Mayflower. He describes well the atmosphere and decisions made by the white men who established the “new world”.
Republicans took over control of the NC General Assembly in 2010. Since then, they’ve changed the UNC Board of Governors from a non-partisan board to one completely controlled by Republicans. In addition to the mess they made of Jones’ tenure decision, they’ve shut down some important programs at UNC that worked to address poverty in the state, and fired a UNC chancellor for no reason other than that they wanted to install a conservative leader. They recently dictated, without involvement of the faculty or an Institute of Civics as a way to bring in conservative faculty. A once-great university is under serious threat by the state’s Republican leadership.
For a reading list, I would also recommend “The Sum of Us” by Heather McGhee. It helped me to understand how racism is woven into so many aspects of our society and how that explains the difficulty Blacks have had escaping poverty.
An excellent book. Something I didn't know and Wilkerson pointed out was that Hitler studied American racism/ slavery to see how a population could be persuaded to commit atrocities onto others, how to brainwash.
“How can they help the conviction that the policy of the Executive is conciliation of rebels and not recognition of Union men, or avoid asking with intense incredulity whether this is the way in which treason is to be made odious?” That is the question not answered after the “end”. Forgive and forget? Not after the irreversible losses of those who fought to preserve the Union. To fight against slavery and racism. Today, here in a country that suffered such human losses, there are those who would return to white supremacist rule. We must pay attention. Tennessee is our Wake-up call, if we need one.
Morning, Irenie! It wasn't until late last night that I discovered VP Harris' speech in Nashville last Friday. Her fiery 19-minute speech is well worth your time, IMO. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IG_yyofT58s
Thank you, Lynell. We all need to see the courage of the Tennessee Three. I posted it along with my letter of support of the Tennessee Three and against the blatant racism of the Tennessee legislature. View it and share it and speak up. Stand up. There are those who are still fighting on the losing side of the Civil War.
I still see stickers proclaiming " Forget, Hell " on vehicles flying the Confederate flag. My recently deceased uncle was against getting rid of monuments commemorating " heroes " of the Confederacy.
Daniel, I see those stickers and the confederate flags too in my small Northern California town. It’s scary. Southern Poverty Law Center tracks Racism and groups like KKK and other Hate Groups. https://www.splcenter.org/issues/hate-and-extremism
Irenie, living in far northern rural CA as well, I am fortunate to be in Humboldt County, which is mostly a ‘blue’ county…unlike to the north (Del Norte) or east (Shasta)….it really does seem to be an almost coastal thing if you look a the maps—this one is from 2020: https://www.ppic.org/publication/californias-political-geography/
Barbara , thank you for sharing the map. The California coast has not been affordable for a long time. Regulations and laws stopping oil drilling and then development increased prices and property value. Northern California homes are valued much lower than bay and metro areas. So moving/selling is an economic challenge. I’m thinking about a retirement community but they are so expensive that’s another problem on one income. And often little diversity and more conservative. Where to go?
In Northern CA ? Strangely enough, I can believe it. I always thought that Northerners were a tad more..... " enlightened " than Southerners, then I became briefly acquainted via the internet with a woman from NJ who talked racist s-t about anybody with dark skin. Needless to say, after a while, I bade her a not - so - fond adieu.
Don’t let the Northern part of CA fool you.....it’s extremely rural and red. Dems and progressives have a really hard time making “progress”. I was raised there but had the good fortune to be able to go to college in Sacramento (not exactly a hotbed of liberalism, but still.....) and reside in the SF Bay Area for a few years. The county I retired from (Shasta) is now under control of MAGA extremists, it’s very disheartening. I’m currently in AZ and was a poll worker in the 2022 election ...am hopeful the direction this state seems to be taking.
Lynell, thank you for posting this link. Moved to tears by such powerful words. I spent yesterday with family including a nine year old girl named Lily, my son-in-law’s niece and her five year old sister Rose. Lily, Rose and I spent time outside yesterday trying out their new jump ropes. When they tired of that, we walked the dog. Then we got out a new art project- making pictures by gluing on sequins. Then, it was time for a movie- Frozen was their choice. Normal, fun, easy time spent with two delightful kids.
Time that three families in Tennessee will never again enjoy. Not to mention thousands of other American families with losses to gun violence.
VP Harris' words moved me to tears as well, Sheila. But so did your quiet recitation of the day you spent yesterday with Lily and Rose. I feel the mixture of joy and sadness in your comment. How can people be so callous to not see what you have seen on what otherwise was a bright and beautiful Sunday.
Lynell(VA by way of MD&DC) "It wasn't until late last night that I discovered VP Harris' speech in Nashville last Friday. Her fiery 19-minute speech is well worth your time,"
Indeed it was. Thank you, Lynell. That was a dynamic speech that spoke to what we need to do together. Kamala preached and the power of her words raised up her audience. It was a positive speech but also an urgent one, pointing the way to positive action. I am tired of hearing about hand-wringing over neighbors with confederate flags and relatives with racist attitudes. We need to do what Kamala said: become leaders to those among us who are seeking ways to support democracy. Do what we can to make it happen.
Leading doesn't always mean speeches and building big organizations. It can mean something as simple as making a safe place for people to work together, or speaking up at a local meeting, so that others will know they are not alone. All the things we've been talking about and doing, but carrying them with us and sharing with people who are out there wondering what they can do. Quit dissing, quit centering the extremists. Focus on building something positive with others seeking to work for democracy.
tRUMP should have been enough of a wakeup call, a man who was racist practically from birth but apparently not enough as the fervor of the Women's March in 17 has not put him behind bars but has emboldened him and made him the faux leader of the GOP. People should be in the streets daily for what happened in Tennessee. It's shameful , undemocratic, racist and un-American.
Trump is a TRAITOR & should be treated as such. His followers need to be put away, at least in a psychiatric facility. Especially those like Boebert & Greene. MTG is beyond insane. She shouldn't be allowed to handle anything sharper than tapioca.
But just as Unionists survived and suffered in the South the slow grind of justice metes out the resolution of the second failed rebellion by Trump. He (and they) will pay.
I think it’s ironic that his race based adventure will crumble into dust by the same implacable trust in the Law expressed by Abe Lincoln.
I must disagree with this. Ford's pardoning of Nixon was an act of magnanimity and dignity that clearly proved beneficial. It was proper justice.
Without the pardon, the Country would have been tossed into a tempest of partisan skirmishes that would have at their worst, paralyzed the Country. Nixon's resignation paved the way for the pardon, as within the course of two years, he went from re-election by a historically wide margin, to a disgraced exile in San Clemente. His own Party leaders encouraged him to resign, and he followed that advise.
In those days, America had two vibrant political parties, with a spectrum of conservative/moderates/liberals in both parties. The vast majority of political leaders were interested in good governance as they saw it, more than exploiting divisions real and imagined, as today's cult Party GOP does.
Nixon's resignation and Ford's pardoning of him led to the election of one of the most productive Congresses thereafter in modern American history, and to the election of one of the most ethical Presidents in its immediate wake in Jimmy Carter.
There was no need to hang Nixon's scalp over the collective mantel.
Of course, Nixon did not and would not have led a scrofulous crew of Bargain Basement Barabbases to storm the Capitol so as to remain in office.
It should go without saying that the very idea of pardoning Trump is worlds apart from the Ford pardon of Nixon. Our constitutional system worked perfectly fine in the aftermath of the Ford pardon. That same system however is still undergoing a stress test due to Trump and the Cult Party's perfidy.
Unlike Nixon's case, if the evidence proves via proper due process presentation that Trump is in fact guilty of the sedition like crimes we all saw with our own eyes, his train to Leavenworth should be gearing up soon.
We have had so many blatant wake up calls. Is this definitive, The One, led by children and youth that will truly make us stand up to these white, supremacist blaggarts and stand up to the insanity of a powerful few?
'The papal bulls "were not considered valid just 30 to 40 years after they were first issued. They were in fact abrogated legally and nullified by the Vatican by the late 1530s," McCallum told NPR.
The Vatican's nullification was too late to stop the destructive impact of colonialism, McCallum said, noting that European expansion was fueled by a "sort of missionary sense that the Western monarchies had a right to go to these new lands and to take from them their resources and if necessary to put down people, including enslaving them."'
My goodness, Heather. I had to re-read several sentences to make sure you were writing about past history and not the recent history and today's current events. Take heed, everyone.
Morning, Ally! On another topic, it occurred to me that if a certain Texas judge can unilaterally reverse a government agency's decision about a certain drug, what's to stop the electorate from reversing that judge's appointment to the bench? Crazy, I know but the thought made me feel good.
I've long maintained that Reconstruction was the wrong solution to the end of the Civil War. I realize that hindsight is 20/20; but the approach the Allies took after WWII was the correct one. By holding the Nuremberg tribunals and trying and then executing the leaders of the Third Reich, the Axis Powers were ground into dust.
Instead the CSA were given every chance, shown every mercy in defeat and allowed to keep their weapons, their horses and go back to their lands. What was their response? Black Codes, lynchings, the KKK, terrorizing the local Black populations. It was as if they were never defeated and the Great, Grand and Glorious Cause was still worth fighting and dying for. Only it wasn't them doing the dying. It was their formerly enslaved populations.
Thank you Daniel. Please take a look at the Indiegogo. If you can through in $10 that would be a great help. I need to drive these numbers up...and join the free Docs in Progress zoom tonight
Despite the Nuremberg trials, I would hasten to add that a sizable number of Nazis were never prosecuted, and many were then brought to the United States to contribute their "scientific" knowledge. (See the book "Operation Paperclip: The Secret Intelligence Program that Brought Nazi Scientists to America" by Annie Jacobsen.)
This ‘Letter’ is unbelievably prescient at a moment in our history when Tennessee has removed two legally elected electeds from its Legislature, extreme judges are disputing the medical decisions of our most respected federal agency guaranteeing drug safety and the highest court in our land has removed fundamental human rights from half of our citizenry….
