Georgia politician publicly uses N-word as Atlanta suburb declares Confederate History Month

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Georgia politician publicly uses N-word as Atlanta suburb declares Confederate History Month

Post by Zaune »

The Independent
A former elected official used the N-word several times during a public meeting, offending a black member of a Georgia city's board of commissioners.

The tense exchange between the two men happened on the same day that the Atlanta suburb of Griffin, Georgia, declared April as Confederate History Month. While speaking about the declaration during the public comments portion of the meeting, Larry Mr Johnson, a former member of the board who is white, immediately turned his attention to Rodney McCord, who appears to have been one of two black officials at the table.

What began as harmless reminiscing of their differences back when they were serving as city officials together quickly escalated when Mr Johnson reminded Mr McCord of a conversation he said they once had about race.

“I told you at that time that there were white folks, and there were black folks when I was growing up,” Mr Johnson said, speaking to Mr McCord from the podium. “There was white trash - my family - and there was N—town. I lived next to N—town.”

The comment immediately caught Mr McCord off guard, while the other board members sat quietly.

“You lived next to what town?” he asked Mr Johnson.

And Mr Johnson's matter-of-fact reply: “N—town, son. I'm telling you son, now that changed. I'm no longer white trash . . . ”

“Hold on a second,” Mr McCord interrupted.

In the next few minutes, as shown in a public video of the meeting, an agitated Mr McCord tried to express his frustration, while the board's chairman, Douglas Hollberg, stopped him so Mr Johnson could keep talking.

“Mr McCord, please let him get to the point so we can move on,” Mr Hollberg said.

To which Mr McCord, with his voice raised, said:

“He can get to his point, but I'm not going to sit here . . . Maybe y'all are comfortable with it, I don't know. I'm not going to sit here and let this man use that type of language. And if nobody else is offended, then I am. Now if y'all want to clap and think that that's okay for this gentleman to stand, in 2018, and get here at the board of city commission meeting – 2018 – the Civil War is over and he is using the N-word not once, not twice – three times! And he just continues to say it with not one word about who it offends.”

At that point, Mr Hollberg asked Mr Johnson to refrain from using the racial slur. Mr Johnson then went on to talk about the Confederacy, why he supports the Confederate flag, the Civil War and his Scottish heritage.

“My skin is white, my neck is red, and I was born in Southern bed,” he said. “Nothing wrong with that. I hope that doesn't offend anybody.”

He also apologised to Mr McCord, and before leaving the podium, reiterated an earlier argument that the Civil War wasn't fought over slavery.

Responding to the use of the offensive slur, the next speaker who addressed the board said the lack of respect she had just witnessed does not represent the city she made her home just a year ago.

“So I propose that we have a list of words that can and cannot be used here at the commission meeting,” Bonnie Moret told the board. “Because if I stood up here and used a four-letter word that began with an "f" and ended with a "k," everybody would be offended. So I think there should be a decorum from everyone . . . just respect other people. Thank you.”

Earlier during the meeting held last week, the board declared April as Confederate History Month and April 26 as Confederate Memorial Day for the city. In 1861, Georgia seceded from the Union and joined the Confederacy, which the declaration described as a fight for “states' rights, individual freedom, and local government control.” Georgia became the last Confederate state to be readmitted to the Union in 1870, several years after the Civil War ended.

Mr McCord decried the proclamation, saying it sends a message that the city is “willing to offend” its black residents to “make other people feel good.”

“A proclamation to these very anti-Americans who did not want to be a part of America and now we are going to celebrate – that is the most un-American thing that I've ever heard,” he said.

Those who supported the proclamation said the objections were based on misinformation and argued that the Confederacy was about heritage, not about racism, slavery or hate. But many historians reject the notion that the war had nothing to do with slavery.

