August 18, 2019

The part of the civil war that continues

Sam Smith - As I've argued before, Donald Trump's politics are remarkably similar to that of the southen Dixiecrats in the era before the civil right movement. Just as in the old South, he is trying to convince lower income whites their real problem is blacks and immigrants rather than the new plantation owners aka corporate executives.

Further, Trump won every formerly confederate state except for Virignia when he ran for president and our regular accounting of objective rankings of states finds every confederate state other than Virginia and Florida to be among the lowest 15 ranked states.

As noted here before, the Civil War ended slavery and secession but not an awful lot else.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Slavery ended with the civil war? Phsaw. Read the following:

https://www.worldcat.org/title/slavery-by-another-name-the-re-enslavement-of-black-people-in-america-from-the-civil-war-to-world-war-ii/oclc/167764008

Impeccably researched, the book documents how "vagrancy laws" were used to funnel a steady stream of recently emancipated into work camps. Over 90% never accrued enough company scrip to pay off their debt accrued in fees for being arrested, housed, adjudicated, sentenced and housed again before assignment to a pitch farm, rock quarry or agricultural edeavour.

This practice was a major component of the southern recovery economy. It continued up until the conflagration with Germany and Japan. Without it, America would not have been able to concentrate wealth as it did on into the Gilded Age. But who reads books anymore?

Anonymous said...

Slavery continues...

1848:' The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains' (The Communist Manifesto, Marx & Engels).

1892: 'The old master class was not deprived of the power of life and death, which was the soul of the relation of master and slave. They could not, of course, sell their former slaves, but they retained the power to starve them to death, and wherever this power is held there is the power of slavery. He who can say to his fellow- man, You shall serve me or starve, is a master and his subject is a slave....Though no longer a slave, he is in a thralldom grievous and intolerable, compelled to work for whatever his employer is pleased to pay him..' (Life and Times of Frederick Douglass).

1928 'Earning a wage is a prison occupation' (Wages, DH Lawrence).

2019: $15/hour by 2024? (BS' Raise the Wage Act).