Today’s GOP, under Trumpism, is as real a threat to the survival of our republic as was the 1860's Confederacy and reflects a worldview grounded in the white supremacy of the American south
Thank you for adding to this concept on our history of repeated coup attempts. From the plantation oligarchs of slavery, who started the Civil War, to the oligarchs of the industrial age, who planned to remove FDR in 1934 with a military coup led by retired Marine general Smedley Butler, to the oligarchs and their lackeys of today, who attempted to reinstate the losser of the 2020 election on 1/6/2021, we have a historical pattern that we haven't learned how to end. "It's all about America’s ongoing battle between oligarchy and democracy."
My first reading of this history was detailed in How The South Won the Civil War, by Heather Cox Richardson, which I didn't see referenced in your post.
"Yes, the Civil War brought an end to the slave order of the South and the rule of the plantation oligarchs who embodied white supremacy. But the Northern victory was short lived — Southern ideals spread quickly to the West. It's all about America’s ongoing battle between oligarchy and democracy."
When you have time check out this book and please consider why our system keeps repeating this cycle. Why do oligarchs keep regaining power - each time more powerful than the last time? Something in our system needs to change.
Consider changes to our authoritarian economic system - which empowers the oligarchs and allows them to buy critical parts of our government, which then passes laws to protect the oligarchs. Can we make our economic system more democratic as suggested by Professor Richard Wolff?
I think we need more than unions. Union reps need to be members of corporate boards of directors, as in Germany. We need to repeal Taft-Hartley. We need to make the work place more democratic. Maximizing that power shift will require additional pro-labor laws. One such law would promote the creation of worker owned coops and enable the conversion of monopolies into multiple coops.
Coops eliminate the adversarial employer/employee relationship by finally eliminating the employer and, more importantly, eliminating those excessively wealthy oligarchs who buy/destroy democratic political systems to preserve their excesses like wage theft.
We need a democratic economic system that reenforces our democratic political system and vice versa.
Such comparisons rarely apply across the board, if you look too close, so we want to look at where the Confederacy and the NaziRepublican Cult align, intersect, or don't touch to compare the model.
Intersection: There are numerous points of intersection - where they only agree on one aspect of something, with everything else different. One example, most supporters of both were/are white, but today support mostly comes from highly gullible, misinformed, and barely educated whites, with educated southern whites mostly Democrats, while in 1860 the main supporters were educated whites taking advantage of highly gullible, misinformed, and barely educated whites.
No connections: There are a number of areas that don't touch, like economics. The south is no longer a single commodity economy.
Alignment: Finally, we look at alignment, where the two societies lie totally on the same line. Mostly, they do indeed align, particularly when it comes to lack of human decency, morals, and ethics. Thom lays out about a dozen MAJOR areas of alignment, but that's a writer's method to not overwhelm and lose the reader, I'm sure Thom could lay out 50 more areas they are similar, if not identical
Yes, this their Confederacy has crossed my mind also, pictorially in my mind as all of those states so strongly defining themselves by this different reality.
This is the perfect time to say "you ain't just whistlin' Dixie", Thom.
There are lots of definitions for confederacy, but I like this one from the Oxford: "an alliance of people or groups formed for an illicit purpose". These actions you have listed then and now are morally bankrupt and illicit. The people involved past and present are very enthusiastic about what they perceive to be a rebellious way of life. They do what they do because they like it, and don't care about who they hurt because hurting is what they are all about. It's what they feed on.
Trumpism without Trump has been discussed in the mainstream a little. I wish I had been in the room the first time he heard that! He thinks he owns Dixie and the Republicans. I hope Georgia slays today, this fall, and in 2024. They already kicked some Republican ass in 2020. Georgia on My Mind is a better song by far.
Why yes definitely you can have Trumpism without Trump. Argentina has long had Peronism with Peron, and that is generally a right wing corporatist approach which could drift into fascism, so there may be some parallels here. Other states and parties have claimed similar legitimacy from a founder, such as the Soviet Union--at least in theory--using Leinism as a foundation. Such labels can of course be very elastic.
