Just when I think Americans can’t get any stupider, I read shit like this:
TheCivil War, the most wrenching and bloody episode in American history, may not seem like much of a cause for celebration, especially in the South.
And yet, as the 150th anniversary of the four-year conflict gets under way, some groups in the oldConfederacy are planning at least a certain amount of hoopla, chiefly around the glory days of secession, when 11 states declared their sovereignty under a banner of states’ rights and broke from the union.
The events include a “secession ball” in the former slave port of Charleston (“a joyous night of music, dancing, food and drink,” says the invitation), which will be replicated on a smaller scale in other cities. A parade is being planned in Montgomery, Ala., along with a mock swearing-in of Jefferson Davis as president of the Confederacy.
A secession ball? Will the local debutantes take turns playing slave auctioneer? Probably not: the Confederate nostalgia buffs always skip that pesky detail about the Civil War. I think they should have screenings ofThe Klansman (akaThe Birth Of A Nation) and laud it for its “historical accuracy.” As vile as DW Griffith and Thomas Dixon’s racist views were, they at least admitted that race was a factor in the war and its aftermath. The Sons of the Confederacy and their ilk pretend that the “the war between the states” was about states rights and being left alone to drink mint juleps. Not so, it all boiled down to the right of some cracker to own other human beings.
I can’t wait to hear the Southern teabagger spin on the 150th Anniversary. Who knows someone may even stage a re-creation of the Lincoln assassination and declare John Wilkes Booth a martyr. Oh, I’ll guess they’ll have to wait until the 150th anniversary of the Confederacy getting its ass kicked.
It’s moonlight and magnolias gone mad. I’ll defer to my friends from Georgia when it comes to bashing the looniness within their borders but I have a suggestion for the South Carolina legislature. Y’all need a new state nickname and the one I have in mind involves a minor change. It’s time for you to become the Palmetto Buggy state because you lot have gone barking mad.
Why, it’s the 150th anniversary of the South as home to a bunch of racist, treasonous LOSERS.
Time to burn some confederate flags in celebration!
Having been educated in both the north and the south, I can see both sides of the coin. In the north, the civil war is almost exclusively portrayed as being about slavery. In the south, it is mostly portrayed about states rights. From the northern perspective, the war was about freedom from being owned by another human being. From the southern perspective, it was about freedom from the north imposing its political and economic might on the south.
History has, I’m happy to say, sided with the north. But it hasn’t always been that way, and, indeed, it has only been within my lifetime that people of different colors were even allowed to be married.
And, believe me, having been in an interracial relationship for a number of years, I can tell you with absolute certainty that racism is just as prevalent in the north as in the south, if not more so. In the south, you got guys dressing up in suits and playing war games. In the north, you got guys dressing up in suits and targeting blacks for dubious loans and helping them into the “right” neighborhoods. Now, you tell me who is more socially destructive? At least in the south, you know who the racist bastards are.
Excellent point, CVS. I do think racism is slowly diminishing in the South at least among educated younger Southerners. And we all know about cities like Boston where some of the least bigoted and most bigoted Americans live.
Seems a little bit like the Germans deciding to whoop it up on the anniversary of the start of World War II. Or to party down on “Endlosung Day”…
It’s treason chic. Maybe Congress can declare a Betray Your Country Day and we can celebrate Benedict Arnold’s birthday again.