“In 1861, they were very clear on what the causes of the war were. The reason there was no compromise possible was that people in the country could not agree over the wisdom of the continued and expanding enslavement of millions of African Americans,” Stephanie McCurry, a history professor at Columbia University, told The Washington Post's Philip Bump last year.
So... yeah. That happened.
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Re: Georgia politician publicly uses N-word as Atlanta suburb declares Confederate History Month

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From Here
The people of Georgia having dissolved their political connection with the Government of the United States of America, present to their confederates and the world the causes which have led to the separation. For the last ten years we have had numerous and serious causes of complaint against our non-slave-holding confederate States with reference to the subject of African slavery.
Second sentence of the Georgia Declaration of Causes.

Texas made it to the third paragraph before saying:
She was received as a commonwealth holding, maintaining and protecting the institution known as negro slavery--the servitude of the African to the white race within her limits--a relation that had existed from the first settlement of her wilderness by the white race, and which her people intended should exist in all future time. Her institutions and geographical position established the strongest ties between her and other slave-holding States of the confederacy. Those ties have been strengthened by association. But what has been the course of the government of the United States, and of the people and authorities of the non-slave-holding States, since our connection with them?
But it's literally the first grievance filed against the U.S. by both states. BUT IT'S TOTALLY NOT ABOUT SLAVERY, GUYS. I doubt a single "South will rise again" moron has even read their state's Causes, even though it's one Google search away. Hell, most of them probably don't even know they exist or probably only read the neutered ones given to them in their Middle School textbooks.

Also, some history ignoring dipshit redneck equating the N-word with "White Trash" isn't surprising. Maybe a bit more since the guy is an elected official. But them thinking what is a racist remark (by nature "White Trash" is a racist term) is equal but ignore the historical basis behind the N-word and the idea that White Trash is different because it specifically attacks a certain part of white culture. Namely that being "white" is great and falling from your whiteness makes you trash. The N-word doesn't have this same meaning behind it.

If "N-word" was just a description for a black person, then "N Trash" would be about as offensive as White Trash. But it obviously isn't.

Basically, some guy said out-loud what he would only usually say when he's talking with his other white buddies (and possibly some black people who don't want any trouble, so don't call him on it) that he's not really racist because he doesn't view "White Trash" as an insult, when it's historically used to insult poor whites, so him using the N-word in a positive way is ok.
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Re: Georgia politician publicly uses N-word as Atlanta suburb declares Confederate History Month

Post by Titan Uranus »

I don't think it's reasonable to call Griffin a suburb of Atlanta, it has its own local culture, it's almost an hour outside Atlanta, (an hour and a half with traffic) and it's on probably the least-populated side of Atlanta. But, in any case, what this article fails to mention is that the proclamation passed by a 3-2 vote. And that at least one of the commissioners that voted for the proclamation has gone on record says that he now supports rescinding it.

So presumably it will be rescinded soon enough.
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Re: Georgia politician publicly uses N-word as Atlanta suburb declares Confederate History Month

Post by Highlord Laan »

Confederate History Month
Lesson number one:
Image

Do we need to burn down Atlanta again? Because it's starting to sound like we need to burn down Atlanta again.

I fixed your tags. Images inside spoilers don't work in this forum apparently.
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Re: Georgia politician publicly uses N-word as Atlanta suburb declares Confederate History Month

Post by U.P. Cinnabar »

1. I'm honestly surprised this was in Griffin, as opposed to Marietta or Cumming.
2. This is just further proof that Georgia still has a long way to go, and too many hellbent on us never getting there.
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Re: Georgia politician publicly uses N-word as Atlanta suburb declares Confederate History Month

Post by GuppyShark »

Titan Uranus wrote: 2018-04-06 09:14pm I don't think it's reasonable to call Griffin a suburb of Atlanta, it has its own local culture, it's almost an hour outside Atlanta, (an hour and a half with traffic) and it's on probably the least-populated side of Atlanta.
Thanks Titan. I am under the impression Atlanta is the unofficial Afro-American capital of the US. It sounds like this is a rural thing, not an Atlanta thing.
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Re: Georgia politician publicly uses N-word as Atlanta suburb declares Confederate History Month

Post by U.P. Cinnabar »

Yep, Atlanta is considered the center of the "dirty South."

