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Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

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Let me eat cake. The rest of you could stand to lose some weight, frankly.

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You are here: Home / Civil Rights / Racial Justice / Post-racial America / The Cult of the Lost Cause and their Fucking Baubles

The Cult of the Lost Cause and their Fucking Baubles

by John Cole|  August 12, 20174:53 pm| 134 Comments

This post is in: Post-racial America

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Let’s not forget that this villainy in Charlottesville found its genesis in protests over the removal of a statue of Robert E. Lee, so it is worth rewatching this amazing speech by the Mayor of New Orleans when they tore down some statues there:

Every god damned one of these statues needs to be torn down and put in a museum somewhere, or just destroyed and forgotten. All they are are monuments to terror, designed to continue to remind black people of their “place” in white society. Nothing more. We should no more see a Robert E. Lee statue at the University of Virginia than we should see a statue of Hitler in front of the Holocaust museum. We should have streets named after Stonewall Jackson any more than we should have Timothy McVeigh Boulevard in fucking Oklahoma City.

If these Klansmen and Nazis love their fucking statues so much, may I suggest they spend less money on swastikas and confederate flags and Gadsden flags, tiki torches, skinny jeans and illfitting khakis, airfare to Charlottesville, and White Lives Matter t-shirts and start building a place to store these monuments to traitors and racists. Maybe in Missouri. But not in polite society.

And don’t fucking even mouth the words “destroying our history.”

https://balloon-juice.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/DHCcfkbXUAUmk1g.mp4

Excellent.

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Previous Post: « More from the Charlottesville Rally: Improvised Vehicular Weapon
Next Post: Meanwhile in Ukraine… »

Reader Interactions

134Comments

  1. 1.

    SiubhanDuinne

    August 12, 2017 at 4:55 pm

    Best. Rant. EVAH.

    Thank you, John.

  2. 2.

    trollhattan

    August 12, 2017 at 4:58 pm

    I suggest they be used to encircle the Kentucky Creation Museum. Ken Ham, now is your time to step forward.

  3. 3.

    Chris

    August 12, 2017 at 5:00 pm

    America’s race problems won’t be solved until the Confederacy is as much an object of shame and disgust here as the Third Reich is in Germany.

  4. 4.

    Jeffro

    August 12, 2017 at 5:00 pm

    Amen and amen.

    Melt the statues down into chains for those who kill innocent protestors. Like, 500 pounds of chains each.

  5. 5.

    Roger Moore

    August 12, 2017 at 5:00 pm

    Every god damned one of these statues needs to be torn down and put in a museum somewhere, or just destroyed and forgotten.

    I’m voting for destroyed and forgotten. Metal ones should be melted down and re-cast into statues of Frederick Douglass, Harriet Tubman, Martin Luther King, Jr., or Barack Obama.

  6. 6.

    David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch

    August 12, 2017 at 5:00 pm

    Hollywood actress and activist Susan Sarandon says former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton would be a more dangerous U.S. president than Donald Trump — provided she’s not indicted first.

    Ms. Sarandon, a supporter of Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaign, told a liberal news outlets this week that Mrs. Clinton’s track record portends a much worse future than anything Mr. Trump might catalyze as commander in chief.

    Such uncanny predictions.

  7. 7.

    rikyrah

    August 12, 2017 at 5:01 pm

    Oliver Willis
    ✔
    @owillis

    What’s not to get? They are his people. We’ve been saying this for 2 years and the media keeps ignoring us.

  8. 8.

    A Ghost to Not

    August 12, 2017 at 5:01 pm

    Ken Ham should buy them all up, and scatter them around his psychotic book-banger water park.

  9. 9.

    Omnes Omnibus

    August 12, 2017 at 5:02 pm

    @David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch: What the fuck is wrong with you?

  10. 10.

    showmepillbilly

    August 12, 2017 at 5:03 pm

    They already got a place for all that confederate shit in Branson! Put in the dumpster out back this place!

    https://www.yelp.com/biz/dixie-outfitters-branson

    They are for real.

    The Confederate flag represents Southern culture, Anna Robb said.

    In an interview with the News-Leader on Monday, she said the flag represents faith, family and freedom — not slavery, racism or white supremacy.

    On Thursday, the News-Leader was alerted by readers that Robb’s husband Nathan, co-owner of the store, once tried to adopt a highway in Arkansas on behalf of the Ku Klux Klan, and that Nathan Robb’s father is Thomas Robb, the national director of the KKK.

    Taney County Assessor’s records show Anna and Nathan Robb own Dixie Outfitters in Branson, a franchise store that sells Confederate flag merchandise located at 1819 W. State Highway 76.

    http://www.news-leader.com/story/news/local/ozarks/2015/06/26/branson-store-owner-said-rebel-flag-represent-racism-ties-kkk/29325367/

  11. 11.

    oatler.

    August 12, 2017 at 5:05 pm

    Chuck Todd‏Verified account @chucktodd 1h1 hour ago

    Chuck Todd Retweeted Gov. Mike Huckabee
    Yet another conservative leader taking a much different tone than the POTUS

    Chuck, you don’t NEED an excuse to load MTP with GOP scumbags…you just like it.

  12. 12.

    Michael Bersin

    August 12, 2017 at 5:07 pm

    “…If these Klansmen and Nazis love their fucking statues so much, may I suggest they spend less money on swastikas and confederate flags and Gadsden flags, tiki torches, skinny jeans and illfitting khakis, airfare to Charlottesville, and White Lives Matter t-shirts and start building a place to store these monuments to traitors and racists. Maybe in Missouri. But not in polite society….”

