Saturday, July 04, 2015

HOPE FOR AMERICA'S FUTURE.

Hope y'all had an excellent Fourth. As I write, the local hooligans are still setting off their bottle rockets and M-80s, so the dog isn't happy. But I am, because I've spotted what may be the meme of the year, and a great development for the Republic: The conservative movement disowning not the Confederate Battle Flag -- to be fair, they probably aren't disowning that anytime soon -- but the Confederacy itself.

By which I mean, they aren't saying they were wrong to grab and hoist the Old Standard of the Lost Cause when the Democrats dropped it in the Civil Rights Era -- they're saying the South was never behind the Confederacy in the first place.

Attend Ole Perfesser Instapundit:
JACK NEELY: Was The South Ever Confederate Anyway?
The Civil War is a big bagful of ironies and paradoxes, and not a recommended study for folks who like to keep things simple. It would be a particular challenge for anyone to survive the 1860s in Knoxville and either idealize one side or demonize the other. It took a later generation, one that didn’t remember the war, to glorify it. 
I do want to point out something provable. Whether the Confederate flag is an irredeemably racist and oppressive symbol or not, the Confederacy is not “the South.” It is not “the South now,” certainly. It was not even “the South” in 1861. The conflation of the Confederacy with “the South” began, I suspect, as some tired editor’s attempt to make a headline fit. 
People of European and African ancestry have been living in the South for 400 years. The Confederacy lasted for four years, about 1 percent of that time. And even during that 1 percent, a large proportion of the people who lived in the South—perhaps even a majority—were skeptical of the Confederacy. . . . 
The Confederacy was not universally popular, even in the South. It would be difficult to prove that as much as half the people who lived in the South in 1861 were fond of the Confederacy. Sam Houston, who grew up in East Tennessee and spent his entire life in the South—except when he was in D.C., representing Southern states in Congress—despised the Confederacy and denounced it publicly. David Glasgow Farragut and Gen. William Sanders—whose last names survive in multiple institutions in Knox County—both grew up in the South and fought against the Confederacy. Sanders, who’d spent most of his life in Kentucky and Mississippi, was killed by Confederate bullets. Several of Knoxville’s fiercest Unionists, Parson W.G. Brownlow, William Rule, and Thomas Humes, were lifelong Southerners. 
It might take years to do a thorough study on the subject, but judging by what we know of those who favored secessionism or the Union, here in East Tennessee at least, Confederate sympathies didn’t necessarily suggest Southern roots. Many of Knoxville’s notable Confederates were immigrants from Switzerland, Germany, or Ireland. John Mitchel, probably Knoxville’s most nationally famous secessionist—editor of The Southern Citizen, which advocated slavery—was an Irish revolutionary Unitarian who’d spent several years in prison in Tasmania and never laid eyes on the South until 1853. J.G.M. Ramsey, the secessionist most influential locally, was from a Pennsylvania family. Father Abram Ryan, Knoxville’s “Poet-Priest of the Confederacy,” grew up in Maryland and Missouri, son of Irish immigrants. Thousands of New Yorkers, many of whom had never seen the South, were Confederate sympathizers. 
Meanwhile, many of Knoxville’s Unionists grew up in multi-generational Tennessee families. Did Southern heritage even play a role in affiliation with the Confederacy? Here in Knoxville, a demographic study might even prove the opposite. Maybe it was the people with the deepest roots here who were most skeptical of the noisy rebel bandwagon. 
In any case, in 1861 more than 30 percent of Tennessee’s Southerners voted against secession, against joining the Confederacy. Well over 30,000 Tennesseans took up arms against the Confederacy.
Yes, but the important point is letting low-information white Democrats feel superior.
 It would appear Neely's trying to tell us that first, Tennessee wasn't entirely united for secession -- which is certainly true -- and second, that neither was the rest of the Confederacy, therefore the South wasn't really for secession, at least not until they were bamboozled by "immigrants from Switzerland, Germany, or Ireland," which is ridiculous -- rather like the protestations of those large numbers of Germans who after WWII declared they had during the recent unpleasantness been in the underground, or Switzerland, but in any case certainly didn't like what the Hitler fellow was doing without their notice. The Southerners' elected representatives voted secession, and hundreds of thousands of Southerners marched for Treason In Defense of Slavery. If they aren't accountable, no polity is.

The Perfesser adds the perhaps unneeded gloss: that the idea that the Confederacy was a Southern thing is just another way we Northerners oppress Southern whites. I noted this on Twitter --


-- which led to the usual festival of shirt-retuckers demanding that I "research" the Free State of Jones and referring me to contrarian essays like 2006's "The Myth of 'the Southern Strategy,'" which asserts that Southern whites only switched to the GOP in the Nixon era because it made economic sense to do so, not because of race (but declined to speculate as to why Southern blacks didn't follow their lead).

They're annoying, but with their annoyance comes this silver lining: These guys seem ashamed of the Confederate legacy, and whether they're sincere about it or (more likely) totally cynical doesn't really matter. With so many wingnuts crying tyranny-'n'-oppression just because private businesses are failing to fly their Battle Flag for them, that conservatives are even tendentiously abandoning the Lost Cause is a healthy development. We should encourage them in this, just as we should encourage them when, some years in the future, they claim they were never against Obamacare. Let us clasp hands o'er the bloody chasm!