Most Atlanta area natives also consider themselves the center of the Universe. Which is why the other Georgia hates them.
"Beware the Beast, Man, for he is the Devil's pawn. Alone amongst God's primates, he kills for sport, for lust, for greed. Yea, he will murder his brother to possess his brother's land. Let him not breed in great numbers, for he will make a desert of his home and yours. Shun him, drive him back into his jungle lair, for he is the harbinger of Death.."
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Re: Georgia politician publicly uses N-word as Atlanta suburb declares Confederate History Month

Post by Aether »

TheFeniX wrote: 2018-04-06 05:59pm But it's literally the first grievance filed against the U.S. by both states. BUT IT'S TOTALLY NOT ABOUT SLAVERY, GUYS. I doubt a single "South will rise again" moron has even read their state's Causes, even though it's one Google search away. Hell, most of them probably don't even know they exist or probably only read the neutered ones given to them in their Middle School textbooks.
To this day I am surprised that confederate soldiers are are not actively considered traitors to the Union. Even if you use mental gymnastics about "States Rights", how is treason not a given?
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Re: Georgia politician publicly uses N-word as Atlanta suburb declares Confederate History Month

Post by U.P. Cinnabar »

Because over 100 years of history have sanitized and romanticized the majority of the Southern Confederacy's leading figures.

Same way two of Quantrill's Raiders are romanticized to this day amongst the other "heroes" of the Wild West.
"Beware the Beast, Man, for he is the Devil's pawn. Alone amongst God's primates, he kills for sport, for lust, for greed. Yea, he will murder his brother to possess his brother's land. Let him not breed in great numbers, for he will make a desert of his home and yours. Shun him, drive him back into his jungle lair, for he is the harbinger of Death.."
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Re: Georgia politician publicly uses N-word as Atlanta suburb declares Confederate History Month

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It's a bit more complicated than that, but a historian (I think a few still post here) might check me on this.

The North didn't stomp on the Confederate mentality hard enough: this allowed the romantization to even happen. They were mostly left to their own devices. This wasn't exactly a bad thing since, unlike say Germany and Japan post-WW2: no one was helping us rebuild the country. The point was that neighbors were killing each other over slaves. Black slaves. The "North" might have been mostly anti-slavery, but a large majority of them weren't keen on shooting other "real" Americans or getting shot by other "real" Americans. Black lives at the expense of white ones? Just, no.

They wanted this shit done, over with, the South back in the Union and they could just move the fuck on, because at the end of the day no one had the strength to treat that many Americans as traitors once the shooting was done. And since near all the fighting never made it North, they could rationalize it all they wanted. The Confeds paid their due by having their part of the country fucking wrecked, sons killed, daughters raped. Shit happens.

Going around hanging thousands upon thousands of former confederates? Hehe, no. Would do nothing but just start another Civil War, especially considering how easily it would be to just hang every male of age (or underage), steal their shit, rape the women (probably the men too), you know, all that good war shit humans are so badass at.

The lack of technology to quickly move about a xboxhueg country and zero desire to send people into every nook to really stamp out the ideals of the Confederacy just was not there. In fact, for many years slavery itself continued like usual, but many owners just shifted/went back over to other systems such as the whole "I rent you a room, you work for your rent, tools, food, etc. Oh, and I'm locking you up at night so you don't skip town.... no no no, it's not slavery at all."

They spanked the South the best they could and told them to get their shit together. And it wasn't exactly the worst idea since (once again, a historian might check me here) there was little to no public support in the continued punishment of The South.

Also, doesn't help we don't teach this shit in school. Our Texas History books had the most neutered version of Causes out of Texas. Didn't mention slavery. They hide it under the guise of "we don't want students to be ashamed of their history" which is bullshit. Who is really ashamed of their history? Maybe if you were the one pulling the trigger.