    Uh, not in west central Missouri. I don’t want them here, either.

  13. 13.

    NotMax

    August 12, 2017 at 5:09 pm

    Don’t destroy them, let them stand as concrete (no pun intended) evidence bolstering “lest we forget” in a national Hall of Shame.

  14. 14.

    Villago Delenda Est

    August 12, 2017 at 5:15 pm

    The entire story of the South, from Brown v. Board of Education on, is hate, not heritage.

    The symbols of the Confederacy were deliberately adopted as the signifiers of white supremacy and segregation.

    Hate, not heritage.

  15. 15.

    Mike in NC

    August 12, 2017 at 5:19 pm

    The oldest city in the country is Saint Augustine, Florida, founded in 1565. But the Lost Cause shitbirds only care about their “Southern Heritage” between the years 1861-1865. Some coincidence! Best thing to do with all those statues would be to load them onto a barge and sail them a mile offshore and weight test them.

  16. 16.

    FlipYrWhig

    August 12, 2017 at 5:20 pm

    @NotMax:

    Or, as Neighborhood Texture Jam once said, “Want to see the rebel flags? / Wanna go see ’em? / They’re next to the swastikas / In a museum!”

  17. 17.

    Ruckus

    August 12, 2017 at 5:21 pm

    @Chris:
    Not only shame in Germany, outlawed. We may have a small problem with that first amendment thing in outlawing but we do have restrictions on speech in this country. We just don’t do it when hate is involved.

  18. 18.

    trollhattan

    August 12, 2017 at 5:22 pm

    @NotMax:
    Maybe makeovers for them all in preparation for appearances on RuPaul’s “Drag Race.”

    “Let’s have a big welcome for Roberta E Lee!”

  19. 19.

    Baud

    August 12, 2017 at 5:22 pm

    Conversation
    John Dingell
    John Dingell @JohnDingell
    I signed up to fight Nazis 73 years ago and I’ll do it again if I have to.

    Hatred, bigotry, & fascism should have no place in this country.

  20. 20.

    David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch

    August 12, 2017 at 5:24 pm

    @Omnes Omnibus: blow me, snowflake. the fucking alt-left played a big role creating this disaster presidency and culture of hate and every time an atrocity occurs their original sin needs to hammered.

  21. 21.

    Hungry Joe

    August 12, 2017 at 5:24 pm

    Ah, yes, Robert E. Lee, that fine Southern gentleman who, when his army invaded the North — a.k.a. the United Sates of America — ordered all the free African-American citizens his soldiers captured be sent south and sold into slavery. Before his fucking statue is melted down I’d pay for the opportunity to spit on it.

  22. 22.

    trollhattan

    August 12, 2017 at 5:25 pm

    @Baud:
    Love it!

  23. 23.

    Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes

    August 12, 2017 at 5:26 pm

    Confederate monuments are participation trophies, mostly put up in the period 1890-1910 by the Confederate widows and daughters using some of the zombie capital gained through several generations of stolen labor, rape, murder and sharecropping in the postbellum years. They gained so much that they felt comfortable wasting money to honor traitors and losers.

    They’re obscenities, and not “history”.

  24. 24.

    NotMax

    August 12, 2017 at 5:26 pm

    Clearing Confederates – particularly those in uniform – from Congress’ statuary Hall would be a huge step forward.

  25. 25.

    jimmiraybob

    August 12, 2017 at 5:27 pm

    Sometimes there’s a bit of good news in Missouri like when Frank Ancona, imperial wizard of the Traditionalist American Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, was found shot to death and floating in the Big River in southeast MO. I’d like to think that there was some kind of cosmic justice afoot guiding his cracked out wife who shot him and then got her son to help dump the body.

    Seriously though, it’s not safe in rural south Missouri to be black, brown or Muslim after dark.

  26. 26.

    Shana

    August 12, 2017 at 5:28 pm

    @Jeffro: I see someone knows their Dickens.

    I hadn’t watched that speech before although many had recommended it. It’s truly wonderful, and a badly needed bit of uplift we all need today.

    BTW, daughter’s safely on her way home from being a legal observer in Charlottesville. Taking her out for a nice dinner tonight.

  27. 27.

    Baud

    August 12, 2017 at 5:31 pm

    @Shana: Good news.

  28. 28.

    dmsilev

    August 12, 2017 at 5:32 pm

    @Hungry Joe:

    Robert E. Lee, that fine Southern gentleman

    Lets not forget “oath-breaker”, since I’m given to understand that fine Southern gentlemen are men of their word.

  29. 29.

    Hkedi [Kang T. Q.]

    August 12, 2017 at 5:35 pm

    Read this yesterday as a sub-link to a post. I found it really clarifying. Tolerance is a peace treaty, not a moral absolute. Link to article here

  30. 30.

    ? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?

    August 12, 2017 at 5:35 pm

    @dmsilev:
    He was so loyal to his state that he had to fight for the Confederacy and against the United States. Lee was a real asshole after the war too.

  31. 31.

    Schlemazel

    August 12, 2017 at 5:36 pm

    @Omnes Omnibus: @David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch:
    I must have missed something. What is it with you two? As nasty as people can be here I have never seen them act the way you guys are over so little.

  32. 32.

    Villago Delenda Est

    August 12, 2017 at 5:36 pm

    @oatler.: Chuckles the Toddler is an utter waste of skin.

  33. 33.

    NotMax

    August 12, 2017 at 5:36 pm

    @dmsilev

    By present day Republican ‘logic’ Lee’s offenses were “youthful indiscretions.”

  34. 34.

