I have neither the time, energy, nor inclination to waste keystrokes explaining the negative consequences of colonialism/imperialism to you.
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I guess the reason I am asking is that is seems like even if you accept all of his premises he is an idiot. Even if you believe that the White American Man is the glory of the universe and that the Constitution is blessed and that getting to that point was the entire meaning of the existence, slavery was not in any sense “necessary”. Defending slavery cannot be justified for any other reason than that you believe it is or was a good idea to be cruel and evil towards people who are not white.
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We have to stop this, because this is how we got Trump. We have to stop pretending like people in power are people we can easily ignore when they spread misinformation (like slavery and it’s still continuing aftermath is justifiable) and are not a clear danger to our country, our democracy, and to REAL human beings, because they ARE. Take them seriously, because their supporters do. These are elected officials. When they promote ideas such as slavery is justifiable in a public forum in the midst of one of the largest anti-racist uprisings since the classical civil rights movement, the go to probably shouldn’t be exploring his ideas, but pretty much condemnation…
Yes. I am quite aware, because I’ve been arguing this since my first post in this thread…
I am unsure why you’d ask questions that are undermining that point such as:
Your point here is NOT remotely clear.
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I don’t see how the question undermines my point. The answer you gave was the one I suspected but wasn’t sure of, namely that the colonies could exist just fine without slavery, that any possible foundation for Cotton’s assertion were unfounded and that his profound racism isn’t simply white supremacy but actual hatred towards Black people.
Your POINT was never clear to begin with.
And people have been saying that since the very beginning of the thread…
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I would have made my point clear from the beginning but I was actually unsure of the facts, which is why I asked. I hadn’t realized that asking questions to verify a point was so looked down on.
Is my point clear now?
Asking for people to develop counterfactuals is not the same as asking for facts. The fact here is that justifying slavery is a long term project by white supremacists, and Cotton is engaging in that action by seeking to call slavery a “necessary evil”. There really is no need to go over any and all alternatives to prove that as a fact.
If you’re interested in discussing counterfactuals, by all means, spin off a new thread to discuss that, as that’s encouraged and I’m sure plenty of people would love to discuss that. It’s just not germane to establishing the facts of this here, I’d argue, and in fact can entirely derail a very necessary conversation about history and it’s distortion, which, as a historian, is very important to me (and others here, I’m guessing, whose rights are on the line in these discussions).
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Like this?
God’s Love to Fallen Man John Wesley (1703–91)
But if you meant to describe that argument as justifying indifference towards evil, I’d say you were missing the point.
Among justifications that were historically used (and not cooked up in the minds of atheists sitting behind computer screens), there is the notion that a enslaved person working for a christian has heard the gospel, but a free person in Africa has not. (At least one slave narrative observes that evangelical slavers were crueler)
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All it has done is move the Democrats further to the Right, kept more Progressives at home, and ensured Republican power. And that’s how the DNC likes it. The Donors who are the heart of the Party want to see neo-liberal ratfuck-the-proles-a-little-slower business as usual and will cut off the money pipe if the Party moves even an inch in the other direction.
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Would it be such a bad thing if they hadn’t been?
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No. Especially if it would have relieved a great deal of human suffering.
Frankly I find Cotton’s statement so bizarre and alien that I was flailing to find any explanation for it. My desire to understand was probably too charitable.
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Here’'s what you need to know: Tom Cotton has always been a vicious racist. His own words over the course of his career show that he believes anyone who isn’t white isn’t fully human, that Black people are animals, and that slavery is a good thing.
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I reiterate:
This country would NOT have the wealth and power that it holds now in the 21st century, if it did not have an ugly and bloody history of exploitative chattel slavery which lasted for hundreds of years; people like Tom Cotton seek to justify and marginalize that atrocity.
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I think this has been a major problem, trying to see “both sides”, which is problematic if one side is, you know, racist and seeking to justify forms of racial oppression. No, we don’t always need to understand the nuance of “both sides” all the time, when it involves various forms of oppression of human beings.
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Please be very careful with how you interpret that statistic. In closed primary states, there are republicans who register as Dems and vice-versa, to try to throw tight primary races to spoilers.
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Seeing both sides means seeing the right side, then insisting on seeing the wrong side for “balance”. Every time a bothsideser sees oppression, they insist on hearing from the overrepresented group who doesn’t know or care about the oppression and has no dog in the fight, but who insists there’s no oppression regardless. Rather than question their misconceptions, they can’t understand that they don’t know everything and not everything is about them, so they shut down.
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Just to be clear, I wasn’t thinking “Maybe Tom Cotton has a good reason for hating black people.” I was thinking, “How on earth could anyone say this and not know that they are evil and if they do how do they live with themselves?”
Yes, engaging in such curiosity might not be useful but it shouldn’t be equated with both-sidesism.
Because they do not see such views as believe in white supremacy as “hating Black people” or as a moral failing. They do not see it as evil at all.
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