Back in the 1990s there was a Denzel Washington movie–Fallen–where he plays a detective working to solve a series a murders seemingly committed by a killer he had captured and whose execution he had just recently watched.
Turns out he is chasing an old demon named Azazel who can hop from one living body to the next. In a pivotal scene the old demon starts body hoping cops in the station and sings through them the old Rolling Stones hit “Time is on My Side” just to mess with Denzel. When Denzel confronts the body hopper on the street outside the station the old demon hisses “Beware my wrath!”
The Confederacy is just like Azazel. It is an old malignant force that has always been and still is a cancer on the notion of Liberty and Justice in America. Since the Confederacy lost decisively on the battle field it has been able to jump from political movement to movement to keep its destructive force alive–and it always warns anybody who notices them to “beware their wrath”. A threat that they have made good on time and time again.
For almost a century the Confederacy had a strong home in the Democratic Party. Then came FDR and the Democratic embrace of Civil Rights. As the Confederacy lost power in the Democratic Party it started to look for a new political host. The ideology of hate wander from Dixicrats to George Wallace until Nixon and Reagan invited the old Confederate Demon to make a new home in the Republican Party.
The Confederates took the GOP up on the offer and began an effort to remake the Party in their image. It worked.
It has taken 40 years, but now the old Party of Lincoln has been fully captured (history is filled with irony). The Republican Party of 1860 no longer exists. Neither does the Republican Party of 1960, or even 1990. Only a name “Republican” and some legacy branding elements still exists. The Republican Party today is a shroud and a faint echo of its past. Now it only exists as a thinly veiled mask and a stripped off skin for the old Confederate Demon to wrap itself in as it continues to work its political mischief.
This election is a choice between moving forward or moving backwards. Backwards not to the policies of three years ago, or eight, or twenty or even to the 1950s. The goal is all the way back and to capture the USA in the same way that the Republican Party was captured, humiliated and destroyed. Elections have consequences. Get active like your future was on the line–because it is.
Cheers
R.L. Harrington
As someone who lives in Texas and is a student of history imo you have hit the nail on the head.
stuckinred
Pete says hi.
Chuck Butcher
My blog tag for these assholes is “Confederate Party of Republicanism” and I don’t mean it real humorously.
Linda Featheringill
Ah, the centrifugal forces that are alive and well in the US.
If what you call the Confederacy gets its way, our elected government will cease to be effective and will [slowly or quickly] fail.
The people that would be happy if the Union were to break apart probably make up 25% of the population. That portion of the people might be as high as 40%.
I don’t think that those people have any idea what they are wishing for. Would they be happy living under the tyranny of local warlords? Would they be happy with NO social support network? Would they be happy with no rule of law?
Probably not. And yet they are drawn to the idea, fascinated by it, like a moth to a flame.
Alex
As someone who’s on board, this is getting to be repetitive. And the constantly-employed graphic seems a bit like a crutch. Move on. We get the analogy. Surely you were asked on this blog because you can do more than this??
Chuck Butcher
Dennis G has it right
kommrade reproductive vigor
An insult to demons everywhere!
Mike in NC
Yesterday self-declared Confederate teabagger leader Jim Bob DeMint seized control of the Senate. Tomorrow he’ll declare a State of Emergency and postpone the election until new Articles of Secession are prepared. His power is awesome but he wields it only in the service of the
TraitorsFounders.That's Master of Accountancy to You, Pal (JMN)
Fallen is a really creepy movie. I think it’s one of Washington’s best performances, but don’t watch it if you’re looking for the feel good movie of the year.
Of course, I’m a huge In Nomine fan, so of course I like Fallen.
Citizen Alan
Ya know, I agree with everything in this post. But then, I get to the bottom where it talks about getting active to support the Democratic Party, and I just despair. I live in the MS-01. My Rep is Travis Childers. And the big local issue of the day is whether, should Travis be reelected, he will vote for Nancy Pelosi or support Steny Hoyer to replace her.
There has been no issue, absolutely none, on which Travis Childers and the rest of the Blue Dogs have not undermined the Democratic Party. There is literally no difference between him and the Repuke running against him, other than the fact that if reelected, he will vote for a Democratic House leader, and now he may support a retrograde Blue Dog pig over the most effective and most genuinely progressive Speaker of my entire life.
Joseph Nobles
Dennis G., just wanted you to know, you peaked my interest in Battle Cry of Freedom and I just got it in the mail today. Looking forward to the book, and thanks!
Rock
@Alex:
Look, any post pimping Fallen should get the benefit of the doubt. That was a cool movie.
