More than a century before David Brooks was born, Abraham Lincoln was calling bullshit on Both Siderism:
Both parties deprecated war, but one of them would make war rather than let the nation survive, and the other would accept war rather than let it perish, and the war came.Because ultimately it isn't how artfully Republicans and their enablers in the Beltway press can spin their disastrous program of nihilism and sabotage on the Sunday shows or in the New York Times that counts.
It is only what they do -- day after day, on the ground -- that counts.
We have chosen to fight for a country that is governed for the good of all of its citizens.
They have chosen to make slow and steady war on that country in the name of killing that idea.
And the war came.
3 comments:
"...rather than let it perish..."
Would the USA have perished if the CSA had succeeded in breaking away, or would the USA have survived, ironically becoming stronger for losing the burden of its more backward section?
Id:
1. I jokingly say, all the time, that we should have let the bigots have their own shithole country, but then I remember that slavery would have continued for quite awhile after, and that ultimately you have to drag bigots, screaming and bloody into modernity. I also think we should give Texas back to Mexico post haste. Not kidding. Fuck Texas.
2. The US might have survived, but if the CSA had seceded and nothing done, I'm fairly sure even more states would have seceded later to go on their own. Which, to be 100% honest, might have been a good thing, since eventually (most likely after we've been dead for a century or two, this EMPIRE will indeed split up). So, the US might have ended up perishing...which might have precluded US from being an Empire now. Good? Bad? Dunno, that's revisionist history and pretty much neither here nor there.
3. I'm one of those radical-but-pragmatic lefties who honestly believes that there will be another Civil War. As DG says, this nation cannot survive Half-Fox and Half-Free.
Fox News is Fascist propaganda, and it runs 24/7.
That is a fuck-ton of propaganda, and much, much more efficient and saturated than the NAZIs could have dreamed of.
I personally despise open-carry laws, because they are ultimately designed to allow bigots to intimidate people who aren't carrying automatic rifles across their chests.
That said, I do not want the second amendment changed, and I do not want automatic weapons prohibited. I also live behind enemy lines in the Confederate States of America.
@Monster
My personal opinion is (usual caveats apply, especially the one holding that I am probably wrong and you would be a fool to listen to such an obvious lunatic):
With the loss of the southern ports, especially the Hampton Roads, and a hostile independent South possessing a stranglehold over the outlet of the Missouri-Mississippi-Ohio river net, the United States would never have been able to counter the imperialist ambitions of England, Russia, and France. The west coast would surely be lost and the interior ruined by a never ending series of petty conflicts. The semipermanent western border would wiggle across the Nauvoo-Chicago axis, perhaps reaching as far west as the 100th meridian in regions favorable to the defense.
The irony is that the Confederacy would most likely suffer the same fate as Argentina after the success of San Martin's branch of the Bolivarian Revolutions. Es decir, it would slide into ever increasing economic dependency on Great Britain until its political independence became purely nominal. Ultimately it would become pretty much what it is today, a cesspool of frustrated dreams and covert inbreeding not unlike Vermont.
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