Want to hear some "The world is just WAY to small, it's laughable" insanity about my family history? Around the same time one side of my family was fleeing (I guess what would become) Germany due to our hilariously large amount of Jewishness (my last name is like... the UBER german Jew name from what I've read. When my uncle did work in Saudi Arabia, he had to have signed papers from his Christian minister and all kinds of other papers PROMISING he wasn't a filthy Jew. So, you know, fuck that shithole.), another side of the family (that would mingle third-hand) was a bit more.... well, let's just say I have a Great-granddad that was Grand Dragon of the Texas KKK. His wife wrote a book about it. I've been trying to find a copy for years, but my mom refuses to help me at all in this regard.... I mean, can't say I fuckin' blame her.

Edit: The book was (from what I'm told) in no way flattering toward either the KKK... nor my ancestor. Supposedly he wasn't a very good husband.... can't imagine why not.
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Re: Georgia politician publicly uses N-word as Atlanta suburb declares Confederate History Month

Post by U.P. Cinnabar »

If you know the title, perhaps Project Gutenberg might be some help in tracking that book down.

And, I concede I oversimplified things a great deal, but I really didn't want to touch off a firestorm discussing Northern complicity in Southern slavery(Fugitive Slave Act and King Cotton being partly why New York is known as the Empire State), or how Radical Reconstruction exacerbated racial tensions in the postbellum South.
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Re: Georgia politician publicly uses N-word as Atlanta suburb declares Confederate History Month

Post by Elheru Aran »

Re treason: To be fair, if you call Confederates traitors, you kinda have to admit that pretty much any American who can trace their ancestors back to the Revolutionary era has to call said ancestors traitors too (unless they were Tories, in which case, maybe not). Something which the Lost Cause defenders love to trot out on occasion.

And yeah, Griffin barely counts as 'suburb'. It's about as close to Atlanta as you can get and still be 'country'. Further away than me, actually.
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Re: Georgia politician publicly uses N-word as Atlanta suburb declares Confederate History Month

Post by U.P. Cinnabar »

Elheru Aran wrote: 2018-04-09 05:05pm Re treason: To be fair, if you call Confederates traitors, you kinda have to admit that pretty much any American who can trace their ancestors back to the Revolutionary era has to call said ancestors traitors too (unless they were Tories, in which case, maybe not). Something which the Lost Cause defenders love to trot out on occasion.

And yeah, Griffin barely counts as 'suburb'. It's about as close to Atlanta as you can get and still be 'country'. Further away than me, actually.
However, Great Britain recognized the US per the Treaty of Paris(1783), and treated with them as a sovereign polity ever since, so the Americans technically are not traitors to the Crown.
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Re: Georgia politician publicly uses N-word as Atlanta suburb declares Confederate History Month

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U.P. Cinnabar wrote: 2018-04-09 05:34pm
Elheru Aran wrote: 2018-04-09 05:05pm Re treason: To be fair, if you call Confederates traitors, you kinda have to admit that pretty much any American who can trace their ancestors back to the Revolutionary era has to call said ancestors traitors too (unless they were Tories, in which case, maybe not). Something which the Lost Cause defenders love to trot out on occasion.

And yeah, Griffin barely counts as 'suburb'. It's about as close to Atlanta as you can get and still be 'country'. Further away than me, actually.
However, Great Britain recognized the US per the Treaty of Paris(1783), and treated with them as a sovereign polity ever since, so the Americans technically are not traitors to the Crown.
After the Revolution, sure. Before, when they started taking potshots... they definitely were.

EDIT: Unless the recognition was retroactive, in which case the only point I have left is that most people wouldn't be aware of this...
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Re: Georgia politician publicly uses N-word as Atlanta suburb declares Confederate History Month

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Elheru Aran wrote: 2018-04-09 05:44pm
After the Revolution, sure. Before, when they started taking potshots... they definitely were.