TN law allows the county commission to appoint someone to fill a vacant position until a special election can be held. The House repubs have told Shelby County (Memphis) and Davidson County (Nashville) if they appoint Jones and Pearson to fill the vacancies, the state will withhold funds from them. How racist (not to mention personal and petty) is that?
But I hear this morning that that is just what they intend to do... send them back. The courts will probably have to decide the legality of withholding funds - which I wouldn't call petty. It's racism too blatant to ignore.
I’m your same age. I had a really good high school education, but history classes then were so heavily weighted towards European history, and also towards memorization, not understanding. Our tenth grade American history classes basically took us to 1950, and we focused so much more on the “what” and not on the “why.” I’ve learned so much here that I wish we had learned in school, and had also taught our children. What little I did understand came from reading historical fiction, not school.
When I was a kid, what we did to Native Americans & African slaves was glossed over or trivialized like they were ( lower ) ANIMALS & not even human. DISGRACEFUL.
At least in my grade school Native American history was taught carefully and a little more accurately because we had kids in the class who had been told exactly what happened at the fight with Custer by their relatives, some fighting on one side, some on the other. It took me a long while to realize how rare that was.
This letter is one of my favorites so far. Thank you for taking the trouble to put complex thoughts and deeds - and their consequences - across so clearly. I'm especially pleased that you mentioned the Nazis' use of Jim Crow laws and Indian reservations as inspiration for their implementation of their ideas of their own supremacy and how to increase and maintain these. As someone who has lived most of her adult life (going on 45 years now) in Germany or one or the other German-speaking countries, the topics of fascism and nazism have been ever-present. A group of us from American high schools spent a year as exchange students in the western part of Germany in the 60's. We lived with host families whose parents had either grown up in Hitler's Germany or who were involved in WW2 - so we often got stories first hand about what it was like to be alive at that time, and to grow up being taught that they were a special race. My German host Mother showed me a number of things that still boggle my mind - one was a kind of Parcheesi game called "Juden Raus" or "Jews Out" - the goal of which was to get as many of the Jewish board pieces off the board as possible. Another was her "Ahnenpass" - "Ancestral Passport" - which included one of her great or great-great grandmothers who had a suspiciously Jewish sounding name. My host Mother said her family had lived for years in dread of what would happen if the wrong officials got their hands on that passport. My point is that there are many ways in which we teach ourselves and our children that others are inferior and we are superior - and that is very important to recognize and remember. I hate and condemn what the Nazis did in Germany, but I also believe that this kind of thinking is always among us, even in America.
A complete utter MESS. The 60's - 70's song " Ball of Confusion " comes to mind. " And the band played on ". The US is like the Titanic with people ignoring the iceberg,
Yes Margie, I'm sure what the Nazis did in WWII was horrible. But I've seen Mexican workers transported in very crowded flat bed trucks in Texas in the 80s, and much worse I've seen the extreme poverty in a Native American reservation in Arizona in the 90s. I often felt poor growing up while in working class America, but it was nothing compared to that. I've seen homeless camps in California also, but realizing that children were growing up large reservations like the one I saw in Arizona was horrifying.
Thank you for this information - this is the sort of thing that I've read about, but your account makes it more "real" in a way. My family was not privileged when I was growing up, but we often saw black or immigrant communities (Florida) that were similar to what you are describing. it is truly horrifying.
"By the end of 1863, President Abraham Lincoln dated the birth of the nation not to the Constitution, whose protection of property underpinned southern enslavers’ insistence that enslavement was a foundational principle, but to the Declaration of Independence."
The distinction between the two founding documents, and noted shortcomings of the Constitution, could not be more relevant to explaining our current plight.
The forces allied against democracy have highlighted the now apparent intent of the founding fathers to enshrine principles that would allow minority rule by the white, male elite. If we survive the current attack, those flaws must go.
As a white person of Southern ancestry, it saddens me to think how long these myths were perpetuated. The untimely death of Lincoln certainly played a role,, but we suffer today from a lack of shared history in this country, and it plays out in so many ways. In my own family, a story was passed down that one of my great grandfathers, a Baptist minister with a Victorian demeanor to judge from his sermons, attended college on money borrowed from Alexander Stephens, the Confederacy's vice president. How, I always wondered, did Stephens have money to loan after the defeat of the Confederacy? Only recently did I learn that slaveholders were compensated for the loss of the people they enslaved, and he must have gotten a lot of money. A Stephens descendent was still representing a district in northeast Georgia until some time in the 1970s.
"Only recently did I learn that slaveholders were compensated for the loss of the people they enslaved, and he must have gotten a lot of money. A Stephens descendent was still representing a district in northeast Georgia until some time in the 1970s."
You may be interested to read the 1619 Book Project and Isabelle Wilkerson's "The Warmth of Other Suns" also mentioned elsewhere in these comments today.
Life changing books. Not only were formerly rich, white slave owners compensated for those formerly enslaved, NOTHING was given to the former slaves.
Hi Mike, you convinced me. I just ordered Wilkerson's book.
I'll get to the 1619 project at some point. To be honest, today the letters and comments are wearing me down. Democracy seems to be two steps forward, one step back and this mind-numbingly slow progress overwhelms.
My husband (who's in his final year of work prior to retirement) and I try to either go to the local gym or walk a few miles daily. Back before I retired, while we'd walk, I'd talk about work and he knew all of my coworkers by the stories I'd tell. He reads the Letter also, but no time for all the comments. I will talk about the comments and some of those who comment as well. He knows you, TC, Will, Ally, Sandy, Fran, Jeri, Gailee, etc, etc. I talk about all of you guys like I'd talk about my work buds and what we'd discuss around the break table.
My point being, like anything in life, there are the silver linings. The letter is educating me, though it often depresses me. But then I find kindred spirits all over this country, even in the entire world, and it gives me hope!
I intend to, Mike. On Sandy Lewis's recommendation, I ordered "On Tyranny" last week. It hasn't yet arrived. I have a stack of books to get through. Sometimes, what is going on in this country is just way more than my psyche can handle.
Racism and white elitism wasn't particular to the American South: the White Man's Burden was writ large across much of the world until the 1940s at least (and sadly lingers in far too many places still). So I wonder how much differently outcomes would have been in the longer term were Lincoln not to have been assassinated. The lesson applied at the end of World War II was the Marshall Plan which avoided the punitive treatment Germans received after WWI. We are in a terrible mess at the moment, there is no doubt about that but I am not sure what lesson history is telling us other than get out the vote and seek some non-threatening way to bring back reasoned debate. I see far too many lessons in history of self-destructive violence and revolutions eating their children. I suppose the greatest lesson I get from this letter is that every alarm bell should be ringing.
Stephen, it may be that no matter what choice one makes or that governments and coalitions make, there is always a cost, a price to be paid. Whether one chooses mercy and forbearance or chooses strict accountability and appropriate punishment, each course has its price. I fear we must make our choices in full knowledge there will be a price to pay and try to avoid the recriminations which inevitably follow with hindsight. Perhaps the best we can do is make the hard choices and doo our best to plan for the price to be paid...where that can be foreseen.
"The decision of government officials 158 years ago to trust in the goodwill of former Confederates rather than focus on justice for everyone else seemed at the time to be the honorable and best course for healing the divided nation. But it ended up protecting the Confederates’ ideology and disheartening those who had fought for the United States."
This is a lesson that MUST be correctly applied with respect to the former guy and MAGA Republicans, otherwise we are doomed. It is obvious that there is no goodwill in these people.
I wonder if Grant’s humanity in that moment would have had a different outcome had Lincoln not been assassinated. Grant was who he was. He showed up, got up and fought. He was not a diplomat, or surrender-visionary beyond not wanting more people to starve. He made his decision, IMHO, based on respect for Lee as an embodiment of the honorable southern soldier, who represented the South because he believed he must respect Virginia first over the Union. Should he have realized that the soul of the surviving Rebels still harbored sedition? Perhaps. But Grant didn’t know Lincoln’s leadership to carry out the victory was not going to come to pass. Lincoln was the visionary. Grant was the reluctant head of the army accepting a revered General’s surrender. Who was the better human being in that moment? Grant. However, no good deed goes unpunished.
If someone were to fly a flag with the Swastika on it, what would be our reaction?
If someone were to fly a Confederate Flag (it's a battle flag) why should our reaction be any different?
Heather Cox Richardson has written the letter I have been waiting for. We let the "rebels" get away with treason and murder. We forgave them in a moment of grace and a desire to "move on". They repaid us with more murder and treason. And because there were no consequences, they were emboldened to continue that bigotry and brutality generation after generation. And here we are - imagine being Black in Tennessee. Imagine being a school age kid just about anywhere in this nation of fools. But especially in Tennessee. A place where weapons are valued more than children is dystopian.
I -- we -- grew up believing that Nazism, the unspeakable-unthinkable crime had been erased, banished from the face of the earth.
My mother took me aside at age 8 and told me:
"We are all children of the One Father, children of the One God. We are brothers and sisters, we are one family, so we must live accordingly.
To persecute, to kill our brothers and sisters because they have a different religion, a different appearance, a different way of thinking, that is the greatest sin possible, that is the crime against God."
I could not understand all the terms, the words she was using, but I understood that she was giving me perhaps the most important, the most fundamental teaching.
This was in 1948. I remember the room, I remember the urgency, the passion with which she spoke.
Only much later did I learn of the photos my parents had just received from my father's cousin, a colonel in Britain's Royal Army Medical Corps who had taken part in the opening of two concentration camps, Fort Breendonk in Belgium and Bergen-Belsen. The photos were of Belsen.
*
"The evil that men do lives after them;
The good is oft interred with their bones."
This, we have seen with our eyes, this we know. We have seen it in Moscow, of all places. We are seeing it in Ukraine.
We have seen this in Washington. Of all places. We are seeing it in America. Daily.
Yes. The metastases are everywhere. No choice but to rise up and cleanse our minds, cleanse our world.
