The New Confederacy

It's best to just ignore these people and their claims of "Northern Aggression". The people who wish for the days of old are just ignorant of their history. While I can understand their cry for state rights, their use of an example is a poor one.

Serious threats to members of Congress up 300%.
Unprecedented rise in militia groups.
State governments openly talking about seceding.
Ridiculous fringe "Tea Party" movement given copious amounts of media attention.
Sudden renewed interest in "honoring the Confederacy".


Nah, nothing to do with electing a black president. How dare you play the race card!

Agreed.

For myself, there's a rub with spring 1865. In one of the few instances I would have disagreed with Lincoln's plans and sided with the sentiment of a good deal of his cabinet, I would have hanged the rebel brass. I've grown to pretty much call them rebels or secessionists outright and leave the "confederate" tag for quotes as it was in fact an insurrection, first and foremost.

Thing is, while reconstruction was hardly the smooth operation Lincoln may have hoped for, the traitors were welcome right back into the union with very little tangible consequence. Yet we still have to hear this shit a century and half later. Now imagine what things would be like had Jeff Davis, Bobby Lee and the rest of Monument Ave (Arthur Ashe excepted) had had their necks stretched.

What state governments are talking of seceding?

Texas.

If the southern, warmer states secede, Obama is fucked.

As others have pointed out, this stuff tends to be cyclic and economy-dependent. I guarantee you that if we were in this situation with McCain in charge, you'd still see a rise in hate groups and it'd be more based around the idea of immigration rather than "socialism." The rise of the militia movement that started under Reagan really didn't end until McVeigh and Eric Rudolph. The fact that the president is both a Democrat and black has exacerbated things extremely, no doubt about that, and what's frightening about this current climate is just how much of it is coming from the politicians.

Well, as someone who has lived in Virginia his entire life, I must say that all of this crap is horrible. But, I think that it's a bit of an easy answer to hang the whole of the matter on racism pure and simple. Racism is definitely an issue, but it's bound up in a much larger mythology that passes for the common wisdom down here. The "states rights" rhetoric, from what I've noticed, usually acts a sort of balm to keep the mythology from being obviously hateful, and keeps it from being rejected.

The mythologized South is pretty well profiled in "Gone With the Wind." By the way, that book/movie doesn't get enough credit. It very slyly shows that myth to be a sham all along while playing to its tropes. Things come to a head thematically when Rhett abandons Scarlett. The realist turns his back on the myth he once loved, because in the end the myth of the South never really loved him back, and only brought him misery. The "tomorrow's another day fanfare" isn't a representation of Scarlett's much vaunted resilience, but rather the cry of a deluded woman who will go to whatever lengths to hold on to the lie that she lived before the war started. She laments the loss of Rhett because he would not live that lie with her.

Scarlett is basically what the South is in a very fundamental way. It seeks to hold on to that lost golden age which never really existed. Most of the country has a similar relationship to the Founding Fathers, there's this national myth that most feel we don't really live up to. The myth of the Confederacy is so powerful down here because it draws on something that was "lost" or "stolen" by what is now the status quo.

The conservatives down here ceaselessly use this myth to justify shenanigans like McDonnell's most recent one, but it also informs our politics to an inordinate degree, and dovetails quite nicely with the "you don't work, you don't eat" ideology of the extreme factions of the conservative evangelical movement. The myth of the South, which informs modern evangelicalism, is obsessed with people "having and knowing their place." Of course, most people who subscribe to this see themselves as plantation owners in the world of this myth, which allows them to go along with it, but in reality makes them ignore their poverty (or even approve of it) while lusting after a past when they would have a superior place to, say, blacks, or gays (the latest group of victims in McDonnell's crusade).

But really, the purpose of the any good myth is typically to justify the existing power structures, and to keep the current people "in their place," which is what people mean when they say "states rights."

Good post, but where were you when we were talking about Gone With The Wind a month ago?

My brother lives in Frederick, MD and is getting damn sick of seeing Confederate Pride shit everywhere. He wants to come up with Yankee Pride bumper stickers. My first suggestion was "Yankee Pride: We like our negroes uppity!"

CHUD Forum Post of the Month right there.

Just had to mention that yes, that is indeed an excellent post. Also, this is as great a book on the subject as you can find. Informative, funny, and scary in equal measure.

Probably playing Dragon Age. That game was sucking up pretty much all of my free time.

I find it extremely amusing that these people claim they love America oh so fucking much, but celebrate the rebellion like it's the real America.


You know what the Confederacy is really?


It's fucking treachery.

My favorite part of this nonsense is that almost all the formerly Confederate states are net importers of Federal tax dollars. If they want to try to go it alone, I'm sure we Yankees will be happy to arrange a repayment schedule that wouldn't be too punitive. Once their tab is taken care of, I'd be delighted to see them go.

If Texas secedes, I only ask that Rick "The Hair" Perry move the seat of government to Dallas and that the greater Austin area be left alone as a colony of the US. We're already an island of paradise surrounded by shit, let's just make it official.

No one's going to secede in this day and age. They're just going to bitch and moan about seceding to impress the worst people in their states.

We're Rome! We're going to fall apart from the inside first. Now could we just accept it and put the goddamn Running Man on the air?

I'll echo everyone else -- well said.