EDIT: Unless the recognition was retroactive, in which case the only point I have left is that most people wouldn't be aware of this...
If I remember right (heading out the door now) the treaty ending the war was retroactive in that it specifically stated that America became a country upon declaring independence.

For whatever that's worth.
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Re: Georgia politician publicly uses N-word as Atlanta suburb declares Confederate History Month

Post by U.P. Cinnabar »

Whereas few if any recognized the Confederacy , retroactively or otherwise.

An argument could be made that the US government tacitly recognized the justice of the Confederate cause by reintegrating many of its soldiers, officers and generals into federal service, allowing ex-Confederate politicians to resume political office after a time, and making little attempt to prosecute Confederate leaders for treason and various other crimes(Davis was tried, but the only Confederate to be convicted and executed for anything also happened to be a foreign national)

Not that said argument holds much water, but it could be made,
"Beware the Beast, Man, for he is the Devil's pawn. Alone amongst God's primates, he kills for sport, for lust, for greed. Yea, he will murder his brother to possess his brother's land. Let him not breed in great numbers, for he will make a desert of his home and yours. Shun him, drive him back into his jungle lair, for he is the harbinger of Death.."
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Re: Georgia politician publicly uses N-word as Atlanta suburb declares Confederate History Month

Post by Simon_Jester »

There's a difference between "declined to press charges" and "we find the defendant innocent."
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Re: Georgia politician publicly uses N-word as Atlanta suburb declares Confederate History Month

Post by Patroklos »

Ralin wrote: 2018-04-09 08:38pm
Elheru Aran wrote: 2018-04-09 05:44pm
After the Revolution, sure. Before, when they started taking potshots... they definitely were.

EDIT: Unless the recognition was retroactive, in which case the only point I have left is that most people wouldn't be aware of this...
If I remember right (heading out the door now) the treaty ending the war was retroactive in that it specifically stated that America became a country upon declaring independence.

For whatever that's worth.
If so I didn't find it in the text, though it maybe defacto recognized elsewhere.

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Re: Georgia politician publicly uses N-word as Atlanta suburb declares Confederate History Month

Post by Simon_Jester »

Ultimately, the underlying difference between the American Revolution and the Confederates' secession is that the American colonists had no meaningful representation in the legislative process, and thus no reasonable recourse. They couldn't say "now see here, Whig party, we elect so and so many MPs, and if you will take a stance on colonial issues that favors us, we will consistently vote in favor of Whig policies and help Whigs form governments."

By contrast, the pro-slavery states in the US had ample political representation and had taken considerable pains to preserve that representation. Their 'problem' wasn't that they weren't getting to vote or that their rights had, in any meaningful sense, been ignored. It was that they'd finally lost an election and an anti-slavery candidate was in the White House.

Their problem, to paraphrase Stephen Colbert, is that they were unable to tell the difference between 'being victims of a tyranny' and 'losing.'
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Re: Georgia politician publicly uses N-word as Atlanta suburb declares Confederate History Month

Post by Zaune »

I'd also note that there was a purely practical obstacle to punishing the Confederates for treason, namely the fact that it would create martyrs if they confined themselves to the ringleaders and going beyond the ringleaders... Well, mass executions would hardly be a good first step to reintegration, would it? And somehow I doubt the Supreme court would sign off on Roman-style decimation or something.
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Re: Georgia politician publicly uses N-word as Atlanta suburb declares Confederate History Month

Post by U.P. Cinnabar »

True. Still, the fact the only Confederate officer they chose to convict and execute(Captain Henry Wirz) was a non-American whose only crime was being the commandant of a POW camp whose circumstances were beyond his control sent the wrong sort of message. In my opinion. YMMV.
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Re: Georgia politician publicly uses N-word as Atlanta suburb declares Confederate History Month

Post by Titan Uranus »

U.P. Cinnabar wrote: 2018-04-08 01:17am Yep, Atlanta is considered the center of the "dirty South."

