OldSouth

OldSouth https://www.dailykos.com/news/OldSouth News Community Action Copyright 2005 - Steal what you want Tue, 28 Jan 2020 02:12:27 +0000 Tue, 28 Jan 2020 02:12:27 +0000 Daily Kos rss@dailykos.com (Daily Kos) Daily Kos rss@dailykos.com (Daily Kos) Can "Good" People Support "Evil" Power? https://www.dailykos.com/story/2016/12/10/1609472/-Can-Good-People-Support-Evil-Power In a comment on my piece, "<a href="http://bluevirginia.us/2016/12/trump-voters-write-off-try-bring-back-dark-side-part" target="_hplink">Trump Voters: Should We Write Them Off or Try to Bring Them Back from the Dark Side</a>," where it appeared on the website Blue Virginia, the host of the site --- Lowell Fled -- posed what he described as "a philosophical question": <blockquote>Can you be a "good person," as Andy claims the Trump supporters in his district are, and support what I think we all consider to be a dark force and/or evil incarnate? I'd strongly argue that you can't be. Andy argues that you can be. Thoughts?</blockquote> Here are my thoughts. First, let us translate the question into a tangible, empirical form. Imagine that you get to know a couple who, as far as you can tell, have a loving family. They also are people who deal honorably with people in their business. When someone they know is sick, or in some other such crisis, they're likely to bring the family food. They're people who will stop to help someone stranded by their car breaking down. Perhaps they're even the kind of people who, when something like the Katrina disaster strikes, go out and buy -- out of their own pocket -- some materials that will be helpful to the afflicted, and drive all the way down to Louisiana to help out. At the same time, they also reliably vote for this ugly and dishonest Republican Party, and whether or not they started out liking Trump (and they might have), they certainly ended up voting for him. They are loyal to the most destructive political force to arise in America in a century and a half. That's the kind of reality that I and other liberals out here in the Shenandoah Valley witness. Going back to our question: "Can one descrie these people, as I have done, as 'good' and 'decent'?" Or perhaps the question could usefully be reframed as, "How is this inconsistency -- this goodness in various spheres of life, this alignment with evil in the political sphere -- to be understood?" There's a concept that I think provides the key to the answer: the idea of "part selves," or as "independently functioning modules" of the self. The notion that people are not just one unitary self is not original to me: it has been developed by some psychologists (see some readings, listed below) who see us having "multiple selves" or a "multimind." The idea is that as we move through our daily lives, we can unconsciously switch from one way of thinking and feeling to another. It might well be true of most of us that we are "good" people in some ways (when we're employing modules or selves aligned with the good, with wholeness) and less than good (or even aligned with evil, with the force of brokenness) in others ways, when a different one of our "selves" gets employed. The "self" a person brings to the political realm can be a special case. That's because politics is about power, and power is frequently involved in introducing brokenness into the human system. In my book <a href="https://www.amazon.com/What-Were-Against-Destructive-World/dp/0996301305" target="_hplink">WHAT WE'RE UP AGAINST</a>, i employ the concept of "part selves" specifically to illuminate the sickness in the politics of our times. What I proposed there dealt specifically with the nature and workings of power in the Old South. It delineated how power influenced the dynamics of community in the South, and how individuals in those communities were socialized to have a particular kind of conformist module to be used regarding a particular category of issues: namely, those issues concerning which demands are made by the power with which the person's community is aligned. (See pages 146-154.) The culture trained people to employ a module in which their critical intelligence gets shut off, and in which people disconnect from their usual moral moorings. Employing this module keeps the individual in alignment with their community-- a community which in turn was shaped for that purpose by the ruling power. This mention of the Old South affords another way of looking at the implications of saying that no one who supports an evil power can be considered a good and decent person. In the South even well into living memory, the social order was one of racial terror and oppression. Jim Crow and segregation were clearly evil by any reasonable measure, and mighty few were the whites in the region who refused to support it. Would we want to conclude that in the Old South -- of the days of slavery, and all the way up into and past the 1950s -- there were virtually no "good" or "decent" white people? Is there anyone here who would want to say that? The contemporary version of that same culture provides a major portion of the base for today's Republican Party. And without an almost clean sweep of the states of the Old Confederacy, Donald Trump would not be our next president. So those patterns formed by power and community and the instilling of a particular kind of "self" that is switched on to engage with the political sphere remain relevant today. What I've read thus far about the psychology of "multiple selves" seems to argue that this kind of division of the psyche is a natural human phenomenon, the way people are by nature. Perhaps in some ways it is. But I think that an essential dimension of this division into discrete "modules" is a function of "brokenness." The impact of brokenness on the person, plus the inability of the person to reconcile the resulting different aspects of the self (and/or to process the impact of trauma), leads to a lack of psychic integration. (Perhaps such division into different "selves" might even be understood as on a continuum on which "multiple personality" disorder is further out on the spectrum-- a difference of degree that breaks down into a difference of kind.) So, if my perspective is valid, calling these people "good, decent