Agree with everyone else. Beautifully stated, D.S. Randlett.

Thanks everyone for the undue praise.

What I don't think really comes across in my post is the feeling that most people in the South are actually very good people despite it all. They just buy into a narrative that corrupts them, and have been for a very long time. It's a tragedy that repeats itself over and over again.

Sometimes I do get angry over stuff like this, but more often than not I'm just incredibly saddened by it.

Randlett's avatar just makes his thought provoking posts so much more awesome.

Will echo this. I lived in Massachusetts half my life and am currently in Georgia, and I have to say, MA was full to the brim with assholes. It's funny how a state that supports gay rights and is so progressive is just full of dick heads, whereas here in Georgia, well...people are nice to you as long as you're a straight white man who at least pretends to like Jesus.

Good call, but i personally hope for something more like "Battle Royale", more drama that way.
Didnt Orson "Dont want no gay in mah planet" Scottt card wrote a book about this? (related to Shadow Complex, i think)

A game show where the only way to win is to survive? I'm pretty sure every single science fiction author wrote at least one book about it.

I tend to prefer Ellison's "Along the Scenic Route" which isn't about a game show per se but hews disturbingly close to where our car/gaming obsessions might end us up. But I digress....

Actually, i was talking about the whole "New confederacy" thing; Shadow Complex (the game) features one, and I think its based on a book Card wrote as well.

Create a cause, convince the common people it's in their "best interests" to fight for it and profit. There's really not that much difference between the Confederacy and the Tea Party "movement" from that perspective. The majority of the cannon fodder for the South didn't even own slaves because...follow me here...they were too poor to do so. They got a nice con job from the dominant economic and political interests of the South to fight a battle they really, for all intents and purposes, shouldn't have given two shits about. It was a common theme in the South during Jim Crow as well. Racism is a tool that's been used in the country for centuries to exploit. Poverty and and economic exploitation know no color.

Poor white people didn't necesarily have an "economic" interest in oppressing blacks, but they DID have an interest - when you barely have a pot to piss in, you can look down at the person who doesn't have one at all.

Shit rolls downhill.

Insane indeed, huffpo:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/0..._n_532420.html

I took a class focusing on the Civil War and Reconstruction a couple of years ago and we read that book.

Unfortunately my school was literally minutes away from one of the few Confederate victories (Marietta/Kennesaw Mountain) of the war and the prevailing theme of the area was that the South never lost.

Needless to say, about 95% of an 80 student class completely missed the fucking point of the book.

There was this guy playing poker last night who was wearing a shirt that I really wanted to take a picture of and post online. It was something along the lines of right to defend our country against government tyranny. It had an elaborate map on it, not sure if it was the location of his hideout but I had a nice chuckle over it. Don't get me wrong, I wasn't about to say anything to the guy.. he was about 6' 7(6'6) and about 275lb's. He looked like Brock Lesnar and Dolph Lundgren's mutant offspring.

I don't mind the south, they make bourbon and moonshine. I got a problem with scary giants though, no redemptive qualities whatsoever.

I believe you're thinking of Empire, which details a Red State vs. Blue State civil war. While it brings up some good points and has some decent action, it's fairly ridiculous (e.g. a Bill Gates-type character fabricating an army of mechs), and I say that as a usual fan of Card's work.

Thats the one...thanks for the reminder.
I still wonder is an actual civil war could break out in the US in the future.

There is a part of me that actually kind of hopes that there is a civil war in the US at some point in the near future. Mostly because it would last about six days tops, and these people who are always shouting and yelling about the incompetence of the Federal Government would see real fast just how capable our military is at kicking the asses of geriatrics informed solely by Fox News, skinheads who hate blacks and Jews, and aging militia types who run around the woods with guns, thinking that they have any kind of a chance against an Abrams motherfucking tank. Also, if we assume that it'd be the red states to secede, their credibility would be shit out the window in all future elections faster than the cries of, "we surrender!"

On a more serious note, these people from the tea parties that are actually talking about secession, and in some aspects hoping for a civil war, it's amazing to me how they don't get how quickly they'd be crushed. And if, for whatever reason, they weren't immediately destroyed, it's a shock that they lack the strategic foresight to understand that China would invade the U.S. and fuck all of us up for good.

Just to be clear, we're closer to colonizing the deep seas than we are to an actual civil war.

The real danger these assholes pose is that they intimidate people in government, law enforcement and the military. Also that they recruit people from same (and they seem to be making a disturbing amount of progress).

There is no chance of a new Civil War in the US, but there could be a coup attempt by these people. And they don't need to be especially organized or competent. They simply need to have a populous that doesn't care or is afraid to oppose them.

I think Keith Olbermann sums it up quite nicely in this video on the myriad of reprecussions that seccesion would have on the "former" state of Texas.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_JGD3yKzVGU

Man, I can't wait for Apartheid History Month.

"Racism and eugenics aside..."

Always a classic.

So, Haley Barber, the guy who is always getting touted as the face of the "new" GOP (kind of a contradiction in terms there!) said of the recent 'Confederate History Month Proclamation " and the exclusion of history from said proclamation:

'Doesn't Matter For Diddly'


To paraphrase Bill Maher: is it ok to call them crazy crackers *now*?