The truth about the Civil War's cause in 2 sentences and relating it to today's political landscape

[AZLD4Candidate]

1: The civil war was about 400 families of rich, conservative slave-owners convincing the poor to fight and die in order to protect property that robbed the poor of wage paying jobs. The poor were dying for a cause that really didn't affect them but media like Cannibals All by George Fitzhugh and provocateurs like John C. Calhoun made them believe some dangerous force was out there going to take what little they had.

2: The potential civil war brewing is about 400 families of rich, conservative wage slave-owners convincing the poor to fight and kill in order to protect a system that has robbed the poor of wage paying jobs. The poor are now supporting a cause that really doesn't affect them but media like (pick any RW media medium) and provocateurs like (pick any right wing carnival barker) made them believe some dangerous force was out there going to take what little they had.

See, whatever your name was with Charlie Kirk bashing social studies in schools, this is the skill set social studies teachers like me teach to our students. Cause-Effect. Causation over Time. Relations between past and current events. We outfit our students with a metronome called a Bullshit Detector and tell them when it swings faster, you're listening to bullshit.

As George Carlin said: “Kids have to be warned that there's bullshit coming down the road. That's the biggest thing you can do for a kid. Tell them what life in this country is about [...] a whole lot of bullshit that needs to be detected and avoided.”

[Alexander Of Assyria]

1. Whole lot of bullshit coming...that needs to be detected and avoided...Social media...detect and avoid!

Even easier…don’t use! Half your work is done!

[AZLD4Candidate]

2. Tik Tok is the same, only worse, because all info goes to a server in China, so they can interject

Chinese bullshit into your phone. Don't use social media, especially something from there.

[Alexander Of Assyria]

5. Hallelujah mate!

[speak easy]

14. 'TikTok moves U.S. user data to Oracle servers'

NEW YORK/WASHINGTON, June 17 (Reuters) - TikTok said it has completed migrating information on its U.S. users to servers at Oracle Corp (ORCL.N), in a move that could address U.S. regulatory concerns over data integrity on the popular short video app.
https://www.reuters.com/technology/tiktok-moves-us-user-data-oracle-servers-2022-06-17/

There may be backups accessible in China, but the statement "all info goes to a server in China" is not correct.

[irisblue]

12. You realize Democratic Underground **is** social media as well?

[Alexander Of Assyria]

32. Think most folks know what I mean mate!

[irisblue]

33. No I am not clear what you meant. Please explain your meaning. I'm listening

[Historic NY]

3. He's right

[Botany]

4. And both the rich slave owners and the poor cannon foder believed "Christian" leaders starting ...

.... with the Pope that God had made them black because they were inferior to white people and that thinking
is still alive in many Americans today.

The civil war was about 400 families of rich, conservative slave-owners convincing the poor to fight and die in order to protect property that robbed the poor of wage paying jobs.

[Alexander Of Assyria]

7. As was the First World War and a a few others before and since...also owners of big media, so

won’t hear that much!

And as is the current setup for the bloated military, the tried and true system is wholly intact still.

[Botany]

10. And to this day I think JFK was killed because by 1963 he had come to the conclusion that ...

... there was no winning to be had in Vietnam and had ordered to start pulling our troops out.
Kennedy was no dummy and even though the pentagon and the CIA kept telling him about all
the V.C. and N.V.A. troops that were being killed but President kept wondering why the communist
forces kept growing. Vietnam was a huge "cash cow" for the very thing that President Eisenhower
had warned us about, "the military industrial complex."

[Lonestarblue]

18. I also think he was murdered because of white supremacy.

He sent federal troops to address the white protests over James Meredith’s entry to Ole Miss, and it was clear that he would support civil rights legislation. Bobby Kennedy and MLK were also killed for white supremacy. It has never gone away, just retreated a bit until Trump made it laudable to be a white supremacist.

[thomski64]

19. ...ever notice how political..

..assassinations tapered way off
after J Edgar Hoover was no longer at
the FBI?

[electric_blue68]

35. I definitely think Civil Rights had a Major, if not The Major cause of...

JFK's, and RFK's assassinations.

Dr King, of course, - absolutely!

With Dr King there was also the potential of trying to unite poor people in The Poor People's March.

With Bobby there was also the fact that among others African-Americans, AND the White Working class borh supported him!

[The Magistrate]

6. Nicely Done, Sir

Good to see reference to Cannibals All or Slaves Without Masters, certainly the most impudent apologia to emerge at the South. Well worth reading today. There are some odd and timeless overlaps.

[jmbar2]

8. Cannibals - wow!

Never heard of it until today.

The author defends slavery as more humane than capitalism, and gives a Marxist critique of capitalism of the time that is very relevant today. With so many struggling today to pay for housing and basic needs, benign slavery might actually be preferred.

Here is a quick summary:
https://docsouth.unc.edu/southlit/fitzhughcan/summary.html

[Farmer-Rick]

17. No, slavery is about owning people as property

That's why there is no such thing as benign slavery. It's a plantation owner's fantasy.