262 comments:

  1. AGoodQuestion12:00 AM

    You know how it is. You let a bunch of Swiss guys crash at your place, get wasted with them. They start talking loud and the next thing you know it, you've seceded from your country.

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  2. calling all toasters12:29 AM

    So, uh...the Confederacy? I don't know what that is... It says WHAT on my jacket-- "Sons of the Confederacy"? I didn't even know that was there. I guess I thought it was some fancy designer label. Maybe I didn't even buy it. Yeah, some guy, some guy with a name like Barack or Alinsky or something, he GAVE me this jacket. He said "if you don't wear this I'll take away your heterosexual marriage." So that's what must have happened.

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  3. DocAmazing12:55 AM

    The various Conservative Citizens' Councils and other coal-rollin' sister-fondlers will not be amused by the likes of Neely. One does not often see Wingnuttia deliberately driving wedges into their own coalitions; what next, embarrassment at snake-handling?

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  4. Derby McBowlerson12:58 AM

    There is nothing--absolutely NOTHING--that these guys won't try to rationalize with fantastically complex, tone-deaf, double-reverse contrarian logic bombs of obliviousness. It's a skill they have developed to world-championship levels of expertise, and that counts for something, I guess.

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  5. Derby McBowlerson1:00 AM

    "And imagine mah embarrassment, suh!"

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  6. Jon Hendry1:01 AM

    " rather like the protestations of those large numbers of Germans who after WWII declared they had during the recent unpleasantness been in the underground, or Switzerland, but in any case certainly didn't like what the Hitler fellow was doing without their notice"


    Or "Don't blame the Wehrmacht, it was a three or four Czech volunteers in the SS who did all the bad stuff."

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  7. Derby McBowlerson1:04 AM

    If I'm remembering correctly, didn't B. HUSSEIN Obama, Frank Marshall Davis, Reverend Jeremiah Wright, Saul Alinsky, and William Ayers regularly meet to embroider Confederate battle flags on jackets, which they then planted on unsuspecting southern states' rights advocates?

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  8. AGoodQuestion1:22 AM

    Do you mean the one-eyed trouser snake? That was just youthful experimentation.

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  9. BadExampleMan1:25 AM

    On the one hand, what the fuck I can't even. On the other hand, this gives me hope I might live long enough to hear an aged Rod Dreher explain how Super-Duper-Double-Secret-Orthodox Christians like him were never really against gay marriage. And that's why left each of the 150 heretical demonimations he formerly belonged to.

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  10. If they thought they could win a race war they seemed to have been hoping/agitating for since Trayvon, they would be all in. That they have had to keep scrambling and even retreating instead into increasingly contradictory and even bizarre positions indicates they know very well they would not.

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  11. Formerly_Nom_De_Plume1:49 AM

    These guys seem ashamed of the Confederate legacy



    Well sure, in the same sense I'm ashamed of the haircut I had when I was 15. I'm mostly just inconvenienced by the fact that it went out of style, and there's photographic proof that I once had it.

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  12. Love means never having to say you're sorry.

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  13. East Tennessee, where Ole Perfesser and Neely live, is indeed a unique case. See the East Tennessee Convention ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_Tennessee_Convention ). Trying to generalize from it to the rest of Tennessee, let alone to the Confederacy at large, is ridiculous. Note that the rest of Tennessee didn't let E. Tn. go on its own.

    Neely: " would be difficult to prove that as much as half the people who lived in the South in 1861 were fond of the Confederacy."

    If a Goldhagen comes to take on this revisionism, I'm sure he'd find the Confederacy wasn't an anti-slavery glibertarian paradise, as Reynolds will no doubt try to assert next.

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  14. These pseudo-patriotic fucksticks should take a look at who was & wasn't for the Revolution, & how "patriotism" changed depending on where the British Army was.

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  15. Megalon3:20 AM

    Sure, there were plenty of southerners who were against the Confederacy, but so what? Every movement or government is going to have opposition. If "the South" wasn't for the Confederacy, then who the fuck was? Did a hundred or so Swiss immigrants fight the war all by themselves? Man, forget Texas, don't mess with Switzerland!

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  16. DerBrunoStroszek3:31 AM

    The Swiss are famously a warlike people.

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  17. DocAmazing3:49 AM

    Well, butternut is a neutral color...

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  18. Pope Zebbidie XIII4:53 AM

    They certainly like it when other people have wars.

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  19. Pope Zebbidie XIII5:05 AM

    Say what you like about immigrants, they sure know how to work hard.

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  20. Pope Zebbidie XIII5:07 AM

    Unfortunately, it was the other party that was the youth.

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  21. We have never been at war with Eastasia, no, Northameri... err, what was the question again?

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  22. Brother Yam5:44 AM

    "We have always, wait, never, uh... Eastasia, uh, Eurasia... oh fuck..."

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  23. Brother Yam5:49 AM

    "Let's you and him fight."

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  24. Once again, it's "I know every scrap of written material we have from that time, written by the very people who did these things, all say the same thing. But that's just too inconvenient for me right now, so here's a theory put forward by noted historian Professor Otto Yerass that I like better. So it must be true!"

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  25. Sadly enough, there was a small movement in Germany that actually did try to blame much of the Holocaust on the Ukrainians. It is established that the Einsatzgroupen who did most of the massacres in the field were Ukrainians, and the worst prison guards in the worst camps were Ukrainians. And each and every one of them was working under German supervision and acting on direct German orders.

    So, yeah--outsiders doing the dirty work that in no way exonerates the Germans.

