Many words describe the "American" South, and some of them can even be spoken in polite company. Unfortunately, meritocracy and accountability are not among of them. I'm reminded of this listening to some otherwise reasonable Southern liberals complain about "South bashing" as if it doesn't matter what the South actually does - as if it's simply entitled to collective respect because it exists, even though as a rule it tends to hold the rest of the country, if not the entire world, in unrestrained contempt. And the origins of this contempt aren't in any rational value judgment, but simply a product of absolute, unfettered narcissism on the part of a region that has - let's be perfectly honest here - done damn little to deserve membership in this nation over the centuries of its existence, let alone to be regarded as equal partners in a society it is constantly trying to undermine and destroy. I have respect for Southern liberals working to change that, but until we see some major progress on that front, you don't get to be indignant that people in other parts of the country are losing patience.
To recap the history of this one-sided national relationship, Southern moderates and liberals had close to a century to end slavery, and made less than zero progress. To the contrary, slavery became the defining cultural institution of the South, and was deemed more important than membership in the United States of America. An entirely new sovereign nation was founded explicitly on the premise of safeguarding perpetual white supremacy, and the state legislature votes that seceded from the Union and established the Confederacy were virtually unanimous. In fact, I'm relying on faith to even mention liberals and moderates living in the antebellum South, because I can find precious little historical evidence they even existed.
What I do find is that if any opposed slavery, they kept their mouths shut - either to remain in good standing within their culture, or to avoid potentially violent repercussions: Selfishness and cowardice so overwhelming, and taken to such extremes as to obliterate any meaningful claim to decency. The same apparently applied to secession: Obedience to the tenets of local culture was far stronger than loyalty to country, even among people who had some internal notion that the causes of the Confederacy were unjust. Robert E. Lee - an educated, philosophical gentleman from a border state who hoped some day to see the end of slavery - decided it would serve a higher duty to murder hundreds of thousands of his own countrymen in defense of that slavery than to serve in the Union army and be hated by the people of his region.
Okay, they made a mistake. Repeatedly. Over nearly a century. With virtually no attempt on the part of anyone within their society to do anything about it. So far, so forgivable - at least from the distance of history, although I doubt actual slaves would have been so understanding. But then outsiders (gasp) threatened their narcissism by seemingly being poised to correct the mistake for them by outlawing slavery on the federal level, and that could not be permitted. Even though Lincoln swore up and down that slavery would never be abolished in slave states while he was President if they stayed within the Union, they knew that time was not on their side: New free states were constantly being admitted into the Union, and both the electoral and economic power of liberal politics kept growing while the South remained an economy powered entirely by degradation.
Southerners stared down a future where their human farm animals would be allowed to talk back to them, learn to read and write, go wherever they please, vote, hold public office, and possibly even - horror of horrors - mix races. They imagined with horror a time when their children would play with black children as equals rather than pets, and work would have to be rewarded with just compensation rather than extracted at the point of a gun, the crack of a whip, and the threat of a noose. In other words, they saw a future where they would have to live as citizens of a free, law-based republic rather than feudal thugs who can take what they want by force, and they were afraid and furious. They decided it was preferable to kill their own countrymen in large numbers rather than face even the possibility that some day they would have to admit they were wrong, learn, and change.
Okay, so they killed hundreds of thousands of Americans just so they could avoid admitting they were wrong and learning how to work for themselves in a fair and democratic society. Mistakes were made. They're only human! Such was the thinking behind Reconstruction: Compensate for past injustices by redistributing the stolen wealth of the slavemasters to their victims, give black people education and access to public office, bring in business investment to help rebuild the South into a functioning and modern economy, and surely white Southerners will gradually come to understand and appreciate the benefits of a fair, open, and just society where everyone has opportunities...
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Uh...no. Reconstruction, in all its benefits, was apparently the South's worst nightmare: The fact that the Yankees they hated were being magnanimous only further wounded their collective pride and deepened Southern rage. To a narcissist, hatred cannot be invalidated by proving it undeserved - quite the contrary, it only intensifies the feeling by proving how unworthy the person feeling it is. They would have been less enraged if the Yankees had left the South in ruins, but by rebuilding it they proved the destruction was deserved, and that Southerners could not forgive.