Most Atlanta area natives also consider themselves the center of the Universe. Which is why the other Georgia hates them.
I have never heard anyone, screaming racist or not call Atlanta anything like that.

It is considered a center of American black culture, however, which I assume is what you are attempting to imply.


In any case, the homogenizing swarm called Atlanta (which doesn't have much to do with the actual city boundaries) is also constantly devouring the smaller towns and cities around it, tearing down their individual cultures in favor of suburbs whose sole function is to warehouse more Atlantans. Who don't work in, eat in, or take their recreation in the small towns, but rather in Atlanta or one of her satellite cities. It's why all of the old downtown areas outside of those cities are half shuttered. Yeah, no reason that anyone would want to prevent that, must just be a bunch of Foolish Peasants bigots standing in the way of Progress out of nothing more that petulance.

Zaune wrote: 2018-04-10 04:37pm I'd also note that there was a purely practical obstacle to punishing the Confederates for treason, namely the fact that it would create martyrs if they confined themselves to the ringleaders and going beyond the ringleaders... Well, mass executions would hardly be a good first step to reintegration, would it? And somehow I doubt the Supreme court would sign off on Roman-style decimation or something.
They didn't need to go after the exalted ringleaders, who were too old and worn out to cause real trouble. They needed to go after the young, energetic, and competent up-and-coming leaders. In particular, US racial history would have been much better had two men, Nathan Bedford Forrest and Wade Hampton, been hanged. Unfortunately, only the former of the two committed any atrocities during the war that could have justified hanging him and not all Confederates more generally.

Aether wrote: 2018-04-08 01:35am
To this day I am surprised that confederate soldiers are are not actively considered traitors to the Union. Even if you use mental gymnastics about "States Rights", how is treason not a given?
They were by the Radical Republicans, unfortunately for them Lincoln left a border state democrat in the presidency and without the war pushing the electorate to vote for the party least like the enemy Radical support dwindled. Leniency is generally the better solution in such large-scale rebellions, unless you think making a few tens of thousands of the most powerful southerners think that they have nothing left to lose is a good idea. It's also more in line with the culture kind of culture necessary for a long-term republic or democracy.
Ignoring that, treating the traitors harshly would have required a long-term occupation of a couple of million square miles of territory and frankly, have you seen a rail map of the CSA?
Simon_Jester wrote: 2018-04-10 03:50pm By contrast, the pro-slavery states in the US had ample political representation and had taken considerable pains to preserve that representation. Their 'problem' wasn't that they weren't getting to vote or that their rights had, in any meaningful sense, been ignored. It was that they'd finally lost an election and an anti-slavery candidate was in the White House.

Their problem, to paraphrase Stephen Colbert, is that they were unable to tell the difference between 'being victims of a tyranny' and 'losing.'
Take your own morality out of it for a moment, why should they have cared that their technical rights were not being infringed? Their whole economic system was based upon slavery. (The poor white families who didn't rely on slaves did not matter, politically speaking, and so can be ignored in this discussion.) The President was anti-slavery now, you may say that he only wanted to limit slavery, but that is just going to result in the slow abolition of it.
Why?
Because, the free states were growing faster than the slave states, and had been throughout the history of the union. If one election can be won by an explicitly anti-slavery party, and without any slave states, that party can win any future election (Lincoln would still have won had the Democrats been united.) If you add to that the probability that no new slave states would be added, ensuring that an ever growing number of faster-growing free states would be added to the union.
So the only reasonable future for the slave states would be a steady waning of power until the free states decide to get rid of slavery for their own moral reasons. Plunging the slave states into economic collapse, and risking (they would probably think guaranteeing) a complete loss of money and power for everyone that mattered.
In that situation, why on Earth not rebel now, when you have the best possibility of success?
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Re: Georgia politician publicly uses N-word as Atlanta suburb declares Confederate History Month