    Schlemazel

    August 12, 2017 at 5:37 pm

    @Hungry Joe:
    When an escaped slave was returned to him he was angry that the local guy was not whipping her hard enough so he paid one of the bounty hunters to whip her harder. The man was scum

  35. 35.

    rikyrah

    August 12, 2017 at 5:38 pm

    @Shana:
    Good to hear

  36. 36.

    Villago Delenda Est

    August 12, 2017 at 5:38 pm

    @NotMax: If I could upfist this comment, I would.

    Hey, I just did!

  37. 37.

    rikyrah

    August 12, 2017 at 5:39 pm

    Good rant Cole.

  38. 38.

    Baud

    August 12, 2017 at 5:39 pm

    I hate that the media is going to make Marco Rubio a hero for saying the right things on Twitter today.

  39. 39.

    J R in WV

    August 12, 2017 at 5:43 pm

    @Omnes Omnibus:

    @David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch:

    Onmes,

    I have to agree with David Canadian Anchor Baby here, Ms Sarandon is even a local person here in Charleston, but she is totally off her rocker about Secretary Clinton and Senator Sanders.

  40. 40.

    seejanerun

    August 12, 2017 at 5:45 pm

    Robert E. Lee was a slaver and if he was on Game of Thrones Dany’s dragons would torch him. I’d sign up for HBO to watch that.

  41. 41.

    Mnemosyne

    August 12, 2017 at 5:47 pm

    Co-signed. All of it. And Robert E. Lee was a traitorous asshole.

  42. 42.

    Elizabelle

    August 12, 2017 at 5:49 pm

    @Shana: Wonderful that your daughter observed; what an interesting dinner is in store for you both.

  43. 43.

    Elizabelle

    August 12, 2017 at 5:54 pm

    Maybe this is a chance for a redo, the opportunity to put the Civil War in context, and stop with the celebrating of the fake-ass Lost Cause.

    Teach the truth, and how that revisionist history came to be popular, even while not accurate. Yes, most white Confederates did not own slaves. But their whole society was built on race laws and unfree labor.

    Today, their descendants (actual and cultural) are strutting their ignorance and trying to deny the rest of us first world healthcare/medical insurance. Along with depriving too many of their rights as citizens. (Voting; responsive government.) Fuck ’em.

    Make that confederate flag as unwelcome and recognized as swastikas. The Germans got it right. We did not.

  44. 44.

    Baud

    August 12, 2017 at 5:55 pm

    @Elizabelle: I apologized to you in the prior thread.

  45. 45.

    Davey C

    August 12, 2017 at 5:55 pm

    @Baud:
    Well, what Rubio said is a helluva lot better than what my useless representative (Lee Zeldin) said, so I think he deserves some credit, if only for this one particular thing.

  46. 46.

    SiubhanDuinne

    August 12, 2017 at 5:55 pm

    @Shana:

    BTW, daughter’s safely on her way home from being a legal observer in Charlottesville. Taking her out for a nice dinner tonight.

    Very good news. Must have been a long day for you. Hope you both enjoy dinner :-)

  47. 47.

    debbie

    August 12, 2017 at 5:57 pm

    @Elizabelle:

    All that is needed is to make the Articles of Secession required reading.

  48. 48.

    Chris

    August 12, 2017 at 5:58 pm

    @seejanerun:

    Not that I’m really trying to push you towards the Star Wars prequels, but I really appreciate the behind the scenes nugget that Count Dooku was based on Robert E. Lee.

  49. 49.

    CarolDuhart2

    August 12, 2017 at 6:00 pm

    “He opposed slavery!” That’s what I’m getting on Twitter from the alt-right apologists. He opposed slavery so much that he dedicated 4 years and killed half-a million Americans to preserve it. If he really opposed slavery, he didn’t need to war against his beloved “Virginia”. He could have resigned his commission and sat the war out, and let less competent leadership run the Confederacy to the ground.

    “There were other reasons!”. Then why didn’t the secessionists name them? If there were other causes, it would have helped in getting more favorable world opinion and taken the pressure off other nations to honor the blockades or even come in on their sides.

    And it says something about these people’s sense of entitlement that they are protesting the removal of statues from other people’s public property. Even though it’s clear the town no longer wants them around or doesn’t care much for them anymore.

  50. 50.

    Major Major Major Major

    August 12, 2017 at 6:00 pm

    @Baud: classic sociopathic behavior.

  51. 51.

    bupalos

    August 12, 2017 at 6:00 pm

    @David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch: Truly impressive. Nominating this for a grammy in the category of Best Achievement in Self-Defeating Tone-deafness.

  52. 52.

    Elizabelle

    August 12, 2017 at 6:04 pm

    @debbie: And Confederacy VP Alexander Stephens’ Cornerstone speech.

    Pretty damn clear, too. How inconvenient for the “heritage” yahoos.

    …. Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite idea; its foundations are laid, its corner- stone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery subordination to the superior race is his natural and normal condition. This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth. This truth has been slow in the process of its development, like all other truths in the various departments of science. It has been so even amongst us. Many who hear me, perhaps, can recollect well, that this truth was not generally admitted, even within their day. The errors of the past generation still clung to many as late as twenty years ago. Those at the North, who still cling to these errors, with a zeal above knowledge, we justly denominate fanatics. All fanaticism springs from an aberration of the mind from a defect in reasoning. It is a species of insanity. One of the most striking characteristics of insanity, in many instances, is forming correct conclusions from fancied or erroneous premises; so with the anti-slavery fanatics. Their conclusions are right if their premises were. They assume that the negro is equal, and hence conclude that he is entitled to equal privileges and rights with the white man. If their premises were correct, their conclusions would be logical and just but their premise being wrong, their whole argument fails.