conservatives" is only part of the truth. It is an important part of the truth because part of them really is aligned with wholeness-- hence their being honorable, generous, responsible, etc. in many domains of their lives. But it is only part of the truth because along with the wholeness, they have been impacted by a force of brokenness, and they themselves are not all of a piece. So the answer I would give as to whether such people are "good, decent people" is yes and no. But then, of whom can that not be said? Postscript: My effort in the pieces I write for the newspapers is to illuminate their political allegiance in the light of their wholeness, i.e. the good values many of the region's conservatives live by in their non-political lives. In other words, I'm trying to erode the discreteness of these psychic modules. *********************** Readings on such multiplicity of selves: Internal Family Systems Therapy, by Richard C. Schwartz. The Social Brain, by Michael Gazzaniga. Multimind: A New Way of Looking at Human Behavior, by Robert Ornstein. rss@dailykos.com (AndySchmookler) GoodandEvil OldSouth TrumpVoters _1609472 Sat, 10 Dec 2016 15:55:29 +0000 The Long Shadow of the Confederacy Hangs Over Us https://www.dailykos.com/story/2016/7/9/1546524/-The-Long-Shadow-of-the-Confederacy-Hangs-Over-Us One year, when I was a young teenager, we took our family vacation through the South, cutting a path via car through Louisiana then through the deep south to the east coast of Charleston SC. I don’t remember every moment, but there are images burned into my memory that remain. Most of the trip revolved around historical stops like to battlefields or historical buildings and towns. One stop was to Oak Alley Plantation in Louisiana, pictured above. One strong impression remains of that visit. But it wasn’t the grandeur of the live oaks framing the white columned majesty of the main house; or the painstaking detailed tour of the house’s interior. It was the way slavery was addressed. The tiny residential structures that lined the drive up to the front door didn’t make it into the brochures, but they are there, just on the other side of the live oaks. The grounds tour was very brief. No one wanted to dwell on the life of the slaves — those ghosts were mostly silenced. The small tiny airless cabins though, they stay with you. And they are with all of us in this nation — the Old South and Confederacy, hanging over us. The racism be it outright vitriol, or the “soft” racism of feeling that somehow victims of police brutality somehow must have deserved it is a direct result of our history and the U.S.’ refusal in the 1800 to abolish slavery back when our European counterparts did so. But the Confederacy’s influence does not stop at obvious demonstrations of racism, it pervades our every day political discourse and social justice system; our current argument over guns; and attitudes towards labor and fair wages. It holds us back as a nation as the grip of the Confederacy’s legacy — right wing conservatism — still controls so much of what happens on Capitol Hill. We dance around this fact as we argue over red vs blue and the meaning of the Bill of Rights. But our past is our present and will continue to be our future until we finally stop entertaining the ideology of the Old South as legitimate. Last year in response to the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charleston_church_shooting" target="_blank" title="">horrific shooting at the a black church</a> in Charleston, localities and states finally started the process of removing statues, other monuments and the Confederate flag from public squares and institutions. Over protests of “historical heritage” by those opposed to this action, most people felt it long overdue. After all, the Civil War was fought over the right for states to protect slave ownership; and these were symbols of a society that owned a population of people and protected their “rights” to own with abject terror. And supposedly, the South lost, right? However, every day in America – as highlighted by this week’s news – we deal with the legacy of slavery. And not just the raw visceral emotion of prejudice that defines racism against African Americans that is obviously on display, but the constructs that are with us that were a direct result of protecting white power: policing and, indirectly, the Second Amendment The first “police forces” in the colonies were slave patrols in the Colonial South. A book, <a href="http://www.rinr.fsu.edu/issue2001/slavery.html" target="_blank" title="">named as such</a>, documents the establishment and legacy of these patrols: <blockquote> While whites held the power in the slave-owning South, by the late 1700s they were beginning to be vastly outnumbered by slaves, brought over by the boatload to make plantations profitable. Rather than reveling in dominion over their subjects, white South Carolinians were paranoid, fearing for their lives as blacks began to outnumber them almost two to one….South Carolina became the first of the three slave-owning states to adopt a comprehensive slave code. The new code officially established slave patrols or "paddyrollers," groups of white men charged though civic duty to keep slaves down and keep revolts from happening. </blockquote> Yes, there were <a href="http://law.jrank.org/pages/1640/Police-History-Early-policing-in-colonial-America.html" target="_blank">police forces established in the northern colonies</a> as well, but these came a little later and too were formed to instill control including over “slaves and American Indians.” Therefore it’s not a stretch to say our current authoritarian system evolved from one that was inherently racist and designed to suppress certain populations to protect the privileged few: white property and/ or slave holders. Furthermore when we look into gun ownership and the origin of the Second Amendment, we know that it was penned to protect a “..well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms..” The father of the Bill of Rights is largely seen to be <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Madison#Father_of_the_Bill_of_Rights" target="_blank">James Madison</a> who was born to southern wealth on a Virginia plantation; and owned slaves his whole