Remember that the game the GQP/tRumpers/Reich Wingers is the game of “no hope”, when we lose hope for the future, they win. To resist is to hold out no matter what the circumstances, don’t let them steal/rob your soul. This is a long haul my friends, buckle up we’re in for a for an ugly ride.
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ETA: One of my favorite musicals has always been Man of LaMancha. And the idea of completely selling out for what appears to be a hopeless cause. Like, you know, this.
To be willing to march into hell, for the heavenly cause.
Yeah, that would be my jam.
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Agreed, 100%. We have one kid still at home, and he’s in his mid-teens. I look at parents of kids in the 8-10 range and I cannot imagine how much harder it is for them, even with only a few short years separating us.
Also, @dnealy this remains (IMHO) one of the best books on Reconstruction ever written: Eric Foner’s Reconstruction; America’s Unfinished Revolution, 1863-1877.
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slavery; however, was always on the minds of the southern states. i’ve read most of the ordinances of secession passed by the various state legislatures and all but one or two make it absolutely clear that they were seceding in order to maintain slavery. to misquote a more recent southern politician they were all about “slavery now, slavery tomorrow, slavery forever!” and they weren’t bashful about putting it into the legal documents they were using to leave the union.
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You can hate a lot about the Southern leaders, but they were quite literate, quite unashamed of their bigotry, and left extensive written records of just exactly how racist they were and how central slavery was to their cause. If only the revisionists were willing to actually read what their heroes wrote, but that would gum up the whole “revisionist” thing, now wouldn’t it?
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The way I always relate this to modern-day Confederate apologists is that at least Confederate leaders back then had the courage to admit what they were about. Cowards today try to hide it.
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Not at the outset, but it became that, and at least some union soldiers came to take pride in that, too.
As shown by their own words.
Yeah, Foner is great.
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I saw him give a talk for some anniversary of the publication of the book. An audience member talked about the “brilliant” title–“Unfinished Revolution”–that kind of draws the reader in, setting the tone for the book. He laughed and said that the publisher tacked that on without telling him. He missed it when he signed the contract and it was on its way out before he knew what was up. But he liked it so he didn’t fight it.
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Wow! Annoying! But it worked as a title, so…
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Sort of related: there’s some pretty scary stuff in the news about how a milita-backed extremist group in Shasta County California just won power through a recall effort. This National split definitely isn’t along state borders this time around.
(The group does love their confederate flags though, so some things never change.)
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Yeah those “State of Jefferson” nuts and like-minded militants in rural NorCal are a much bigger (and more organized) threat than most people realize.
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But cAliForniA is bLuE!!! hOw cAn iT HapPeN there? iT’s OnlY soUtheneRs wHo aRe rAciSt!!! /s
By the time we understand that this is a nation-wide problem, it will be too late. These groups have long been in out west. Let’s not forget that until recently, CA was pretty reliably Republican and that in the modern era, 2 of our presidents who were GOP got their start in CA… And southern California was a key area for the rise of the modern right, with far right groups like the John Birch society getting their claws into politics there. That doesn’t even get into the more violent activity by the far right, which this is a direct connection to.
Thanks for posting this!
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When I talked above about “regular cut-offs of water and power” in a civil war scenario, these are the people who’ll be taking over or blowing up aqueducts and power lines that serve the rest of the state. I’ve been through Redding and it’s hardcore right-wing ammosexual territory with no love for either Sacramento or the “coastal elites” of the Bay Area and L.A.
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black americans had to deal with that after reconstruction failed. violent militias, mob violence, assassinations and murder, condoned or even led by local authorities while the federal government at it’s very best looked the other way
i think we could call that a long simmering second civil war… but we don’t because whites weren’t the target, and whites controlled the narrative
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as a continuation of the whole “there’s an xkcd for everything” i remember in the aftermath of 2020 he did a map showing how there were more trump voters in california and new york than there were in georgia and how there were more biden voters in texas than there were in washing state or pennsylvania.
it’s truly remarkable how widely distributed both democrats and death-cultists are. during the american civil was there were a few from the south who fought for the north and vice-versa
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This is what I point out to Republicans who think that a direct election would be unfair due to states like CA all voting for Democrats. They act like the whole state is Democrats. There are more Republican voters in CA than some states have people. And even though CA usually votes Democrat in a national election, how many Republican voters stay home because there is no way their vote will count for the Electoral college? (And vice versa).
I think a direct vote for president would create more of an incentive for everyone to vote in national elections.
Maybe. 
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Perhaps more importantly, it would also create an incentive for politicians to cater to the wants and needs of their constituents. Right no presidential candidates of either party have been working very hard to earn the support of California Republicans or Ohio Democrats.because those votes are unlikely to make any difference. The Republicans of California may have different priorities than Iowan corn farmers, and the Democrats of Ohio might have different priorities than the ones from Nevada and Arizona, but there’s little incentive to even find out what those priorities are.
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As a realist, I’m going to say the ‘civil war’ is very much evitable and not even particularly upcoming.
