Can’t you see the enclosure acts and the human misery involved in British industrialization as basically being the third edge? Didn’t slavery make it such that the population of Britain was unable to leave to the new world and thus were forced into extremely poor working conditions? I might not have my history completely right here but I thought that while Africa and Africans and their descendants suffered the most from slavery it also negatively impacted everyone but the wealthy.
Hm. I don’t think I agree. He was pretty much a marked man from the time he emerged out of the bus boycott. Let’s not forget that he was under constant threats of violence all through the 60s, well before the Poor People’s campaign became his focus.
Not to mention the many other individuals assassinated (Medger Evers, Malcolm, Fred Hampton, etc).
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They are wrong. 
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Would slavery have ended sooner if the union had never formed?
There’s been a couple times where I’ve asked a question in this forum and people have interpreted it to mean something other than “I don’t know the answer to this question and would like more authoritative people to chime in.” so please understand that to be the case here. I am not making an argument.
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If it had remained a British colony, it would have officially ended in 1807 when the British government ended slavery in the colonies.
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Would the British have ended slavery in 1807 if they were still in possession of wealthy slave holdings in America?
someone was arguing whether it was “necessary,” as if human beings could make choices about it
whatever, keep moving those goalposts
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They did when they had some pretty wealth slave holdings other places… but they just replaced it with “indentured” South East Asian labor, which was pretty much slavery anyway. It was a shell game to get the abolitionist off their backs and so they could take the high road over places like the Ottoman empire, which still had slavery.
EITHER WAY, this violent system of labor is NOT necessary. At all. Tom Cotton is a racist asshole who is wrong. He wants to continue various forms of exploitation against people who do not look like him, because he believes in them.
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Human beings did make choices about it.
Nah, he was.
I guess I was picturing a point after the American Revolution and before the adoption of the Constitution where the northern colonies and southern colonies decided they would rather be independent of each other because of this issue. It’s probably a dumb counterfactual question because to answer it you have to answer things like “Would the ununited states of America have won the war of 1812 and what effect would losing have had on slavery?” etc.
wheeeeeee!!! Sportsball!!!
Not the ones enslaved… they actually matter to this discussion, too, you know.
It didn’t happen, of course, and the southern colonies decided it was worth their while to stay. The real problems between the south and north emerged when enslavers expressed a desire to move slavery westward and had the political clout to do it.
I doubt two independent states would have lasted long.
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When I first read what Cotton said I interpreted it in much the same way you are. I think I was being much too charitable. But I still feel like there must be some sort of “Lost Cause” kind of reasoning that would allow him to say something like this without it sounding like he was saying something like “Canabalism during the Liberian Civil War was a necessary evil.” to himself.
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Many of them did just that by hiding money in Switzerland, loot and gold in various caves and dugouts around Europe, and a few with exit plans to South America, Africa, Israel, etc etc etc. They were all evil, but some of them were highly intelligent, twisted fucks. Eichmann evaded until 1960. Mengele until 1979.
A similar looting is occurring now. We haven’t quite gotten to the Endlösung der Judenfrage but the precursor is certainly occurring via these trillion dollar covid bills they keep passing.
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Yes. It’s called racism. Dude believes in white supremacy. It’s not much deeper than that. Cotton is about as deep as a puddle.
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Except that Cotton isn’t quite in the class of people that would come out and say “I believe that white people are superior to all other races” and not recognize that it would be problematic for his political ambitions. I’m confused as to why he didn’t see that this would be politically bad since its racism is very nearly as blatant. Or I’m confused as to why his constituents would reject my sentence and accept his.
Are you kidding? Have you seen the president? The GOP is openly in bed with white supremacists right now.
Bad with some, great with others.
Because some of them are racist, too, or at the very least care so little for the lives of people of color, that they are willing to align with racists to get what they want, which is destroying the remaining new deal state, because they believe it’s communism and will destroy their “freedoms.”
There are enough people who believe that white supremacy is a good and ethical world view to support people like Cotton. I am eternally frustrated as to how people are still unaware of this fact when it’s pretty much staring us right in the face on a daily basis at this point.
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I don’t disagree that the threat was always there…it just seems to me that when the Mudsill notion was threatened or LBJ’s old adage about folks needing someone to look down on was the threat turned to action. Even today that whole region is against unions or any way of leveling the playing field, even if it would help them and theirs. A threat to the order of things has to be dealt with. Stability and status have to be protected.
My point is that there were multiple attempts on his and his family well before the poor people’s campaign. James Earl Ray just happened to be the one who managed to kill him. He was a target from 58 onwards.
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Oh, pft i wish. I just mean it shows how they are struggling when so much of their advertising income comes from a business like that.