  53. 53.

    Elizabelle

    August 12, 2017 at 6:05 pm

    @Baud: You’ve got me curious. Checking your misdeed now. LOL.

  54. 54.

    Villago Delenda Est

    August 12, 2017 at 6:05 pm

    @debbie: Exactly. They state precisely why the slave states were acting as they did. White supremacy and slavery.

  55. 55.

    Baud

    August 12, 2017 at 6:08 pm

    @Major Major Major Major: This isn’t real life.

  56. 56.

    donnah

    August 12, 2017 at 6:08 pm

    David Duke was thrilled with the white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, calling for a reclaiming of America for the whites. He acknowledged that he voted for Trump because he promised to do that. When he saw Trumps’s weak non-apology, he replied to Trump in a tweet:

    “I would recommend you take a good look in the mirror & remember it was White Americans who put you in the presidency, not radical leftists.”

    We are skating on very thin ice. Please let cooler heads prevail.

  57. 57.

    Dave

    August 12, 2017 at 6:08 pm

    @Elizabelle: Amazing how similar the reasoning is to that applied to different settings. Like the fired googlebro’s manifesto. Pseudoscience used to defend bigotry.

  58. 58.

    Major Major Major Major

    August 12, 2017 at 6:09 pm

    @Baud: how so?

  59. 59.

    Bob Collins

    August 12, 2017 at 6:09 pm

    Where I am in Virginia, we hear all the time that we have to preserve our Southern heritage. Heritage? It’s a heritage of slavery, racism, treason, and defeat. The real Confederate battle flag is the white surrender flag.

    The hate and envy of much Southern trash knows no bounds.

  60. 60.

    Baud

    August 12, 2017 at 6:10 pm

    @Major Major Major Major: Y’all treat me decent here.

  61. 61.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    August 12, 2017 at 6:11 pm

    Good lord, I didn’t watch the Ape’s remarks. They were even worse than “many sides”

    Hallie Jackson‏Verified account @ HallieJackson 3h3 hours ago
    “We condemn in the strongest possible terms this egregious display of hatred, bigotry, and violence on many sides. On many sides.” -@ POTUS
    Adds: “This has been going on for a long, long time.” Calls for restoration of “law and order.”

    John Harwood, whom I’ve always liked, is not amused

    John Harwood‏Verified account @ JohnJHarwood 31m31 minutes ago
    imagine an American president, after Bloody Sunday, condemning hatred “on many sides” on the Edmund Pettus Bridge

    sad to say, I don’t find that president too difficult to imagine

  62. 62.

    Major Major Major Major

    August 12, 2017 at 6:11 pm

    @Baud: that might be more a statement about the people around you than about you.

  63. 63.

    Mnemosyne

    August 12, 2017 at 6:11 pm

    @Elizabelle:

    Yes, most white Confederates did not own slaves.

    I have long suspected that those numbers are deliberately cooked. If you had a slaveholding family of a husband, wife, and six kids (not uncommon for that time), technically only one of those 8 people was the slaveowner: the husband. That doesn’t mean that the rest of the family didn’t benefit from the slaves that they themselves were not the legal owners of.

  64. 64.

    Brachiator

    August 12, 2017 at 6:12 pm

    @Chris:

    America’s race problems won’t be solved until the Confederacy is as much an object of shame and disgust here as the Third Reich is in Germany.

    America’s race problems did not begin with the Confederacy. Racism and American Apartheid has been at the heart of the United States since it’s founding. Rejecting the fetish objects of the Confederacy is at best a small, but very welcome gesture.

  65. 65.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    August 12, 2017 at 6:13 pm

    @Mnemosyne: good point, adult sons who would’ve fought might well have grown up in a slave-holding family

  66. 66.

    Elizabelle

    August 12, 2017 at 6:13 pm

    @Dave: Ooooh. Good point.

    @Baud: Just looked. Meh. Saw your comment not long after it went up, and recognized it as snark.

    You can do something worse you have to apologize for!

  67. 67.

    Hkedi [Kang T. Q.]

    August 12, 2017 at 6:13 pm

    @Elizabelle: I’m reflexively resistant to anyone saying that we should do something because it’s a “moral truth” If they can’t explain why, that person is “selling” something. It’s pretty easy to see who the mark is.

  68. 68.

    schrodingers_cat

    August 12, 2017 at 6:14 pm

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist:Credit where credit is due, Harwood has been telling it like it is ever since T announced as a candidate.

  69. 69.

    Baud

    August 12, 2017 at 6:16 pm

    @Major Major Major Major: The people around me have changed over time. It’s no one’s fault. Just the way it has to be.

    @Elizabelle:

    Whew. I’m sure I’ll take you up on that offer.

  70. 70.

    Amaranthine RBG

    August 12, 2017 at 6:16 pm

    I wonder if any of this is true:

    http://gotnews.com/breaking-charlottesville-car-terrorist-is-anti-trump-open-borders-druggie/

    Link presents “evidence” that the Charger’s driver was not one of the White Supremacists/ Nazis.

  71. 71.

    Elizabelle

    August 12, 2017 at 6:16 pm

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist: I was highly impressed by Cory Gardner’s tweet; he being a Republican from the purple state of Colorado. Adam put it up on previous thread.

    Mr. President – we must call evil by its name. These were white supremacists and this was domestic terrorism. https://twitter.com/sencorygardner/status/896465229181210624 …

  72. 72.

