Yes I fully agree, and thank you for the conversation. However I am deeply cynical American society will excise their fascist tumor since they have such a long history of refusing to punish criminals, enforce laws, and enact meaningful reform.
The war was inevitable by the time Buchanan took office. He could have forestalled it or prepared the Union for it more adequately, and deserves blame for basically doing neither of those things, but he isn’t a direct cause. In fact, many of his political options for corralling the South in the antebellum period could have caused the war to start earlier than it did. It’s just a personal belief of mine that he gets more hate than he really deserves, especially compared to people who could have easily been better like Johnson.
It certainly wouldn’t have gone perfectly but I think the best evidence that it would have eventually worked out for the better is how much political power former slaves had shortly after the Civil War ended while Reconstruction, in whatever diluted form, was actually being attempted. This is the period we get the first black senator, Hiram Revels from Mississippi. Further, In 1868 black Americans made up a majority of the South Carolina’s state legislature and opened the South’s first public school system. Former slaves started taking up tons of local political offices as well. They wielded true local political power and although there were still racists opposed to their inclusion in society, it was much harder to extract former slaves from that society and subjugate them again. Once federal troops withdrew from the South all of these reforms were taken away, violently and illegally, by the people who weren’t punished under Johnson, the violence and subjugation became much easier. This is how we get Jim Crow etc.
I mean, if this period had gone on for long enough for white Southerners to benefit from it, maybe a generation or so, we wouldn’t even have the modern Republican party since it only exists today as an extension of white Southern racism that was enabled by Johnson. Instead, we get generation after generation of white Southern children being indoctrinated into racist beliefs because the leaders of the Confederacy were allowed to spread their hateful ideals throughout their society after they lost the war. We’d live in a much more egalitarian society as a whole if that hadn’t happened. Again, not without its problems, but we would have solved the major problem. It’s most of my issue with people today jumping to Trump being the worst president, not only is it recency bias but he’s just the obvious result of decisions made by Johnson et. al. during Reconstruction.
If Reconstruction had proceeded properly, the United States would have hung all of the Confederate officers and government officials and at least pulled up the root of the problems in the South. Johnson allowed them to fester and re-emerge, and we have been living with those problems since.
Not punishing heinous crimes like chattel slavery and violent insurrection is how we get precedent for not punishing even more crimes. Like Ford pardoning Nixon so “the country can heal” and then Reagan using that precedent for Iran-Contra and then Bush using that precedent to steal the 2000 election and commit the US illegally in Iraq etc etc. And now Trump realizing that laws don’t matter at all and doing whatever he wants with impunity. Most of the Supreme Court justices are direct descendants of politics Johnson enabled. Roberts clerked for Rehnquist ffs, an avowed segregationist who wouldn’t have been politically viable if Reconstruction had succeeded.
Andrew Johnson was by far the worst of all time for sabotaging Reconstruction. Basically every problem we have now including Trump/fascism is a direct result of Johnson’s actions.
and so you never pick one up unless you intend to kill.
This is a bit overdramatic as many gun owners have only ever shot at targets on ranges
New Hampshire is a joke. They’re the only state in New England without recreational cannabis and their license plates say “Live Free or Die”. They also have the second highest property taxes in the country. Their libertarian enclaves get overrun by bears because they’ve cut town budgets so much there’s no money for garbage collection. Nothing they do there is surprising.
I would think someone alive during Jim Crow would remember Kent State
It sounded like you wanted a concrete example within living memory
I’m not saying not to do it, I’m saying you can’t just call for something on the internet and expect it to materialize out of nothing.
I’d also maybe suggest we stop using the term “general strike” when we mean “protest”
You have to build the ground work for that first. How do you feed people indefinitely when stores are closed, trucks aren’t moving, etc? You need a massive mutual aid network and solidarity. We don’t really have anything approaching that in the US
Is “remain ‘impartial’ to political agendas” a dogwhistle for “tolerates Nazis” or have I just become too cynical
FYI the Superbowl is a great time to go to the grocery store. I mark it on my calendar so I don’t forget
Yes they can but they’ll only do it when they’re sucking up to federal law enforcement
It’s a good message for the non-insane, but anyone still pro-Trump will just tell themselves that we haven’t gotten rid of enough gays/immigrants/trans people yet for the country to be as great as it once was in some imagined past. In that light the sign has an ambiguous interpretation
Idk about the others but old Angus just won reelection so he has like five years left in his term, and by then he’ll be around 107 years old so I don’t think he really gives af
His kid is trying to run for governor though so call him up and ask if being a coward runs in the family
Tell that to the squirrels that used to be in my backyard
A strike with an end date is not a strike
It would be weird for the guy who only speaks in metaphor to not use a metaphor this one time.
Really this is just a modern reinterpretation of this verse that lets people drive their Mercedes from their gated community once a week to church and not feel bad about it