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  26. I don't think it's because they believe they'd lose a race war--they KNOW they'd become complete outcasts from this and every other society. For reasons they can't comprehend, being racist assholes is no longer tolerated by the vast majority of people worldwide.

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  27. :Look, whatever it was, we both did and didn't do it because we're at once proud of our heritage and ashamed that you keep bringing it up."

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  28. coozledad8:14 AM

    The whole country was complicit in the slave system, but the South ran the mill. They could count on most white trash to fight the war, because there's a predominant genetic strain down here that will crawl through a heap of rotten dead to suck the boss's dick. And they're of Scots Irish and English extraction.


    Maybe that's what they're trying to deflect- the sad fact that if you want to see what the douchebags who fired on Sumter looked like, all you've got to do is look at any Republican legislator.

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  29. These are the same yahoos who claim the Civil War was NOT about slavery, and yet invariably the anti-confederate Southerners were poor or working-class folks living hard-scrabble lives in the hollers and hidden by-ways.


    So, who were the pro-Confederate assholes who betrayed our nation and sent poor young men off to die in a war to preserve this evil economic system? Just like today's war to preserve Corporatism, they were fat cats either running country-sized plantations or those who benefitted financially and politically from that system.

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  30. Marion in Savannah8:48 AM

    Let's not leave out wee Ross "I'm more Christian than you" Douthat. Or, as I always refer to him as, The Pasty Little Putz.

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  31. Marion in Savannah8:49 AM

    Well, unless they're the rapin' Messican kind. Ask The Donald to 'splain that one.

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  32. DN Nation8:49 AM

    So the Confederacy was the fault of the Democrats like Obama, and Jim Crow was the fault of Democrats like Obama, and we must, must, *must* keep all Confederate symbols, memorials, and culture in the public eye with state sponsorship because- why, exactly? To shame the damn dirty Dumbocraps?

    I'd hit these yokels on this logistical inconsistency more if I wasn't entirely sure they don't believe a letter of it.

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  33. coozledad8:50 AM

    Me too. And a relative of Jesse Helms on my dad's side.


    That's because the Helms owned Monroe, NC. Most of Union County even.

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  34. This argument takes the cake for Chutzpah, replacing former favorite like "Murderer of parents throws self on mercy of the court, pleads that he is an orphan."

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  35. Strider8:51 AM

    Turns out that the entire Confederacy was actually like half a dozen dudes named Steve.

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  36. You know how I know Obama is not behind the Confederacy or the Confederate flag? Because they would all have been shitting on them since 2008 just like they have everything else associated with Obama and the Dems.

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  37. coozledad8:53 AM

    Judah Benjamin was the treasurer.


    Just sayin'.

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  38. coozledad8:54 AM

    They drive those into their coalitions, too.

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  39. Daryl Cobranchi8:55 AM

    I'm surprised that he didn't use the example of West Virginia as more evidence that not all Southerners were in favor of insurrection.

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  40. mgmonklewis9:05 AM

    It's the same with the marriage equality debate. They loved discrimination back when it was working for them in 2004. But now that liberals won the fight that conservatives started, the conservatives are in their default fallback position: Whining and lying.

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  41. buckguy9:07 AM

    East Tennessee lacked a plantation economy and the small holders there hated the planters who dominated the politics of the state and undercut the prices for the crops in markets like Nashville. Nashville, itself, has enough Unionist sentiment that it fell quickly and the merchant class got rich as it served as a garrison town. OTOH, you won't find Union and Confederate statutes in town, like you do less than an hour East in Lebanon. Mammon created a lot of "moderation" but it didn't replace a fundamental support for the Confederacy.

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  42. hellslittlestangel9:09 AM

    The Dukes of Hazzard was a product of liberal Hollyweird. Most of the actors were carpetbaggers from the North.

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  43. Say what you like about the Swiss, but their flag is always a big plus.

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  44. GeniusLemur9:16 AM

    The best indicator that the conservative movement is shit is the number of dog whistles and "no, this isn't what it looks like" arguments they have to use.

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  45. calling all toasters9:21 AM

    I wonder where all those Swiss, Irish, and Germans developed such strong opinions about states' rights and tariffs?

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  46. SufferinSuccotash,Entitled9:24 AM

    Grist for the mill. Anything to confuse the issues. Like saying Democrats are the real racists because Robert Byrd was a member of the KKK in 1955, or Socialists are really Nazis because Nazi stood for National Socialism. etc., etc.. I'm waiting for the story that it was really Union forces disguised in grey uniforms that fired on Ft. Sumter...

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  47. M. Krebs9:26 AM

    Wasn't Hitler himself an immigrant?

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  48. hellslittlestangel9:26 AM

    So, who were the pro-Confederate assholes who betrayed our nation and
    sent poor young men off to die in a war to preserve this evil economic
    system?


    The Jews, and the Freemasons. That's why the Ku Klux Klan arose after the war, to eradicate those dead-enders of the Confederacy.

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  49. hellslittlestangel9:29 AM

    The Civil War was the fault of Southern black families. Where were the fathers?

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  50. mortimer20009:39 AM

    And even during that 1 percent, a large proportion of the people who lived in the South—perhaps even a majority—were skeptical of the Confederacy...

    I can think of at least a third of the "people who lived in the South" being skeptical of the Confederacy. But they don't count for these cracker assholes, now or then, or even in this article.

