The "Recent Unpleasantness" is more recent than you might think....

[captainsblog]

That phrase is what's known as a meosis (aka "it's me for you and euphemism") for the 1861-65 conflict that we Yankees learned about in school under the name of the "Civil War." Other versions of the conflict name range from the even more neutral ("The War Between the States") to the outright hostile ("The War Of Northern Aggression"), but I lead off with it because it's hard to ignore that the unpleasantness remains fairly top-of-mind for much of this country.

Witness the recent effort by the surviving members of Lynyrd Skynrd- about as red in the neck, in recent history, as any musicians you're likely to find- to distance themselves from the Stars and Bars as being more of an instrument of hate speech than one of pure historical symbolism. Their fans fought back with a protest that led to them reintegrating the Confederate flag (see what I did there?) into their backdrop of their live shows.

There's also a new book out which takes a very different angle on the smoldering embers of the now-sesquicentennial conflict: it's called Better Off Without 'Em: A Northern Manifesto for Southern Secession and is reviewed in this Wall Street Journal piece.  The author references, indeed relies on, all the usual suspects of stereotypes about Southern religion, race relations and even sports before concluding that we might have been better off to treat the 1865 outcome as a badly-handled call by replacement refs and let the CSA go their merry way.

My gut reaction was an Attaboy! (translations for various readers below the Mason-Dixon line: Roll Tide! Whodat! Boomer Sooner!), but fortunately, I pay more attention to more northern influences than my gut.

----

It would be an easy solution, but a cheap and sleazy one, to redivide the spoils of this great nation along the lines of United States of Canada/Jesusland, as some have proposed. At first, it would seem to solve a bunch of problems. Religious influences would retreat to the red in most respects. Poles would form and the respective "nations" would gravitate to them, likely making these two "new" nations more opposed than united in even a trading-partner sense.

And, just as any effort to unify or subdivide a people always results in a new opposed minority, what would come of this one? Some of the past year's worst and strangest oppressions of traditional United Statesian democracy have come out of Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, which, in this model, would be assigned to the good guys in blue.  If the division of our nation would lead to me being stuck with Mittens, Scott Walker and "Frothy" Santorum, I think I'll pass, thanks.

Plus, I know too many people in Jesusland who reject the evil and oppression of the loud, shrill voices who claim to speak for them. They are educated, intelligent, reasoned and reasonable people, who hate the divisiveness and all-or-nothingness of political brinksmanship that both parties have some responsibility for having caused.  I'd hate to have to pay international phone bills to keep in touch with them.

I've heard backchatter in recent days suggesting that, if Obama is re-elected, particularly if his coattails result in gains in both Houses for Democrats, the Republican leadership will finally, finally, abandon the "no to everything" approach they will have tried and failed with over the past 2-plus years and return to the table to negotiate, to compromise, to govern. It would help immeasurably if the party selected new and different faces than Reid and Pelosi to lead those efforts; they've become too divisive and stereotyped in Jesusland and, if the Republicans will take a similar tack and get Boner and McChinless out of their leadership roles, we might actually be on the way to starting something special:

a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Nahhhhhhhh.

Comments

[glenmarshall.livejournal.com]

My fond hope is that this election will provide an ignominious defeat for the Repugnantins in much the same ways as Goldwater in 1964, leading to a massive and permanent progressive change of the scope of the Johnson years. But I also hope that such a defeat would not empower a prior loser like Nixon.

Well, actually...

[9thkvius.livejournal.com]

the "War Between the States" is not a neutral term. It was the preferred term used by ex-Confederates and their allies because it emphasized "states" and tended to downplay the role of Southern Unionists, white and black. The Southern view of the war managed to dominate the scholarship and discussion for a few generations (even though they lost) until people began to question that perspective beginning in the 1950s and 1960s, around the same time that the Civil Rights movement was really taking taking hold.

Growing up in the South as the son of New England parents gave me a pretty interesting perspective. Looking closely at the way the war is remembered and reading between the lines showed me that there is still a lot of bitter feeling, much of it not based in reality or historical fact, but powerful nonetheless. The same Southerners that will go on and on for an hour about Yankee oppression and how they "haven't forgotten" the four years of war will turn around and pretend that African-Americans have nothing to complain about when they bring up the 250+ years of slavery they suffered right up to that same time period. So clearly some things are worth remembering more than others to your average white Southerner. I grew up in a town that had a Confederate monument on the town square, and yet no monument whatsoever to the four Union generals born there, or any other local person who fought for the Union, white or black. When I asked why there was no marker to the prominent local man who was a two-time Presidential candidate and nationally known antislavery activist anywhere in town, people rolled their eyes or had no idea what or who I was talking about. This was a town where people got upset when we tried to organize a chapter of Sons of Union Veterans at a local Civil War Round Table meeting.

Anyway, didn't mean to hijack the thread or anything, but this is obviously right up my alley. I think I will try to continue on my blog later.

Re: Well, actually...

[captainsblog.livejournal.com]

No problem at all. I should've known, from those stacks of books on the subject I saw, that I was playing at something you know tons more about.

Any thoughts on why this particular conflict is the one we've never gotten over? Maybe it's because I'm watching the Doctor Who semi-finale pre-show, but our war- TWO wars- with the Brits aren't that much further back in history. Our rhetoric the first time around was just as angry, and they burned down many of our national landmarks (not to mention a nascent Buffalo) the second time 'round- and yet that-all has evolved into a "special relationship" such that we saved their bacon in two wars, we treat their royals with reverence, and we even give them their own cable channel.

[bill_sheehan.livejournal.com]

Can we award TLC to the South?

Seriously, excellent rant. I wish I'd written it.

Re: Well, actually...

[snowy-owlet.livejournal.com]

I'm a lifelong Southerner and descendant of Famous Names of the Confederacy.

I totally agree with your assessment. I think the victim mentality and (forgive me) whitewashing of slavery are so dumb and counterproductive to life in the really real world.

Re: Well, actually...

[9thkvius.livejournal.com]

I think it's still remembered with such bitterness for a variety of reasons. After blustering for years and years, literally bullying the rest of the country, the South had a hell of a comeuppance. One chivalrous Southern cavalier could not whip ten Yankee hirelings. Their country was wrecked. In the end a sizable number of "chivalry" fought for the other side, as did some 150,000 of their slaves. Most wealthy Southerners invested extra money in land and slaves, and all the slaves were freed. And on top of that the whole social order was overturned. I think that is why so many Southerners could not let it go, and in fact turned to groups like the Klan to redress what they saw as wrongs. And so while the war was technically over, in reality it continued in many places. In Louisiana alone, about 3,000 people died in political and racially motivated violence between the end of the war and the election of 1868. That is also the great irony about the war, at least to me. They fought a war to protect a social order that was blatantly racist and oppressive, and then denied that the war was fought for those reasons, despite fighting like hell for years after the war to reinstate that same system in a different way. And they succeeded, not only in bringing their social order back (mostly, anyway) but in fooling a lot of people into thinking that the war wasn't fought for the worst of reasons.

[bluevicksen11.livejournal.com]

That post made me shed a tear for Liberty. Ray for president!

[bluevicksen11.livejournal.com]

This thread is super interesting. Until recent years, I wasn't even aware that the war is given a different name in the South, and generally taught with a radically different skew. It really bothers me how divided this country is, and that those divisions tend to fall along fault lines of cold hard facts vs emotional reaction to - and suppression of- facts. Not just with history education, but other social issues as well ( climate change denial, evolution and science education, abstinence only education, don't say gay - don't even acknowledge they exist- type measures.)
And to be fair, I see that polarization of opinion even within this horrible, godless state of NY.