General Stuck
Denzel even sacrificed himself at the end to deny the demon, but it went on anyway, timeless and one mean sumbitch.
Man on Fire is my favorite Denzel movie, but there have been so many, and his bad cop role in Training Day was a tour de force as well.
I know of this southern Azazel well, it is woven deep into the red clay of dixie like some demon survival seed, waiting for the right conditions to sprout. And a black presnit has stirred it’s roots and we will all need to become more vigilant than ever, so as it don’t spread north and west.
asiangrrlMN
dengre, I fear that we have many people in our country who want to take that step backwards (or ten). I also fear that the ones who want to go forward are too demoralized to do so.
@General Stuck: Argh! Shoulda led with *spoiler alert*! I’mma looking into renting the DVD now.
Jewish Steel
Salmon P. Chase, one of the founders of the Republican party, appointed the first African-American attorney to argue before the Supreme Court.
I saw the 2009 inauguration as a little piece of unfinished family business. Chase is my 4X great-grandfather. He was a pretty canny dude by all accounts and might have also appreciated history’s ironic little ways with his erstwhile party.
General Stuck
@asiangrrlMN: ooops, I could have misremembered, being old and and and……..
KDP
@Citizen Alan: While I agree with your point regarding the actions of the Blue Dogs, I think even a Blue Dog Democrat would be a safer bet for the future of our society than the outcome should Republican’s gain control of the Congress.
I’ve been working 70 hours a week (out of the country every other week for the past two months) and I just started my master’s program, but I hope to be able to put some time into GOTV activities in the next few weeks. The idea of Fiorina in the Senate and Whitman as governor of California is frightening, but not nearly as frightening as the vision of O’Donnell, Paul and the other teatards winning their elections.
Surely, Democratic and independent voters have a greater understanding of the immeasurable harm such an outcome would have for all of us. Don’t they? Someone? Some reassurance?
asiangrrlMN
@General Stuck: S’OK. I would expect nothing less from Denzel. And, what else ya gonna do against a demon?
Daddy-O
The choice is between moving sideways and moving backwards.
FYT. I know I’m never going backward again.
Admiral_Komack
The Republican Party:
“Partying like it’s 1860, y’all.”
Admiral_Komack
@General Stuck:
Have you seen “Book of Eli”?
JWL
“The Republican Party of 1860 no longer exists. Neither does the Republican Party of 1960, or even 1990”.
Like Cole, perhaps you never paid attention to politics during-or-before 1990.
But it’s like this: nothing about the GOP has changed in the past half century, except the caliber of its nominal opposition.
General Stuck
@Admiral_Komack:
Yes, and loved it.
Mnemosyne
@Citizen Alan:
It absolutely drives me up the frickin’ wall that people keep talking about punishing Nancy Pelosi for getting a huge amount of progressive legislation passed that keeps getting hung up in the Senate. WTF is up with that?
Stillwater
Dennis, more good stuff here. What you’re talking about in this post – the enemy that persists – is something I’ve tried to convey to people in my small circle as well. Liberals have this idea that once we ‘win’ something, the game is over, whether it’s civil rights, or some small advance in egalitarianism or justice. Not true. Our victories energize our opponents to fulfill their agenda even more than had we not won anything at all. I agree with your assessment – we need to be vigilant and active. What that means in our daily life … I don’t know. But we’ve got to push back.
Pooh
Such a good movie, IMO.
S. cerevisiae
Fuck it: h’nglui mglw’nafh Cthulhu R’lyeh wgah’nagl fhtagn
Little Boots
You’re on a roll, Dennis. This is a little overwrought, but you are on a roll. Your posts have been amazing lately.
sherifffruitfly
If by “always” you mean “as long as white folks permit racism”, then I agree.
nancydarling
Like the evil in Ian McEwan’s “Black Dogs”, the present evil was always there lurking, waiting to return. I read the book a few months ago. One scene took place at the fall of the Berlin Wall. Some young neo-Nazi thugs were bullying a young Turk and screaming “Auslander raus”—foreigners out. I got a chill in my soul that took days to shake. The parallels to current events were just uncanny.
I’ve probably said this before on this blog, but if the confederacy had succeeded, they would be a third world nation today, and the Yankees would be arguing about building a wall on the Mason-Dixon line to keep out economic refugees.
Progress has always been a jerky road. We take two steps forward and one and a half steps back. We may be in a back-stepping phase. I take heart from something that Barry Lopez said on Moyer’s last show—that we should always lean toward the light. Today that means voting, and yes, I will hold my nose and vote for Blanche.
WereBear
Thank you Dennis, for pointing out what is at stake.