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  51. hellslittlestangel9:39 AM

    It would be difficult to prove that as much as half the people who lived in the South in 1861 were fond of the Confederacy.

    Unless you count some of those people as three-fifths of a person.

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  52. MrDependable9:39 AM

    I'm sure you meant to say Fort Reichstag.

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  53. hellslittlestangel9:40 AM

    The Confederate flag itself was a false-flag operation.

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  54. Snarki, child of Loki9:48 AM

    Not to mention the fondue parties!

    The horror, the horror!

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  55. They used to be, you know. Remember William Tell! From smashing the Austrians in wars of 1315 and 1386 to staying out of the Thirty Years' War by supplying mercenary soldiers to both sides. Soldiers were their number one export for centuries. Probably not the most significant factor in East Tennessee though.

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  56. FlipYrWhig9:50 AM

    That must have been what happened to Vatican City!

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  57. Snarki, child of Loki9:51 AM

    A plan hatched at DFH headquarters, no doubt.

    Gotta watch out for those Secret Embroiderer Conspirators. They're sneaky, and will stick you with a needle if you're unwary.

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  58. M. Krebs9:51 AM

    This seems typical of a lot of southerners who feel obligated to feel proud of their "heritage" while in denial of just what that heritage is, as well as of its results all over the rural and small-town south today. Some of them are even Democrats and pretty liberal.


    Another southern trait I've observed -- and this may be more universal -- is the ability to ignore a lot of awfulness. This surely makes pride come a lot easier.


    But I don't know why people think it's so virtuous to be proud of themselves and those around them regardless of everything. Tribalism?

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  59. hellslittlestangel9:52 AM

    It's not hard to find massive amounts of evidence -- evidence that is so consistent as to defy credibility -- that the South seceded form the Union and fought a war of treason, not when the Yankees have had a hundred and fifty years to manufacture it.

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  60. Snarki, child of Loki9:52 AM

    "I don't know why people think it's so virtuous to be proud of themselves and those around them regardless of everything. Tribalism?"

    Something in the water that causes brain damage?

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  61. M. Krebs9:54 AM

    They didn't make those knives for nothing!

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  62. Snarki, child of Loki9:55 AM

    Calling all 101st Kerning Konfederate Keyboarders! Now is the time to examine those documents fonts & kerning & shit to dispute their authenticity!

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  63. It's not so much a southern problem as a Republican problem, really, and the Southern Strategy. The crackers they went after to recruit into the Permanent Republican Majority never had any trouble explaining how they felt about the Confederacy, but the old country club Republicans wanted to keep calling themselves the Party of Lincoln at the same time as they turned against any and all civil rights legislation (not to mention the other priorities of the 1860 Republicans like free labor, government-led industrial development, massive federal investment in education and infrastructure, and, however weakly, women's rights).

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  64. Magatha10:33 AM

    Mon dieu, you're good. And with fiddles. I'm weeping. And also hungry.

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  65. Magatha10:40 AM

    This is the sort of thing that happens in a fucking Civil War. That's why they are so icky, and why one hates them.

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  66. coozledad10:40 AM

    It's from Ken Burns' Civil War in Recipes.

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  67. What are you saying? Conservatives have totally been shitting on the Confederate flag since 2008. "We have always been at war with Battleflaggia." Pay no attention to all those video clips from two weeks ago demonstrating the opposite.

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  68. ColBatGuano10:42 AM

    That "perhaps" is doing a lot of heavy lifting.

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  69. Magatha10:44 AM

    This is all so confusing. Are you related to Jade Helms too?

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  70. In smellovision. I have to see that.

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  71. coozledad10:46 AM

    It's a catechism you learn as a child, and it colors your understanding of everything in a really fucked up way, until you're exposed to actual history.

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  72. Jade's from the CIA branch of the clan.

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  73. Or in some cases not then either.

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  74. coozledad10:49 AM

    We hardly ever see her anymore since she run off and got them tatttoos. I hear she's hanging out with some Chinese guys in the basement of a Wal-Mart.

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  75. LutherZBlissett10:55 AM

    East Tennessee supported the Union mainly because it was too fucking remote and rocky for slavery. Same with lots of places up Appalachia. Didn't stop those places from becoming KKK strongholds with a whole load of sundown towns and lynchings -- because nobody ain't never seen black folks round here.


    You'd think that $160k/yr Ol Perfesser would know this, and he probably does, but pretending not to know such things has been the Ol Perfesser's schtick for a decade.

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  76. LittlePig11:15 AM

    +2 for "y'all", and +5 for 'the recent unpleasantness'.

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  77. LittlePig11:22 AM

    'BoboLite' is my typical nomen for that posterior osculatin' poser.

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  78. smut clyde11:22 AM

    You let a bunch of Swiss guys crash at your place
    You don't get a choice. They're all "Je Suisse et j'y reste".

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  79. dynamic_dave11:28 AM

    So...30 percent of Tennesseans voted against secession. I'm not great at math, but that still leaves, like, 70 percent who didn't? So if the point is, "Hey, they did that whole Confederacy thing, but there were people that didn't go along with it!" then maybe you need to go back to the drawing table.

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  80. LittlePig11:31 AM

    "It was a-blocking the harbor, and we'uns was jas trying to do access improvements to get ah sub-sity from Jeff Davis..."

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  81. postmodulator11:38 AM

    Who was that sportswriter who said something like "As I understand it, there were only five or six Nazis, but of course they worked very hard?"