life, never to free them even by will after his death. In this context we know that only free men would be allowed to own guns. An of course, firearms were used by these slave patrols specifically to intimidate and suppress the slave population out of fear of revolt. It is in the context that the right to bear arms follows a more horrendous narrative than many would have you believe. It is not a coincidence that the largest vocal support for the police and the Second Amendment today seems to be contained along conservative lines. One could say that it’s fair to view the modern-day right wing as a direct decedent of the southern white man. If you look at conservative platforms in the United States they basically are a reflection of Old South ideology, held up by social Darwinism that maintains that only those that exert strength and smarts will be the most successful in society, and deservedly so. (Never mind that privilege begets privilege. Or as someone once said “Some people are born on third base and go through life thinking they hit a triple.”) And therefore this ideology also encases views that the powerful should be free to pay people what employers deem affordable rather than what is needed to live a life of dignity. This legacy of the plantation owner where the powerful few make the rules on how those doing the labor live and get compensated still hangs over us today. And our massive prison system that <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incarceration_in_the_United_States" target="_blank" title="">disproportionately </a>houses inmates of color also is a direct result of the Confederacy’s cruel intentions; and fear and hatred of the black male as so expertly chronicled by Michelle Alexander in her book, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in The Age of Colorblindness. As other Westernized nations have rejected strict authoritarianism and moved towards more equitable societies where health care and a good education are a right, not a privilege, America is still strangled by the power of the southern states in their ideology that the powerful deserve more than anyone else and must be protected by an increasingly militarized police force. And as it’s been <a href="http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2016/07/07/3796062/nra-black-lives-matter/" target="_blank">pointed out </a>multiple times this week, the right to own and carry guns is only respected for white Americans — just as the writers of the Second Amendment intended. It took almost one hundred years after the North won the war for true recognition of racial equality as a concept and enacted into law, but we’ve seen this week how much more ground we need to cover. How much longer will it take for the legacy of the Union and President Lincoln’s vision of an equal American society to actually come to fruition? Sources like Fox News and other right-wing hate propaganda machines have been able to lengthen the power of the Confederacy by dog whistling racial fear, deference to monetary power, and violence as the remedy. And it is possible little can be done to reverse these perverse ideologies until the older generations pass away. (Think about it — the Eisenhower Generation many who are still alive today knew people in their youth that were young during or in the aftermath of the Civil War. Relatively little time has passed since we were a slave-owning country.) It is also possible that we can never be free of these chains until new legislation is enacted to reinstate some form of the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fairness_Doctrine" target="_blank">Fairness Doctrine </a>that’s repeal led to the establishment of these fear machines. There is no doubt that propaganda is a huge problem in our country and it keeps us from unifying for the greater good. But we don’t have time to wait; it is time for progressive Americans to<a href="http://www.contactingthecongress.org/" target="_blank" title=""> speak truth to power</a> and demand for leadership and legislation that reject these institutionalized ideas established by the Colonial South. We must vote — in every election no matter how little may be on the ballot. We must vocally push for the end to our police and prison state; demand stricter gun laws; and call to abolish the War on Drugs – <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2016/03/23/politics/john-ehrlichman-richard-nixon-drug-war-blacks-hippie/" target="_blank" title="">established in response to a decade that had finally started to reject Southern culture</a> - which enables some police to act on their racism and violate all citizens’ civil rights with impunity. (Let me be clear — there are good people that hold jobs in policing. However, our laws and the criminal justice system as a whole are not just.) If we are the “greatest country in the world” surely we can imitate <a href="http://www.globalopportunityindex.org/opportunity.taf?page=rankings" target="_blank" title="">other progressive societies</a> that have embraced gun control and <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/jun/09/the-counted-police-killings-us-vs-other-countries" target="_blank" title="">comparatively peaceful policing</a> while rejecting rampant inequality. This means we need to move towards spending more on infrastructure, schools, fair wages, and socialized health care for the benefit of all Americans. We need to embrace the rhetoric of life, liberty and pursuit of happiness for everyone. It is time for the Confederacy to finally be defeated. rss@dailykos.com (MaryAEnglish) BlackLivesMatter Confederacy GunViolence OldSouth PoliceShootings TheSecondAmendment _1546524 Sat, 09 Jul 2016 16:03:13 +0000 Georgia - 2015 https://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/7/16/1402863/-Georgia-2015 Welcome to Georgia, State of 159 counties (only Texas has more): 159 Sheriffs, 159 County jails, Land of modern courvee labor  - no chains on these chain gangs,  just Armed and armored overseers. Land so hot that crops fry in the fields, while climate change deniers wrap themselves in Dixie colors and keep their heads firmly tucked deep in the red Georgia clay. Land where the hallmarks of slavery are still writ large but so ingrained in the fabric of life that they go unnoticed by those who grew up with them. White folk here claim the past forgotten. They lie. Confederate graveyard abound and in backwater 'pseudo-cities', one still sees the broken chimneys where Uncle Billy burned (but did not burn enough), A word about Georgia's so-called cities. A group moves into an area and when enough have gathered, they petition the legislature to declare that area a 'city'.  