We keep struggling because there will always be damaged people among us; and that is what we are dealing with here. People who use every psychological mechanism in Freud’s tool drawer rather than take responsibility for themselves and the harm they do.
Those of us fortunate enough to live without a crushing sense of inferiority underestimate the desperate power this gives people who, upon losing their aim, redouble their efforts. However wrong that sense of white superiority may be, it is all they have, they think.
The only thing that will lift them out of it is lifting them out of it; and yet they fight us.
Catsy
Fallen was such an awesome movie. Truly one of my favorite Denzel movies, and a good candidate for introducing to people in order to gauge their taste. It’s not for everyone. But it’s fantastic.
LanceThruster
And the public has the memory of the character in “Memento”.
mclaren
Then get ready for a Republican house of representatives in 2010 and President Palin in 2012. America made its choice between the future and the past in 1980. Given a choice between moving forward to deal with the future as Jimmy Carter proposed in his “malaise” speech, and moving backward into an imaginary lala-land as the senile sociopath Ronald Reagan proposed, the American people shouted with a single stentorian voice: “We want the past!”
America has been moving backward ever since. Backward into the unscientific past (canceling the Superconducting Supercollider and letting Europe take the lead on science), backward into a superstitious past of leeches and the four humours theory of disease (shutting down stem cell treatments for illnesses), backward into the robber baron days before financial regulation and interest rate usury laws (repealing Glass-Steagall, removing all usury caps from interest rates and allowing 400% interest title loans), backward into unpaved roads and darkened streets and illiteracy (cities and towns all over America now grinding up their asphalt roads and converting ’em back to gravel, shutting down their streetlights, closing their libraries).
Now America has the opportunity to travel the whole way back. America can turn the wayback machine all the way back to the 1820s, and boy, watch American wipe the Cheetohs dust off their lips and race for the polling booth to pull that lever for less knowledge, less science, less business regulation, less literacy.
Under President Palin, Dan Quayle will be our new ambassador to the United Nations and Christine O’Donnell will be the next Secretary of the Education and this guy will be the new White House chief of staff.
Reagan hired an astrologer to set the time of his public appointments of key White House personnel. Watch Palin hire a witch doctor to “purify” the White House press room before she opens up each press conference.
2012 with President Palin in charge and a triumphant GOP denying evolution and denying global warming and denying Peak Oil and denying that America needs to get out of Afghanistan or Iraq won’t be the end of the world. But 2012 will be a year of panic. As Bruce Sterling put it in 2009:
The Year of Panic by Bruce Sterling, SEED magazine.
President Palin won’t cause the disintegration of the United States of America and its basic institutions like banking, durable goods manufacturing, basic scientific R&D, publishing in all its form, the entertainment industry in all its forms (video, audio, books, plays, movies, TV), higher education, health care, our oil-addicted freeway Happy Motoring culture and its appendages, the fast food industry and the big box superstores and strip malls and chain stores. But she will hasten the disintegration of all these institutions. What will remain afterward, after President Palin leaves office to become host of an online game show and pen her best-selling ghostwritten memoirs?
Nobody knows. One thing we can foresee: the America of 2016 or 2020 won’t be recognizable. No middle class, no health care industry left, no book publishers or TV networks or movie industry as we know it, no newspaper industry, no automobile companies, no higher education as we know it, no domestic manufacturing industry, no jobs, no basic scientific R&D industry. America will be a nation of dog groomers and xerox clerks sorting through dumpsters on their off hours in search of scraps to eat and trudging back to the canyons to their lean-tos without running water or electricity or plumbing to sleep for the night.
kay
@Citizen Alan:
Well, for what it’s worth, I don’t think you should volunteer for him. Your time is valuable, and you should be genuinely enthusiastic if you’re going to donate it.
I think, in a district like yours, Congressional candidates that you are enthusiastic about are going to be few and far between, like, maybe one a lifetime? I live in a conservative House district too.
I would go state and local. State legislature races go begging, particularly in your part of the world, especially if some brave liberal steps up and runs. You can go all the way down to school board. It will be you and the candidate’s family volunteering, but you might actually win a local race, and it doesn’t take a whole lot of money.
You can also go to organizational, the state or (better) county Democratic Party. You may be the youngest person in the room. They’ll promote you immediately because they (probably) don’t have a whole lot of active members.
Finally, you can do the mechanics of voting. Poll worker, watcher, etc.
I think you’re going to be miserable if you’re working for Mr. Conservative Values (I went to his site) and you’re a liberal. So look for a liberal, or go in some other direction, to voting process or organizational. Do that instead. Worst case, you’ll meet every politically active liberal in the county. If there’s ever a federal candidate you really like, you can volunteer when that person runs.
kay
Dennis G., I want you to do a post about this book.