But far worse than that, being forced to see to black people becoming educated, making a decent living, some of them building quite enviable lives for themselves as tradesmen, businessmen, or even political leaders rubbed the South's centuries-long crimes in its face, proving that the people they had murdered and brutalized for generations; whom they had given the status of cattle, and derided as subhuman as a matter of law; were in fact their equals, if not moral superiors for having risen from the ashes without vengeance in their hearts. This, Southerners would have rather died than forgive - to stare into the face of their own vileness, and have it rubbed in their faces that the society they had built and celebrated for so long was an abomination bearing the Mark of Cain.
But the American hero President responsible for Reconstruction was soon assassinated by a Southerner, and his replacement in office - also a Southerner - was soon about the business of undermining Lincoln's policies and returning control of the South to unrepentant Confederates. As soon as the Union army departed, open season was declared on the newly educated and empowered black population - every last one who had been elected to office during Reconstruction was driven out, "black voter" was once again an oxymoron, blacks could not own businesses that competed with whites, black workers lived in virtual slavery as sharecroppers, and white-hooded riders styling themselves "knights" (a feudal rank, naturally) enforced the new status quo through campaigns of murder and terrorism that didn't even begin to wane until the 1970s.
For the next century, white Southerners overwhelmingly - if not unanimously - elected people who gave unqualified support to this state of affairs: They were 100% of criminal juries, 100% of elected officials, 100% of the wealthy, effectively 100% of voters for most of that time, and blacks could not so much as speak to them impertinently without endangering their lives, and nary a word was to be heard against any of it in Southern white society. I challenge anyone to find a record of a white man - one, single white man - being found guilty of any crime against a black person in the South at any time from the end of Reconstruction to the beginning of the Civil Rights era. And conversely, I would also challenge anyone to find a black man acquitted in the South during this period of committing a crime against a white person - and without some other white person vouching for them. If such cases occurred, they would be very fascinating to historians for their extreme rarity.
Where were the white Southern militias rising up to shut down the Ku Klux Klan? There were none. Where were the reformer politicians promising to at least improve the conditions of segregation for black people, let alone opposing the institution as a whole? There were none. Where were the law enforcement officers protecting black people who tried to vote? There were none - they were too busy arresting, beating, and murdering them for being "uppity." Where was the outrage among white Southerners at the patent unfairness and injustice all around them? Nowhere to be found. To all appearances, the South during this period considered itself the ideal society, just as it had during the Confederate and antebellum years - only the relative opportunity and equality of Reconstruction was considered a "dark period."
If problems were even acknowledged - which they weren't, at all, until practically the 1950s - they were belittled as minor quibbles exaggerated by "outside agitators," and that was the prevailing attitude, not just the party line of the hardcore racist. Circumstances that any sane person would have regarded as dystopian were treated as the way things were supposed to be, and anyone who would have dared to offer solutions or suggest change of any kind was regarded as a threat and an enemy. So what if there was a psychotic terrorist group roving around murdering people for the color of their skin? So what if they had members throughout local and state government? That's no excuse to go around stirrin' up trouble! To disturb the ego of Southern culture was considered a greater moral affront than centuries of mass-murder and oppression. And thus we hit on some of the core problems with it.
The Southern mentality is and has always been fatalistic and counter-rational, much like Saudi Arabia or Afghanistan. To question the status quo constitutes some kind of blasphemy, and to attempt to change it is betrayal of identity. It clings to the medieval notion that people have a "station in life," and being morally upright requires respecting that station and not getting "uppity" - i.e., proving yourself worthy of more than your society is willing to concede. This is why Southerners hated intelligent, educated black men most of all - because they proved the basis of white supremacy false, and in doing so "got above themselves" (i.e., rose above the status they were given). In Southern society, and indeed all likeminded societies worldwide, truth is morally subordinate to power, so when the truth says one thing and power says another, being "good" means you must uphold the lie. Telling the truth in that situation is an act of rebellion against God. To wit, tell a Southern conservative they're wrong and they'll call you immoral; prove it, and they'll call you the devil.
