Excellent article this morning. I am one of those ‘60’s people who thought we had fixed everything. This November has become so consequentially important to a vast number of issues. But the pressure is building in the streets now and November is six months away.
You just made me think of how my thoughts of progress or regression turn on the treatment of black people. I was elated when Barack Obama was elected and so were my black friends - finally we had a black president! Then, George Floyd happened. I never was very interested in history or politics, but that event was so appalling it sent me off on a 5+ year study of how on earth something like that could happen. While eye-opening, it makes me extremely sad that there are so many people filled with hate - and especially those who say that they are Christian.
This reads the right move and draws the wrong lesson.
Callais is not a Confederacy revival. It is the terminal node of a forty-year institutional campaign: Federalist Society, state legislative capture, Shelby County, Brnovich, now this. Roberts has been working this file since the Reagan DOJ. The cost to the right was patience. The cost to the left was everything that compounds while you are not paying attention.
The complacency was not cultural overconfidence. It was a category error. Liberals optimized for symbols. The right optimized for maps, courts, and election machinery. Symbols do not compound. Procedural control does.
Statues come down and go back up. District lines, once redrawn under a gutted VRA, do not.
The two most erroneous and damaging liberal assumptions were that everyone would play by the rules — turns out playing by the rules leaves you with a limited toolbox for opposition — and that everyone still lived in the reality-based community, and therefore shared the same views and values. These two assumptions are related.
If Steven Spielberg has one more film in him, I wish that he would make one that would follow the outcome of the Civil War with the North and the South becoming two different nations after the Union wins the war. I can just imagine how poverty would skyrocket in the South, people of color would be trying to sneak into the North over a wall the South would build, Mexico building a wall to protect them from Southerners from trying to get across the border, all leading to an inevitable internal war with the slaveholders and monied class being overthrown. It could end with a subtle and powerful courtroom case, with a White slaveholder being tried, and in the final moments, the camera reveals that the jury is entirely Black.
That photo of the Confederate flag in the Capitol where it had never been before is an image I'll never forget. The filthy ideology that flag represents; the filthy traitor who carried it; the filth his boots tracked in on our Constitution.
This piece is spot on. Having just returned to Maine (home of Joshua Chamberlain, no less ) from a two month bike tour of the south I was surprised at how many markers of the confederacy I ran into Just by chance. I could not help but feel the confederate vibe all over mostly the rural south. Not so much in New Orleans or Austin. Thank you Paul for this piece.
You triggered a memory. I was brought up in upstate New York and joined the Marine Corps in 1978. I went to OCS in Quantico, VA. When we graduated and finally got a chance to go off base, I was referred to as a Yankee and they were still talking about the Civil War. I couldn’t believe it! “Wasn’t that over 100 years ago?” my puzzled young self asked to myself. And further, they were proud to be traitors and apparently slaveholders. I say let them secede. We would be better off without them.
Oooooooo Rah, Alexandra. Graduated Boot Camp, Paris Island in spring of ‘76. First duty station Naval Air Base Meridian, MS. Same awakening, same realizations.
An important piece. Looking at this from a transnational historic and geopolitical lens makes it even scarier: as the Great War of empires was nearly ready to explode and into the Interwar period these neo confederates found synergy and even alliances with right wing, antisemitic, white supremacist regimes that peaked with an outright Nazi movement in the US that simply slunk back under a rock on December 7, 1941. At the end of World War II the conservative administrations literally recruited Nazis, most obviously in Operation Paperclip, to work in our most sensitive agencies in the government.
The neo-Confederacy surge is the local variety of a larger right wing, anti-enlightenment, pro 'but mah feelin's!' fascistic resurgence globally.
"One lesson to take from this abysmal moment is that no victory is permanent and politics never ends." Paul's excellent article captures the time we're in. The struggle continues, and we will stay in it.
Two excellent reads in understanding how this happened are the late Tony Horwitz's "Confederates in the Attic," and Heather Cox Richardson's "How the South Win the Civil War."
I have a partly Southern background on one side of the family, and spent my early childhood in rural Virginia, but was awakened by being a teen-ager at the height of the Civil Rights movement. Reading "Confederates in the Attic" made me realize I had not understood how much the white South still clung to its racist customs and beliefs. It's eye-opening for liberals who believed progress was permanent.
I'm still reading Richardson's 2020 book. As usual, she pulls together historical threads in ways I hadn't thought of before. The title alone shocked me.
The behavior of the Southern legislatures this week shows us just how right she was.
The conservatives on SCOTUS will appoint Clarence Thomas as their Grand Dragon to prove they aren't racists. Bur dems let this all happen with weak messaging, squishy, compromised, and corporate sponsored candidates. The only good thing about trump's policies is that they will harm more maga, more poorly educated, ad more of the GOP base. It might come to a point where the dimmest of the dim might realize they are being bamboozled, conned, and scammed to the point where a light of awareness starts to flicker. They may finally realize that destroying the lives of others, is also destroying their own lives.
If and when we manage to get out of this, we need to do a re-enactment of Sherman's March to the sea. Except we march the Republicans into the sea for real this time so we don't have to do this shit again in the future.
We didn’t punish the South enough the first time. It’s time to give governance of Southern states over to non-whites. Any complaints about losing representation can be met with: “Yeah, and how does it feel? Deal with it.”
Excellent article this morning. I am one of those ‘60’s people who thought we had fixed everything. This November has become so consequentially important to a vast number of issues. But the pressure is building in the streets now and November is six months away.