    CarolDuhart2

    August 12, 2017 at 6:17 pm

    @Mnemosyne: And of course, those who rented or borrowed or leased slaves don’t really count, do they?

  73. 73.

    Chris

    August 12, 2017 at 6:17 pm

    @Elizabelle:

    What’s fascinating is how hard he works to promote Confederate exceptionalism – not just “obviously, white supremacy is a great truth” but “OUR government is the FIRST founded on white supremacy!” It’s a very sharp contrast to his descendants’ mealy-mouthed “but you guys! EVERYBODY was racist back then!” and “blacks sold other blacks!”

  74. 74.

    Brachiator

    August 12, 2017 at 6:18 pm

    @Elizabelle:

    Mr. President – we must call evil by its name. These were white supremacists and this was domestic terrorism.

    Yes!

  75. 75.

    sukabi

    August 12, 2017 at 6:18 pm

    @Baud: well, they are looking to make some republican viable for a 2020 run against Drumpf…and Rubio is malleable.

  76. 76.

    Another Scott

    August 12, 2017 at 6:19 pm

    @David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch: OO isn’t the only one who thought your comment was shockingly out of place in this thread.

    Bernie and Susan aren’t the enemy.

    Trump and his minions are the enemy. Keep a little perspective.

    Eyes on the prize.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  77. 77.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    August 12, 2017 at 6:20 pm

    @Elizabelle: that is a surprise, as he has not been a profile in courage, and he’s a close McConnell ally from what I’ve read.

  78. 78.

    Chris

    August 12, 2017 at 6:20 pm

    @Brachiator:

    And Germany’s race problems didn’t begin with the Third Reich. Rejecting them isn’t a sufficient step, but it is a necessary step.

  79. 79.

    Betty Cracker

    August 12, 2017 at 6:22 pm

    @Shana: Thank dog she’s okay! I’m sure you’re very proud of her. ?

  80. 80.

    Schlemazel

    August 12, 2017 at 6:22 pm

    @Elizabelle:
    A pretty good video from Salon Was the Civil War FOught Over Slavery?

  81. 81.

    Omnes Omnibus

    August 12, 2017 at 6:22 pm

    @Schlemazel: I am sorry. Nazis are marching with torches and people are driving cars into crowds of anti-fascist marchers, so I am a little bit on edge. David Koch’s reflexive (and, imo, irrelevant*) Sarandon bashing rubbed me the wrong way.

    *Others’ mileage may vary.

  82. 82.

    Immanentize

    August 12, 2017 at 6:22 pm

    @Mnemosyne:
    At least Lee surrendered. Assholes.

    ETA. I’m listening to Iggy, ” Now I wanna be your dog.”

  83. 83.

    Elizabelle

    August 12, 2017 at 6:23 pm

    @Chris: I liked that Stephens thought the abolitionists were the whackadoodles.

    Projection. A major part of white supremacism and revanchist politics, since 1861 1761 1661 … um ….

    Those at the North, who still cling to these errors, with a zeal above knowledge, we justly denominate fanatics. All fanaticism springs from an aberration of the mind from a defect in reasoning. It is a species of insanity. One of the most striking characteristics of insanity, in many instances, is forming correct conclusions from fancied or erroneous premises; so with the anti-slavery fanatics.

  84. 84.

    Schlemazel

    August 12, 2017 at 6:24 pm

    @Omnes Omnibus:
    I get that but you two have been at each other in other threads & in ways that makes me think there is a long battle going on.

    OTOH, I do not think we should ever let Stein or Saranwrap or the others every forget until the fully apologize and admit they were wrong (ala Mike Moore)

    Bad timing & considered, all your reaction seemed harsh. He could have done better

  85. 85.

    Another Scott

    August 12, 2017 at 6:25 pm

    @CarolDuhart2: I’m sure you’ll be [surprised]
    that there are a bunch of lies told about Kindly General Lee.

    Or maybe not! :-)

    Keep fighting the good fight!

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  86. 86.

    Betty Cracker

    August 12, 2017 at 6:29 pm

    The Confederate statue drama is playing out here locally too. In June the county commission voted to let it stay. In July (after intense pressure led by many groups, including the Democratic Party), they reversed course and now plan to remove it as soon as they find a suitable spot. Dumpster sounds good enough to me. Or the bottom of the bay — let it become a reef.

    Like Mayor Landrieu, I grew up walking past these monuments without seeing them. In fact, I never gave them the thought they deserved until a few years ago. I’m ashamed to have been so oblivious.

  87. 87.

    Brachiator

    August 12, 2017 at 6:29 pm

    @Mnemosyne:

    I have long suspected that those numbers are deliberately cooked.

    The numbers are probably accurate, but that’s not really the issue. The South was a slaveholding society, and free whites were enlisted in various ways to help protect and perpetuate it.

  88. 88.

    Jay S

    August 12, 2017 at 6:30 pm

    Can we have a Lee Statue pull down like they did to Sadam’s statue in Iraq?

  89. 89.

    Sentient AI from the Future

    August 12, 2017 at 6:31 pm

    Re: the south

    Sherman was insufficiently ambitious.

  90. 90.

    Major Major Major Major

    August 12, 2017 at 6:32 pm

    @Jay S: you mean deceptively?

  91. 91.

    Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism

    August 12, 2017 at 6:33 pm

    @Mnemosyne: Lots of small farms had a slave or two. It wasn’t an exclusive practice of the big landowners.

  92. 92.

    Elizabelle

    August 12, 2017 at 6:33 pm

    @Schlemazel: Thank you. Will watch that later, and might put it up on Facebook.