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  82. you're wrong, roy.


    there's simply no way for us to ever know if the south was truly for secession. the data---things like whether or not there ever was an economy there that was based wholly on the enslavement of people imported from abroad that regional political leaders had fought since the nation's founding to enshrine in law---this information is simply not there.


    it's clear we may never know.

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  83. Oh, good, because at his rate of production it will see the light of day in about a decade past its relevance. By that time the entire Civil War will have dissapeared down the memory hole.

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  84. News Nag11:45 AM

    Born in New Orleans, raised in Biloxi, lived in Texas the last 35 years - that's me. I've come to believe that all of the excuses and rationalizations and overglorification of The South and The Confederacy, and all the resentment and utter defensiveness of defenders of The South and The Confederacy, comes from one only one thing: That southerners are so ashamed that they LOST that they can't even begin to deal reasonably with the other steps of grief. The phony arguments from Confederacy apologists mentioned above, the outside agitators gambit, are what you get when they can't accept responsibility for their slave society's actions. They couldn't even perform the 1st Step of a 12-Step program successfully with their shuffling dissemblings and 'the dog ate it' excuses. Until they can reach at least Step One, what they're doing STILL TODAY is defending what their slave society did. In other words, THEY CAN'T HANDLE THE TRUTH, yet.

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  85. Ah! "Lets not argue about who killed who." The classics!

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  86. See, e.g. Kai Erikkson's Everything In Its Path.http://www.amazon.com/Everything-Its-Path-Destruction-Community/dp/0671240676

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  87. OMG the Israelis were behind it all along.

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  88. The dog ate my slave owner papers!

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  89. John Wesley Hardin12:03 PM

    "Chinese guys in the basement of a Wal-Mart" Always low opium prices. Always.

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  90. Meanie-meanie, tickle a person12:04 PM

    Let us clasp hands o'er the bloody chasm!

    But let us also leave one hand free, so we can still point and laugh...

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  91. John Wesley Hardin12:05 PM

    "Yes, but the important point is letting low-information white Democrats feel superior." And now, since they can laugh at the stupid white Democrats, Glenn's audience of low-information white Republicans can feel superior. It's always fucking projection.

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  92. FMguru12:07 PM

    The first line of that article is a giveaway: The Civil War is so complicated and hard to understand and resistant to simple understanding! Whenever a conservative starts waving their hands around and talking about how "complex" an issue is, that's a can't-miss signal that a tidal wave of bullshit is incoming (McMegan relies a lot of this particular shtick, switching to it every time one of her just-so libertarian explanations for things is exposed for garbage it is). And, of course, the piece doesn't disappoint. I'm also reminded of The Perfesser's endless apologism for the in-process Iraq occupation, forever blaming the media for not covering all the parked calls that DIDN'T explode and kill dozens of people.

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  93. Meanie-meanie, tickle a person12:07 PM

    Lincoln's dog ate the Emancipation Proclamation!
    Somewhere in a trunk--or several--is an alt history novel where that actually happened...

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  94. Meanie-meanie, tickle a person12:09 PM

    Heh, yeah. I loved that "It might take years to do a thorough study on the subject" bit. You'd think one of these days the historians would get started on that...

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  95. Meanie-meanie, tickle a person12:10 PM

    #NotAllSoutherners
    Trend it!

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  96. Confederacy? What Confederacy?

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  97. this will be the civil war book that's never been written in such detail or care

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  98. FMguru12:15 PM

    I've actually heard this explanation from confederate apologists - after the secession, the fort was on confederate soil, and the garrison refused to evacuate it, making it in essence a Northern invasion, and the south was well within its rights to secure its territory. QED, the North started the war with its sovereignty-violating military occupation of the south.

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  99. It's because of the liberal domination of academia, don't you know. US history departments have never looked seriously at the 19th century because they're afraid of what they might find out.

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  100. smut clyde12:17 PM

    I paid good money for a Swiss Navy Knife but it was disappointingly useless.

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  101. well, sure. but logistically! i mean, the technology to house this stuff---a place to keep many books an papers, a library of sorts, or an "archive" if you will---the tech is at least 25, 30 years out.

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  102. smut clyde12:19 PM

    Imma guessing that they all had at least three names, though.

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  103. Meanie-meanie, tickle a person12:20 PM

    It doesn't appear to be preserved on youtube or anywhere else, but longtime Houstonians will remember a live Marvin Zindler (Eeeeeyyyyyyeeeeeewitness news!) report wherein, if I remember it right, he was interviewing someone in front of some business, and the cameras picked up a man beating a dog on the other side of (or farther down) the street. Marvin, being Marvin, broke off the report and stormed over to confront the asshole, cameras and all, who responded, "Dog? What dog? I don't see no dog!"

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  104. smut clyde12:21 PM

    The Brain-Eating Parasite explanation is as good as any.

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  105. smut clyde12:22 PM

    See under "Dunces".

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  106. smut clyde12:23 PM

    At least he wasn't a feckin Bavarian.

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  107. PaddyRichard12:24 PM

    It's funny, because this guy does the whole "history is complicated" routine. But the truth is that the Civil War is one of the only instances in American history were things really weren't that complicated. One side committed treason in defense not only of slavery, but so they could expand their slave empire into the carribean and out west. The other side fought to preserve the country in their image. Which is to say they fought to destroy the slave empire. Yes many northerners didn't care about black people, but it's still a pretty straightforward story.

