And yet by the time the 2020 election comes along, the anger at Trump over the Kurds will have subsided and the Deplorables will still vote for him over that angry socialist that wants to destroy America.
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Very much this.
People have short memories and few convictions. Something bad will come out for one candidate or another the day before the election and a whole lot of people will have a change of heart.
I’m worried about spending Thanksgiving with relatives this year. My brother-in-law is the Canadian version of a racist redneck. Kind, generous, intelligent, and yet he claims:
*The Civil War wasn’t really about racism/slavery
*Climate change is a hoax. Ice melts one place but forms somewhere else
*If you eat vegetables, you have a mental illness
*The real problem is all of the false accusations destroying innocent men’s lives (when I brought up the Netflix show Unbelievable)
*Native Americans deserve what they got because they chose to surrender
*He hopes to become a real estate entrepreneur and has a Trump book as part of his curriculum
*Reasonable people still rightfully think 9/11 was an inside job done with bombs inside of the towers
*Canada sucks, socialism is evil, isn’t it nice living in America where we actually have #freedom
For me, most of these are not things reasonable people can disagree over. They offend me to a degree I cannot control.
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I never commented about whether the guy’s a racist. My assumption is definitely headed in that direction.
Given his approach to vegetables, at least you can take solace in the fact that he won’t be around for long.
His health has actually dramatically improved on the carnivore diet. It works well for him. But he takes “works well for me” to mean anyone who disagrees is obviously as wrong as he thinks he once was.
This is one that I go round and round on, because I think it depends on where you’re starting the conversation.
From the South’s point of view, the issues of “State’s rights” and slavery are pretty much the same - and I agree that it was all about it. You can just take the words of any number of Southern politicians - for example, Howard Cobb, who happily survived the war to see the whole Southern system destroyed - “If slaves make good soldiers our whole theory of slavery is wrong. But they won’t make soldiers. As a class they are wanting in every qualification of a soldier.” Or William Yancey, who was killed by being clocked in the head with a glass inkwell by a fellow confederate congresskritter - " You are allowed to whip your children; we are allowed to whip our negroes. There is no cruelty in the practice. … Our negroes are but children. … The negro that will not work is made to work. Society tolerates no drones. And on and on.
OTOH, at least in the first couple of years of the war, the North was pretty much focused on keeping the Union intact - Lincoln himself said " My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that." - although in the same letter to Horace Greeley he also noted that " I have here stated my purpose according to my view of official duty; and I intend no modification of my oft-expressed personal wish that all men every where could be free.
But from his letter in August of 1862, he pretty clearly stated that slavery was a secondary consideration in term of the War.
And I also think it depends on who’s motivations you’re looking at - I’m completely comfortable assuming that for the ruling class of the confederacy the war was all about slavery. For the North it was a consideration that became much stronger as the war went on, until it ended up being the primary reason for the fight. And as Shelby Foote recounted in a story about a poor barefoot Confederate private who was captured by the Union and clearly couldn’t have been a slave owner, when asked why he was fighting - “I’m fighting because you’re down here” - which is probably as good a reason as any, I guess.
MM MD
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Based on his stance about First Nation peoples, I don’t think he was arguing that we should have a nuanced take on the ancillary concerns and conflicts of those involved in the Civil War.
To your points, I will concede that some people in the North were more conflicted than we give them credit for, but I don’t otherwise see any special objections to me in saying the Civil War was mostly about racism/slavery, and to a degree that makes it appropriate to talk about it as though that was the only motivation. The Confederacy literally said the Civil War was about slavery. Each Confederate state presented articles of secession that specifically identify slavery as the reason they are seceding from and willing to wage war against the United States.
Look at Georgia’s articles, where they lay out
serious causes of complaint against our non-slave-holding confederate States with reference to the subject of African slavery. They have endeavored to weaken our security, to disturb our domestic peace and tranquility, and persistently refused to comply with their express constitutional obligations to us in reference to that property
Later, Georgia says they’re willing to wage war against the North precisely because the “party of Lincoln…is admitted to be an anti-slavery party.”
Mississippi doesn’t wait but a paragraph to declare
Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery-- the greatest material interest of the world.
On and on, including the declaration of secession by the VP of the Confederacy, wherein he says:
The right of property in slaves was recognized by giving to free persons distinct political rights, by giving them the right to represent, and burthening them with direct taxes for three-fifths of their slaves; by authorizing the importation of slaves for twenty years; and by stipulating for the rendition of fugitives from labor.
We affirm that these ends for which this Government was instituted have been defeated, and the Government itself has been made destructive of them by the action of the non-slaveholding States.
A geographical line has been drawn across the Union, and all the States north of that line have united in the election of a man to the high office of President of the United States, whose opinions and purposes are hostile to slavery. He is to be entrusted with the administration of the common Government, because he has declared that that “Government cannot endure permanently half slave, half free,” and that the public mind must rest in the belief that slavery is in the course of ultimate extinction.
So, to offer you the other side of the discussion, to me, all of these things do raise special objections to any claim that the Civil War wasn’t really about racism/slavery. Some in the North were more conflicted than we tend to think, but the Confederacy was unified in its declaration that slavery was why they were seceding and willing to wage war.
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Don’t disagree for the most part - the south was all in. The north, not so much - but they were in the fight anyway.
MM MD
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Nice chatting with you on the topic 
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It was about slavery, but to a degree that some people probably don’t appreciate, it was about slavery in every state admitted from 1821 to 1861 and the prospect of more states to come. There were more slave states or a tie until 1846. In 1858 there were two more free states than slave and in 1861 the margin was four. The South didn’t just want to keep slavery, they probably could have for a while, they wanted to expand it at least to keep from losing power…but really because plantation owners wanted more slave territory to get richer and richer.
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Off the topic but on the derail…
I’ve been reading a lot about Latin American history. Pretty obvious that if the south had secceeded, they would have been a lot closer to brazil/mexico/Columbia/cuba than the North.
150 years of instability and military juntas.
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What are you reading on the topic? Any articles or books? Old man blog ramblings? I’d like to read on it, too.
I love me some great courses audio books.
Great courses: Americas in the revolutionary era
Great Courses: Conquest of the Americas
First is more relevent, but makes more sense if you have the background from the second one.
All available on Audible. Best value with a subscription.
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Nice. Not so nice that my library has zero from them. Audible it will have to be.
Do you know if that is the same studio that produces a bunch of Great Courses videos on Prime?
I think so. They are a big company. Been going for a long time. Lots of content
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Thank you for mentioning them
bit of a happy ending, “cool story bro”. i room with a friend of mine that voted trump in 2016… i didn’t know that he was a trump voter at the time, didnt even really know he was a “fiscal” republican but i should have suspected based on the area and upper class upbringing.
but over the two years we’ve roomed together we have talked many times about politics and things, and last night, i saw on his facebook a status he made about how “billionaires are policy failures.” and he’s said multiple times recently that he could never vote republican again after this.
winning them one heart and mind at a time…
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One reason I’m an UBI advocate is I believe it will make some conservatives more progressive once they see some positive results from a govt program.
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