Thursday, December 19, 2019

The Democrats' "Lost Cause" myth

We live immersed in a world of lies.  I've posted about how history as taught today about the Civil War* is retarded.  Nowhere is this on better display than the Wikipedia page about the "Lost Cause Mythos":
The Lost Cause of the Confederacy, or simply the Lost Cause, is an American pseudo-historicalnegationist ideology that holds that the cause of the  Confederacy during the American Civil War was a just and heroic one. The ideology endorses the supposed virtues of the antebellum South, viewing the war as a struggle primarily to save what they view as the beneficent and ethical Southern way of life,[1] or "states' rights" in the face of overwhelming "Northern aggression." At the same time, the Lost Cause minimizes or denies outright the central role of slavery in the buildup to and outbreak of the war. [my emphasis on this last sentence - Borepatch]
This is retarded.  A simple scanning of the dates of secession confirms this:
South Carolina: December 20, 1860
Mississippi: January 9, 1861
Florida: January 10, 1861
Alabama: January 11, 1861
Georgia: January 19, 1861
Louisiana: January 26, 1861
Texas: February 1, 1861
Missing from this list is the Virginia Secession Convention which voted to remain in the Union on 6 December 1861.  Also missing is Lincoln's attempt to break the blockade of Ft. Sumpter at the beginning of April 1861.  Up until this point, secession had been limited to the deep south; after what was seen as an act of war by the Federal government against a state, four other southern states seceded.
Virginia: April 17, 1861
Arkansas: May 6, 1861
North Carolina: May 20, 1861
Tennessee: June 8, 1861
Kentucky: Ordinance passed by people in 1861
Missouri: Ordinance passed, but not presented to people
But this isn't the limit of the Wikipedia article's retardedness.  Look at that last sentence, and ponder that the following slave states never seceded: Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky (mostly because of force of Northern arms) and Missouri (ditto).  So the best you can say is that 7 slave states seceded over slavery, 4 more seceded over Federal aggression (but not over slavery), two more never seceded at all, and two were occupied by the Federal army and so the issue became moot.

In a world where we're continually informed by our betters that we're not well educated enough to correctly interpret all the nuance of the world, it sure would be nice to get a little nuance from historians.  But they have their red, white, and blue cardboard history cutout and so we once again find ourselves swimming in an ocean of lies.**

Democrats don't seem to like nuance, no matter what platitudes they mouth.  It's not surprising, then, they get bitter, they cling to abortion or the Ivy League or antipathy to people who live in Fly Over Country or anti-American sentiment or pro-impeachment sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.***

The impeachment circus will circle back to bite them.  The word that nobody in the press is saying today is "Nineteen" - that's how many House seats Republicans have to pick up to win back the majority.  There are 29 Democrats holding seats in House districts won by Donald Trump in 2016.  It looks grim for the Democrats.

Nancy Pelosi started rolling out a Lost Cause mythos for the Democrats yesterday, with the "solemn" vote on a bag of nothing.  It will come to nothing, but the victory laps being taken by the Democrats show that politics is now a game of humiliating your enemies.  Unfortunately, people have noticed and the American electorate is pretty unhappy with the whole Democratic charade.  We shall see how many more than nineteen districts flip next year.

The Democrats will need their Lost Cause mythos.  Unlike the Civil War* one, this one will not be based on a noble cause like Virginia choosing to resist Federal aggression.  Rather, it will be based on a small and mean desire to humiliate an opponent.  Worse, it targeted an opponent who punches back.


* It wasn't a Civil War at all: the Southern states weren't trying to take over and dominate the northern ones.  They wanted independence.  My preferred name for that conflict is the American War of Southern Independence.

** Note that I say this even though I'm not southern.  I'm from firmly midwest yankee stock and grew up in Maine.  As I like to joke, where we were Boston was in the south and New York was in the deep south.

*** Yes, this was modeled on another famous quote.

7 comments:

Old NFO said...

Revisionist history strikes again... sigh

selsey.steve said...

That 'Thumbs Up' picture is going to be as famous as Churchill's famous V sign picture!

LSP said...

Two things stand out to me from this excellent post:

"Retarded" and "it will be based on a small and mean desire to humiliate an opponent. Worse, it targeted an opponent who punches back."

Right on.

As an aside, some see the War of Independence as English Civil War 2.0. Does this make the hideous conflict of the 1860s a third iteration? Perhaps.

Just a thought and if so, the Old Country betrayed its natural allies for the sake of Indian cotton. I hate that aspect.

Borepatch said...

LSP, English Civil War 2.0 is a *really* interesting idea.

McChuck said...

Agree with 99% of what you wrote. However - declaring a blockade is an act of war. Especially when you enforce that blockade with cannon fire.

The Democrats can't say they didn't light the match on this current conflict, either.

mac.mcgovern said...

The first war move was moving the Federal troops from Ft Moultrie to Sumpter. Also, you can't talk about the causes of the war without including the Morrill act. Slavery gets more credit than it deserves. I believe that the failure to enforce the Fugitive Slave act was used because of what happened with the Stamp act and Jackson declaring that you can't just up and leave the Union. Lack of enforcement of Constitutional law was used as good reason to leave

the pistolero said...

Democrats don't seem to like nuance, no matter what platitudes they mouth. It's not surprising, then, they get bitter, they cling to abortion or the Ivy League or antipathy to people who live in Fly Over Country or anti-American sentiment or pro-impeachment sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.

Oh. My. God.

Here's a shiny new Internet, Borepatch. You earned it, sir.