It is worth reminding ourselves that re WWII, the Axis authoritarians and killers of ethnic groups were not stopped by internal citizenry, the US the UK, China and Russia (Allies) were required to stamp out (temporarily at least) Fascism as a good governing model. A very interesting and pertinent statement in the book "Seeing Like a State" by James C Scott reads "a prostrate civil society that lacks the capacity to resist (authoritarian interests and planning.)" PP 4-5. Are we approaching a prostrate society now?
The majority of us believe in justice for all. Racism prevents universal healthcare, food and housing security. The task of transforming our country to one where "justice for all" is a reality instead of just words is the civil work of our century. If we succeed democracy will prevail. If we fail democracy will be shown to be a sham and fail.
I'm not so sure democracy would be shown as a sham as much as the pervasiveness and persistent evils of tribalism and greed and hate. We must be vigilant as challenges will continue to arise for evil will always seek to be treated as an equal. We must unite -- in the many, we can be as one -- and persevere in the cause of freedom and justice for all. We must continue to seek the 'more perfect Union.'
I think the source of hate is always fear (something even science fiction writers like Frank Herbert and movie makers like George Lucas understood). So I always identify the two main "problems" of humanity as fear and greed. I think the fear is basically unchanged and comes from, is related to, tribalism (our "monkey brains") and the greed has been changed over time to many different attributes in our modern societies. As for our U.S. democracy and its exercise of free enterprise, greed has become malevolent, more so as so many have allowed money to become both their god and their bludgeon. We are a cruel society. (Read: Poverty By America by Matthew Desmond.) Social democracies, often with starting points of more homogeneous populations, are much less cruel. We are certainly not a society with Christian or any other major religion's values (watch what we do not what we say). You are correct that we must be vigilant, but I'm afraid our institutions and government have been, perhaps hopelessly, corrupted by the religions of finance and money that only seeks profit. A country where people must go without basic healthcare or go broke because of a major illness is not really a sane place for humans to live. Nevertheless, many without the ruling wand of "capital" do manage to survive and persist using their strength, wits, and grit. Perhaps, our country will change its trajectory before it is too late. Until then we must depend on and nurture our local tribes of families and friends.
Excellent point about fear being the source of hate. Unfortunately, fear is rather easily triggered and channeled. Maybe that's why faith and hope and charity are necessary if we are to be strong and to persevere. Maybe that's why inspirational words and song and actions are so essential in life....
The assassination of Lincoln and the subsequent ascension of Johnson to the presidency all but nullified the righteous goals achieved by the Union in the Civil War.
Hitler had many sympathizers in the US, and does to this day. (I had a co-worker who ,while removing a T shirt, revealed a tattoo of Hitler.)
Today’s lesson, on the anniversary of Appomattox, is as much current events as history.
Thank you, again, HCR.
Certain people would really relish the idea of a 2nd Civil War, unfortunately. & most of them are in the deep South, some in little backwater redneck areas that are stereotypically straight out of " DELIVERANCE ", as well as Atlanta, Nashville & Asheville NC & Charleston.
Not just the South. Michigan, Oregon, Idaho, Wisconsin etc etc. and they aren’t just rednecks.
Racism and white supremacy is alive and well everywhere. They are funded as they have been all along by wealthier white men, many of whom we can name. This is what death star gave carte blanche to with open statements and dog whistles all the time. The party of death no longer even pretends to be democratic.
Pennsylvania can be included too. I live in the Northwestern part of the state where one can see Confederate flags flying next to Trump flags. A few weeks prior to the 2020 election, some people in the area awakened on a Sunday morning to find KKK literature in their front yards. It wasn't a coincidence that they had Biden/Harris signs displayed. There is a long standing and active branch of the Oath Keepers in my county. As disturbing as it is here, other parts of the state are worse. Pennsylvania is home to Scott Perry, Doug Mastriano, and Mike Kelly. Shameful and twisted ideology and behavior can be found everywhere.
It is a rural thing. You know the saying about Pennsylvania, Pittsburg on one end, Philly on the other, Alabama in between.
Michele, is your name Polish? That’s my inheritance on my father’s side. He was the only Pole I knew or thought about until I came to Chicago, got to know Polish people, started learning the language, and went to Polish school in Kraków every summer 2016-19 (then Covid). What you are writing about where you are in PA (married 30 years to a transplanted Pennsylvanian who was above all other careers a musician), put together with what I have learned about the state and about Polish people generally, It seems that many Poles are racist, so wondering if you live among many of them in the situation you describe.
Virginia, I'm wondering if your response is meant for me? My name is Kamila. I do not have any Polish ancestry. My husband's father's family were/are Americans of Polish descent. Most members in this branch of the family passed away before we were married so I never met them. I can't speak to their beliefs or ideology. My husband does not hold the views you describe.
You can include Connecticut, a blue state in the urban areas, not so much in the rural areas. Waves of trump signs.
On a visit to Tolland CT last year, I was surprised to see a quite active local Republican group on the town common; quite a contrast to my town in Massachusetts, where the local Republicans have not yet filed papers to become a valid town committee after disbanding some years ago.
Oh yes. That's truly trump country in CT. It's almost scary to drive through those places. But they're also quite depressed areas, economically, so that's one of the prices we pay for the economy being so lopsided. When trump visited Hartford during his first presidential campaign, I attended a protest outside the building where he was to appear and I was shocked by the long lines of people waiting to go in. Who would have thought in such a blue state?
J Nol: ...”the prices we pay for a ...lopsided economy.” Amen. The for profit medical system is killing US; the loss of the middle class is a nightmare. We need to look at Europe and learn what is possible in a well-ordered state. Today’s HRC tells US where we have miserably failed.
Economically depressed? Tolland? Didn't appear so the last time we were there. It's redder in western and central Mass... those areas I could understand, with our Boston-centric state government.
Our rural area : Waves of Red Trumpy and “Let’s Go Brandon” and Let Live or Die or Blue and Black line and other flags. Not on my streets, condos with regulations against flags and signs except unaltered American Flags. Next door neighbor had a roommate that flew a confederate flag from back of pickup truck. And a small string noose. Not on the building. I could do nothing about it. Except freak out.
It is freaky isn't it, that people display their hostility so freely. Gives me the creeps.
Some of those places have militias & Proud Boys, Qanon as well, or so I understand.
I've read that there are 4 known militia groups in Vermont, living off the grid. We've had several potential school shootings, stopped in time by red flag laws. My anxiety level increases for my grandchildren. I am grateful to Heather for her continuing US history lessons and how that relates to the country today.
This is REALLY UNNERVING. After over 4 years in Purgatory we still have to put up with unstable psychopaths carrying guns. Ain't America great ? DISGUSTING ! I'm ANGRY in a way that I'm not comfortable with.
I remember it as 4 years in HELL, now getting hotter as vicious states rights advocates encourage murderous well armed nuts. Putin is still winning in America.
We have seen Proud Boys much too often here in Salem, Oregon. Part of the problem is that being white and male does not always give people a total leg up as it used to and the grievances are many. Social media has provided these people with a forum as well where they can be as awful as they want to be.
One of the main guys in the Proud Boys, Ethan Nordean, is from a small town in Western Washington which isn't too far from where I lived a year ago. These people are EVERYWHERE. It's horrible.
Ah, gotta love the veil of anonymity of the internet..... ( he said sarcastically, of course )
Actually Michigan, Wisconsin recently revealed they have risen far above the scum. Less populated portions of Oregon, like less populated regions in California may be rooted in the white superiority hypocrisy, but overall both States are way above that level. I'll grant you Idaho.
I have someone down the street flying militia flags, MT
Me, too. He went to the J6 insurrection, too.
As a former upstate New Yorker who lives in Atlanta, I do not agree with the “DELIVERANCE” Comment that included Atlanta. Atlanta and its two counties were the primary reason that Biden won Georgia and the national election to become President. Our Democratic black Mayor with a graduate degree form Georgia Tech and our popular white Governor have a supportive working relationship. Perhaps you thought Marjorie Taylor Greene lives in Atlanta. She does not. She represents the Northwest Corner of Georgia.
Tom, I'm a longtime transplant, and I agree with most of what you say. However, Gov. Brian Kemp, while wisely not a Trumpie, is disingenuously cultivating an amicable relationship with Andre Dickens. This, despite the fact that after Trump's "phone call" with Brad Raffensperger, Kemp and the legislature, supported by Raffensperger, put in place a voter "integrity" law that allowed limiting the number of drop boxes for mail-in ballots, other voter suppression measures, but most disturbingly a provision that would allow legislators to take over county election boards and toss out ballots cast and commit what amounts to vote nullification. Kemp is smart enough to portray himself as an alternative to Trump or DeSantis in a future run for President.
Kemp, though resisting falling into the T***p camp, is nevertheless still a very conservative Republican. Don't forget his ads for governor where he talked about "gettin' in my pickup truck and goin' to round up sum'm'em illegals" and aiming a shotgun at one of his daughters' dates. He's not quite as unhinged as the far right, but I still wouldn't trust him. Politically, he is very savvy and is pretty good at seeing where and how the political "winds" blow that will benefit him. He also has a broad appeal to more moderate Republicans and Independents. He hasn't really allied himself that much with DeSantis, though he agrees with him on a lot of issues--I think the "person" DeSantis might put him off a bit. Kemp has good people advising him, though I personally don't think he's that smart. It doesn't help that he sounds like he "just fell off the turnip truck" with that good ol' boy country accent. As to whether he has broader national appeal, I can't say. I can't see him running for Senate, as has been suggested. I think he's been too used to being the man-in-charge and the "head CEO" to accept a more legislative position. Keep your eye on him.
Bruce, I agree with everything you have said. Kemp is very savvy - especially when he joined Geoff Duncan by distancing himself from TFG, but never criticized him specifically. I failed to mention that among his sins is the Heartbeat Abortion law and the fact that so much of Georgia's budget surplus resulted from Biden's Rescue Plan, not for his own skill, but know that you're aware of all that. I've read several times that he has his eye on a White House run at some point, but I agree that he doesn't have the intellect. His country accent is an affectation, I'm sure. He was wealthy from birth, and I'm guessing that he doesn't use the accent at the country club.
