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Susanna's avatar

Great column. I’d like to point out that while slavery may have been engineered by a “small minority of white people [who] were once brutal slaveholders,” it was maintained by the whole populations of the slave states—i.e today’s red states. It was a group effort and still is with the racist right wing GOP the engineers. It’s disgusting.

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Teach1's avatar

We now live in the Deep South, by choice, for a variety of reasons; the people are decent, polite and many go to church. A lot of people here like to live in the country-side, because they can't abide what they see in our big cities. Surprisingly a lot of people have intelligent conversations about politics and the ridiculous behavior of the legislative branch's elected members, and surprisingly many areas used to vote overwhelmingly Democratic tickets in the Deep South:

"In 1960, all 22 U.S. Senators from the South were affiliated with the Democratic Party. Today, all but three are Republican.[i] For decades, historians and other researchers have debated what drove the exodus of white Southern voters from the Democratic Party. Were they turned away primarily by economic self-interest? Or did they abandon the party because they came to view it as too progressive on issues of racial equality?" (https://economics.princeton dot edu/working-papers/why-did-the-democrats-lose-the-south-bringing-new-data-to-an-old-debate/).

Obviously the The US Democratic Party deliberately adopted a platform that alienated the majority of the voters in the US South. There is no excuse for that bit of arrogance.

However, Mr. Hartman is absolutely correct, when he states that:

"Name one single piece of legislation since 1980 that has been proposed by Republicans, passed a Republican-controlled Congress, and been signed into law by a Republican President that primarily helps working or poor Americans more than it does fat-cats on Wall Street, polluting industries, or billionaire industrialists"

Somehow, in a practical and respectful way, we need to figure out how to have conversations and determine how we can put our country back together again. There are many fringe positions in both camps that are sincere issues that we, perhaps, could agree to leave alone until we have, for example: 1. A federal voting bill with a guaranteed, secure Vote-by-Mail system, 2. Medicare for all, and 3. A public service system trading two years of service for all young people at age 18 for a free college and trades education.

Mr. Hartman suggests "It’s all theater to distract us..." So, instead of voters accepting as "news" and "investigative journalism" from the current corporate media outlets, why are we not seeing thousands of passionate young people create local digital news outlets? The www dot commondreams.org does an excellent national model staffed by young volunteers, completely advertising free and donation supported; why can't every county and every city have something like that?

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