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  108. Meanie-meanie, tickle a person12:28 PM

    Prions now, prions tomorrah, prions fo-evah!

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  109. Meanie-meanie, tickle a person12:29 PM

    It's the math that makes things down there so "complicated"...

    ReplyDelete
  110. there's a solid body of contemporary historical scholarship demonstrating that the southern strategy was a paper tiger, but only because the nixon administration was in fact lagging well-behind grassroots conservatives in the south, who were well on their way to solidifying segregationist gains in local and state legislatures.

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  111. Tentative Titles:


    Up is Down
    Union Slavers
    The War of Northern Passive Agression

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  112. Via Juanita Jean http://juanitajean.com/not-an-exact-translation-but-close-enough/

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  113. Meanie-meanie, tickle a person12:40 PM

    I've often wondered who would give orders to whom, when they're all Kernels...

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  114. The interns are going to pull the name out of a colon?

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  115. Meanie-meanie, tickle a person12:43 PM

    And one of 'em was always "Beauregard"...

    ReplyDelete
  116. calling all toasters12:44 PM

    This is the comment at the end of the wingnutverse.

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  117. coozledad12:44 PM

    You want to avoid swimming in a catch pond.

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  118. calling all toasters12:45 PM

    "evidence that is so consistent as to defy credibility"


    Are you quoting Scalia's opinion on the Civil Rights Act?

    ReplyDelete
  119. DocAmazing12:51 PM

    My Turtledove ate my alt-history novel.

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  120. Meanie-meanie, tickle a person1:08 PM

    the worst prison guards in the worst camps were Ukrainians

    Because the Germans were excellent recruiters, and if there were willing accomplices to be had, that meant more German troops for the Eastern Front...

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  121. M. Krebs1:08 PM

    The same three names in all six permutations.

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  122. Keyser Soze1:09 PM

    The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the South that the Confederacy ever existed

    ReplyDelete
  123. Meanie-meanie, tickle a person1:12 PM

    Annnnnnd, now I'm hearing HLA's comment in Marvin's voice...

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  124. M. Krebs1:22 PM

    The one negative review of that book at Amazon is awesome.

    ... But the author was there as an employee of a law firm that was suing the mining company on behalf of the residents. So, not surprisingly, everyone he interviewed complained bitterly about the aftermath of the flood, and the author reports results right in line with what his employers wanted--maximal negative information about the consequences of the disaster. This is highly biased reporting.



    I guess some say the flood was a net positive!

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  125. AlanInSF1:24 PM

    It's not like the entire region's economy was based on the subjugation of another race, or that said subjugation continued for more than a century after the Civil War ended.

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  126. Howlin Wolfe1:25 PM

    Yes, the Confederacy, merely a pimple on the body politic of the South, of idiopathic origin, and a blemish on an otherwise pristine, morally righteous region of the country. They were gonna eliminate slavery at some point. Honest! Just as soon as they get rid of the European interlopers!

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  127. Howlin Wolfe1:26 PM

    Their cheese closely resembles the brains of the natives.

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  128. LookWhosInTheFreezer1:26 PM

    It's fun watching Conservatives squirm every time the world tries to hold them accountable for some awful thing that Conservatives proudly endorsed for ages but now are forced to pretend they were always against. Articles like Ole Proff's remind me of this.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QZqfxoCYfxw

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  129. Avattoir1:40 PM

    Eyesight and reflexes not what they used to be: at first I read that as "cry tranny and oppression". It made pretty much the same sense.

    ReplyDelete
  130. Marion in Savannah1:41 PM

    Out of Jonah's. After all, it's where all of his stuff shit comes from...

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  131. If it was good enough for Captain von Trapp, then it's good enough for you, dagnabit!

    (Wie sagt man "dagnabit" auf Deutsch?)

    ReplyDelete
  132. Marion in Savannah1:46 PM

    Amen.

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  133. M. Krebs1:46 PM

    True story: When I was a wee lad I heard somewhere that the USA had never lost a war. With this factoid stuck in my mind, I concluded that the South won the Civil War.

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  134. Howlin Wolfe1:48 PM

    Kind of a reverse-Occam's Razor.

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  135. This is what we refer to as sunk costs.

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  136. It's "Alinksy." Please get your memes correct, or I'll have to send John McCain over to edumacate you about all Internet traditions.

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  137. Ellis_Weiner1:50 PM

    "Many of Knoxville’s notable Confederates were immigrants from Switzerland, Germany, or Ireland."

    Further, for all the talk of "secession," no one has proven at all convincingly that any effort was completed--or even begun--to separate, via saws and pick axes, the "South" from the "North." In fact, not a single trench was dug to effect this separation--rendering all talk of "leaving the Union" abstract at best, and thus susceptible to exaggeration, stereotyping, and, ultimately, exploitation by Northern propagandists. One is thus tempted to suggest that the so-called Civil War never actually took place.

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  138. Better that than "JIG-gery pokery" I guess.

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  139. M. Krebs1:53 PM

    If it weren't for Matthew Brady, I'm sure they'd give it a shot.

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  140. Better check the kerning on "all those video clips." Might surprise you.

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  141. Well, it did lift all boats. And lawn furniture. And living room furniture. So there's that.

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  142. With a few notable exceptions, the USA has never lost a war.

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  143. no...fondue he's good.