Parchman Farm and convict labor.
I read it over Labor Day weekend. Jesus. I had no idea.
Karen
I wonder how the suddenly functional Republican Congress and Senate override Obama’s veto of the Teapublican bill that will declare that because the 14th Amendment has now been repealed along with the Civil Rights Act, slavery never got repealed either. And with that, it won’t matter where Obama was born, he has no rights to even vote, let alone become President.
I figure with the new “election” McCain will be the front but once the TEP (Teaparty) make Sarah Palin the VP, McCain will suddenly pass away or be declared mentally ill, making Sarah Palin the President.
After that, with the Civil Rights Law a thing in the past, they’ll no longer bother to pretend they they see black people, Asians, Latinos, etc. as human beings because only whites will be able to vote.
You can say that I’m being ridiculous and none of what I just said is legal or even possible in the US.
Here is my answer to that. Things that happened in the Bush Administration proved that the Constitution IS just a piece of paper, like Arturo Gonzales said. The only rule of law is Republicans are G-d. No rules apply to them. Blackwater proves they can kill anyone they want. Do you realize that the Tea Party has the backing of armed MILITIAS?
The great thing is that they don’t even have to cheat with the elections anymore because no one else will have rights. Forced conversions to their version of Christianity will be the only religion allowed and believe me, in a theocracy you best have religious faith or at least fake it or it will cost you your family, your rights and most of all, your life.
And you know who to thank for ths scenario? Why it’s the Jane Hamshers of the world and the ones who say Obama isn’t left enough for them and would rather the country be under martial law by the TEP than have a black man who won’t bend and scrape and kiss their ass as President.
Of course, Obama didn’t help himself because he had the naive belief that being “bi-partisan” would bring the two sides together. He preferred a carrot to a stick and that would never do because he wasn’t changing the way the Presidency and the Congress hanled bills. He was not willing to govern by fiat like Bush did. He was silly to think that even though he inherited this mess and managed to accomplish a lot, that the media and the Congress wouldn’t hate his guts for daring to run and win. A black man wasn’t supposed to even be electable, according to Hillary Clinton. And if you don’t think that a good amount of the Democrats in Congress never forgave him and are actually purposely sabatoging Obama, then you have short memories.
I only hope I can escape across the border before I become an Unwoman…
And yes, that’s a word from “A Handmaiden’s Tale.” Margaret Atwood wrote the story over 20 years ago and it’s eerily frightening to read about how she foresaw a lot that has already happened. I highly recommend it but be prepared, the theocracitic dystopia may be fiction but so much of it isn’t and that scares me more than anything.
WereBear
@kay: Your link is broken, there, for the Amazon book. Extra http
And now it’s on my wish list. Thanks!
WereBear
@Karen: I didn’t know, until fairly recently, that Margaret Atwood wrote it after a long stay in… the American South.
And it all became clear. One of the reasons I fled was not just the oppressive heat. It was also the oppressive expectation that the rest of my life would be just what was modeled for me in my teenage years.
That would be sitting on a lawn while the males worked on cars, constantly alert to leap up and fetch another beer.
aimai
@kay:
Kay, your link is broken but I know the book. Its on my list of things to read too. I think Dennis may have written something about it, but it won’t hurt to do it again.
Here’s my take on the post: Dennis is right and we can’t blog and think about this stuff too much. But here’s the thing, not only is the confederacy a shape shifter but its targets are much bigger than its original nominal targets. Its targets are, and always have been, the vulnerable, the workers, the lowest and the lower classses.
In talking about this to my kids I arrived at a good way to help them understand both the centrality of race and racism to our modern struggle, and its ultimately inessential nature. I was fresh from an argument with my Sister in Law about the role of racism in teabagger politics, which she utterly denied. And I realized that I’d made a mistake in arguing that group X was, or was not, racist or that their policies were or were not racist. Of course they are. But the function of racism in the modern Republican party isn’t specifically, or only, to keep non whites down and out. It is to prevent all lower class groups from getting together and fighting for regulation, education, health care, etc… In other words, as I said to my daughters “Racism isn’t the only problem in this country, its really a bellwether. Racism is why we can’t have nice things in this country.” Racism and the idea of the eternal, internal, evil “other” (jews, blacks, commies, welfare queens, slackers, stupid school kids, feminists, hispanics, illegal immigrants, gays) all prevent white voters from voting their economic and real interests and keep them fixated on keeping the boot on the neck of the dangerous underclasses. In the specifically Southern/civil war context the struggle is, first, to use the government to do the owner’s dirty work and then, when the government sides with the slave/worker to reject the government and demand “smaller” government.
aimai
Dennis G.