Post by Simon_Jester »

Titan Uranus wrote: 2018-04-10 08:49pmIn any case, the homogenizing swarm called Atlanta (which doesn't have much to do with the actual city boundaries) is also constantly devouring the smaller towns and cities around it, tearing down their individual cultures in favor of suburbs whose sole function is to warehouse more Atlantans. Who don't work in, eat in, or take their recreation in the small towns, but rather in Atlanta or one of her satellite cities. It's why all of the old downtown areas outside of those cities are half shuttered. Yeah, no reason that anyone would want to prevent that, must just be a bunch of Foolish Peasants bigots standing in the way of Progress out of nothing more that petulance.
I can empathize with people not wanting their towns to get englobulated, but I can't empathize with them being super racist assholes about it.
Zaune wrote: 2018-04-10 04:37pm I'd also note that there was a purely practical obstacle to punishing the Confederates for treason, namely the fact that it would create martyrs if they confined themselves to the ringleaders and going beyond the ringleaders... Well, mass executions would hardly be a good first step to reintegration, would it? And somehow I doubt the Supreme court would sign off on Roman-style decimation or something.
They didn't need to go after the exalted ringleaders, who were too old and worn out to cause real trouble. They needed to go after the young, energetic, and competent up-and-coming leaders. In particular, US racial history would have been much better had two men, Nathan Bedford Forrest and Wade Hampton, been hanged. Unfortunately, only the former of the two committed any atrocities during the war that could have justified hanging him and not all Confederates more generally.
Yeah. Jeff Davis and Robert E. Lee weren't going to be making any more trouble, realistically. But guys like Forrest and Hampton went on to create the terrorist movements that prevented blacks from getting meaningful political representation in the post-Reconstruction South, and the country would have been a far better place had they never lived.
Ignoring that, treating the traitors harshly would have required a long-term occupation of a couple of million square miles of territory and frankly, have you seen a rail map of the CSA?
Ugh, I for one have, and it's heartbreaking. Huge swathes of the South were several days' travel from the nearest major port, river, or rail line. It would have been a guerilla's dream. And frankly, Union leaders were aware of this in 1865, as were some Confederates.

As I understand it, the way the war ended had a lot to do with the senior Confederate leadership (especially Lee) just being so goddamn tired of war that they wouldn't even consider carrying on the struggle into "bushwhacking." By contrast, men like Forrest would have been perfectly happy to do so.
Simon_Jester wrote: 2018-04-10 03:50pmBy contrast, the pro-slavery states in the US had ample political representation and had taken considerable pains to preserve that representation. Their 'problem' wasn't that they weren't getting to vote or that their rights had, in any meaningful sense, been ignored. It was that they'd finally lost an election and an anti-slavery candidate was in the White House.

Their problem, to paraphrase Stephen Colbert, is that they were unable to tell the difference between 'being victims of a tyranny' and 'losing.'
Take your own morality out of it for a moment, why should they have cared that their technical rights were not being infringed? Their whole economic system was based upon slavery. (The poor white families who didn't rely on slaves did not matter, politically speaking, and so can be ignored in this discussion.)...
See, I'm not even disputing the question of whether the Southern plantation aristocrat class had an incentive to secede from the Union. I'm disputing the question of whether their rebellion was in some sense "just."

I have a pretty consistent standard of when a secession/revolt is justified, versus being unjustified. Conversely, of when the state is justified in punishing rebels rather than letting them secede.

The big ones are...
1) There have to be real abuses- the kind where the central government is specifically harming someone, not just indirectly harming someone by helping someone else.
2) There has to be a lack of representation- the existing central government has to be of a kind that, for whatever reason, structurally locks the rebels out of proportionate access to the halls of power.

The Confederates had at best a very dubious claim to (1) and no claim whatsoever to (2). Their argument was basically "well, if we can't dominate the government forever by winning all the elections, we don't want to be part of this legal system," when they were quite happy to insist that other people had to obey their rules back when they dominated the government.