    Incidentally, my rebel yell brother in law unfriended me on FB about a month ago. He of the “the Civil War was all about states’ rights” cult. Laughable, but he is causing real problems for me with my sister and the family.

    Love that your video is by a West Point(!) prof, and found it poignant that post was by the late great Scott Kaufman.

  93. 93.

    Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes

    August 12, 2017 at 6:34 pm

    McAuliffe 2020.

  94. 94.

    NMgal

    August 12, 2017 at 6:34 pm

    Funny, the lead-in and link in this comment:
    @Amaranthine RBG

    Is *exactly* the same as a comment left at LGM just now by someone drive-by trolling (different nym).

    Just a strange coincidence, I’m sure.

  95. 95.

    Sentient AI from the Future

    August 12, 2017 at 6:35 pm

    @Amaranthine RBG: I’ve seen slabs of Himalayan salt used as furniture that were smaller than the grain I’d need to take with anything reputed floor-shitter Chuckles Johnson emits.

  96. 96.

    hitchhiker

    August 12, 2017 at 6:36 pm

    Tan khakis and white short-sleeved shirts seem to be the uniform of these flaming shitbags. I wonder where they got that look?

  97. 97.

    Mike in NC

    August 12, 2017 at 6:36 pm

    Interesting parallel between defeated Confederates of 1865 and defeated Nazi Germans of 1945. In both cases hardcore true believers wanted to take to the hills and wage guerilla warfare rather than give up the fight. Eisenhower and his senior leadership were very concerned about this as there was some hard intelligence that SS units were stockpiling weapons and supplies in the months after the surrender.

  98. 98.

    Jay S

    August 12, 2017 at 6:38 pm

    @Major Major Major Major: I mean publicly, with cheering crowds. Deception would be fine if necessary. The image would be cathartic.

  99. 99.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    August 12, 2017 at 6:39 pm

    @Mnemosyne: some stats on confederate soldiers and slavery.

  100. 100.

    Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes

    August 12, 2017 at 6:40 pm

    @Brachiator:

    There was a vanishingly small middle class that were beholden to the slavers for everything, and the nonwealthy southern populationnwas also beholden. Every pastor, governor, publisher, lawyer, judge, legislator, mayor, doctor, storeowner was heavily propagandize by and in thrall to the slave labor system.

  101. 101.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    August 12, 2017 at 6:40 pm

    @Mnemosyne: some stats on Confederate soldiers and slavery.

  102. 102.

    Elizabelle

    August 12, 2017 at 6:52 pm

    @Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: Terry McAuliffe has been a GREAT governor. Very proud of him, especially not having expected much of him going in. (I thought he was doing it for the resume. No. He has been serious, and as effective as he can be, with a nutjob gerrymandered GOP legislature.)

    He’s very approachable too. I have had more out of towners show off their pics with the governor, when they were roaming around Richmond. Very good guy.

  103. 103.

    Elizabelle

    August 12, 2017 at 6:54 pm

    Also, FWIW, sad to report that Terry McAuliffe’s one year old Golden Lab, Guinness, died this week. I still don’t know what happened to the pup, whether it was an accident or what …

  104. 104.

    Mnemosyne

    August 12, 2017 at 6:56 pm

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist:

    Aha! I’d bet that it was Coates’s column where I first read that and couldn’t remember where I’d seen it. He has a good point that he’s specifically talking about Confederate soldiers since non-slaveholders in the South were, it seems, less likely to put their lives on the line to protect slavery.

    A representative statistic:

    One in every ten volunteers in 1861 did not own slaves themselves but lived in households headed by non family members who did. This figure, combined with the 36 percent who owned or whose family members owned slaves, indicated that almost one of every two 1861 recruits lived with slaveholders.

  105. 105.

    frosty fred

    August 12, 2017 at 6:59 pm

    We never talked about it growing up, but my great-great-grandfather and his brothers were in Lee’s army at Gettysburg, and as I’ve gotten interested in family history I’ve found far more of my ancestors and connections on that side than the other. My mother did tell me once that all our family were “poor people who never owned slaves.” I don’t know whether she believed that, or it was just the standard line; I’ve seen almost exactly the same words elsewhere.

    As it turns out I descend from slave holders in every line; it’s true none of my antebellum ancestors was a large plantation owner, but every one of them owned at least a few slaves or had a parent who did. Since I’ve started working with DNA testing I’ve regularly been connected to distant cousins of predominantly African ancestry.

    I was somewhat cheered to find a fifth-great-uncle whose household included four slaves in 1830, but eight “free colored persons” in 1840; I like to think that means the slaves had been freed and stayed with the household as employes.

    I’ve had people ask me why I find this history shameful; I’ve never known how to answer them.

  106. 106.

    Mnemosyne

    August 12, 2017 at 7:06 pm

    @frosty fred:

    My brother has managed to lose the paperwork, but apparently we have ancestors going back to at least Jamestown on my mother’s side. I now know enough about American history to know that that means that we have slaveholders in our ancestry, even though our family mostly lived in the north. I’ve haven’t dug far back enough on Ancestry.com to see which ones, but I know they’re there.

  107. 107.

    sharl

    August 12, 2017 at 7:08 pm

    @Another Scott: Yep. Anyone who claimed that Trump would be better than Clinton – even if that ridiculous claim was made over a year ago, as in that link – deserves to have their faces rubbed it in now and again. Having said that, timing matters, and this isn’t the time.

    DSA youngsters (and most of them are youngsters) – many of them probably Sanders supporters – marched with BLM people today, and some were injured by the vehicular homicidal racist. They are worried and sad and angry, but early indications are that this will make them more determined than ever.

