There's an Ugly Truth about a Faction of our Democratic Party that Needs to Be Addressed.

[johnlucas]

106. I'm born & raised in the South & I say Southerners need to stop whining

If you don't check your own house, then don't get mad when someone else checks it for you.

The South IS the problem.

It's the core of where all this ignorance emanates.

If you look at history the proverbial South didn't just stay in the Deep South.
Texas territory was taken over by Missourians. Southerners kept going westward & northward.
Places like what is now Arizona & Montana. That whole general rural belt that keeps voting for these "Conservative" wackos.
Remember how Arizona was one of the last places to honor Martin Luther King Jr. Day?
Public Enemy wrote a song about it, remember?

The whole cause of the Civil War was the Southerners constantly raiding Natives lands to gain more power & representation in the Congress (not to mention money for themselves).
The whole Missouri Compromise thing with that Free State/Slave State borderline.
Most of this territory conquered ran SOUTH of that borderline. Big ol' giant Texas, Big ol' giant California.
More lands, more slaves, more power, more money.
The 1846 Mexican War was a Southerner's war. They just said "I'm taking this land from the Mexicans & that's that!"

The President was weaker than the Democratic bloc in Congress remember? A bloc that was pro-slave.
The Solid South even then.
Whigs were dead & the slavery-minded Democrats pretty much ran the whole government in the 1830s, 1840s, 1850s.
A bunch of disparate factions came together to oppose this virtual monopoly on power & called themselves the Republican Party.
They ran this anti-slavery guy named Abraham Lincoln for the Presidency in 1860...
...and HE WON!

The Southern power bloc KNEW what he was going to do & immediately split the country in two.
By definition a confederation can never defeat a union so the CSA got its ass whomped.
Slavery is over (at least the chattel kind anyway) & the South was demolished.
Unfortunately the union didn't finish the job & let these jackasses fester.
These jackasses end up poisoning all the accomplishment done as a result of the war & now we have the American Apartheid era AKA Jim Crow as a result of the South's sore loserdom.

Republican Party with the Missouri Compromise issue settled left the Blacks in the dust & started chasing the money thing.
60 years later that leads to a Great Depression.
An odd band of Northern Democrats (created from the initial split of the Democratic-Republican monopoly in the 1820s) were different than their Southern counterparts & they ran this rich dude from New York named Franklin Roosevelt for the Presidency in 1932...
...and HE WON!

Frankie R set the stage for the evil Democratic Party's atonement for its past with the introduction of his New Deal situation...
...which includes the Black folks oddly enough!
4 consecutive terms later, he's about to set the stage for those Blacks to serve in the military as an equal but then he dies.
So his VP Harry Truman does the job for him.
What does the South do? They split along those same Confederate lines, those same Missouri Compromise lines as before in protest.
Democrats are supposed to hurt the Negroes not help them!

A little while later, another odd Northern Democrat from Massachusetts named John Kennedy runs for the Presidency in 1960...
...and HE WON!
Ironically, 100 years after the Civil War goes on here we have this fight for Civil Rights going on in the country.
Predictably the South is split along those same Confederate lines, those same Missouri Compromise lines in protest.
They don't know whether to get behind the Democrats who are starting to warm to the Blacks more & more each day in some circles...
...or to get behind the Republicans who were their mortal enemies & were also helping Blacks through President Eisenhower.

Kennedy sees horrendous terrorist attacks done on little Black girls in a church & says he'll pass the Civil Rights Act but then he's killed.
So his VP Lyndon Johnson does the job for him.
What does the South do? They split along those same Confderate lines, those same Missouri Compromise lines as before in protest.
I SAID Democrats are supposed to hurt the Negroes not help them!
THAT TEARS IT!! This party ain't for me anymore! Kiss my ass Democrats!! I'm OUT!!

The Republican Party had watered down over the decades. They should have been as a whole first & foremost in pushing this kind of legislation but they had been ignoring Blacks' plights for the most part in their reach for the big money.
With the New Deal in place & all this good stuff coming from the newly-reformed Democrats, Republicans knew they would end up ironically like the Whigs again & the Democrats will run everything again (this time for the better).
Instead of just fading out quietly into the night, they began a strategy to court the bigots in exodus from the Democratic Party.
This Southern Strategy bizarrely turned the party which once freed the slaves into a party with a foundation of descendants from the pro-slavery class.
They use this strategy to chase the big money & roll back all the accomplishments done under FDR's New Deal Democrats with the racist generally bigoted mentalities of the South as their fuel.

About 40 years later after this strategy led to THE WORST PRESIDENCY IN AMERICAN HISTORY in George Walker Bush, the de-bigoted Democratic Party ran this guy from Hawaii via Chicago named Barack Hussein Obama II for the Presidency in 2008...
...and HE WON!!
His former pastor Reverend Jeremiah Wright said that The Chickens Are Coming Home To Roost.
The worst nightmare of the Confederate descendants...the descendant of an African slave (through his "White" mother) & an African from Kenya (through his Black father) is now The Leader of the Free World™!!!
The first Black/Multiethnic President ushered in by non-racist Whites, Blacks, & others including those Mexicans the old South fought about 150 years ago.

What does the South do? Yep you knew it. They split along those SAME Confederate lines, those SAME Missouri Compromise lines as 150-200 years ago.
The newest storefront of this Confederate faction is called the Tea Party & they are determined to stop any hint of Progress the first Black President may do.
As you know Blacks who are the First anything tend to make revolutionary change.
Being historically denied & wanting to open it up for the future makes them dangerous to any status quo.
Thurgood Marshall, Jackie Robinson, Jack Johnson, Michael Jackson, Venus & Serena Williams, Tiger Woods, the list goes on & on.

Yeah, so the South is the problem & Southerners need to be THE FIRST to call out this problem.
Quit being defensive & fix your house. Others will help you but you better call out the sludge & filth strung around your house before any work needs to get done.
Quit taking it personal. They're not talking about you when they talk about the proverbial South.
They're talking about the power structure that exists there.

On the other hand, non-Southerners don't need to heap on the snobbery.
Everybody that watches pro wrestling, NASCAR, & hunts isn't necessarily a dimbulb.
I myself watch pro wrestling (used to before it started to suck) & it taught me a lot about real life, strange as that may sound.
I'm not into NASCAR & I don't hunt but I threw those in there to help complete the example.

But this is a minor point.

The major point is Southerners need to start taking out the trash in a public way.
Outside of the backward mentalities that litter this region, it's not a bad place to live.
Let's get rid of that backwardsness so that it helps the entire nation become not such a bad place to live either.
John Lucas