They then proceed to create ordinances, the intent of which is to drive the original residents out.  After a while they put up real walls   Something white folk do in this land once owned by the Creek nations. This also gives the new ruling group the right of any municipality to belly up to the federal trough and get whatever freebies the feds offer. In the case of Doraville, one freebie was an armored personnel carrier, a toy the goods ol boys of the Doraville PD love to charge around in for 'training'. Welcome to Georgia. A fine State to be white in. Uncle Billy did not burn nearly enough. rss@dailykos.com (SchenectadyWill) blackoppression Georgia History OldSouth Racism White Privilege WhitePrivilege _1402863 Fri, 17 Jul 2015 04:46:54 +0000 Yes, losing the Confederate flag really means something to South Carolina https://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/7/17/1402662/-Yes-losing-the-Confederate-flag-really-means-something-to-South-Carolina <div class="dkimg-c"><img src="http://images.dailykos.com/images/154411/large/RebFlagDown.png?1437145762" alt="Some of the people watching the Confederate Battle Flag being lowered at the capitol in Columbia, SC" width="382" height="320" /></div> When I posted on Facebook last Thursday, that I was thinking about going to Columbia, South Carolina, the next day to watch them finally furl the Confederate flag, I got a little pushback from some of my conservative friends. They cynically insisted that the historic event I was going to witness was no big deal and its impact way over-hyped. They said, on my post and others, that the media frenzy over moving "a square piece of cloth" was at worst a distraction for the world's problems and at best a panacea that would lull people into thinking that we've finally turned a cultural corner in the Old South. "It's a manufactured event, " one critic wrote. "I don't expect the air to smell like lilacs, don't expect 300 million people to hold hands and sing kume by ya." "Just smoke and diversion" from the "real issues," wrote another. I thought they were misreading people's expectations, that there can be no question there is still much work left to do. Was it mostly symbolic? Sure, but it was an important step. As it turns out, for the people of South Carolina, it was hugely important, much closer to an awakening than I thought, and so much more of the optimism the event's critics sardonically predicted. rss@dailykos.com (ProseAndThorn) ConfederateFlag Culture OldSouth Politics Racism Recommended Rescued RescuedtoRecommended Slavery SouthCarolina Southernpride _1402662 Fri, 17 Jul 2015 15:24:28 +0000 In the Wake of Selma ... and Other Events https://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/3/11/1370199/-In-the-Wake-of-Selma-and-Other-Events <blockquote>University of Alabama elects <a href="http://www.al.com/news/tuscaloosa/index.ssf/2015/03/university_of_alabama_elects_f.html#incart_river_mobile">first black SGA president</a> in four decades</blockquote> More: <blockquote>The University of Alabama Tuesday elected their first black Student Government Association president in almost four decades. Elliot Spillers, a junior from Pelham, is also considered to be the first non-Machine candidate to win the election since John Merrill (now Alabama's Secretary of State) won in 1986. This will be Spillers' first elected position within the SGA, where he has served appointed positions, most recently as deputy director of engagement. </blockquote> The Machine? What? Considerations below the squiggly: rss@dailykos.com (Karen Hedwig Backman) ElliotSpillers Fraternities OldSouth Racism TheMachine UniversityofAlabama _1370199 Wed, 11 Mar 2015 18:47:35 +0000 The Old South https://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/2/27/1280807/-The-Old-South <div class="dkimg-c"><img src="http://s3.amazonaws.com/dk-production/images/70978/large/5102306754_164bed5771.jpg?1393509519" alt="" width="500" height="333" /></div> The water dark as the heart Of the Old South Beautiful fields, cotton clinging to stalks Belie the ugliness of so much That happened here in this Old South of South Carolina The train races past the crossroads And almost not quite towns Fields and woods and black water swamps Cypress trunks swollen in the water How many workers did they kill In the 1934 textile strike? No one really knows Bodies dumped in these black water swamps Just regular folks tryin’ to make a living Instead of starving their kids work That consumed families Husbands and wives called lintheads Kids called trash and so much worse 35 years later while we moaned The killings at Kent State and Jackson Foretold by the Massacre at South Carolina State, three kids killed Almost 30 shot, almost all backshot Numberless lynchings and beatings And white on black rape in this land Of black water swamps And cotton clinging to its stalks. Beauty in the Old South belies The darkness of a heart unchanged Dreams still denied Lives still sacrificed for a way of life That requires poverty and cruelty And celebrates those whose boots Grind our people in the dust of crossroads And not quite towns. Photo source: jc.winkler on Flickr (<a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/deed.en">CC BY 2.0</a>) rss@dailykos.com (StewartAcuff) Inequality OldSouth Poem Poems Poetry Racism South _1280807 Thu, 27 Feb 2014 13:59:33 +0000 I ain't no 'Miss Laura' from Georgia https://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/2/23/1274230/-I-ain-t-no-Miss-Laura-from-Georgia <div class="dkimg-l"><img src="http://s3.amazonaws.com/dk-production/images/70730/small/Candy.jpe?1393349332" alt="" width="176" height="286" /></div> <div class="dkimg-r"><img src="http://s3.amazonaws.com/dk-production/images/70729/small/miss_laura.jpe?1393349133" alt="" width="190" height="266" /></div> rss@dailykos.com (jeana brown) Black