You have two good senators. May you keep them a long time.
Thank you, Virginia, and we hope they'll win their next election. I'm hoping that the current abominable crop of Republicans will suffer the consequences of their obstructionism and disregard for their own constituents and will be defeated across the country. It's necessary to save our country.
Yeah it would be folly to trust Kemp at all.
Upstate NY: Home district of House of Rep. "Ultra-MAGA" Elise Stefanik. The threat is everywhere, not just southern states.
All the Comments about Governor Kemp are correct. I am disgusted with his scorched earth support for loosening gun restrictions before both of his elections. However, his recent support for Mayor Dickens helped stop the disastrous Buckhead separatists state legislative initiative and sent Bill White to Lake Rabun. Also, I like our strong state economy, while being uncomfortable and ashamed of our high wealth disparity in Atlanta. I acknowledge that It’s a mixed bag at best.
I'm glad you said "most". We live in Rhode Island and I am surprised at the number of confederate flag bumper stickers that I see...
That's still quite UNSETTLING.
The description of Ralph's co-worker who had a tattoo of Hitler is VERY unsettling, too. I want to ask, "Haven't they learned?" but I suspect I know the answer.
1854sailor, I'm glad you made this point. I grew up in suburban Boston, and witnessed a good bit of racism and other ills. Even now, living in Georgia, I've had to cut ties with old friends in MA whose bigotry has survived.
Rhode Island is one of my favorite places in the world, however I think it's crazy that Rhode Island passed the first anti-slavery laws in the colonies / country and there are people there that want to flag the confederate flag. Freaking shameful...
Yes, but it wasn't until 2020 that "...and Providence Plantations" was dropped from the state's official name...
Many are here in the West, There are cells in many states waiting for the word as Jan 6th shows. MT & ID have people itching to take up their guns. If u want to find them, just post something re gun violence on Republican Congressional FB pages.
I figure that I'll do that when they open NHL training camps in the 9th level of Hell, thanks. 😈👿
Racism in America. Lindbergh was a Fascist.
As was Henry Ford.
Yes. Old and young Henry Ford of Model T fame were rabid mad dog antisemites. And the wealthy Connecticut prep school, The Hotchkiss School, was their baby. That prep now has a decent Black man running admissions. Times have changed at Hotchkiss. But the fascist odor will take decades to cleanse. Grads selected Hotchkiss for exclusivity.
If you scratch beyond the surface, you'll find lots of antisemitism, racism, and broad-range hatred in many exclusive bastions and locations. There's plenty of WASP-ish behavior to go around, and it is everywhere.
As Mitchell T. Rabkin MD, a dear friend, 34 year Director of BIDMC in Boston, said years ago, “Nothing like the passive hostility of the WASP”.
And since his surname was Rabkin, I'm sure he'd experienced WASPs' "passive hostility" on many occasions. You and Dr. Rabkin have given me a chuckle this morning, although its source is not funny at all.
The waspishness is greed? We’ve got it and we’re gonna keep it attitude? That’s universal, but Trump emphasized it and got judges and tax code to prop it up. If Democrats don’t take power in ‘24, keep it for 30 years and rebuild unions and the middle class with fair tax codes and not-for-profit medical care, we’re gone. Are we up for a truly super-human effort like WWII?
I think there are many WASPs who feel that way, but my interpretation is that they consider themselves simply superior to the common riffraff, and look down their noses at "common" people, regardless of wealth. My guess is that a WASP would never fraternize with anyone like TFG - he's much too crass, and openly flaunts (and lies about) his net worth. "Class" and "breeding" are more important to WASPs, much like the English aristocracy, and they frown on the neuvo riche. All of that said, they believe that they get to keep whatever wealth or possessions come their way, while looking down on the T***ps of the world. We must vote to take dark money out of the hands of the oligarchs, regardless of their origins, or our hopes for the American Dream and less corrupt government and social programs will die permanently. First in line is overturning Citizens United, then cleaning up the Supreme Court in any way possible - expansion or otherwise.
That's the reason why the Catskills became popular and why it was typical for Jewish men to become doctors and lawyers. Antisemitism. If you could open your own practice you could get a job, if you had your own hotels to go to you could go on vacation. Golf courses etc. All exclusively WASP. This country has no business calling out other countries for human rights violations. Look in your own backyard.
Shellee, I knew that the reason the resorts were built in the Catskills was due to the fact that Jews were shunned in country clubs in New York and elsewhere, but I hadn't made the connection with doctors and lawyers. As long as I live, I'll never understand why antisemitism has existed for centuries. If for no other reason than practicality, one would think that Jews would have been welcome in all societies simply because of their potential contribution to civilization. They have strong family values, education is stressed in their culture, and apparently they are forgiving of the rest of us for their persecution - centuries of pogroms, being shunned and hated, Hitler's insane "final solution", while most of the rest of the world turning a blind eye - including the "land of the free and the home of the brave." It should be a requirement for every non-Jewish person in the world to spend a day touring the now-sanitized Auschwitz-Birkenau and other death camps to sense the horrors that have been endured there, and reevaluate the universally foul treatment of Jews worldwide.
And, the originator of America First. When Trump began using that,I thought Mango Mugabe had gone insane. Didn't he know what that meant to anyone who lived through that era?
Decidedly, the joke was on me.
Lindberg was not a Fascist; he was a leader of America First, which only wanted to keep America out of the European war. But he was an antisemite, blaming Jews for wanting us to prepare for war. FDR wanted us to prepare for war, too. My father was a member of America First, and he disrupted Nazi meetings and co-founded the Houston Bill of Rights Foundation.
HCR is great at just putting the historical facts out there and letting us connect the dots and see the parallels. It goes without being said we are seeing things now which do, more or less, bear similarities to events in our past. But, we are also on new terrain in regard to the palpable threats we are experiencing to this country's system of laws and governance. It's a different playing field because of technology, and the fact that a major political party has been taken over by zealots and is turning into a autocratic, fascist entity. That's not hyperbole anymore. HCR keeps reminding us of history. Sometimes there are stark parallels--human beings still haven't changed in many ways from 150+ years ago--but there are also some scary aspects to today's situations that we HAVE to stay aware of. "Everything old is new again...", or "plus ça change..." are still apt, but with some caveats.
Thank you for your thoughtful response. I heartily agree, except for one minor point.
“…a major political party has been taken over by zealots…”
The Republicans gave themselves over to zealots, willingly. In my view, the GOP Fox News/AM radio propaganda industrial complex created the zealots, who are now grown beyond control, thanks to the best con man this country ever created.
Point taken, though I think I basically said as much, just with different wording. The fact remains: the party has become what it has become, whether willingly or not. The salient point is what it now is: a threat to this country. I also implied "because of technology", which infers, among many other things, the influence of television and social media. T***p is the end result of myriad factors that have been brewing for decades. I concur with what Robert Reich said this morning: "I don’t believe Trump alone is responsible for the birth of modern Republican fascism, but he has legitimized and encouraged the vicious rancor that has led much of the GOP into election-denying fascism."
Ralph, you said it much better than I would have. Heather is a master when it comes to drawing parallels.
If you managed to refrain from taking a swing at your co-worker, you're a hero!
Verbal swings. That day and every day thereafter whenever we were on the same job site. When other members of the crew found out about the tattoo, they joined in as well.
Good for you!
Hitler had many sympathizers in the US, including Harlan Crow, the financier of Clarence Thomas.
As a teenager growing up in Orange Co., CA I saw the Fascist Party alive and well in many local and national Republicans. It made me a life-long Democrat...
Current news reveals Clarence Thomas dear friend also seemingly enamored of Hitler, et. al, https://www.washingtonian.com/2023/04/07/clarence-thomass-billionaire-benefactor-collects-hitler-artifacts/
MeidasTouch on YouTube has a boatload on Crowe. His admiration of Hitler is the least of it.
I maybe "get" some of why some people admire sociopaths, but not why such great numbers worship them. We seem to need smarter approach to discouraging that.
"That" was the subversive intent and execution of 'the plan', or plot Ralph. The enemy now is much the same as then... Different 'uniforms and badges' but still the same. The imposition, or actually insistence of the will of a tiny minority of the 'haves' vs the laws of the majority. I know who's behind today's 'uniforms and badges'. The 'who' behind these new uniforms and badges is the fundamental need to widely broadcast across the land today, tomorrow, forever if we are to remain the community at the core of our national intent. To force us to stray is the mission of those fervently opposed, who would and have taken up arms (1/6th) in opposition and they do have a name - It accurately is the AFP, aka, the gop wearing false flags and badges; the AFP is correctly the American Facist Party. Check out the reveal over at Bob (Robert Reich's) Substack, under the title of his proposition statement, * "Is the GOP becoming the American fascist party" ? I'll post a link with HCR's permission which I dare to presume. > see > https://robertreich.substack.com/p/what-happens-when-supermajorities/comments
**.. And more.. > I've lived, accepted, and insist that The "Democracy" I swore allegiance to, is Not a spectator sport to merely observe. When I of my own volition, signed over my life to the still existing Draft Board to be a military conscript (aka "cannon fodder") so very many years ago, I 'lived' that allegiance. Again, when I flipped a coin for party selection to vote. Again, so very many times I not only served, but volunteered for jury service, and executing that service in numerous ways I 'did not' personally want, such as to serve as foreman on soul wrenching trials. I will do it again in the face of the bitterest rotten harvest in the current, to become a history of my country - the rise of posers who are in fact the AFP, aka, the American Facist Party, hiding under the cloaks and badges that were once owned and worn by those of common purpose as myself, and they are rightly known by their 'actions' and intents, revealed in evidence for any to see, or 'will' see. Today I swear / renew that oath again, if need be as it seems, to do what must be done as my responsibility in defense vs enemies within and without, even to the end of my means. Bring it facist bastards - I very clearly 'see' you, and am clearly standing opposed.