You just made me think of how my thoughts of progress or regression turn on the treatment of black people. I was elated when Barack Obama was elected and so were my black friends - finally we had a black president! Then, George Floyd happened. I never was very interested in history or politics, but that event was so appalling it sent me off on a 5+ year study of how on earth something like that could happen. While eye-opening, it makes me extremely sad that there are so many people filled with hate - and especially those who say that they are Christian.
If they hold that much hate there is no way they are true Christians.
This reads the right move and draws the wrong lesson.
Callais is not a Confederacy revival. It is the terminal node of a forty-year institutional campaign: Federalist Society, state legislative capture, Shelby County, Brnovich, now this. Roberts has been working this file since the Reagan DOJ. The cost to the right was patience. The cost to the left was everything that compounds while you are not paying attention.
The complacency was not cultural overconfidence. It was a category error. Liberals optimized for symbols. The right optimized for maps, courts, and election machinery. Symbols do not compound. Procedural control does.
Statues come down and go back up. District lines, once redrawn under a gutted VRA, do not.
Johan 🐌
The two most erroneous and damaging liberal assumptions were that everyone would play by the rules — turns out playing by the rules leaves you with a limited toolbox for opposition — and that everyone still lived in the reality-based community, and therefore shared the same views and values. These two assumptions are related.
Rules are for suckers and losers?
Agreed! As I note below, the South has been waging Cold War for some 161 years now.
Pretty sure they’d also like to take a shot at the 1770s
Indeed, property doesn’t vote …
If Steven Spielberg has one more film in him, I wish that he would make one that would follow the outcome of the Civil War with the North and the South becoming two different nations after the Union wins the war. I can just imagine how poverty would skyrocket in the South, people of color would be trying to sneak into the North over a wall the South would build, Mexico building a wall to protect them from Southerners from trying to get across the border, all leading to an inevitable internal war with the slaveholders and monied class being overthrown. It could end with a subtle and powerful courtroom case, with a White slaveholder being tried, and in the final moments, the camera reveals that the jury is entirely Black.
That photo of the Confederate flag in the Capitol where it had never been before is an image I'll never forget. The filthy ideology that flag represents; the filthy traitor who carried it; the filth his boots tracked in on our Constitution.
This piece is spot on. Having just returned to Maine (home of Joshua Chamberlain, no less ) from a two month bike tour of the south I was surprised at how many markers of the confederacy I ran into Just by chance. I could not help but feel the confederate vibe all over mostly the rural south. Not so much in New Orleans or Austin. Thank you Paul for this piece.
You triggered a memory. I was brought up in upstate New York and joined the Marine Corps in 1978. I went to OCS in Quantico, VA. When we graduated and finally got a chance to go off base, I was referred to as a Yankee and they were still talking about the Civil War. I couldn’t believe it! “Wasn’t that over 100 years ago?” my puzzled young self asked to myself. And further, they were proud to be traitors and apparently slaveholders. I say let them secede. We would be better off without them.
Oooooooo Rah, Alexandra. Graduated Boot Camp, Paris Island in spring of ‘76. First duty station Naval Air Base Meridian, MS. Same awakening, same realizations.
Rises again? The Confederacy has been conducting a Cold War ever since Appomattox.
An important piece. Looking at this from a transnational historic and geopolitical lens makes it even scarier: as the Great War of empires was nearly ready to explode and into the Interwar period these neo confederates found synergy and even alliances with right wing, antisemitic, white supremacist regimes that peaked with an outright Nazi movement in the US that simply slunk back under a rock on December 7, 1941. At the end of World War II the conservative administrations literally recruited Nazis, most obviously in Operation Paperclip, to work in our most sensitive agencies in the government.
The neo-Confederacy surge is the local variety of a larger right wing, anti-enlightenment, pro 'but mah feelin's!' fascistic resurgence globally.
The Dark Ages will be what they achieve.🤬
And they’ll like it!
Hmm, quick reminder: One of Donald Trump’s first appearances in court was his being indicted, along with Dad, for discriminatory renting.
"One lesson to take from this abysmal moment is that no victory is permanent and politics never ends." Paul's excellent article captures the time we're in. The struggle continues, and we will stay in it.
Two excellent reads in understanding how this happened are the late Tony Horwitz's "Confederates in the Attic," and Heather Cox Richardson's "How the South Win the Civil War."
I have a partly Southern background on one side of the family, and spent my early childhood in rural Virginia, but was awakened by being a teen-ager at the height of the Civil Rights movement. Reading "Confederates in the Attic" made me realize I had not understood how much the white South still clung to its racist customs and beliefs. It's eye-opening for liberals who believed progress was permanent.
I'm still reading Richardson's 2020 book. As usual, she pulls together historical threads in ways I hadn't thought of before. The title alone shocked me.
The behavior of the Southern legislatures this week shows us just how right she was.
Well done. Terrifying and depressing. Thanks for ending in a hopeful note.
The conservatives on SCOTUS will appoint Clarence Thomas as their Grand Dragon to prove they aren't racists. Bur dems let this all happen with weak messaging, squishy, compromised, and corporate sponsored candidates. The only good thing about trump's policies is that they will harm more maga, more poorly educated, ad more of the GOP base. It might come to a point where the dimmest of the dim might realize they are being bamboozled, conned, and scammed to the point where a light of awareness starts to flicker. They may finally realize that destroying the lives of others, is also destroying their own lives.
Sadly I think that's a price they're willing to bear if it means victory over us evil libs.
If and when we manage to get out of this, we need to do a re-enactment of Sherman's March to the sea. Except we march the Republicans into the sea for real this time so we don't have to do this shit again in the future.
We didn’t punish the South enough the first time. It’s time to give governance of Southern states over to non-whites. Any complaints about losing representation can be met with: “Yeah, and how does it feel? Deal with it.”