Kos BlackKos Chattanooga ClasswarfareNewsletterWallstreetvsWorkingClassGlobalOccupyMovement DailyKosLabor Django Georgia Human Rights HumanRights Labor MedicaidExpansion OldSouth rascism Rescued Rural RuralProgressives Social Justice SocialJustice Team Rural TeamRural Volkswagon _1274230 Sun, 23 Feb 2014 23:43:59 +0000 Django in Georgia-the Favored Son System https://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/9/18/1239746/-Django-in-Georgia-the-Favored-Son-System <div class="dkimg-r"><img src="http://s3.amazonaws.com/dk-production/images/70726/small/decaprio.jpe?1393348475" alt="" width="250" height="137" /></div> <div class="dkimg-l"><img src="http://s3.amazonaws.com/dk-production/images/70727/small/house.jpe?1393348488" alt="" width="250" height="140" /></div>                                                                                                                                   rss@dailykos.com (jeana brown) Black Kos BlackKos Classwarfare Newsletter ClasswarfareNewsletter DemocraticPartyofGeorgia Django DK Elections DKElections DubosePorter KaismReed OldSouth Redneck Party RedneckParty Slaverybyanothername Team Rural TeamRural _1239746 Thu, 19 Sep 2013 02:19:59 +0000 The South Has Risen Again https://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/7/2/1220709/-The-South-Has-Risen-Again The Republican Party was taken over by the Dixiecrats when they realized that the GOB's in the Democratic Party were not going to bring back the Old South. First Lyndon Johnson betrayed them with Civil Rights.  Then Bill Clinton didn't repeal any of the things they hoped he would.  The Southern Cabal, hereinafter referred to as the SC went on the attack.  Hell hath no fury like a Rebel scorned. Subsequent events were orchestrated and blown out of proportion by the SC. The question is why on earth go to such lengths?    When I was in the South after WWII, the good one, the Southerners were still fighting the Civil War.  They had beautiful hazy memories of the way it used to be.  Every white man with a little money had two families, one white and legitimate; the other black and starving. Every white family had black servants who were paid $1 a day and worked until they dropped of old age.  Cook's daughter or granddaughter supplied the second family-see Strom Thurmond.   3 Federal Actions destroyed this heaven. rss@dailykos.com (oldcatlady) Civil Rights CivilRights CivilWar Contraception dixie-crats n-word OldSouth Republicans Social Security SocialSecurity Voting Rights VotingRights Welfare _1220709 Tue, 02 Jul 2013 22:29:02 +0000 Chattel Mortgages https://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/2/28/1069143/-Chattel-Mortgages I'm trying to get ready for a show, people. I don't have time to be digging around on the web, or even digging around in my garden which is what I'd really like to be, what with Azaleas bursting out robustly on the edges of the Camellia trees - (around here they aren't bushes, nor are the Azaleas - the Formosas are antebellum ladies waiting for their day in the sun... but I walked past my collection of objects with my 13 bean soup in hand in a bowl thrown by a classmate at USA and some wonderful whole grain crackers and noticed for the hundredth time the binder sitting on the counter. That huge, red leather covered binder from an antiques estate in South Carolina, on which the words Chattel Mortgages is tooled in gold leaf. The marbled inside pages and the clip binding are all that's left in this remnant of days gone by, but it is a fascinating object that rounds out a collection of journals and ledgers dating from the 1700's collected mostly for the handwriting. When I collected vintage writing instruments and had a book contract with a leading publisher I was interested in those things. I had to give that idea up in 1996 when my website crashed and burned and I had to move home to Alabama. Four years later I went back to school for the final time (unless...lol -- I catch myself looking at PhD programs all the time now and thinking that maybe a fellowship is the next step for me) and I became a prisoner of the train to graduation. Along the way I learned a lot about libraries and research. I'm pretty good, but I also learned from one of the best historians I have ever known. Dr. Stephen Goldfarb, PhD. My friend and colleague on the website LeoFrankLynchers.com. It's not up any longer because Stephen was not on any sort of ego trip when we created it. He was just frustrated that the information he had pieced together from his research was of no interest to the local papers. Of course, we both lived in Atlanta when he was doing that research. I was working on the pen collection and trying to contain my excitement that I might actually have found something I was good at. Antiques, art and the internet - wow. I was so enthralled with the concept that I totally blew all sixteen thousand dollars of my 401K that I had at the company where I worked. Blew it on computers, printers, ink, photographs, developing, auto expense, online fees, research, and phone calls. And my kids were sick of it. My exhusband was sick of it. My friends were sick of it. My family had other things to worry about. I had sort of cashed in all my chips. And then I got sucked in to a MLM and that's when the whole thing upended and I found myself on the way to Alabama. Broke. I mean really, really broke. I didn't look broke, however. Driving a 1987 Sterling, I was travelling in style. That car made me so happy. I didn't care that I had 15% interest - I KNEW what I was doing when I bought the first year model of a brand new car. What I didn't know was that the good old boys in Detroit could put such a squeeze on the advertising agencies that handled the Sterling accounts that they got squeezed out of the market and the story of the Sterling is one that only a few have actually ever heard. I have heard it though. The story I was told by someone who worked at British Leyland is that the agreement between the three auto companies in that joint venture was that any one of them could buy the rights to the first design. The first design was not approved. That eventually became the Accura Legend. Thus the twin cars got to compete. Guess who won? Guess who else won. The banks