I thought for certain you would mention the book "Caste" by Isabel Wilkerson when you wrote "In the 1930s, Nazi leaders, lawyers, and judges turned to America’s Jim Crow laws..." Ms Wilkerson does a superb job of describing how impressed the Nazis were of our caste system.; calling it "Jim Crow" obscures the vile nature of the system of segregation and discrimination based on race in the USA.
Isabel Wilkerson also wrote “The Warmth of Other Suns” about the great Northern Migration. It was a wake-up call for Americans who believed the Civil War ended and racism was a Southern issue. Both of her books are not only wake-up calls, but courageous writing in a country that still is divided. https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/190696/the-warmth-of-other-suns-by-isabel-wilkerson/
I read Wilkerson's book six years ago and it totally changed my life. For the first time I understood the origin of the northern slums. How racism was endemic throughout the United States. How powerful violence was sponsored onto blacks in the south.
Finally, I understood why I worked in three corporations that were all white.
America is a fundamentally a white supremacist country.
The First Americans found that out as well. My maternal grandfather did a series of articles about the Trail of Tears that nearly crushed the spirits of the Cherokee nation.
The insistence that First Americans should speak English ONLY, dress in European - style clothing, adopt Christianity, etc., reads like ethnic cleansing, culturally.
Daniel , thank you for the reminder of the first Racism in America. We need to know history and that is one more part of American History that is likely erased by banning CRT. Critical Race Theory. A Genocide of a people who lived on this land for thousands of years before the white man stepped on this soil. Another “Never Forget” part of History. The First Peoples. https://www.history.com/news/native-americans-genocide-united-states
Irenie - I'm a quarter Cherokee on my mother's side so I felt like I was OBLIGATED to point out our treatment of the First Americans, my responsibility to do so. THANK YOU.
Even the Mayflower Puritans participated in mistreating Native Americans, as did Columbus. Very deep roots indeed.
I try to consolidate these issues into a sense of entitlement. Europeans believed they were entitled and that theme touches almost every problem you can point to.
And they will quote bible verse to justify their actions
"Manifest Destiny" my foot.
Irenie, thanks so much for the link! What a frightening series of revelations put so well documented and presented together. The best listen from the history channel I've had in a long time. it took me back to my school days when history was taught with accuracy instead of agenda.
This type of forced action, to bend others to the so-called leaders' will, is of course based on fear. Fear of losing their foothold, their power, which is why admitting their thinking is wrong is unthinkable. These days tech continues to trail a healthy moral conscience, which has been moving in reverse. The right's stand against CRT, which they insist puts a target on their backs, is a smoke screen for admitting many of our ancestors took wrong action in institutionalizing racism. Anti-CRT laws are its very definition.
Indoctrination. My cousin has been programmed by evangelicals. No Critical Thinking or questioning allowed. Just mindless acceptance, become a robot sheep. Oh, & criticize / condemn whatever doesn't fit neatly & smoothly into your new software package download.
This aspect of our history is equally disgusting. My husband has Lakota ancestry and we did not know much, but are now in the process of learning about the treatment of Native Americans. We do have a set of military orders from another part of his family who fought Native Americans. I have mentioned this before, but the orders are about a war in southern Oregon where the soldiers were told to pursue Native Americans (Indians in the orders) using every means possible including eating horses and then dead Indians if necessary. If the soldiers did not, they would be mentioned unfavorably in the records. I have had to stop reading a couple accounts of both the treatment of Native Americans and cotton slavery because they made me sick. I am taking a break by reading a bio of Catherine de Medici which of course, has plenty about the religious wars in France.
I think that I need a drink, even if it's morning. Didn't they give blankets infected ( ? ) with syphilis to them ?
small pox, I think. The Lakota in the 19th century was vaccinated and so they did not have the huge population drop. Two books I recommend, Lakota America and Indigenous Continent. The author is a Finn who is an Oxford don and I can't spell his name.
Yes, and so much more...
I am a very small part Native American. My great-great-great grandfather was Choctaw in MS. It shows in the faces of my great grandpa and my grandmother & all her siblings. I always wondered how marriage to a white woman in the Segregated South in the 1840s was accepted, but it seems quite common as many black & white ppl from there have Choctaw ancestry.
There is another aspect of this that was also quite common. I too have an ancestor from that period who was purportedly Cherokee. Her anglicized name was Lucy "Bear Paw" Proctor. I've seen her Cherokee name that she gave up on marriage. That said, 23andMe assures me that I do not have any Amerind or Asian DNA segments, but I do have some that are of Congolese origin (tied into the Bantu expansion on that continent). That means that almost without a doubt that Lucy was actually a refugee from slavery living among the Cherokee, and then through her marriage "escaped" a little more by moving into the Melungeon communities in the mountains of eastern Tennessee and Kentucky. In digging into this, I discovered that it was standard in the South, and probably the North as well, for descendants of mixed race couples to either claim they were purely of European descent if their skin color was light enough (e.g. many of the Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemmings descendants) or if their skin tone did not permit that, to claim that they had a Native American ancestor, which was often culturally but not genetically true. Apparently, the tribes and bands commonly provided refuge to people trying to escape slavery, which may shed a little more light on the sentiments that led to the exclusion acts and the trail of tears. There seems to have been a strong continuity between the Civil War and the wars against the Native Americans.
"Ancestry" did not find any Native American in my DNA, which was quite disappointing considering my great-great-great grandfather was known Choctaw - even the family lore that they would not sell him liquor and that my grandmother & siblings had those facial features. I read that the Tribes do not share their DNA with these groups, probably to keep out claims to the tribal gambling fortunes. Central & S. American native DNA is known.
And in the end, speaking English, adopting Christianity, and dressing "European" didn't save the Cherokees - they still got removed when the "real" whites found gold on their lands.
Daniel, thank you for adding this voice.
And it is still going on
Mike S, your comment here highlights the journey so many of us have made these past 6 -8 years. By reading more broadly we discovered so much that was left out of our history lessons “back-in-the-day”. Life makes sense when you have all the information. And you cannot go back to unknowing it. I have absolved to not be angry or disgusted with the citizens who don’t know - or wish to not know- this history. They are being mislead for purposes not helpful to “The Greater Good”. I pity them though. And I continue to work to push back against their ignorance, listen to their fears with compassion, and work to change their ability to exist in America without knowing all the history. I view our current moment as a besiegement of our minds. Social medias’ tools for persuading outcomes not for the Greater Good, by questionable characters, as well as outright ill-intentioned characters, is so dangerous to Democracy right now it’s chilling.
Yes, for the last two years, after I was outsourced and, then, at age 61, did not find another engineering job and did not want to do contract stints, I had time to read.
NPR had run a segment of Wilkerson's The Warmth of Other Suns" so I checked it from the library (all of our local libraries here have it).
It was amazing.
MLRGRMI - "listen to their fears with compassion, and work to change their ability to exist in America without knowing all the history." So powerful for me! First post I've seen that does not have an underlying forecast of civil war in it. How can we change the trajectory of this country? Thank you
I don't forecast a civil war because we are actually in it... the battlefields are not the same, more diverse, even subtle and we retreat to our trenches to compare notes. It's ground down to the law and the ballot box and education where possible.
That is the goal. But it is so hard sometimes, so soul-draining, to be met with the obdurate insanity of the Republicans, and to not be able to budge them from their wrongful beliefs.
That statement also stood out to me - so important, yet, for me, SO hard to do. Kudos to you both. I promise I will attempt.
As a MIchigander, I am surrounded by family and friends who remain Trumpers and Fox News viewers. I find it so difficult to talk to these people, because it seems their minds are made up long ago. It’s very hard on the soul to even lose contact with family members. Quite despairing sometimes.
I always look for your comments as a fellow MIchigander. Thank you
MLRGRMI, you give us hope that we can rise above travesty.Tthanks for giving voice to us all!
MLRGRMI -- I think you mean 'resolved' rather than 'absolved'. Absolution is different than resolution. But I get your point.
So well said MLRG
Yes, Mike. I read it in my book group, too, when it was first published. 2011. Not only is it a life-changing book, it revealed how ignorant many of us are about racism and white supremacy. Still some people believe it all ended with the Civil War. Back to U.S. History and Reconstruction. And Today. https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/190696/the-warmth-of-other-suns-by-isabel-wilkerson/
I have read Caste, but based on what you guys say, have just ordered The Warmth of Other Suns from the library. Thanks.
You will not regret it.
I liked Warmth of Other Suns better.
Irenie,
The book certainly "revealed" my own ignorance. The way the book personalized the Great Migration through the lives of three people was simply brilliant.
We read it in our book club too, several years ago. Certainly opened my eyes.
I grew up in northern Indiana (Elkhart) and I can tell you that racism was and still is everywhere. When you delve deeply into the history of Indiana or Oregon, you find plenty of racism. On my book list is a new book by Timothy Egan, Fever in the Heartland, about the KKK in Indiana.
Tim Egan says his original intent was to write about the Klan in Oregon but his research lead him to Indiana. He was the author presented (interviewed) for our paper's Northwest Passages. He tried to answer questions without giving away too much of the book.
They were famous for their nefarious work in the Oregon legislature in the 1920s. Indiana had the record number of Klansmen during the same period.
If there is anything we can thank tfg for is uncovering & making us aware of how racist we are & the menace of white male privilege racist we are .I had a very difficult time with all the Easter greetings. To me it was white dominance pushing down & not acknowledging the multi culture that is the US. Working in the schools, at Christmas & Easter time all the kids got pictures to color that did not necessarily reflect their culture or religion. It is more heinous now with CN being legislated into our personal decisions
Mike S, Daniel, Privilege and power, and not willing to give them up, may fit in here somewhere too to some degree, my thought this morning. Love reading our compatriots thoughts.
Sandra. Yes. Not having been born black is great good fortune in America. No doubt.
I would not say we a a fundamentally white supremacist country. I don't know the numbers if there are any that can be had but there are plenty who think feel and vote this way. I would say though that we are a fundamentally divided country along those lines and that the Civil War has long legs.