    Criticizing them on this day smacks of the worst and most cynical kind of opportunism, and would be entered as evidence by lefties in support of the harshest accusations they make against centrist liberals.

  108. 108.

    Mnemosyne

    August 12, 2017 at 7:08 pm

    Also, too, since Cole is proud of his West Virginia roots, let’s mention again that the reason it exists as a separate state at all is because they didn’t want to join the Confederacy and broke off.

  109. 109.

    Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism

    August 12, 2017 at 7:11 pm

    @Mnemosyne: We have a young man in the family tree who simply vanishes between 1861-1865. Lots of speculation that he moved into the Smokey Mountains for the duration; a lot of pro-Union folk did.

    @frosty fred: I really, really want to track down the ancestor who gave me one particular length of DNA. Two of my black cousins triangulate on it. It’s so hard for black family historians to track down the slave owners that I’m kind of hoping that this will turn into the clue they need.

  110. 110.

    Another Scott

    August 12, 2017 at 7:11 pm

    @frosty fred: One can’t pick one’s parents. :-)

    Thanks for the story. It’s important to realize that we’re all human and we’re all tied together whether we like it or not.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  111. 111.

    Betty Cracker

    August 12, 2017 at 7:13 pm

    @Elizabelle: I didn’t expect much either — I held a mild grudge against him because I thought he was kind of an ass during the Clinton-Obama primary. All is forgiven, guvnah! :)

  112. 112.

    Elizabelle

    August 12, 2017 at 7:15 pm

    @frosty fred: Interesting story, and thanks for sharing it. As you investigate further, please update us.

  113. 113.

    Omnes Omnibus

    August 12, 2017 at 7:17 pm

    @sharl: Thank you. This was the point I should have made.

  114. 114.

    frosty fred

    August 12, 2017 at 7:24 pm

    @Another Scott: I quite liked my parents in the event. In fact, my father refused to have anything to do with the only family reunion that side ever had, because it was organized around honoring “the old reprobate” and putting a stone on his previously-unmarked grave. (Even with that, though, he never specified in what way his great-grandfather had been reprehensible.)

    I suppose it adds a dimension to the story to mention that I would not have been available to be ashamed without the Gettysburg chapter, since GGGF was wounded, taken prisoner, and married his nurse.

  115. 115.

    Central Planning

    August 12, 2017 at 7:25 pm

    I was flipping between MSNBC and CNN this afternoon, around 4pm, when they put up Pence’s tweet.

    The name on the account said “Nice President Pence”. I’m sure that was their typo, not actually someone ratfucking his account.

  116. 116.

    Keith P.

    August 12, 2017 at 7:31 pm

    Jack Kingston is actually ticked off that Trump is catching shit for not using the term “white supremacist”. There is so much irony here….and the anchor JUST nailed him on “This is the same guy who went after people for not using ‘radical Islamic terror'”. Am I a bad person for wishing Jeffrey Lord was up here instead of Kingston?

  117. 117.

    Mnemosyne

    August 12, 2017 at 7:33 pm

    Is it too early to be wondering why the cops in Charlottesville seemed to be so drastically underprepared for a series of rallies that were so well-publicized, AirBnB was refusing rooms to the Nazis?

  118. 118.

    Elizabelle

    August 12, 2017 at 7:36 pm

    @Mnemosyne: Could it be they were working a bit too gingerly, so as not to offend the easily offended White Power creeps? Perhaps more cognizant of First Amendment protections, and then events overtook them?

  119. 119.

    David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch

    August 12, 2017 at 7:37 pm

    @Schlemazel: I havent said anything to him in over 2 years. and to our credit, during that time, our infrequent comments have been polite. but a couple of weeks ago he tried smear me with mccarthyite innuendo implying I’m a plant because i detest sanders, which is ridiculous because I’ve been posting here since 2007 in support of obama and democrats; long before the alt-left emerged. But, I let it go, and didn’t say anything. We all have bad days. Yet, there’s only so many times one can ignore unprovoked personal attacks.

  120. 120.

    ArchTeryx

    August 12, 2017 at 7:41 pm

    @Elizabelle: At this point I’m inclined to give the cops zero credit for much of anything. They’re totally hands on when it comes to peaceful leftist protests and lawful gatherings of black folks, but nowhere to be found when the armed right shows up. Shoot a black kid to death for having a toy gun in hand, ignore white people with fully automatic assault rifles brandishing them at the public. Their hypocrisy knows few bounds.

  121. 121.

    cain

    August 12, 2017 at 7:45 pm

    @Baud:
    I responded to the tweet with “Now we know why they are called the Greatest Generation!”

  122. 122.

    sharl

    August 12, 2017 at 7:47 pm

    Virginia governor is now saying three dead, but it’s possible that includes the two who died in the crash of the helicopter that was supporting law enforcement people on the scene, which had already been reported.
    It’s breaking news, so usual precautions apply regarding what to believe.

  123. 123.

    Cheryl Rofer

    August 12, 2017 at 8:00 pm

    Thanks for reposting MItch Landrieu’s speech, John.

  124. 124.

    cain

    August 12, 2017 at 8:05 pm

    @Elizabelle:
    Sorry to pry, what kind of troubles? Is it a matter of him bad mouthing you? Or are you all going after him?

  125. 125.

    Lurking Canadian

    August 12, 2017 at 8:06 pm

    @Baud: Dingell is a national treasure.

  126. 126.

    fuckwit

    August 12, 2017 at 8:36 pm

    @Hungry Joe: I’d rather piss on it

  127. 127.

