Hit the Road, Jack or US Out of Texas!

[IamSam]

Disclaimer: No, not everyone in the South is a racist Nazi, many if not most white Southerners are honorable people, etc, etc. My own family has roots in the South going back to the late 1700's and earlier. I am proud of my Southern heritage and I've read more than one book about Southern history and culture. (There is an excellent article in Salon for those who are interested.) I've often thought about the ways in which the South has and has not changed. The following is merely an observation of a few political/regional trends both then and now. Satisfaction is not guaranteed.

The nation continues to stagger onward into the new year, hobbled by high unemployment, an uncertain economic future and a paralyzed government, held hostage by the tea party. One national poll found that the communist party is actually more popular than Congress - Commies got an 11% approval rating and Congress got 10%

A group representing a minority of Americans has so far blocked any attempts at functional government. The tea party has embraced Nancy's Reagan's "Just say 'no' campaign and broadened it to include saying 'no' to anything and everything that anyone else not tea party might be so foolish as to bring to the House floor.

The Southern states are the heartland of the tea party consituency with Texas in the lead and Florida a close second. The ideology of this "grass roots" movement is nothing new. From the earliest years of the American republic, white Southern conservatives who have lost elections and found themselves in the political minority have sought to extort concessions from national majorities by paralyzing or threatening to destroy the United States.

The most famous historical example of this is, of course, the Civil War (or "the War Between the States," as many Southerners call it). Southerners were even more angry over the election of Lincoln than they are now over the election of Obama. The South vented its spleen with the attack on Fort Sumter and the exit stage right to form the Confederacy.

It is hardly surprising that once again, having lost the November election, Southern Tea Party members began circulating petitions to secede from the Union with Texas having the greatest number of signatories.

Despite its claim of a return to the principles of the founding fathers, the tea party has little use for participatory democracy - especially when it loses a national election, but even when the party is asked to make the smallest compromise to allow the country to move forward. Better to go off the fiscal cliff, better for the US to default on its loans, better to deny disaster relief for the blue states of New York and New Jersey, better to shut down the US government than to give a single inch. The motto of the tea party is "My way or the highway," and they mean every word.

It's also important for the South to suppress voters who happen to have the wrong skin color and/or are members of the wrong socio-economic class. The presidential election antics put on every 4 years by the state of Florida are well known examples of this. There is still barely concealed resentment over the Civil Rights movement of the '60's among many white Southerners. And they still remember the Reconstruction era with great bitterness.

It is time for the United States to give the South what it has wanted for more than 200 years. Let it remove itself from the rest of the country and form its own government. Texas was once a seperate nation and many there long for it to be seperate again. Let's start with Texas. Give x number of years for its transition to independence, draw the new borders and do what we should have done in 1861 had it not been more important to abolish slavery - let the South go.

The United States could then move forward while the tea party government of the nation of Texas moves back.

[Adak]

Except that you have your facts goofy, that's a fun read.

Did you perhaps notice that Obama's budget proposals have been so bad, in every year that he's proposed HIS (not the first year when he proposed Bush's), that neither the Senate nor the House, would even vote for them.

But now that the middle class has *oh despite all the promises by Obama!* had their taxes raised, maybe some common sense will begin to seep into our fellow citizens brains.

You wanted Obama -- you got him - and you got the start of the higher taxes on the middle class AND the upper class, that go right along with him.

And Nancy Pelosi has already stated that "this is just the beginning" of the revenue adjustments that will be made. "Revenue adjustments" is code for taxes, of course.

And what do we have for spending cuts? ROFL!!

You keep bringing up the Tea Party, and everything else - now it's the Civil War, no less - but you keep avoiding the problem -- THE BIG PROBLEM, that is going to lead us into a monetary crisis :

Runaway Spending!

[Ibby]

y'know, if a SINGLE republican were to propose a SINGLE major spending cut that didn't disproportionately take away resources for the needy - whose use of those resources stimulates the economy and earns the government money on the taxes on the repeated uses of those dollars, through both Keynesian stimulus and through the sheer fact that when you give needy people money they spend it, and then the people they trade that money too also almost always need to spend it again themselves, and so on, over and over (while the wealthy's spending patterns hardly change when they get an extra handful of percent of cash on hand) - i might believe that "spending cuts" actually means a goddamn thing to wingnuts like you.

[xoxoxoBruce]

Originally Posted by IamSam

[i]snip~ The most famous historical example of this is, of course, the Civil War (or "the War Between the States," as many Southerners call it). ~snip

It's, "The War of Northern Agression", my dear.

[xoxoxoBruce]

Originally Posted by IamSam

[i]snip~ The most famous historical example of this is, of course, the Civil War (or "the War Between the States," as many Southerners call it). ~snip

It's, "The War of Northern Aggression", my dear.

[footfootfoot]

Ohh Texas, oh Texas don't you treat me so bad,
You're the best damn state I ever did have

Don't care what you say, cuz it's understood,
You got civil rights and you just ain't no good.

Well I guess if you say so,
I'll have to pack my things and go...

[IamSam]

Originally Posted by xoxoxoBruce

It's, "The War of Northern Aggression", my dear.

Hah! Very true. Damn Northerners should have minded their own business and left the South alone. I'll take Robert E. Lee over Grant any day of the week. Lee did a damn fine job fighting an enemy which had him outgunned and had a far better industrial base than the agrarian South.

@ Adak: Please go back over to your "Macabre" thread if you have nothing relevant to add to this one.

[Gravdigr]

Originally Posted by xoxoxoBruce

It's, "The War of Northern Aggression", my dear.

I prefer "The Recent Unpleasantness".

[Adak]

Originally Posted by IamSam

Hah! Very true. Damn Northerners should have minded their own business and left the South alone. I'll take Robert E. Lee over Grant any day of the week. Lee did a damn fine job fighting an enemy which had him outgunned and had a far better industrial base than the agrarian South.

@ Adak: Please go back over to your "Macabre" thread if you have nothing relevant to add to this one.

Of course - running down the Tea Party is fine, but putting it's actions back into the context of our fiscal troubles - that's no help at all.

I'll leave you to your important assessment of Lee and Grant.

[richlevy]

Originally Posted by xoxoxoBruce

It's, "The War of Northern Agression", my dear.

Seriously, if anyone ever uses that phrase in front of me, I'm going to respond "You mean The War of Southern Stupidity?"

[xoxoxoBruce]

That's what I usually do. Well maybe a little more colorfully, but the same idea.

[ZenGum]

Wasn't it "Operation Enduring Equality"?

[IamSam]

Originally Posted by Adak

Of course - running down the Tea Party is fine, but putting it's actions back into the context of our fiscal troubles - that's no help at all.

So far you don't qualify for Sam's special thread drift permission. I'll let you know if that happy day ever arrives.

I'll leave you to your important assessment of Lee and Grant.

Gee, thanks! I'm sure we'll manage the First Battle of Bull Run without you - somehow.

[IamSam]

Originally Posted by ZenGum

Wasn't it "Operation Enduring Equality"?

There's been a bit of a problem with that "enduring" part. Enduring resentment is giving it a run for the money, though.

[richlevy]

Originally Posted by IamSam

There's been a bit of a problem with that "enduring" part. Enduring resentment is giving it a run for the money, though.

What I never understood is all of the Civil War reenactment in the South. Why keep faithfully reenacting a war that they lost? Isn't it a bit like inviting an old girlfriend over every year to replay the day she broke up with you?

Or is it the hope that if they keep doing it over and over again, there will be some moment of epiphany when they can watch it and say "So that's why we lost to those guys."