Mike S: okay, correct. Changed your life, totally? And the historian that willingly and willfully ignores the incredible and increasing pain of today is a cause of this. Tim Snyder: Silence enables. America is sick. Passive aggressive kills. Being nice may not be nice. Truth triumphs. Dialect deals.
Deal.
Exactly, Irenie X.
Thank you to both you & Bruce for recommending both “Caste” & “The Warmth of Other Suns” by Isabel Wilkerson. I remember how shocked I was when I learned in “Caste” that the Nazis based their Nuremberg Laws on our own Jim Crow Laws.
It was a gut punch for me to learn that. gah
I didn’t know of Wilkerson’s book. If I were to read just one of her books, which one do you recommend?
Warmth of Other Suns if you only read just one. You feel the experiences she describes in your gut, in your soul.
Thank you.
I’ve only read Caste, which was excellent. Next, looks like ‘The Warmth of Other Suns’.
I listened to Warmth of Other Suns a few years ago, I agree its mind blowing. Next is Caste.
Read both.
CASTE
Thank you.
The 1619 Book Project, with multiple authors and organized by Nicole Hannah Jones also notes that the Nazi's studied the Jim Crow laws to incorporate the racist laws into place.
However, the book notes that Nazi's found the Jim Crow laws too harsh: Only one drop of blood of a past relative was used to define a person as black man. Nazi's ended up defining a Jew as having one grandparent as Jewish instead.
Nicole Hannah Jones’ became controversial with the publication of “The 1619 Project.” While she graduated from University of North Carolina, Master of Arts in Mass Communication, their board of trustees didn’t want to give her a tenured position, only offering a five year contract, an insult to an author and graduate. Too much Truth? After much publicity and controversy, she now has a professorship at Howard University. Racism lives on.
Nikole Hannah-Jones Will Join Howard Faculty Instead Of UNC - https://www.npr.org/2021/07/06/1013315775/after-tenure-controversy-nikole-hannah-jones-will-join-howard-faculty-instead-of
https://profiles.howard.edu/nikole-hannah-jones
Howard University recognized Nicole Hannah Jones for her outstanding scholarship and capabilities. She will thrive at Howard. The mega donor, who gave $25 million to name the journalism school, rather objected to Nicole Hannah Jones work in the 1619 Project. He made those objections known. The radical Republican legislators keep messing with the UNC Board of Governors, undermining higher education in NC. They are hurting NC in the long run, but only care about power and lining their pockets.
The Board of Governors had too much power. Nicole Hannah Jones would have added tremendous academic excellence, perspective and Truth to UNC. The students are the losers and the board caused pain and suffering, a wake-up call, not only to Nicole Hannah Jones but to all who falsely believe racism is over.
Irenie,
Yes, I bought the original pamphlet from NY Times and the .pdf of that pamphlet.
Ms. Hannah Jones was only controversial with male, southern, white historians who "took issue" with her adding slavery to America's origin story.
However, the real controversy is white men historians becoming upset at adding truth to history.
So, whenever I refer to Hannah Jones/Wilkerson I say: "The Warmth of Other Suns/1619 Book Project are books that cast light on the controversy of American history books written by white men that leave out slavery".
Another great historian is Lerone Bennett who wrote a book entitled Before the Mayflower. He describes well the atmosphere and decisions made by the white men who established the “new world”.
Republicans took over control of the NC General Assembly in 2010. Since then, they’ve changed the UNC Board of Governors from a non-partisan board to one completely controlled by Republicans. In addition to the mess they made of Jones’ tenure decision, they’ve shut down some important programs at UNC that worked to address poverty in the state, and fired a UNC chancellor for no reason other than that they wanted to install a conservative leader. They recently dictated, without involvement of the faculty or an Institute of Civics as a way to bring in conservative faculty. A once-great university is under serious threat by the state’s Republican leadership.
Gee whiz, just awful.
The NAZIS thought the Jim Crow laws were too harsh? My that sure is telling, isnt it? So much for the excellence of our "democracy"!
Pretty shocking yes.
https://www.isabelwilkerson.com
Thank you.
For a reading list, I would also recommend “The Sum of Us” by Heather McGhee. It helped me to understand how racism is woven into so many aspects of our society and how that explains the difficulty Blacks have had escaping poverty.
I would include in a book list The New Jim Crow which is about the pernicious influence on communities of color of the drug laws.
An excellent book. Something I didn't know and Wilkerson pointed out was that Hitler studied American racism/ slavery to see how a population could be persuaded to commit atrocities onto others, how to brainwash.
“How can they help the conviction that the policy of the Executive is conciliation of rebels and not recognition of Union men, or avoid asking with intense incredulity whether this is the way in which treason is to be made odious?” That is the question not answered after the “end”. Forgive and forget? Not after the irreversible losses of those who fought to preserve the Union. To fight against slavery and racism. Today, here in a country that suffered such human losses, there are those who would return to white supremacist rule. We must pay attention. Tennessee is our Wake-up call, if we need one.
Morning, Irenie! It wasn't until late last night that I discovered VP Harris' speech in Nashville last Friday. Her fiery 19-minute speech is well worth your time, IMO. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IG_yyofT58s
Thank you, Lynell. We all need to see the courage of the Tennessee Three. I posted it along with my letter of support of the Tennessee Three and against the blatant racism of the Tennessee legislature. View it and share it and speak up. Stand up. There are those who are still fighting on the losing side of the Civil War.
Thank you for keeping eyes on Tennessee. We need to keep the nation’s attention as we work to make changes here.
Working along side you, MLM💙
TY!
I already donated to them through ActBlue!
Me too, Mark!
Excellent idea. Will donate now! Thanks.
I still see stickers proclaiming " Forget, Hell " on vehicles flying the Confederate flag. My recently deceased uncle was against getting rid of monuments commemorating " heroes " of the Confederacy.
Daniel, I see those stickers and the confederate flags too in my small Northern California town. It’s scary. Southern Poverty Law Center tracks Racism and groups like KKK and other Hate Groups. https://www.splcenter.org/issues/hate-and-extremism
Irenie, living in far northern rural CA as well, I am fortunate to be in Humboldt County, which is mostly a ‘blue’ county…unlike to the north (Del Norte) or east (Shasta)….it really does seem to be an almost coastal thing if you look a the maps—this one is from 2020: https://www.ppic.org/publication/californias-political-geography/
Barbara , thank you for sharing the map. The California coast has not been affordable for a long time. Regulations and laws stopping oil drilling and then development increased prices and property value. Northern California homes are valued much lower than bay and metro areas. So moving/selling is an economic challenge. I’m thinking about a retirement community but they are so expensive that’s another problem on one income. And often little diversity and more conservative. Where to go?
In Northern CA ? Strangely enough, I can believe it. I always thought that Northerners were a tad more..... " enlightened " than Southerners, then I became briefly acquainted via the internet with a woman from NJ who talked racist s-t about anybody with dark skin. Needless to say, after a while, I bade her a not - so - fond adieu.
Don’t let the Northern part of CA fool you.....it’s extremely rural and red. Dems and progressives have a really hard time making “progress”. I was raised there but had the good fortune to be able to go to college in Sacramento (not exactly a hotbed of liberalism, but still.....) and reside in the SF Bay Area for a few years. The county I retired from (Shasta) is now under control of MAGA extremists, it’s very disheartening. I’m currently in AZ and was a poll worker in the 2022 election ...am hopeful the direction this state seems to be taking.
"Forget, Hell" works both ways, Daniel. Just sayin'!
I was thinking that, too... Maybe we should be saying it... with a slight addition... "Forget that the North won? NFW!"
I like it, Evelyn!
Lynell, thank you for posting this link. Moved to tears by such powerful words. I spent yesterday with family including a nine year old girl named Lily, my son-in-law’s niece and her five year old sister Rose. Lily, Rose and I spent time outside yesterday trying out their new jump ropes. When they tired of that, we walked the dog. Then we got out a new art project- making pictures by gluing on sequins. Then, it was time for a movie- Frozen was their choice. Normal, fun, easy time spent with two delightful kids.
Time that three families in Tennessee will never again enjoy. Not to mention thousands of other American families with losses to gun violence.
Grateful for VP Harris’s leadership.
VP Harris' words moved me to tears as well, Sheila. But so did your quiet recitation of the day you spent yesterday with Lily and Rose. I feel the mixture of joy and sadness in your comment. How can people be so callous to not see what you have seen on what otherwise was a bright and beautiful Sunday.
Lynell(VA by way of MD&DC) "It wasn't until late last night that I discovered VP Harris' speech in Nashville last Friday. Her fiery 19-minute speech is well worth your time,"
Wow! Simply Wow!
I think it was one of her best, Ron, coming from the heart as it seemed to do.
Certainly spoke to me here, Lynell! We have a fired-up wave rippling💙
You know we are with you, Ashley, 1000%.
Indeed it was. Thank you, Lynell. That was a dynamic speech that spoke to what we need to do together. Kamala preached and the power of her words raised up her audience. It was a positive speech but also an urgent one, pointing the way to positive action. I am tired of hearing about hand-wringing over neighbors with confederate flags and relatives with racist attitudes. We need to do what Kamala said: become leaders to those among us who are seeking ways to support democracy. Do what we can to make it happen.
Leading doesn't always mean speeches and building big organizations. It can mean something as simple as making a safe place for people to work together, or speaking up at a local meeting, so that others will know they are not alone. All the things we've been talking about and doing, but carrying them with us and sharing with people who are out there wondering what they can do. Quit dissing, quit centering the extremists. Focus on building something positive with others seeking to work for democracy.
Hey, Annie. If you intend these to be fightin' words...I'm in! (I hear paper bullets are a thing these days😎
Thank you Lynell. Well worth the 19 minutes. It's about having courage and speaking the truth.
Glad you found it worth watching, Jay!
Bravo Lynell for posting this speech by VP Harris! WOW!!!!!!!
Thanks, M! Made me sit up and take notice from the git-go!