But to go to the Confederacy analogy, there is a very close parallel now developing. As part of the compromise of 1850 a much stronger Fugitive Slave Act was passed. It basically allowed people of color who were accused of being runaways to be dragged off Northern streets and sent south without a trial. Citizens and officials were supposed to help in this on pain of imprisonment and fine.
Obviously massive resistance occurred. The Underground Railroad was extended to Canada and some states nullified the law while mobs occasionally freed people awaiting deportation. But this is exactly the same scenario we could see if Roe v. Wade is overturned and states pass threatened laws criminalizing citizens who go to other places for abortions. People (at least those with enough understanding and money to do so) will flee conservative states and if warrants are enforced may then have to leave the country, as perhaps will those performing the abortions. Some progressive jurisdictions will refuse to support these efforts and the country will be split in yet another way. Women who want control of their bodies will be the new enslaved class.
How do the Trumpist cons/Republicans "Regulate school curriculum to promote a racist worldview"? From what or where do they derive that phenomenal capability? It comes initially from authority granted to petty officials, bureaucrats, "educationists", and supposed expert curriculum designers by the state. The state is in the driver's seat solely for one reason and by virtue of one mechanism only. Compulsory attendance laws substitute control and the definition of education for authentic education, which is an ineffable personal attribute that cannot be forced upon anyone and cannot be gifted to anyone via a government or established institution or organization. Under mandated schooling the mechanisms are firmly in place to make obedience, conformity, passivity, self-deprecation or guilt and shame for its failures, and competition the means by which ignorance and arrogance replace knowledge. This is where it all starts and where it all ends unless these paternalistic and unconstitutional laws are eradicated. Authoritarianism is the logical end product of sustained and enduring arbitrary authority over parents and children.
Thom,
Thank you for adding to this concept on our history of repeated coup attempts. From the plantation oligarchs of slavery, who started the Civil War, to the oligarchs of the industrial age, who planned to remove FDR in 1934 with a military coup led by retired Marine general Smedley Butler, to the oligarchs and their lackeys of today, who attempted to reinstate the losser of the 2020 election on 1/6/2021, we have a historical pattern that we haven't learned how to end. "It's all about America’s ongoing battle between oligarchy and democracy."
My first reading of this history was detailed in How The South Won the Civil War, by Heather Cox Richardson, which I didn't see referenced in your post.
https://billmoyers.com/story/bill-talks-with-heather-cox-richardson-about-how-the-south-won-the-civil-war/
"Yes, the Civil War brought an end to the slave order of the South and the rule of the plantation oligarchs who embodied white supremacy. But the Northern victory was short lived — Southern ideals spread quickly to the West. It's all about America’s ongoing battle between oligarchy and democracy."
When you have time check out this book and please consider why our system keeps repeating this cycle. Why do oligarchs keep regaining power - each time more powerful than the last time? Something in our system needs to change.
Consider changes to our authoritarian economic system - which empowers the oligarchs and allows them to buy critical parts of our government, which then passes laws to protect the oligarchs. Can we make our economic system more democratic as suggested by Professor Richard Wolff?
https://www.democracyatwork.info
I think we need more than unions. Union reps need to be members of corporate boards of directors, as in Germany. We need to repeal Taft-Hartley. We need to make the work place more democratic. Maximizing that power shift will require additional pro-labor laws. One such law would promote the creation of worker owned coops and enable the conversion of monopolies into multiple coops.
Coops eliminate the adversarial employer/employee relationship by finally eliminating the employer and, more importantly, eliminating those excessively wealthy oligarchs who buy/destroy democratic political systems to preserve their excesses like wage theft.
We need a democratic economic system that reenforces our democratic political system and vice versa.
I’ve been saying for about a decade that the GOP is becoming the new Confederacy. Have been ridiculed for my comments, but, here we are.