Slavery is always a horror no matter how you dress it up.

Would you want to be my slave? I promise to treat you nicely but if I don't, no one will care because you are my property.

I have a ton of farm work for a slave to do and a chicken coop a slave can live in. I'll feed them just enough to survive and maybe......just maybe.......get them health care when they inevitably catch COVID or dyptheria from the dirty water I give them.

Slavery is immoral, always.

Capitalism is also a horror show, as we are learning. But it was better than feudalism and slavery. We need to evolve a better economic system and not fall back into the horrors of inherited rank/capital and slavery.

[Straw Man]

31. Absolutely.

The concept of benign slavery ignores the fact that all power is underpinned by violence. Even relatively benign power structures use the threat violence to enforce their norms. And there is nothing benign about being forced to work without remuneration. Simply put, it goes like this:

OWNER: Work.
SLAVE: I don't want to.
OWNER: Work or starve.
SLAVE: I'd rather starve.
OWNER: Work or be beaten to death.
SLAVE: (works)

It's the paradigm of being held up at gunpoint. If I didn't believe my assailant would kill me for non-compliance, I would tell him to fuck off. The threat of violence is what compels compliance.

[burrowowl]

9. Carlin was really good!

[lindysalsagal]

11. Teachers are being muzzled by parents and school boards for this very reason.

[Rebl2]

13. 👆👆👆👆

What he said. 👍👍👍

[KS Toronado]

15. I'm going to take Carlin's advice and question

if my cellphone will make pancakes.

[bucolic_frolic]

16. Yes, and during the Cold War they told us the Russians were coming to take our food

I recall someone connected to conservative military circles on a low level telling me that at the time. It was the Party line on communism. They are coming for yours!

[Chainfire]

20. Of course, the events that led to the Civil War were simple....

Bad guys vs good guys. Monsters vs saints....Black and white, cut and dried.

Although I am descended a from a family that were plantation owners and slave holders, I certainly realize how evil the institution was and I don't support the Confederacy any more than I support the Nazis or the other MAGAS. You get to choose your politics but you don't get to choose your ancestors.

That said, the young men who served the Confederacy as cannon fodder went to war for the same reasons all young men, everywhere, throughout history, go to wars. They were told, by their elders, that it was the patriotic thing to do and if they didn't they were cowards. A parallel may be our war in Viet Nam. Most progressives damn that war, rightfully, but don't damn the soldiers.

Southern soldiers were victims, not boogeymen. Here is the photo of a Southern soldier, a distant relative that died "defending his country" He was a kid, from the "have not" side of the family, he was not a rich landowner, not a slave holder, just a kid, when he was decapitated by a cannon ball. Damn slavery, damn the generals, damn the politicians, and damn the slave owners, but the soldiers were just soldiers.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:FilePath/Private_Edwin_Francis_Jemison.jpg

[BlackSkimmer]

26. Yes, and there was also conscription during that war.

No doubt many had no wish to particular in that bloodbath.

[Chainfire]

27. The conscription in the North was interesting,

I don't know if it worked the same in the South, but in the North, a conscripted person with money could pay someone to go in his place. Soldiers serving the Union went to war for the exact reasons that the Southern soldiers did. The bankers, the politicians and the preachers told them it was the right thing to do for god and country. I seriously doubt that 1 in 100 Union soldiers were willing to be killed in battle to free the slaves. They, just as their Southern counterparts were products of their time.

Wars are fought to protect or grow fortunes or for religion or a combination of both. Ethics and morals rarely enter into the formula.
No wars are ethical or moral and war is as evil as slavery. Even as Studs Turkle described WWII as the "Good War" he was wrong, there wasn't a damn thing good about it, it was a battle of evil and atrocity against other evil and atrocity. As always the winners claim the high moral ground and write the history.

If you think that the Allies in WWII had a monopoly on right, you don't know about the bombing of Dresden.

[BlackSkimmer]

28. Spot on.

And I do indeed know about Dresden.

Both my parents were children in Britain during that war. As a child, I was fascinated by their stories. My mother always made it clear that atrocities occurred with all countries involved. I remember being horrified by the story of Dresden. And Coventry. So many others.

Mom told me of how she and her brothers and sisters were absolutely terrified by the thought of incendiary bombs. So many stories. I miss hearing them.

[electric_blue68]

34. Er... Hitler was waging an Authoritarian, Anti-Semetic, Anti other vunerable populations...

War.

Dresden was probably wrong. I only know a little except it was an extremely massive attack on a civilian population. Sounds like it might have been worst in a way
than the bombing of London bc it was done in a very short time, thus destruction, injuries, and deaths were higher (no chance to heal, or reconstruct damages).

I'm not totally certain that the Atomic Bombing of Hiroshima, and Nagasaki were right either. Especially after viewing the relics, and photos about that - the first
Touring Exhibit from Japan in NYC back in the early '70's!