THANK YOU LYNELL!! WOW!!
Sharing.
YOU'RE WELCOME, MARYPAT!! (Yes, Wow!)
Thank you... couldn’t hold back my flooding hope!!
tRUMP should have been enough of a wakeup call, a man who was racist practically from birth but apparently not enough as the fervor of the Women's March in 17 has not put him behind bars but has emboldened him and made him the faux leader of the GOP. People should be in the streets daily for what happened in Tennessee. It's shameful , undemocratic, racist and un-American.
Trump is a TRAITOR & should be treated as such. His followers need to be put away, at least in a psychiatric facility. Especially those like Boebert & Greene. MTG is beyond insane. She shouldn't be allowed to handle anything sharper than tapioca.
And a nationwide walk out re gun violence
"or avoid asking with intense incredulity whether this is the way in which treason is to be made odious"
Turns out it DID make treason odious. Trump remains at Mara Lago a free man having led an attack on the US Government to overthrow it.
Turns out that treason is totally OK in the United States. Treason was normalized in 1865, assuming you are rich and white.
But just as Unionists survived and suffered in the South the slow grind of justice metes out the resolution of the second failed rebellion by Trump. He (and they) will pay.
I think it’s ironic that his race based adventure will crumble into dust by the same implacable trust in the Law expressed by Abe Lincoln.
Art,
Optimism is good. I wish I shared some of it.
Never, never, never, never, never Give up!
And aided and abetted by Gerald Ford pardoning Nixon before he was brought to Justice.
I must disagree with this. Ford's pardoning of Nixon was an act of magnanimity and dignity that clearly proved beneficial. It was proper justice.
Without the pardon, the Country would have been tossed into a tempest of partisan skirmishes that would have at their worst, paralyzed the Country. Nixon's resignation paved the way for the pardon, as within the course of two years, he went from re-election by a historically wide margin, to a disgraced exile in San Clemente. His own Party leaders encouraged him to resign, and he followed that advise.
In those days, America had two vibrant political parties, with a spectrum of conservative/moderates/liberals in both parties. The vast majority of political leaders were interested in good governance as they saw it, more than exploiting divisions real and imagined, as today's cult Party GOP does.
Nixon's resignation and Ford's pardoning of him led to the election of one of the most productive Congresses thereafter in modern American history, and to the election of one of the most ethical Presidents in its immediate wake in Jimmy Carter.
There was no need to hang Nixon's scalp over the collective mantel.
Of course, Nixon did not and would not have led a scrofulous crew of Bargain Basement Barabbases to storm the Capitol so as to remain in office.
It should go without saying that the very idea of pardoning Trump is worlds apart from the Ford pardon of Nixon. Our constitutional system worked perfectly fine in the aftermath of the Ford pardon. That same system however is still undergoing a stress test due to Trump and the Cult Party's perfidy.
Unlike Nixon's case, if the evidence proves via proper due process presentation that Trump is in fact guilty of the sedition like crimes we all saw with our own eyes, his train to Leavenworth should be gearing up soon.
We shall see.
White supremacy is like a revenant that refuses to stay dead even after one thinks that it's reburied.
Exactly! Punishment of the insurrection’s leaders is a lesson we should have learned after Andrew Johnson and must apply now.
We have had so many blatant wake up calls. Is this definitive, The One, led by children and youth that will truly make us stand up to these white, supremacist blaggarts and stand up to the insanity of a powerful few?
Less than 2 weeks ago:
https://www.npr.org/2023/03/30/1167056438/vatican-doctrine-of-discovery-colonialism-indigenous
'The papal bulls "were not considered valid just 30 to 40 years after they were first issued. They were in fact abrogated legally and nullified by the Vatican by the late 1530s," McCallum told NPR.
The Vatican's nullification was too late to stop the destructive impact of colonialism, McCallum said, noting that European expansion was fueled by a "sort of missionary sense that the Western monarchies had a right to go to these new lands and to take from them their resources and if necessary to put down people, including enslaving them."'
Hear! Heare!
My goodness, Heather. I had to re-read several sentences to make sure you were writing about past history and not the recent history and today's current events. Take heed, everyone.
Morning, Lynell! Likewise. Sure feels like history rhyming.
Morning, Ally! On another topic, it occurred to me that if a certain Texas judge can unilaterally reverse a government agency's decision about a certain drug, what's to stop the electorate from reversing that judge's appointment to the bench? Crazy, I know but the thought made me feel good.
Exactly!
Same, Lynell! The parallels are frightening
Indeed, yes, Claire. Question is can we break the parallel logjam?
I've long maintained that Reconstruction was the wrong solution to the end of the Civil War. I realize that hindsight is 20/20; but the approach the Allies took after WWII was the correct one. By holding the Nuremberg tribunals and trying and then executing the leaders of the Third Reich, the Axis Powers were ground into dust.
Instead the CSA were given every chance, shown every mercy in defeat and allowed to keep their weapons, their horses and go back to their lands. What was their response? Black Codes, lynchings, the KKK, terrorizing the local Black populations. It was as if they were never defeated and the Great, Grand and Glorious Cause was still worth fighting and dying for. Only it wasn't them doing the dying. It was their formerly enslaved populations.
Maria, this is an excellent observation and the first time I've read it articulated this way.
I quite agree with you.
Please take a look at my substack page for more
I subscribed, although I'll pay when my budget allows.....
Thank you Daniel. Please take a look at the Indiegogo. If you can through in $10 that would be a great help. I need to drive these numbers up...and join the free Docs in Progress zoom tonight
Despite the Nuremberg trials, I would hasten to add that a sizable number of Nazis were never prosecuted, and many were then brought to the United States to contribute their "scientific" knowledge. (See the book "Operation Paperclip: The Secret Intelligence Program that Brought Nazi Scientists to America" by Annie Jacobsen.)
and it looks like we're in the fight all over again.
This ‘Letter’ is unbelievably prescient at a moment in our history when Tennessee has removed two legally elected electeds from its Legislature, extreme judges are disputing the medical decisions of our most respected federal agency guaranteeing drug safety and the highest court in our land has removed fundamental human rights from half of our citizenry….
TN law allows the county commission to appoint someone to fill a vacant position until a special election can be held. The House repubs have told Shelby County (Memphis) and Davidson County (Nashville) if they appoint Jones and Pearson to fill the vacancies, the state will withhold funds from them. How racist (not to mention personal and petty) is that?
But I hear this morning that that is just what they intend to do... send them back. The courts will probably have to decide the legality of withholding funds - which I wouldn't call petty. It's racism too blatant to ignore.
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I'd say clairvoyant even more than prescient. HRC uses both eyes to see with.
Your writing — your communication — makes it much easier for me (nearly 62) to learn what I should have more deeply grasped in my school years.
Thank you
I’m your same age. I had a really good high school education, but history classes then were so heavily weighted towards European history, and also towards memorization, not understanding. Our tenth grade American history classes basically took us to 1950, and we focused so much more on the “what” and not on the “why.” I’ve learned so much here that I wish we had learned in school, and had also taught our children. What little I did understand came from reading historical fiction, not school.
When I was a kid, what we did to Native Americans & African slaves was glossed over or trivialized like they were ( lower ) ANIMALS & not even human. DISGRACEFUL.
At least in my grade school Native American history was taught carefully and a little more accurately because we had kids in the class who had been told exactly what happened at the fight with Custer by their relatives, some fighting on one side, some on the other. It took me a long while to realize how rare that was.
That's a definite step in the right direction, indeed. Thank you.
This letter is one of my favorites so far. Thank you for taking the trouble to put complex thoughts and deeds - and their consequences - across so clearly. I'm especially pleased that you mentioned the Nazis' use of Jim Crow laws and Indian reservations as inspiration for their implementation of their ideas of their own supremacy and how to increase and maintain these. As someone who has lived most of her adult life (going on 45 years now) in Germany or one or the other German-speaking countries, the topics of fascism and nazism have been ever-present. A group of us from American high schools spent a year as exchange students in the western part of Germany in the 60's. We lived with host families whose parents had either grown up in Hitler's Germany or who were involved in WW2 - so we often got stories first hand about what it was like to be alive at that time, and to grow up being taught that they were a special race. My German host Mother showed me a number of things that still boggle my mind - one was a kind of Parcheesi game called "Juden Raus" or "Jews Out" - the goal of which was to get as many of the Jewish board pieces off the board as possible. Another was her "Ahnenpass" - "Ancestral Passport" - which included one of her great or great-great grandmothers who had a suspiciously Jewish sounding name. My host Mother said her family had lived for years in dread of what would happen if the wrong officials got their hands on that passport. My point is that there are many ways in which we teach ourselves and our children that others are inferior and we are superior - and that is very important to recognize and remember. I hate and condemn what the Nazis did in Germany, but I also believe that this kind of thinking is always among us, even in America.
"This letter is one of my favorites so far."
Agree.
Aryan Nation, White supremacists, & Trumpists. If there's a hell, they belong there.
But they are amplifying it here. Setting up camp and prepping the bonfire in a forest drying of goodwill toward each other.
A complete utter MESS. The 60's - 70's song " Ball of Confusion " comes to mind. " And the band played on ". The US is like the Titanic with people ignoring the iceberg,
Yes Margie, I'm sure what the Nazis did in WWII was horrible. But I've seen Mexican workers transported in very crowded flat bed trucks in Texas in the 80s, and much worse I've seen the extreme poverty in a Native American reservation in Arizona in the 90s. I often felt poor growing up while in working class America, but it was nothing compared to that. I've seen homeless camps in California also, but realizing that children were growing up large reservations like the one I saw in Arizona was horrifying.
And unfortunately, these things haven’t changed!
Thank you for this information - this is the sort of thing that I've read about, but your account makes it more "real" in a way. My family was not privileged when I was growing up, but we often saw black or immigrant communities (Florida) that were similar to what you are describing. it is truly horrifying.
It’s a really good one - had to share.