@JWL:
I’ve been actively paying attention since about 1965 when I was a boy. The GOP of today is far, far worse than the GOP of 45 years ago. Back then the biggest problem was with the Dixiecrats and there were many Republicans who were willing to stand up to them on issues of individual rights. Not anymore.
RSR
Great film; as an aside, the station house was a real Philly PD station. Now it’s condos or apartments, I think.
On Race St, between 4th & 3rd, in Philadelphia.
Elie
@aimai:
..totally agree and would add that racism allows or facilitates the power of corporatism (keeps the poor whites from joining with blacks and browns to figure their own power and advantage). It is further facilitated by religion — which rather than empowering the worker to believe in strong values like fairness, support of the weak and powerless and mercy, is used as blinders to prevent people from thinking. I believe that the stubborn anti science and anti intellectual bent in the Republican Party was exacerbated by the fundamentalist christianity that requires holding beliefs that cannot be tested and therefore all strongly held beliefs are equally untestable…
Ultimately, I believe this will all fail — but how much pain and suffering and going backwards first, I dont know.
Another great book that addresses of what you speak is the history — “Southern Politics” by v.o. Key — timeless and right to the heart of the use of the wedge of racism in this country…
Elie
I think that it is pretty important to remember that racism and the central tenets of the confedaracy survive not by its own energy, but because other anti democratic movements (corporatists, religious, militarism), USE its deep emotional connections to carry theirmessage… in other words, other movements/causes actually use this charged belief system as a vehicle to implant and enhance their own message.. THAT is what makes this persist over time — the cynical exploitation by other power bases in the US that are not democratically intended… We have to attack those to expose this and burn it out
Benjamin Cisco
@Mike in NC: I see what you did there. Well played.
Alwhite
@JWL:
AGREED! What really has changed is where the ‘center’ of the national debate is. Most of the Republican Party believes what it has believed from all of my lifetime. What has changed is how much they can say out loud and how much is considered main steam today.
I remember the ’64 Republican National Convention, there were black delegates, older gentlemen that had been life-long REpublican’s because of the Dixiecrats. They had to be escorted out of the convention because of threats of violence and incidents of being spit on (actually recorded events not made up like the Viet-vet ones). Their hearts are the same only what we as a nation deem acceptable has changed.
Alwhite
@S. cerevisiae:
Chtulhu 2010 – why vote for a lesser evil?
Esteban
So, has Fort Sumpter been fired on yet? What should we do about this, march on Richmond? blockade Vicksburg? or should we march to the sea again through Georgia? There are a lot of things to worry about these days, climate collapse, economic depression, the continued dismantling of government structure for profit, and the waging of wars so we can continue our access to cheap gas and cheap consumer goods. This is nothing but fear mongering to keep the people divided while the financial sector and the elites of this country consolidate power and money at the expense of any type of real civilization and future generations. It is a war, not the Civil War, but a war nevertheless, and we humans are losing. But I really don’t think the emancipation is going to be repealed anytime soon, and I really don’t worry about a bunch of clowns waving the confederate battle flag.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@Dennis G.:
Ditto that. I’ve been paying close attention to US politics since 1972 (hoo-boy was that an introduction). I’d give my left arm if we could have the oppostion today be as rational and open to empiricism and appeals to common values, common decency, and common interest as was the GOP of circa 1974-1979. Can anybody imagine a scene today comparable to when Barry Goldwater went to the WH to tell Nixon it was time to step down for the good of the country, if today’s GOP held the WH? Can anybody today imagine the mainstream press going after a Republican President the way the WaPo and the NYT and others did, during Watergate?
Of course IMHO the big difference is that back then radical anti-capitalist ideologies like communism and the USSR in particular were still considered to be an internal and external threat to the US power structure. American elites didn’t think they could afford to destroy the country and let it all collapse while making off with their loot, the way they do today. The seeds of the collapse of US power today were sown in 1989-1991, when the lid was taken off of any limits on the irrationality and self-destructive behavior of folks here in the US.
Citizen Alan
@Mnemosyne:
You misunderstand. The knock on Travis Childers at the moment is that Pelosi is a radical Socialist tax-and-spend liberal, and if Childers supports her for party leader, then he is also a radical Socialist tax-and-spend liberal, even though he votes against her proposals 90% of the time. It’s pure tribalism, nothing more. Conservative Four Legs = Good. Liberal Two Legs = Bad.