that loaned money on cars that couldn't be sold under any circumstances - I was upside down in that car from the day I drove it off the lot, and I was a CAR SALESMAN when I bought it. I traded in a paid for Civic to boot. To my own dealership, where the finance guys were probably rolling on the floor laughing at me. I know all that now. I damn sure didn't know it then. But in 1987, something else happened. I drove that car from Winston-Salem where I'd been living and earning really good money as a car salesman to Atlanta where I lasted three months. Because in October of 1987, the stock market crashed. In Atlanta, where everyone was leveraged to the hilt, I was a brand new salesman on the floor. The dealership where I worked had a "house mouse" that got all the good deals. The rest of us were trying to survive and I didn't last long. I had six jobs in three years trying to find my way around the community of Atlanta that had been so good to me two decades earlier. I finally went back to school at Georgia State. GSU was a good place for adult students. While I was living over my sister's garage, with my children living with their uncle in North Alabama, I applied for financial aid and was thrilled to get accepted. Then I did something else I'd never been able to do before. I took a typing test. And I passed. I could type, but I have ADHD. And I panic under pressure. Timed typing tests are pressure. Companies that make you fill out form after form neatly describing all the jobs you've had all your life are pressure. Forms that ask you why you moved from here to there - well, that's a different sort of pressure. And then you get to the end, they sigh, look up and say "Well, you won't be here long. You've owned your own business? You were a member of the Chamber of Commerce? The building committee of the Church?? I knew this drill. I'd seen it all before. Remember my daddy? My father's life was starting to seem like a precursor to my own. I started hearing the familiar "ne'er do well" refrain in my head. So I took this typing test, got a temp job and went to work for a 500 person nuclear utility organization. I was the typist that entered in the reports that the plants submitted when there was an incident. Or as the airlines would have called it, "Irregular operations" - I was just a typist. I didn't want to be anything else. But then I heard about something called Benefits. I didn't know what that was. I'd not even thought about benefits really. I'd always had some sort of coverage until I didn't have it. I didn't ask for benefits when I divorced. Not for myself. In fact, I didn't ask for anything. We went to a mediator. I was okay with anything that kept my kids and my ex happy. I had enough conflict in my life without having to stir it up even more. We even had the same lawyer. I thought that was better. I did't know much about negotiation and conflict resolution till much later. And then it was too late. I didn't know anything about psychology, but I remember my therapist once telling me I could probably get a degree in it already from what I'd lived through and been able to understand. That's because, as he pointed out to me, I am a writer. I still had to have credentials though. So I did what I was supposed to do, I thought. Boomers always do that. We're not the ones who push the envelope. We're the ones who spill out of the envelope when it's too full. And then world just has to deal with us. I'm sorry that my diaries go around in circles all the time. But my life has gone full circle so many times I am having a hard time keeping it straight.   Chattel Mortgages. That's what this diary was supposed to be about. I'm getting to that. Here's what I found when I innocently looked up the term: <blockquote>This article aims to determine when, where, and under what circumstances the first chattel mortgage statutes arose.  This article first examines the southern colonial statutes mentioned in those early American appellate opinions and traces them to their earliest version.  The article then explores analogous Anglo-American recording statutes for personalty, some mentioned in the early American appellate opinions as potential sources of the southern colonial chattel mortgage acts.  These two investigations establish that the first chattel mortgage acts arose in the Chesapeake colonies during the mid-seventeenth century, shortly after the development of the nonpossessory secured transaction.  The article then analyzes the earliest reported southern American opinions, from the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, for clues to the circumstances giving rise to the first chattel mortgage acts.   Lastly, the article reviews the scanty legislative history concerning these first chattel mortgage acts.  These latter two investigations suggest that southern colonial legislatures first passed these statutes to eliminate the secret lien problem for judgment creditors.</blockquote> Chattel Morgages are nonpossessory. Stuff that can be moved. Like my laptop, and two cars that were stolen I suppose, but I didn't have a mortgage on them. I just had liability on the cars and the laptop wasn't insured because I'm a renter. And broke. And the nine year old was too young to prosecute so his mother routinely uses him to hawk things that either he or she picks up and we can't do anything about it. The second car was my van, stolen out of my driveway when the City of New Orleans decided to evacuate an entire city - check the crime statistics for that day in Mobile if you don't buy my theory. I helped though because I'd come in from teaching exhausted and depressed, and told the tenant I had just gotten from Craigslist (who is another suspect in my view) that I was going upstairs to grade papers. The first car that was stolen was another one of my two Sterlings. That's another story for a different day. But it's a good one. So when I get time, I'm going to chew on this history of Chattel Mortgage law - because of something I saw in the footnotes that interested me. It's this comment: <blockquote>Not all legal systems have the filing requirement.  Roman law recognized the transaction, but did not require a filing. The Napoleonic Code banned the transaction.  