My thoughts on that maybe IF they were going to use it - drop it on an uninhabited island near by.
It's.not that none one would have been affected, but I'm
guessing less by some order of magnitude.

[Chainfire]

36. My point, of mentioning Dresden, was that war is evil, period.

All parties concerned do horrible things to other people. As I said, old Studds was wrong, it was not a Good War. Do not think that I am, in any way, defending Hitler's Germany, I am a confirmed and dedicated Hitler and Nazi hater from way back. Hitler and the rest of the Nazis had to be stopped by any means necessary. However:

When we destroyed the center of Dresden, the war was nearly over [/i]and the outcome had been decided on the battlefields, Germany was beaten. The bombing was not making war on Hitler's industrial base. It was not a military base, it wasn't a production, or training center, not a cantonment, depot or port. The city was a cultural center, and at the time of the bombing, it was serving as a place of refuge for the old men, women and children that were being evacuated ahead of the rampaging Soviets. It was packed with refugees and we knew it. The bombing was a terror operation. We had learned how to create fire storms, and we got damn good at it.

The first wave of planes carried "Block buster" bombs; these big bombs did two things, (other than killing people and destroying property directly) they ruptured the watermains, so as to prevent effective fire fighting and they also made tinder out of the, predominantly wooden, historic homes and businesses. The succeeding waves of planes carried incendiaries to get all of that tinder blazing. It was designed to overwhelm any possible emergency response. It made for a fire so big, and so hot, that it consumed all of the available oxygen in its vicinity so that if the people weren't blown up or burned up, would die, hiding in the basements, from suffocation. The mission was a complete success...

Estimates of the dead, were 200,000 to 250,000, no one will ever know the exact numbers because no one knew how many refugees were in the city at the time. The vast majority of those killed were civilians. It was an atrocity, a war crime on a grand scale, but it was overlooked because the people doing the bombing won the war and wrote the history. The British and American Generals in charge of the operation were given praise and medals...

I will bet dollars to donuts that you did not know of the scale of the bombing of Dresden from you high school history. It was swept under the rug. As far as some equivalency to the bombing of London, that is a stretch. London was a military target, the center of government, an industrial base, a training center, a cantonment, and a port...During the entire war, perhaps 22,000 Londoners died from the bombing. That is a hell of a lot of people, but not on the scale, physically or morally as Dresden.

All war is Evil. There is Evil on all sides. We love it, we must because we are always fighting, preparing to fight or recovering from fighting or all three at the same time. So much for a civilized society...

[keithbvadu2]

21. 1+

[Farmer-Rick]

22. Yeah, it's true that the civil war was about slavery

But it was about those 400 filthy rich Americans' slaves. It was their slaves all those Southerners were fighting for. Not for their own slaves.

In the deep South, unlike in the fantasy Gone With The Wind, there was no real commerce outside of slavery. An expert woodworker couldn't make much money because a smart slave could easily be taught what the woodworker was doing. And though the slave might not be as good, at first, the whip made them so much faster at learning. You couldn't even be a small local farmer and sell your produce because a slave could do it better for free. There was no work or market that an average person could do that wasn't filled by slave labor.

But the filthy rich capitalist in the North were also pretty awful. Their concern over losing the child labor they were able to get for a pittance was really quite horrible. Many industrial towns looked like war zones due to the number of people who had lost hands, arms, feet and legs. Their chant was:"Factories were made for children, and children were made for factories."

Both systems were pretty awful. But in the end capitalism won out because owning people as property is immoral, no matter what the Bible says.

[CatWoman]

23. excellent points all

I was just thinking about the civil war parallels last night.

[Tarc]

24. The problem with that Carlin snippet is that the wingnuts can warp it to support them

I loved Carlin...top 5, probably top 3 stand-up acts of all-time. But sometimes he dipped his toe a smidge too far into the "both sides suck" waters. The right-wingers will extract the "your vote doesn't count" from the long list he rattled off and weaponize it into their current run of election denialism.

[grantcart]

25. The primary reason for the secession of South Carolina was

an effort by a small number of South Carolina businessmen to restart the trans Atlantic slave trade which was made illegal in 1807.

This group, called the Fire Eaters, were unsuccessful passing legislation and hijacked the South Carolina government into secession.

This move was actually opposed by the 'intellentsia' of the slave holders who opposed it in the Confederate Constitution Convention.

Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee and Arkansas all resisted secession and only seceded after fighting started with the firing on Fort Sumter.

[snot]

29. ...and the same can be said of just about every war.

"Why of course the people don't want war. Why should some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece? . . . But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. . . . All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the peacemakers for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger."

– Hermann Goering, per "Nuremberg Diary" (Farrar, Straus & Co 1947), by Gustave Gilbert

[Poiuyt]

30. The Lost Cause was one of the most successful disinformation campaigns in our

country's history. It should be taught in marketing classes.