    Elizabelle

    August 12, 2017 at 8:45 pm

    @cain: Him badmouthing me, and alienating me from his family. He is a very good father; his sons adore him, and I can feel the wedge that he’s introduced. Sadly, my two oldest nephews have gone full Southern white boy. Although they are really good guys, too. They are young. I hope they can turn around.

    My sister is a conflict avoider. She’s mentioned husband is playing “Devil’s Advocate” over Trump. Quite honestly, he sees that Trump has bad qualities, but is attracted, too. Same deal as his Southern heritage with the Confederacy. He explains away the Civil War with “it was all about state’s rights,” which is the historical equivalent of being a flat earther. Fun times.

    I decided to give them all a time out, but am sad because the sons are college age and older, and it’s the time they become scarce for a few years. I miss them, and my sister, and that I used to love my BIL, before he turned full hard head.

    Trump the shit midas is helping to tear families apart, and not just those with undocumented parents.

    Thank you for asking. Hope this was not TMI.

    Mostly, when I saw this happening with the BIL, I thought to myself “ah well, you’ve had a charmed life; this is an opportunity to toughen up, and you need to learn that.” I did not expect it would cost me time with my sister — who works all the time — and what little time left with the kids. It’s sad.

  128. 128.

    J R in WV

    August 12, 2017 at 9:44 pm

    @Mnemosyne:

    And those huge plantation homes weren’t built for husband/wife/kids. They had in-laws, cousins, nephews both resident and moving from mansion to mansion, and all of those shiftless suckers on other peoples’ sweat made their living from slaves.

    So don’t tell me most Confederate Traitors didn’t own slaves. They all benefited from the slaves, even the lowly men who were overseers, who whipped the lazy slaves in the hot sun to make them pick cotton faster.

    Even the less prosperous farms had 3 story houses with full basements water table permitting. With 4 big rooms downstairs, 8 on the second floor, and more on the top floor, all for the white folk, except for a few closets for the house slaves… so they would be handy when mistress called out. Or master come to see them.

  129. 129.

    The Lodger

    August 12, 2017 at 9:52 pm

    @Central Planning: Nice President? I think that was Granny Clampett’s title. She didn’t want anything to do with vice.

  130. 130.

    J R in WV

    August 12, 2017 at 9:57 pm

    @NMgal:

    Funny, the lead-in and link in this comment:
    @Amaranthine RBG

    Is *exactly* the same as a comment left at LGM just now by someone drive-by trolling (different nym).

    Just a strange coincidence, I’m sure.

    Exactly why I have pied “Amaranthine RBG” since the day Major^4 and Cleek and Alain installed Cleek’s famous software device into Balloon-Juice!!! But I still often read to see what the trolls are saying. And you comment, too, pied though it was.

    Thanks for the update !!

  131. 131.

    J R in WV

    August 12, 2017 at 10:24 pm

    @Mnemosyne:

    My paternal grandmother was from a Giles county VA family, I still have distant cousins and such relatives over there. My connection with them came from Giles county VA to Monroe co WV in the late 1800s, then through Greenbrier county and Summers county to the county where I grew up.

    She married a child of Swiss immigrants, so I know he had no connection to southern slaveholders.

    My maternal grandmother was from eastern Kentucky, along the Big Sandy River. Indeed when she was a girl, everything moved on the riverboats. She was educated, and took a bookkeeping job with a coal company in SW WV, where she met a Pennsylvania Dutch blacksmith working as a hoist engineer. Pretty sure he had no connection to southern slaveholders except perhaps to have had a father or grandfather or uncle who fought them in the 1860s.

    I doubt my (maternal) Grandma’s family ever had or were connected to slaveholders. They were too familiar with working for what they needed, going to school to learn about something they could make a living at, etc. Pioneer mountain people, making do and working hard, moving up out of East Tennessee into Kentucky back quite a ways.

    The mountain folks of East Tennessee were more likely to fight for the Union than for the Rebels, this is the origin of the U of Tennessee nickname, “Volunteers” because more Tennesseans volunteered for the Union army than would have been drafted if the state had remained in the Union.

    I think the “Lost Cause” folks have beaten that fact out of the consciousness of everyone in TN, but it is the truth. I have it from an old time mountain man from NW Georgia who studied in Tennessee when people were alive who remembered that war. He was a professor at Emory back a long time ago.

  132. 132.

    NotMax

    August 12, 2017 at 10:36 pm

    @J R in WV

    Also why Andrew Johnson was tapped as v.p. for Lincoln’s second term, to help solidify eastern Tennessee’s bonds with the Union.

  133. 133.

    Matt

    August 13, 2017 at 8:41 am

    @showmepillbilly:

    The Confederate flag represents Southern culture, Anna Robb said.

    Let’s go over this again, Confederates: “southern culture” IS white supremacy. You motherfuckers FOUNDED A COUNTRY explicitly based on it – there’s no ambiguity. If you wanna bring “faith” into it, that’s a good sign your “churches” should go into the shredder right after those statues.

  134. 134.

    Obdurodon

    August 13, 2017 at 9:12 am

    I disagree with the idea that such things should be destroyed. Rather, I believe that they should be put in purpose-built museums, with placards and photographs illustrating their connection to the horrors of slavery and civil war. Let people who are tempted to believe in American exceptionalism visit those museums and learn how such feelings have been used before, luring our own countrymen into the greatest evil and folly. We must continually re-learn those lessons, and to learn we must acknowledge. This was the approach evident in Berlin when I visited last year, regarding the original Nazis, and it seemed much more effective than mere suppression. Destroy the symbol’s appeal, not the symbol itself.

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