The  modern explanation of these three different legal rules involves the secret lien. *  When debtors retain possession of the personalty serving as collateral under the nonpossessory secured transaction, subsequent lenders and purchasers have no way of discovering the prior ownership interest of the earlier secured creditors unless the debtor’s honesty forces disclosure.</blockquote> <blockquote>*Cf. OLIVER  WENDELL  HOLMES, JR., THE  COMMON  LAW 5 (Little, Brown & Co. 1923) (1881) (discussing how rules survive the problem they were intended to solve).s this:</blockquote> Some of you may remember that I recently read the wonderful book called The Metaphysical Club but what you might not know is that part of it is about Holmes. I have a very different understanding of the way things were understood, discussed and argued in this country after having read that book. I HIGHLY recommend it. You won't regret it. And I plan to read Louis Menaud's next book soon as I get off this damn computer and hang that art show! rss@dailykos.com (alabamaliberal) ADD Alabama Atlanta Auto Industry AutoIndustry Banking chattelmortgage Community Divorce Economy Education Georgia History OldSouth PredatoryLending Social Security SocialSecurity SouthCarolina Stock Market StockMarket TemporaryJobs typingtests Virginia _1069143 Tue, 28 Feb 2012 22:50:02 +0000 Planter vs Magnate: How we got to this horrid state, from the inside, Part 1 https://www.dailykos.com/story/2016/7/7/1035828/-Planter-vs-Magnate-How-we-got-to-this-horrid-state-from-the-inside-Part-1 This was prompted / triggered by recent horrors and by a comment in the Dallas thread that this was like being in a war: The below may be a bit jumbled, but I’ve tried for years to establish the context against which the last 150 years has to been understood. Enough prologue to the prologue or I’ll start again ;) — probably a rough ride, and lost in the recents, but see you...? ---------— Not a war: an instigation of war, a provocation — a demand FOR war. No-one wants to talk about it EVER, but there are at barest minimum 100,000 individuals in this country who believe in a racial ‘war of cleansing’ in which “we” will return to a nation where “people know their places — and keep to them” They have been planning, dreaming and praying and working for it since the ‘defeat’ of the Slaver Rebellion...and it JUST WON’T COME, DAMMIT!!! Just like Jesus…. This is not a joke: these people are not crazy, and they are not stupid: the ones driving this are not ‘racists’ in the sense that they hate/fear blacks: ranchers do not ‘hate’ the livestock….It’s not hyperbole or exaggeration or word-play when I call these people SLAVERS...it is what they are, it’s what they want AND THEY MEAN TO HAVE IT BACK ...augmented now by the melding with the Industrialists, and a system of wage-slavery and social repression so built-in and painted-over with patriotism that we simply can’t SEE it, even when we know it’s there, and and we’re looking for it. It has been polished since “the South lost” I grew up in it, violently rejected it and lost my family over it, have been examining it for most of my life, but they’re close — THIS ELECTION close — to having all three branches of government and rolling back the entire Twentieth Century. They are certainly patriots: what they are NOT is Americans. They are Confederates. THAT is the country they want back — and all the land under it, and all the people on it. I hate that this sounds so wild-eyed and ‘imaginative’, but I was raised by and for them, by a planter family — that is, a Slaver family and grew up plainly seeing the class divisions & power structure, the religious hypocrisy AND sincerity that I suppose is what allows them to consider themselves to be human, noble, nature’s aristocrats, and all others to be either ultimately expendable. I have been watching closely from a young age, and have puzzled for most of my life why I learned so early to despise and distrust the people I grew up around, to spot the bullying, the contradictions, the nod-and-wink gaslighting (plausible-deniabilty wrapped in the gracious Southern manners covering the whip, the club, the noose, even in my childhood). Everything unique or peculiar to the Old South is related to the fact that the South never surrendered; Appomattox was an armistice: they simply agreed to stop shooting & go home, and pretend we were all on the same side again...but the Slavers never gave up, haven’t given up yet. They ARE the ‘Old Boys’ in the “good ‘ol boys network”, the White Citizens’ Councils, the Klan, and crucial parts of public and private infrastructure throughout the region. They ARE why the South is the way it is, and they’ve happily helped make life for most of the people in the country much more miserable that it ought by any right to be...and they’re not called “the Dixie Mafia” for nothing This is real: 100,000 mad zealots with guns, other munitions, military training of some kind, friends as nuts as themselves (the Bundy Gang), their own inflammatory Imams demanding that they “take back the Kingdom” and replace the heathen constitution with the Holy Scripture. ...and they’ve spent so much of their lives It is Christianity (of a sort) in league with the Devil. (wow, I’ve been trying to figure out how to start writing this out for so long, and…wow.) rss@dailykos.com (chmood) BlackLivesMatter DallasShootings Ferguson JimCrow KKK Klan OldSouth _1035828 Fri, 08 Jul 2016 06:13:13 +0000 SCDP Chair - Emotions run high as Noble blasts Harpootlian https://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/4/12/966387/-SCDP-Chair-Emotions-run-high-as-Noble-blasts-Harpootlian The race for Chair of the South Carolina Democratic Party just went ballistic.   The early favorite, Dick Harpootlian, is running into a lot of resistance from Party stalwarts and key interest groups who recall his pockmarked record of five years as Party Chair from 1998 to 2003.   In a high profile speech before the black legislative caucus, Harpootlian's main challenger, Phil Noble, blasted the ex-Chair for belittling minorities and alienating two key Democratic voting blocs:  African-Americans and the GLBT community. Promising to turn a page on the era of racial discrimination, chauvinism and sexism, Noble defined the race as a stark choice between the New South versus the Old South. As Party Chair ten years ago, Harpootlian made a series of snide comments that hit print and deflated the Democratic brand sending the Party into the doldrums.   