History echoes. It doesn’t exactly repeat–but events are informed, defined and argued by the fragmented memories of our shared past. Around the globe there are conflicts that have roots in events centuries old. We have one of those in America that is often shorthanded with the term ‘The Civil War’, but really the conflict goes deeper. At the root of it is the question of slavery, but even that is a side issue to the main flash point–the role of white supremacy in America.
A common thread from some founding fathers fighting to protect slavery to the treason of the Confederacy to the terrorism of the Jim Crow years to today’s rantings from TeaBaggers, neo-Confederate Republicans and other wingnuts is the idea that the Constitution was perfect when it was drafted and that any changes since 1810 or so have been attacks on that perfection. This is why they hated Lincoln, FDR, Truman, Johnson, Clinton and now hate Obama. All of these cats and many others subscribed to the idea that our Union, our Constitution was not perfect when ratified and that it is still a work in progress. Every time Obama talks about “perfecting our Union” it is like fingernails on a blackboard to those folks who see the original Constitution as perfect and filter that view with rhetorical bullshit firmly rooted in privileged, property and white supremacy. This ongoing fight in America is more than 200 years old and it is at the heart of most of our current political battles.
I happen to believe that our laws, Constitution and Union are alive and always evolving–always moving towards a more perfect Union. I am firmly in that camp and feel my point of view is firmly rooted in history, culture, nature, science and life. Everything evolves. And yes, I also believe in evolution and that there can be proven scientific facts. This makes me a liberal because as Colbert once said “We all know that reality has a liberal bias”. This puts me at odds with those other folks who think that Jesus rode a dinosaur and that the Constitution was perfection when drafted–as if the good Lord rose out of the Potomac and handed the completed document to Madison from the back of a winged stegosaurus.
The ideas of the other side are doomed to failure. History will one day move them to the dustbin. Evolution will take care of that. But in the near time these wankers will continue to do real damage as they work overtime to protect their oligarch sugar daddies and sell the old snake oil that white supremacy is why America is an exceptional nation. I call this group of folks the Confederate Party as their name and political affiliation keeps changing to follow power, but their core ideas always remain the same. And because their ideas are stupid (and always have been stupid) the only political tactic they know is obstruction, hostage taking, name calling, fear mongering and a refusal to compromise.
A NYT editorial, titled One-Sided Compromises could almost be run today with a few word swaps like switching ‘Republican’ everywhere you see ‘Democrat’ and vice versa.
We’ve been here before (and it was worse then)Post + Comments (87)