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  144. Occam's Razor after you've wacked the edge against a rock a half-dozen times, then tried to resharpen it by dipping it in seawater and dragging it behind the car on the interstate for 50 miles.

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  145. Ellis_Weiner2:16 PM

    This on stilts on acid. Half the staff of National Review would have been openly Tory, while the other half would have made the same arguments openly behind their hands.

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  146. Ellis_Weiner2:39 PM

    But it's especially hurtful to them here, per Isaac Asimov's

    “Anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread
    winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the
    false notion that democracy means that 'my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.'”


    Similarly, my racism is just as good as your bleeding heart racial "tolerance." They must grow up thinking that, and never get over the trauma of realizing that the rest of the country (never mind world) takes exception.

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  147. Ellis_Weiner2:40 PM

    And even if some (or all) historians do conclude that the South was for secession, it will be dismissible because (say it with me now) it's just a theory.

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  148. Ellis_Weiner2:45 PM

    Why go to all that bother? Try Occam's Safety Razor, the principle that states that any explanation you like it fine, as long as it makes you feel good.

    ReplyDelete
  149. Randy Gibbons2:48 PM

    That line of Scalia's gave me the distinct impression that the racist variant of jury- or jerry-rigged got left on the cutting room floor.

    ReplyDelete
  150. Brian Schlosser2:54 PM

    I want to listen to David McCullough narrate this comment

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  151. Now with five blades for a smoother lie!

    ReplyDelete
  152. Brian Schlosser2:56 PM

    Hey, "Dixie" WAS written by a northerner...

    ReplyDelete
  153. Snarki, child of Loki3:03 PM

    Douche-Hat.

    ReplyDelete
  154. Brian Schlosser3:03 PM

    "Look, we've both said a lot of things you're going to regret"

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  155. Brian Schlosser3:15 PM

    The US has never lost a (declared) war!!

    ReplyDelete
  156. Brian Schlosser3:17 PM

    Now, go fetch grandpa some more bourbon

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  157. All as fake as the moonlanding.

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  158. Brian Schlosser3:22 PM

    This is good, but missing the final "Nuh uh, but you!" that is the hallmark of all the best wing nut thinking. I can only conclude that they were unaware of the Copperheads, and that is why they didn't go for the natural conclusion to the argument: not only was the south opposed to the Confederacy, it was the Northerners (some of them Democrats!) who actually supported it!

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  159. redoubtagain3:44 PM

    Shelby Foote: "The 101st Gruyeres were first commanded by ol' General Schmeerkase, or 'Rindy' as they called him. He came down off that Alp he was living on and took the first boat over to Charleston, and got in through the blockade. So Beauregard sent ol' 'Rindy' up to help Joe Johnston 'ginst McClellan, and then when Lee took over 'Rindy' was out front of his unit at Seven Pines when he got hit square in the chest by a case shot.

    Nobody'd ever seen a man bleed cheese before."

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  160. redoubtagain3:55 PM

    How does that joke about Austria go? "Austrians want you to believe that Beethoven was Austrian and Hitler was German, instead of the other way around"?

    ReplyDelete
  161. In one of my many many workplaces we had a small group of Brit WW2 vets (I'm talking 1985) who always sat together at lunch. I overheard them talking once to say
    "Funny 'ow there was no Nazis left when we got to Germany."
    "Yes we was such good shots we only killed the bad 'uns."

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  162. Since no one in the South supported the Confederacy they won't mind giving up the stupid flag, then?

    ReplyDelete
  163. Coming soon: The Iraq War was engineered by liberal hippies and the Democrat party over the strong opposition of Bush, Cheney and all other conservatives. Fucking hippies, what trouble will they cause next?

    ReplyDelete
  164. I still believe that all dogs are male and all cats are female.

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  165. wizard20005:36 PM

    Maybe it's the 30/30/30 rule? (if there is any such "rule"). For instance, I read once that during the Revolutionary War, about 30 percent of white colonists were for splitting from Great Britain, about 30 percent were for staying under the Crown's control and about 30 percent didn't care one way or the other, let's say, Patriots, Tories and Independents, respectively. Maybe during the Civil War there was a similar 30/30/30 split in the South (and maybe even in the North)? Those that wanted to keep the USA intact, those that wanted to split off the Southern states (to maintain slavery and white, aristocratic, slaveowner, economic dominance) and those that didn't care one way or the other? (note: I'm not including black slaves in this 30/30/30 mix because they didn't have much say in matters at that time, but their sympathies, mainly, seemed to be for breaking from Great Britain and for breaking the slaveowners grip on the Southern states in each major early American war).
    I know, this is probably too simplistic, but I've noticed a similar 30/30/30 mix in today's American politics, Republicans, Democrats and Independents, respectively, with politically-active Independents being wooed to side with the Tory Republicans or the Patriot Democrats. Tory Republicans? Today's Republican Party ONLY represents the interests of the 1 percenters and the billionaire/aristocratic class, like their Tory ancestors did in supporting America staying under the Crown's control and in fighting to maintain slaveowner/aristocratic control over the southern states.

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  166. Shorter Instapindick: "No true Scotsman SOUTHERNER supported the Confederacy."

    ReplyDelete
  167. wizard20006:12 PM

    So, dogs are from Mars and cats are from Venus? I thoght so.

    ReplyDelete
  168. http://assets.amuniversal.com/bb8bf660fec90132efb3005056a9545d

    ReplyDelete
  169. Magatha6:42 PM

    Oooooh, hey, I was going for the rhyme. Adieu to you. And you, and you, and you.