To the shock of South Carolina's African-Americans, Harpootlian said, "I don't want to buy the Black vote, I just want to rent it for one day."   To make matters worse while he attempted to criticize Lindsey Graham (R-SC), Harpootlian slurred the entire GLBT community by defining the Republican politician as, "a little too light in the loafers."   That slur was not an off-the-cuff comment - it was an official Democratic Party press release written and signed by Dick Harpootlian.  Predictably, Graham threatened to sue Harpootlian for libel after insinuating that he is gay, a riposte that backfired with the GLBT community where Harpootlian's slur still provokes anger and bitterness. Harpootlian's gaffe-prone off-the-cuff style has left a lingering and disagreeable aftertaste so memorable that he has been forced to make the pledge that he will serve one and only one term as Chair, and no more.  Harpootlian appears to have peaked too soon.   Phil Noble is the son of a white civil rights minister, J. Phillips Noble.  Young Phil grew up during the era of marches, freedom rides, KKK atrocities and landmark legislation.  FBI documents record the fact that Rev. Noble was targeted for assassination by the KKK, a period of time that shaped Phil Noble into a champion of civil rights, equal rights and GLBT rights. In the intervening years, Noble soared to prominence as one of the world's leading political consultants with a lengthy client list in the USA and Europe and working in major campaigns in over forty foreign countries.  In the early 1990s, Noble became the world's leading authority on the political impact of the internet.  Regarded as one of the gurus of the IT industry, Noble has pledged to turn SC blue in this campaign cycle.  In 2008, Noble advised the presidential campaign of Barack Obama. Noble is the President of SC New Democrats and a former fellow at the Harvard Institute of Politics of the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. This race just got interesting.   It is definitely one to watch.   rss@dailykos.com (MalleusMaleficarum) Barack Obama BarackObama BLACKCAUCuS Civil Rights CivilRights Democratic Party DemocraticParty DickHarpootlian GLBT Hillary Clinton HillaryClinton JamesClyburn LindseyGraham NewSouth Obama OldSouth PhilNoble SouthCarolina _966387 Wed, 13 Apr 2011 02:15:11 +0000 What Confederate changes are the north prepared to make https://www.dailykos.com/story/2010/4/8/855140/-What-Confederate-changes-are-the-north-prepared-to-make As I comtemplate Gov Robert McDonnell proclamation of Confederate Day in Virginia I wonder just what concessions the NATION might be required to make if McDonnell's proposal gain traction in the country. Since McHenry submitted a bill to take Grant's face off the Fifty dollar bill and put Reagans on it, it is only a matter to time that other changes may be required. I have no doubt that McDonnell may suggest that they put Jefferson Davis' picture on the 5 dollar bill and take Lincoln's off. He may also like Grant's body removed from Grants Tomb and put General Lee's in its place. We may then have a valid question about "Who's buried in Grant's tomb. rss@dailykos.com (Taming the FOX) McDonnell OldSouth RepublicanWingnuts _855140 Thu, 08 Apr 2010 11:44:15 +0000 Open Letter to the Old South—PLEASE Rise Again https://www.dailykos.com/story/2009/2/27/702691/-Open-Letter-to-the-Old-South-mdash-PLEASE-Rise-Again When I was a youngster (back in the fifties) it was still possible to hear the slogan "The South will rise again!" expressed in earnest.  At that point the defeat of the Confederacy was only ninety years in the past.  This wistful phrase was seen as nothing to worry about, merely a part of the Lost Cause mythology of things as they never really were—the romance of Southern chivalry, the elegance of plantation society, the belles and the beaux gliding around ballroom floors, all ignoring that the whole glittering heap teetered atop the unimaginable hell of slavery.   Then, starting in the 1990’s, it seemed to come to pass.  Southerners were suddenly holding all the reins of government.  All you had to do was look around Washington—Trent Lott, Newt Gingrich, Bill Frist and Tom DeLay were calling the shots, and even those shots apportioned to the Democrats went to the Arkansan Bill Clinton.  And when George W. Bush became president the North appeared finally to have lost the Civil War.  The South had risen again, not as its own entity, but through penetrating and smothering, like a choking fog, the very government that had defeated it all those long years ago.   But, since then, how the mighty are fallen! rss@dailykos.com (Pragmatus) BibleBelt Bigotry BobbyJindal CivilWar Conservatism OldSouth Secession _702691 Fri, 27 Feb 2009 20:24:12 +0000 Jesse Helms Brand Of Politics Doesn't play here anymore https://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/4/25/503397/-Jesse-Helms-Brand-Of-Politics-Doesn-t-play-here-anymore  As some of you are well aware, the NC-GOP have posted a <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cG8uf349S2k">"wonderful" ad</a> saying that Obama is "Too extreme" For NC. Let me tell you something about this ad. Those in NC that may not know this but Jesse Helms (you know they guy that all but showed up to Senate in his white robes (no there is no proof he was but if you ever watched him talk you had to wonder) ran these kinds of ads against his chief opponent in the late 80's and early 90's Harvey Gantt.   That was 20 years ago, has it changed that much? have we in this state changed to the point where those don't work. I have seen it, it a promise land of BLUE in this sea of Red in the south, in the history of NC we have always been close to last on a) joining the union 12th out of 13, and b) leaving the union last and C)rejoining last, we are could be the first southern state to turn blue is historic. rss@dailykos.com (red states blues) Barack Obama BarackObama GOP JesseHelms John Edwards JohnEdwards Moore NC OldSouth Purdue Race StromThurmond _503397 Fri, 25 Apr 2008 21:58:36 +0000