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I understand the reasons for Civil War in 1860. We really did have two completely different cultures and economies, one of which was completely immoral, of course. What I see here is the utter failure of Reconstruction reaching its logical conclusion. We failed to complete 1...
the job in the south. We just gave up and let the former confederates come back and institute Jim Crow across the land. Now the descendants and intellectual progeny of the former slave holders and their allies have become the Trumpers of today. Just like in the old south, 2...
the slaveholding class whipped up the poor whites to fight by appealing to their common whiteness, Trump whips up today’s poor whites by appealing to the exact same thing. They use religion to bolster their argument, just like their forbears. This is all about feeling superior 3.
to somebody. Poor whites are made to demonize POC. They do so because they have literally nothing else to feel superior about. Alexis de Tocqueville understood something about the American character. He got that Americans are fundamentally intellectually lazy and are prone 4...
to demagoguery. We seek the easy answer and to feel better about ourselves without cause. This is also the origin of the myth of American Exceptionalism. It is a way for us to feel superior to other people based upon nothing other than the accident of geography at birth. 5...
We are witnessing the harnessing of all that is worst in us, our anti-intellectualism, demagoguery, hatred of others, our desire to feel superior without cause. The scary part here is that they appear to be winning. Even if we manage to avert this current crisis and get 6...
Joe Biden into the White House, it may not be enough. A light breeze could blow this house down in an instant at this point. And the fracturing of our society into echo chambers is exacerbating the problem. We no longer have a common culture. We are separated into armed camps 7..
that can see no good in the other side. Limbaugh talked of secession and I don’t think he was joking. But it is a secession he will have created by appealing to what is worst in us, rather than what is best. 8...
I fear that the genie is so far out of the bottle at this point that there may be no coming back from it. I hope I’m wrong.