    ReplyDelete
  170. M. Krebs7:03 PM

    Hey folks, this is off topic, but I accidentally saw a cool movie last night. It's a very low-budget adaptation of Henry Gibson's Henrik Ibsen's play A Master Builder, directed by Jonathan Demme and starring ... wait for it ... Wallace Shawn as the master builder. Shawn also wrote the screenplay. It's worth seeking out. Thank me later.

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  171. calling all toasters7:14 PM

    Yore welcome.

    ReplyDelete
  172. josefina8:10 PM

    The guy was just mad because the dog had been gettin' into the sliiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiime in the ice machines.

    ReplyDelete
  173. LookWhosInTheFreezer8:13 PM

    I guess some say the flood was a net positive!</blockquote

    It's possible that sales of "nets" (fishing, safety etc.) increased as a result.

    ReplyDelete
  174. LittlePig8:14 PM

    "Like the fella says, in Italy for 30 years under the Borgias they had
    warfare, terror, murder, and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo,
    Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had
    brotherly love - they had 500 years of democracy and peace, and what did
    that produce? The cuckoo clock."

    ReplyDelete
  175. tsam1009:06 PM

    Get an empty box in the mail?

    ReplyDelete
  176. There was a master builder
    And then he died.

    Thank You.

    ReplyDelete
  177. tsam1009:13 PM

    Yeah-it's complicated and "you don't understand it. Allow me to educate you on the realities that those historians are hiding from you..."

    If that's not a blaring bullshit alarm...almost to the level of "I'm not a racist, but..."

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  178. tsam1009:19 PM

    They already caused ISIS, leaving our conservative statesmen to do all the work of manufacturing excuses for another war.

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  179. Meanie-meanie, tickle a person9:56 PM

    So, Occam's Vegematic, then...

    ReplyDelete
  180. TGuerrant9:58 PM

    The Steves later voted for Nixon and even though they were the only ones to do so, Nixon won twice.

    ReplyDelete
  181. Judging where the dogs' noses always seem to end up, dogs are from Uranus.

    ReplyDelete
  182. Wm Kiernan10:25 PM

    Spare us the bullshit, Instahick, and check this out:

    https://archive.org/details/interestinslaver00indebo

    "The interest in slavery of the southern non-slaveholder" by James Dunwoody Brownson

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  183. And sometimes their cotillions.

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  184. AGoodQuestion11:35 PM

    Paul Klee and the Cabaret Voltaire in Zurich have to count for something. Welles probably knew about all that, but apparently Harry Lime didn't.

    ReplyDelete
  185. Gabriel Ratchet11:40 PM

    ... to the dismay of some on the left.

    ReplyDelete
  186. AGoodQuestion11:42 PM

    This story is really about Ethics in Continental Drift.

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  187. AGoodQuestion11:46 PM

    That's what happens when you leave two of them alone for the twelve days of Christmas.

    ReplyDelete
  188. AGoodQuestion11:57 PM

    Ask The Donald to 'splain that one.
    Aaah, Ricky, I don't wanna!

    ReplyDelete
  189. tsam10012:04 AM

    As long as they talk like they have a nasty head injury, they shall remain voted off the island. No acceptance for them.

    ReplyDelete
  190. Brian Schlosser12:06 AM

    Hey, not liking the Confederacy doesn't mean you can't hate Yankees, a hyuck!

    ReplyDelete
  191. tsam10012:17 AM

    "Perhaps" the Instapuke writers have sex with farm animals. It would be irresponsible not to speculate.

    ReplyDelete
  192. AGoodQuestion12:17 AM

    Goldwater had gotten the ball rolling four years earlier by winning five ex-Confederate states and keeping it close in several others. (If you look at the county by county breakdown you'll be surprised he didn't win Florida.) Nixon's achievement was to win over other members of the Democratic coalition like urban white Catholics, many of whom were in the process of fleeing the city.

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  193. Good god imagine the contortions the 101st Keyboarders would be going through to prove that Brady faked his photos. "The sun at 2.15pm on 2 July at the Devil's Den would be at 115 degrees to the perihelion and this is 114 if it's anything". The South won this battle and Brady and his MSM enablers know it."

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  194. point being---they didn't need politicians with national aspirations, nor their best and brightest, to teach them racism, to put that racism in a grammar of individual rights and property, and to create a politics for it all.

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  195. FMguru1:08 AM

    I'm reminded of Paul Ryan, the alleged conservative budget wonk who actually got called on his phoney-baloney budget, and when he was asked a simple question (about what he would cut in order to pay for his tax cuts and close the deficit - social security? medicare? or what?) he started stammering about how complicated the answer to that question was and there were a lot of moving parts in play and how he couldn't really cover it in just a few minutes and so on. Almost as amazing as a Republican politician getting called out for his bullshit (on one of those Sunday morning chat-n-grunt shows, even!) was the way he kind of dropped off the national political scene afterwards. The green-eyeshade numbers whiz was exposed as a fraud on national teevee, and it stuck. Quite remarkable, and also another example of conservatives sounding like The Dude ("This is a very complicated case. You know, a lotta ins, lotta outs, lotta what-have-you's. And, uh, lotta strands to keep in my head, man") when they get caught out.

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  196. Gabriel Ratchet2:13 AM

    Matthew Brady: the 19th Century's answer to Stanley Kubrick.

    ReplyDelete