Even their claim to (1) involved begging the question very hard.
Why?
Because, the free states were growing faster than the slave states, and had been throughout the history of the union. If one election can be won by an explicitly anti-slavery party, and without any slave states, that party can win any future election (Lincoln would still have won had the Democrats been united.) If you add to that the probability that no new slave states would be added, ensuring that an ever growing number of faster-growing free states would be added to the union.
So the only reasonable future for the slave states would be a steady waning of power until the free states decide to get rid of slavery for their own moral reasons. Plunging the slave states into economic collapse, and risking (they would probably think guaranteeing) a complete loss of money and power for everyone that mattered.
In that situation, why on Earth not rebel now, when you have the best possibility of success?
Again, I'm not debating whether the decision made sense in some "utilitarian from Southern plantation aristocrat's viewpoint" calculus. I'm debating whether the decision was justified by some kind of ethical standard that exists outside the head of said plantation aristocrat.

If I were a plantation aristocrat, killing hundreds of thousands of people to ensure the continued existence of plantation aristocracy might somehow seem like a self-evident good choice to me. That doesn't mean anyone else should be expected to humor me, respect my opinion, or do anything to validate or apologize for my decision after the fact. Saying "this person's decision made sense in context" isn't really an excuse for their actions unless you can prove they were acting out of genuinely benevolent motives, and arguing that for slavery doesn't pass the laugh test.
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Re: Georgia politician publicly uses N-word as Atlanta suburb declares Confederate History Month

Post by houser2112 »

Titan Uranus wrote: 2018-04-10 08:49pmTake your own morality out of it for a moment, why should they have cared that their technical rights were not being infringed? Their whole economic system was based upon slavery. (The poor white families who didn't rely on slaves did not matter, politically speaking, and so can be ignored in this discussion.) The President was anti-slavery now, you may say that he only wanted to limit slavery, but that is just going to result in the slow abolition of it.
Why?
Because, the free states were growing faster than the slave states, and had been throughout the history of the union. If one election can be won by an explicitly anti-slavery party, and without any slave states, that party can win any future election (Lincoln would still have won had the Democrats been united.) If you add to that the probability that no new slave states would be added, ensuring that an ever growing number of faster-growing free states would be added to the union.
So the only reasonable future for the slave states would be a steady waning of power until the free states decide to get rid of slavery for their own moral reasons. Plunging the slave states into economic collapse, and risking (they would probably think guaranteeing) a complete loss of money and power for everyone that mattered.
In that situation, why on Earth not rebel now, when you have the best possibility of success?
Because the country would have an incentive to not have half the country be an economic backwater, perhaps? I'm sure slavery wouldn't have ended suddenly. I would imagine a graduated phasing out would be necessary to avoid a collapse, to give the South enough time to shift to a less vulnerable labor source.
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Re: Georgia politician publicly uses N-word as Atlanta suburb declares Confederate History Month

Post by Simon_Jester »

Honestly yes. If we look at how abolition proceeded in the northern states, it was very much gradual and either compensation or the slaves having to 'earn' their freedom financially was very much involved.

Now, that being said, the reality would almost certainly still be "South gets manumission and an end to slavery crammed down its throat some time in the 1860s, '70s, or at the latest '80s, and the plantation aristocracy loses considerable status." That's what the politically dominant aristocrats were looking at: the loss of their status as assholes running latifundia. Given that their best hope for keeping the racket running another generation or two was to form a country whose deck was even more blatantly stacked in favor of plantation-owning assholes than the US's had been...

Again, I get why they wanted to do it, but I get it in the same sense that I understand the clearly defined motives of the guy who mugs me in an alley. I know why he's doing it, and if had exactly the same life circumstances as him and no morals I might do the same thing... but that doesn't mean I or anyone else should concede his right to do it.
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