Well, okay, they made some more mistakes, and committed another century of unremitting atrocities without making a single attempt to change things. Who hasn't? Let he who is without centuries of unanimously publicly-supported, state-sanctioned mass-murder, terrorism, and oppression cast the first stone. But once southern blacks started to assert their rights peacefully and make persuasive arguments to change things, surely then the white South would have risen to its pretenses of community spirit and recognized that it was time to stop defending the indefensible. Surely with all its devout Christianity, and being exposed to the ideas of a changing nation, it could see clearly that the arguments of men like Martin Luther King Jr. were correct and the people standing in their way were arrogant thugs. With black people newly confident, educated, and engaging their white neighbors in dialog, the Southerner would rise to the occasion and join America in building a better future...
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Nope. Black people politely, civilly asked for their rights, and backed up the request by more than proving themselves worthy of respect, and the white Southern answer was rocks, bottles, bricks, firehoses, attack dogs, burnt crosses, dynamited churches, bodies dumped in swamps, and an overwhelmingly popular Governor oh-so-heroically trying to stop a black girl from going to school by standing in the doorway. The National Guard had to be deployed across the South to guarantee that black children had a right to go to school, because as always, nothing enraged the Southern ego like their victims trying to rise above victimhood. As a century earlier, the South would only move forward at the point of a gun, dragged kicking and screaming into obeying even the most basic tenets of civilized human behavior and democratic society.
When the Democratic Party saw the horror of segregation for what it was, and witnessed black WW2 veterans treated like animals by Southern whites who hadn't even served, they were outraged and began the process of transforming into a party characterized by supporting racial equality. Did the Dixiecrats then still in the party learn from this and follow their party toward progress? No, they defected en masse to the GOP, and the voters of their states followed them. All it took for Nixon, Reagan, and all subsequent Republican criminals to win the loyalty if not adoration of Southerners was to demonize black people - the infamous "Southern Strategy," whereby racist propaganda virtually guarantees winning the Solid South.
Well, okay, the South has a problem with the concept of human brotherhood. Everyone has their little foibles! Surely they have other qualities that are worthy of praise and emulation. For instance, the South is overwhelmingly and devoutly Christian, so surely its culture is committed to peaceful foreign policies, nurturing children with education and healthcare, and caring for the impoverished and disabled...
...HAHAHAHAHAHAHA! Uh, no. The South has been the loudest and most malevolent voice of fascist warmongering, xenophobia, and murderous imperialism for practically its entire history - the only society the majority of Southerners seem to think should be left alone from interference is their own. As for the impoverished and disabled, we once again run into Southern fatalism - being in a bad circumstance means that it's the will of God that those people suffer, and therefore interfering in it by showing compassion or trying to provide opportunities to the disadvantaged is an example of being "uppity" on the part of the recipient or "oppressive" government on the part of an institution that dares to interfere in the Natural Order. And as for educating children or medical care, both are properly the domain of the church pastor, who knows all he needs to know by reading the Bahble and can heal the sick through the power of prayer.
If prayer fails to heal the sick, then it's the Will of God. But naturally this logic only applies to people who can't afford real doctors, because if God had wanted the rich to rely exclusively on prayer, he wouldn't have given them money. The difference, of course, is power - where power exists, it is to be worshiped and obeyed, and where it does not exist, it is not to be introduced artificially in service to any blasphemous concept like fairness, democracy, responsibility, or sanity. In point of fact, the only lesson Southern culture seems to have drawn from Christianity is that God hates everyone they hate, and endorses the preternatural level of greed, narcissism, mendacity, and bloodlust of their culture.
Well, okay, so they haven't been perfect on race relations, foreign policy, social safety nets, education, or healthcare. Surely a society characterized by working-class values would be a staunch defender of labor unions and the rights of workers to living wages, decent benefits, reasonable hours, safe working conditions, and some level of job security...
Woops - I forgot we were talking about the South, so any level of labor unionization or worker rights above third-world expectations is completely out of the question. Fatalism, worship of power, and bully ideology rules out such concepts, as they are based on ideas that aren't prevalent - ideas like fairness and shared sacrifice for mutual benefit. To demand respect from superiors would violate the whole worldview of a culture that makes no distinction between power and morality, and would also implicitly obligate a person to show respect to those even less fortunate than themselves. That's not a trade white Southerners seem willing to make. Even in poverty, they seem to find great solace in telling themselves at least they're white. And that's even separate from the corrosive influence of the fatalistic attitudes I already talked about.
