The slow grind and the big lie
It’s the economy, stupid!
A day before I wrote my last post, I got an email from a friend:
“Hello Zork.
Will is a Facebook friend of mine. We disagree on Climate Change (he is a Change zealot), and now he has been continually posting about the US election. It seems he has family in the States.
He is a professor at [….] He is a learned chap with very well-considered opinions - on anything.
I have been largely ignoring his election posts, but this morning his post includes a verbatim re-post of a Heather Cox Richardson post. I know you have well-considered views on her posts.
Would you kindly give me your views on W's post in general and Richardson's post specifically, please?
Rick”
…and the letter:
This campaign has been very stressful for me. Mostly because I have personal connections, friends and family, who in my eyes are supporting or at least tolerating a kleptocrat with fascist intent. I love them all dearly and I respect them, but their decisions not to call out what is so very clear to me that which needs to be called out, has baffled me into an existential crisis of faith.
Throughout this Heather Cox Richardson has been a beacon of light, making sense of the unsensible. Her final piece, where she explains why she still has hope might be the first step in my journey of recovery. I share it in its near-complete form in case you are having a similar crisis in your life. It is untitled, but if I were to title it that title would be "There is good reason for hope".
(then he quotes this post in its entirety: November 3, 2024 - by Heather Cox Richardson)
I don’t know how Will feels today, but I doubt that he is happy.
My post hopefully answered Rick’s question about @Heather Cox Richardson, but not specifically about the post. That’s what I want to remedy here.
Both of her posts I referenced received over 8,000 likes meaning that her writing clearly resonates with her readers. She is a manipulative propagandist, and a very talented one at that. I will not dissect the posts to analyze the morally questionable points made in it but I should address the main point, comparing the ‘crisis’ America has today with the civil war.
finishes her November 8th post with the following paragraphs:Even those poor white men who survived the war could not rebuild into prosperity. The war took from the South its monopoly of global cotton production, locking poor southerners into profound poverty from which they would not begin to recover until the 1930s, when the New Deal began to pour federal money into the region.
Today, when I received a slew of messages gloating that Trump had won the election and that Republican voters had owned the libs, I could not help but think of that earlier era when ordinary white men sold generations of economic aspirations for white supremacy and bragging rights.
An interesting take on history and the people of the South. “Selling their inspirations for white supremacy”. Just like today.
But we can look at that history:
The Libertarian Thomas DiLorenzo wrote three books highly critical of Lincoln. His points are quite convincing:
Slavery was not the primary cause of the civil war
Lincoln was the destroyer of the Union, not its savior
The civil war could have been easily avoided
The Confederate states did NOT start the war
Less than one hundred years after its revolution and gaining its independence, the young United States was not a significant economic power. British industry was far ahead of the American, which had serious difficulties competing with the better and cheaper products from Europe.
All industrial production was concentrated in the North.
The South had industrial agriculture, in the form of cotton production. The UK was NOT only their biggest market, but the primary source of all the agricultural machinery they needed.
Lincoln was a protectionist, and his campaign was financed by Northern industrialists in need of protection from UK competition. This protectionism was directly harming the Southern states. It made their imports more expensive while at the same time, they decreased demand for their products. The point of Lincoln’s policies was to help the North by economically destroying the South. Slavery was not even a secondary issue. Had the South won, they could have kept their dominant economic position. Even slavery would have ended eventually. The war was about money, power and control. Just like today, btw.
Here are a few facts to keep in mind:
Slavery was legal in five Union states; Delaware, Kentucky, Maryland, Missouri and West Virginia; before and during the war. Lincoln made absolutely no effort to end it. In Delaware and Kentucky, only the passage of the thirteenth amendment put an end to it.
The Emancipation Declaration was only demanding the abolition of slavery in the confederate states.
The war did NOT start by the attack on Fort Sumter, but by Union states refusing the confederate states’ demand for independence. The federal port and Custom house at Fort Sumter collected tariffs that benefited the North at the expense of the South. Once they declared their secession, the forth became an outpost of a hostile power.
Before the civil war, the United States was a voluntary union of free states. The end of the civil war marked the birth of the Imperial state with an ever-increasing role and power of the federal government.
The civil war was a war of independence and the South lost. Three quarter of its population never owned slaves.
It was Abraham Lincoln who destroyed the economic power and prospects of the Southern states, NOT the “ordinary white men …. for white supremacy and bragging rights.”
They wanted independence but ended up with subjugation and misery. The worst outcome was the living standards of the emancipated blacks. You can read about it in detail in Time On The Cross.
@Heather Cox Richardson is a historian specializing in American history. She is not stupid and she knows this. She is right in one point: there is a historical parallel.
Her dismissive condescension is exactly the same as the North had for the South, and what she has for the ordinary people who elected Donald Trump: an arrogant disregard for their real and actual concerns.
The little lies of @HCR are just the manure creating the fertile soil for the big ones, such as the misrepresentation of the causes of the civil war.
But let me make something very clear: I am not a historian and have very little interest in historic minutia, which seems to be the world of HCR. I want to understand, not to judge. Everything I pointed out here is just a Bing-chat away from anybody who cares to know. You can learn a lot from looking at the cartoons of the time like this one:
The victory of Trump was a victory for democracy, but I doubt that HCR or my friend’s friend Will would see it that way. What they hope for is democratcy, the capricious rule of well meaning and good intentioned arrogance.
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