Re: The good professor's observation:
"By the end of 1863, President Abraham Lincoln dated the birth of the nation not to the Constitution, whose protection of property underpinned southern enslavers’ insistence that enslavement was a foundational principle, but to the Declaration of Independence."
The distinction between the two founding documents, and noted shortcomings of the Constitution, could not be more relevant to explaining our current plight.
The forces allied against democracy have highlighted the now apparent intent of the founding fathers to enshrine principles that would allow minority rule by the white, male elite. If we survive the current attack, those flaws must go.
Lincoln's use of the Constitution is key. "ALL men are created EQUAL".
Yes, and this was the crux of the Letter. As sharp as a scalpel.
Too true!
As a white person of Southern ancestry, it saddens me to think how long these myths were perpetuated. The untimely death of Lincoln certainly played a role,, but we suffer today from a lack of shared history in this country, and it plays out in so many ways. In my own family, a story was passed down that one of my great grandfathers, a Baptist minister with a Victorian demeanor to judge from his sermons, attended college on money borrowed from Alexander Stephens, the Confederacy's vice president. How, I always wondered, did Stephens have money to loan after the defeat of the Confederacy? Only recently did I learn that slaveholders were compensated for the loss of the people they enslaved, and he must have gotten a lot of money. A Stephens descendent was still representing a district in northeast Georgia until some time in the 1970s.
"Only recently did I learn that slaveholders were compensated for the loss of the people they enslaved, and he must have gotten a lot of money. A Stephens descendent was still representing a district in northeast Georgia until some time in the 1970s."
You may be interested to read the 1619 Book Project and Isabelle Wilkerson's "The Warmth of Other Suns" also mentioned elsewhere in these comments today.
Life changing books. Not only were formerly rich, white slave owners compensated for those formerly enslaved, NOTHING was given to the former slaves.
No land. No money. No help. No vote. No NOTHING.
Hi Mike, you convinced me. I just ordered Wilkerson's book.
I'll get to the 1619 project at some point. To be honest, today the letters and comments are wearing me down. Democracy seems to be two steps forward, one step back and this mind-numbingly slow progress overwhelms.
Miselle, (I should say congrats as well!)
If you have not read the 1619 Book Project, that one is a life changer too.
Both of them are real reading though. Packed full of information and brilliantly posed text.
Another random thought, Mike.
My husband (who's in his final year of work prior to retirement) and I try to either go to the local gym or walk a few miles daily. Back before I retired, while we'd walk, I'd talk about work and he knew all of my coworkers by the stories I'd tell. He reads the Letter also, but no time for all the comments. I will talk about the comments and some of those who comment as well. He knows you, TC, Will, Ally, Sandy, Fran, Jeri, Gailee, etc, etc. I talk about all of you guys like I'd talk about my work buds and what we'd discuss around the break table.
My point being, like anything in life, there are the silver linings. The letter is educating me, though it often depresses me. But then I find kindred spirits all over this country, even in the entire world, and it gives me hope!
I feel kinship with some of the posters hear as well Miselle.
I intend to, Mike. On Sandy Lewis's recommendation, I ordered "On Tyranny" last week. It hasn't yet arrived. I have a stack of books to get through. Sometimes, what is going on in this country is just way more than my psyche can handle.
I understand.
I've done my reading, but I should have said that.
Racism and white elitism wasn't particular to the American South: the White Man's Burden was writ large across much of the world until the 1940s at least (and sadly lingers in far too many places still). So I wonder how much differently outcomes would have been in the longer term were Lincoln not to have been assassinated. The lesson applied at the end of World War II was the Marshall Plan which avoided the punitive treatment Germans received after WWI. We are in a terrible mess at the moment, there is no doubt about that but I am not sure what lesson history is telling us other than get out the vote and seek some non-threatening way to bring back reasoned debate. I see far too many lessons in history of self-destructive violence and revolutions eating their children. I suppose the greatest lesson I get from this letter is that every alarm bell should be ringing.
Stephen, it may be that no matter what choice one makes or that governments and coalitions make, there is always a cost, a price to be paid. Whether one chooses mercy and forbearance or chooses strict accountability and appropriate punishment, each course has its price. I fear we must make our choices in full knowledge there will be a price to pay and try to avoid the recriminations which inevitably follow with hindsight. Perhaps the best we can do is make the hard choices and doo our best to plan for the price to be paid...where that can be foreseen.
"The decision of government officials 158 years ago to trust in the goodwill of former Confederates rather than focus on justice for everyone else seemed at the time to be the honorable and best course for healing the divided nation. But it ended up protecting the Confederates’ ideology and disheartening those who had fought for the United States."
This is a lesson that MUST be correctly applied with respect to the former guy and MAGA Republicans, otherwise we are doomed. It is obvious that there is no goodwill in these people.
I wonder if Grant’s humanity in that moment would have had a different outcome had Lincoln not been assassinated. Grant was who he was. He showed up, got up and fought. He was not a diplomat, or surrender-visionary beyond not wanting more people to starve. He made his decision, IMHO, based on respect for Lee as an embodiment of the honorable southern soldier, who represented the South because he believed he must respect Virginia first over the Union. Should he have realized that the soul of the surviving Rebels still harbored sedition? Perhaps. But Grant didn’t know Lincoln’s leadership to carry out the victory was not going to come to pass. Lincoln was the visionary. Grant was the reluctant head of the army accepting a revered General’s surrender. Who was the better human being in that moment? Grant. However, no good deed goes unpunished.
It’s not politics. It’s common sense.
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" no goodwill " ? There's almost no humanity in them. There are probably few redeeming characteristics of any sort.
If someone were to fly a flag with the Swastika on it, what would be our reaction?
If someone were to fly a Confederate Flag (it's a battle flag) why should our reaction be any different?
Heather Cox Richardson has written the letter I have been waiting for. We let the "rebels" get away with treason and murder. We forgave them in a moment of grace and a desire to "move on". They repaid us with more murder and treason. And because there were no consequences, they were emboldened to continue that bigotry and brutality generation after generation. And here we are - imagine being Black in Tennessee. Imagine being a school age kid just about anywhere in this nation of fools. But especially in Tennessee. A place where weapons are valued more than children is dystopian.
Superb iteration of the unresolved issues of the uncivil Civil War, Heather. Thank you for your eloquent summary.
Not to mention she wrote the book. It's called How the South Won the Civil War. I'm reading it now.
1945.
2016.
TODAY
And TOMORROW.
I -- we -- grew up believing that Nazism, the unspeakable-unthinkable crime had been erased, banished from the face of the earth.
My mother took me aside at age 8 and told me:
"We are all children of the One Father, children of the One God. We are brothers and sisters, we are one family, so we must live accordingly.
To persecute, to kill our brothers and sisters because they have a different religion, a different appearance, a different way of thinking, that is the greatest sin possible, that is the crime against God."
I could not understand all the terms, the words she was using, but I understood that she was giving me perhaps the most important, the most fundamental teaching.
This was in 1948. I remember the room, I remember the urgency, the passion with which she spoke.
Only much later did I learn of the photos my parents had just received from my father's cousin, a colonel in Britain's Royal Army Medical Corps who had taken part in the opening of two concentration camps, Fort Breendonk in Belgium and Bergen-Belsen. The photos were of Belsen.
*
"The evil that men do lives after them;
The good is oft interred with their bones."
This, we have seen with our eyes, this we know. We have seen it in Moscow, of all places. We are seeing it in Ukraine.
We have seen this in Washington. Of all places. We are seeing it in America. Daily.
Yes. The metastases are everywhere. No choice but to rise up and cleanse our minds, cleanse our world.
And yet, the descendants of those who died fighting fascism are vulnerable to their message. Be ashamed, America of chump
It is worth reminding ourselves that re WWII, the Axis authoritarians and killers of ethnic groups were not stopped by internal citizenry, the US the UK, China and Russia (Allies) were required to stamp out (temporarily at least) Fascism as a good governing model. A very interesting and pertinent statement in the book "Seeing Like a State" by James C Scott reads "a prostrate civil society that lacks the capacity to resist (authoritarian interests and planning.)" PP 4-5. Are we approaching a prostrate society now?
Wow! Great post
The majority of us believe in justice for all. Racism prevents universal healthcare, food and housing security. The task of transforming our country to one where "justice for all" is a reality instead of just words is the civil work of our century. If we succeed democracy will prevail. If we fail democracy will be shown to be a sham and fail.
I'm not so sure democracy would be shown as a sham as much as the pervasiveness and persistent evils of tribalism and greed and hate. We must be vigilant as challenges will continue to arise for evil will always seek to be treated as an equal. We must unite -- in the many, we can be as one -- and persevere in the cause of freedom and justice for all. We must continue to seek the 'more perfect Union.'
I think the source of hate is always fear (something even science fiction writers like Frank Herbert and movie makers like George Lucas understood). So I always identify the two main "problems" of humanity as fear and greed. I think the fear is basically unchanged and comes from, is related to, tribalism (our "monkey brains") and the greed has been changed over time to many different attributes in our modern societies. As for our U.S. democracy and its exercise of free enterprise, greed has become malevolent, more so as so many have allowed money to become both their god and their bludgeon. We are a cruel society. (Read: Poverty By America by Matthew Desmond.) Social democracies, often with starting points of more homogeneous populations, are much less cruel. We are certainly not a society with Christian or any other major religion's values (watch what we do not what we say). You are correct that we must be vigilant, but I'm afraid our institutions and government have been, perhaps hopelessly, corrupted by the religions of finance and money that only seeks profit. A country where people must go without basic healthcare or go broke because of a major illness is not really a sane place for humans to live. Nevertheless, many without the ruling wand of "capital" do manage to survive and persist using their strength, wits, and grit. Perhaps, our country will change its trajectory before it is too late. Until then we must depend on and nurture our local tribes of families and friends.
Excellent point about fear being the source of hate. Unfortunately, fear is rather easily triggered and channeled. Maybe that's why faith and hope and charity are necessary if we are to be strong and to persevere. Maybe that's why inspirational words and song and actions are so essential in life....