Fighting the Final Battles of the Civil War

As usual, Glynn Wilson of The Locust Fork Journal (AL), nails it.
Very good and thoughtful analysis.
This is posted with Glynn's permission.
He and I are both natives and current residents of Alabama, so y'all be nice now.
;-)

America Just Elected Its First Black President

Are the people of Alabama ready for an African-American governor?

by Glynn Wilson

ATLANTA, Ga. — Some historians say the final battle of the Civil War was fought at Sayler’s Creek, southwest of Petersburg, Virginia, on April 6, 1865. Try bringing that up in a political bar like Manuel’s Tavern in downtown Atlanta, however, and see how fast you can start an argument.

While everyone knows that Robert E. Lee surrendered his Army of Northern Virginia on April 9, 1865, at the Appomattox Court House, effectively ending the war, many an expert would argue that the old, lingering causes of the war survived in people’s attitudes long after the fighting on the bloody battle fields came to a gentlemanly end.

Ask the leaders of the Civil Rights movement, those who had to fight those battles all over again in the 1950s and ’60s.

Then there are thinkers and writers who will tell you, if you give them half a chance over a few shots of whiskey or a few pints of dark beer, that the election of George W. Bush in 2000 effectively erased the Union’s victory in the war and was finally, at long last, a victory for the old Confederacy. Putting aside the issue of election theft and the Supreme Court, ponder the idea that Bush came into office in large measure by the hands of mostly white voters from the old Confederate states of the Deep South, with some help from middle America and parts of the West.

Since Obama’s election even the TV pundits will tell you the only base left for the national Republican Party lies in the old states of the Confederacy, thanks in part to the scorched earth strategies of Dick Cheney and Karl Rove, whose marches to Washington and Baghdad with Bush scarred the national character almost as much as General William Tecumseh Sherman’s fiery “March to the Sea.”

Then consider that while Bush’s campaign coffers may not have been filled by the profits from cotton, hand-picked on plantations worked by slaves, the mega corporations that mostly supported his candidacy were interested in keeping wages low and gutting the rights of juries in courtrooms to punish corporate crimes against working people, humanity and the earth. Bush got most of his money to run in 2000 from oil and other energy companies, including Exxon Mobile and Southern Company, as well as insurance companies and the pharmaceutical giants. He came into office — in the world prior to 9/11 — with the prime objective to pass national “tort reform,” the watchword for stopping juries from rendering multi-million dollar judgments against multi-national corporations.

Rove had already accomplished that feat in Alabama — once known as the top state in the country for large jury awards against corporate malfeasance — by helping the Republican Party orchestrate a political takeover of the state Supreme Court.

If you ask just about any academic expert who studies the demographic numbers from public opinion polls and election results, you could say Americans finally fought the final battle of the Civil War on Tuesday, Nov. 4, 2008. Symbolically, it took another Abraham Lincoln, Barack Obama, to put together enough of a national coalition to defeat Confederate attitudes once and for all.

Read the rest here:
http://blog.locustfork.net/

and try to break the UAW. Doesn't sound like it is over yet.

We (Alabama) have no Big 3 factories here.
Just Mercedes, Hyundai, Toyota, and Honda.
But we do have a LOT of Big 3 dealerships that must employ thousands of people. Why aren't they raising hell with Shelby?

us to stand together. If bushie doesn't bail them out we are all going to feel the failure. Coleman from my state voted against it also and we have one plant and many dealerships in our state. Plus those foreign plants cannot sell cars to people who are too poor to buy them so I think those pug senators have just joined the Hoover Club.

would vote against Artur Davis for AL governor.

Happy Holidays Trof, :hi:

:hi:

While I appreciate the many efforts I see to sort out the bush admin as the acidic, corrosive compound it has been all along; there are some things about this blog I find curious...

Looking past g.w. bush's heritage as that of some of the oldest, filthiest NE money in America serves to pull the eye from what is a hack, implanted Texas accent that gets thinker & thicker when its in trouble as though being a bumpkin will save you from pointed questions over your even more pointed failures = "You-nited States of Amurica" in flowing purple TX A&M gowns easily worn by wolves in fields of demure, clueless sheep,

Obama is not Lincoln; to use the flip side, Obama hasn't even taken the oath yet and we need to leave all that right there. As we have a history of Lincoln as president, his deeds, his thoughts, and his results having been concluded which are better left right there as well imo, neither has any would-be coalition defeated Confederate attitudes when just two confederate senators are able to squash millions of northern jobs by way of Japanese investment from their state of republican obstruction & obstenence...united states indeed! I agree the war goes on, though still, sometimes for all the wrong reasons

When black jobs & white jobs, and every color job in between are lost because of such 'confederate attitudes' the civil war is continued alright but not for the moral justification many think or thought, the people forced nor the cotton gin. But between the industrial north and the cotton ball.