Such comparisons rarely apply across the board, if you look too close, so we want to look at where the Confederacy and the NaziRepublican Cult align, intersect, or don't touch to compare the model.
Intersection: There are numerous points of intersection - where they only agree on one aspect of something, with everything else different. One example, most supporters of both were/are white, but today support mostly comes from highly gullible, misinformed, and barely educated whites, with educated southern whites mostly Democrats, while in 1860 the main supporters were educated whites taking advantage of highly gullible, misinformed, and barely educated whites.
No connections: There are a number of areas that don't touch, like economics. The south is no longer a single commodity economy.
Alignment: Finally, we look at alignment, where the two societies lie totally on the same line. Mostly, they do indeed align, particularly when it comes to lack of human decency, morals, and ethics. Thom lays out about a dozen MAJOR areas of alignment, but that's a writer's method to not overwhelm and lose the reader, I'm sure Thom could lay out 50 more areas they are similar, if not identical
Yes, this their Confederacy has crossed my mind also, pictorially in my mind as all of those states so strongly defining themselves by this different reality.
Steve Schmidt was correct when he said the Republican Party should be burnt to the ground.
This is the perfect time to say "you ain't just whistlin' Dixie", Thom.
There are lots of definitions for confederacy, but I like this one from the Oxford: "an alliance of people or groups formed for an illicit purpose". These actions you have listed then and now are morally bankrupt and illicit. The people involved past and present are very enthusiastic about what they perceive to be a rebellious way of life. They do what they do because they like it, and don't care about who they hurt because hurting is what they are all about. It's what they feed on.
Trumpism without Trump has been discussed in the mainstream a little. I wish I had been in the room the first time he heard that! He thinks he owns Dixie and the Republicans. I hope Georgia slays today, this fall, and in 2024. They already kicked some Republican ass in 2020. Georgia on My Mind is a better song by far.
Why yes definitely you can have Trumpism without Trump. Argentina has long had Peronism with Peron, and that is generally a right wing corporatist approach which could drift into fascism, so there may be some parallels here. Other states and parties have claimed similar legitimacy from a founder, such as the Soviet Union--at least in theory--using Leinism as a foundation. Such labels can of course be very elastic.
But to go to the Confederacy analogy, there is a very close parallel now developing. As part of the compromise of 1850 a much stronger Fugitive Slave Act was passed. It basically allowed people of color who were accused of being runaways to be dragged off Northern streets and sent south without a trial. Citizens and officials were supposed to help in this on pain of imprisonment and fine.
Obviously massive resistance occurred. The Underground Railroad was extended to Canada and some states nullified the law while mobs occasionally freed people awaiting deportation. But this is exactly the same scenario we could see if Roe v. Wade is overturned and states pass threatened laws criminalizing citizens who go to other places for abortions. People (at least those with enough understanding and money to do so) will flee conservative states and if warrants are enforced may then have to leave the country, as perhaps will those performing the abortions. Some progressive jurisdictions will refuse to support these efforts and the country will be split in yet another way. Women who want control of their bodies will be the new enslaved class.
How do the Trumpist cons/Republicans "Regulate school curriculum to promote a racist worldview"? From what or where do they derive that phenomenal capability? It comes initially from authority granted to petty officials, bureaucrats, "educationists", and supposed expert curriculum designers by the state. The state is in the driver's seat solely for one reason and by virtue of one mechanism only. Compulsory attendance laws substitute control and the definition of education for authentic education, which is an ineffable personal attribute that cannot be forced upon anyone and cannot be gifted to anyone via a government or established institution or organization. Under mandated schooling the mechanisms are firmly in place to make obedience, conformity, passivity, self-deprecation or guilt and shame for its failures, and competition the means by which ignorance and arrogance replace knowledge. This is where it all starts and where it all ends unless these paternalistic and unconstitutional laws are eradicated. Authoritarianism is the logical end product of sustained and enduring arbitrary authority over parents and children.