Well, gosh darn and golly gee, surely the South has something to be proud of? Environment? Nope - it rapes and pillages with abandon, exactly to the extent the federal government permits, and still complains about all the trees that haven't been chopped down yet and mountains that haven't been explosively decapitated ruining the scenery of capitalist paradise. Transportation? Since public transit is a Communist plot, I'm guessing not. Criminal justice? Apart from the whole thing about executing mentally ill children for crimes they didn't commit and celebrating their deaths with barbecues while being served by forced prison labor...oh wait, that's pretty much the gist of Southern "justice," so I guess that category's a bust too. The arts? Lynyrd Skynyrd! There we go - the South occasionally produces people who make good music. Food? Apart from all the toxic fast food that predominates and looking only at cooked food, it's okay - nothing spectacular or aesthetically brilliant. So if we forget every remotely morally relevant subject and just deal with the South on arts and food, we can say it's mostly a cultural wasteland that has some occasional bright lights here and there. Clearly I've been too hard on them.
Except for the slight matter that the Confederate flag is still widely flown, and in some states is even officially recognized - i.e., even in the 21st century, there is still only limited recognition of wrongdoing, and Southern politics continues to careen ever deeper into violent psychosis as time goes on. There is some unrepentant, incorrigible evil at the dark heart of that culture that simply will not die or fade away, and people who don't agree with it for some reason don't seem to know how to fight it. The South has doubled down on the crazy, evil, and stupid again and again to the point where doing so has become almost definitional, and has played central roles in causing and/or exacerbating nearly every disaster this nation has suffered in the last 67 years. They are like a petri dish of political diseases, social dysfunctions, and mass psychoses all waiting to slip through the cracks in our nation's immune system: Religious fanaticism, corporatism, racism, fascism, they all flourish there in far greater potencies than the core values of American democracy.
Southern liberals, such as they exist today, should not misunderstand me - I appreciate that the people standing in the way of your efforts are far more deranged, violent, and arrogant than their counterparts in other areas of the country. Hell, the abusiveness and arrogance of Scott Walker that has probably guaranteed his recall from office in Wisconsin is just par for the course down South. But here's the question: How do sane, decent Southerners deal with the psychopaths who control their politics? How do they deal with the majority of their fellow Southerners who are on board with the madness? It seems to me that, for the most part, they deal with it exactly as they always have - as in, not. As in, speak very softly, just barely above a whisper, and don't carry any kind of stick because the other side has guns. Well, here's the breaks, kids: Decent people have never, ever achieved change in the South without outright provocation of the evil bastards who run their society.
Stop tolerating the vile people usually elected to your governments, and stop tolerating the despicable little pseudo-American replicants who vote for such people, even if they're the vast majority of people in your state. Either you want to see things improve or not, and if so, call things as they are and to hell with your "community" standing among such people - if they're like that and you're better than them, it is your view of them that matters, not the other way around. Stop being polite with people who want your head on a pike, and stop letting people slide who are more incensed hearing dissent than watching injustice unfold in silence.
If they're not vandalizing your property and sending death threats, you aren't doing your job. You are going along to get along, and as always, that gets us nowhere - it just leaves the problems to fester for the rest of the country to have to deal with someday. Fucking stop it. Stand up for yourself and your country. If non-psychotic Southerners had been willing to do that at some point before now, we wouldn't be in this monumental clusterfuck today, and who knows how many past disasters would have been avoided.
To put it bluntly, the "American" South is evil. I don't know why it is the way it is, but it is nonetheless. Maybe it's the climate - maybe hot humidity just drives people insane. Maybe there's some mosquito-borne illness that fills psychopaths with passionate intensity while making decent people into mewling kittens and Stockholm Syndrome hostages. Don't know, don't care. It's on sane, decent, intelligent Southerners to put the inmates back in the asylum and - for the first time in American history - make their region something this country can be proud of instead of being constantly embarrassed, sabotaged, and violently threatened by it. I'll stop "bashing" the South when it stops bashing this whole goddam country and destroying its institutions from within our government - a government it never wanted to be part of, and today openly seeks to obliterate.
PS, Virginia and North Carolina get some consideration for voting for Obama in 2008, but we'll have to see if that was just a fluke or if they've actually learned something.