THE FLAG AND THE WATCHMAN

Reading Harper Lee's Go Set a Watchman, by returning me to the world of the Alabama segregated South of the 1950's, gave me an instructive insight into one of the debates that recurred during the recent Confederate Battle Flag controversy. It has to do with the old argument as to whether the Civil War was fought over the institution of slavery or over the principle of states' rights, each side of which has strong and vehement proponents. I've come to the conclusion that the War was fought over both--and neither. The actual cause of the Civil War was Racism: specifically, a dispute between north and south over the degree of racism--racial distinction, prejudice, and discrimination, toward persons of African origins-- that could be tolerated in the United States of America in the latter nineteenth century. Both parts of the nation held deep racial prejudices, which were directed against Indians and Asians as well as Africans, though the Africans were the only ones being held in slavery. Both parts unabashedly considered European persons to be innately, and by divine intent, superior to other color varieties of humans. The racism was merely a matter of degree. The difference was that in the north, a preponderance of opinion was just forming that there must be a limit to the disparity in treatment of people of color by white people, and that the line fell at the point of actual ownership of one human being by another, with all its potential for violent and heart-wrenching abuses . Thus, Abraham Lincoln was correct when, upon meeting Harriet Beecher Stowe, one of those who helped mold northern opinion, he said, "So you are the little woman who made this great war." Southerners were in too deep to be turned by Stowe and the abolitionists. There were too many slaves among them, and the social consequences of emancipation outweighed even the economic ones. For them, there could be no limits applied to their supremacy over blacks, specifically--Indians having already been driven out, and Asians not yet beginning to pour in. To protect themselves from horrors of being murdered in their beds by uprising slaves, or by vengeful freed slaves, nightmares they had brought upon themselves, they held strongly to their traditional position that black people, being inferior in every conceivable way, were made to be enslaved. Poor Southerners did not fight for the Confederacy because they dreamed they might someday be slave owners; they were not that stupid. They enlisted because they were every bit as much racially prejudiced as their betters, and they were every bit as much afraid of the consequences to them of the emancipation of slaves. Where would freed slaves live? Among them, not among the rich. With whom would freed slaves compete for land and jobs? With them, not with the rich. With whose daughters (always the daughters) might they want to intermarry? With theirs, not those of the rich. These were the fears whose flames were fanned not only during the war but for the century and more following. In some ways, poor whites and newly emancipated blacks might have formed an alliance for a more democratic and just South, but that was not to be, for fear, suspicion, and "otherness" combine so strongly to keep people apart. A great irony of the American Civil War, then, is that its conclusion brought an end to actual slavery in America, but not to the deep and abiding racism that brought both about. The conflict is therefore not really resolved, and cannot be, until all segments of American society recant, repent, and root out, all vestiges of racial prejudice and come to realize that there is but one race present on this earth, and it is called "human." That is why the controversy over the Battle Flag rages, and why it will never go away until it no longer matters to anyone.

WHY BLACK LIVES HAVE TO MATTER

WHILE I'M ON THIS TEAR...(and it looks like it may be a while)... WHY SUBSTITUTING "ALL LIVES MATTER" FOR "BLACK LIVES MATTER" IS HARMFUL AND OFFENSIVE. It seems so simple to the unwary. Of course it's true, or ought to be, that "All Lives Matter," not just Black people's. Please, do not be misled. The switch is conniving, underhanded and insulting to those who protest blatant and violent discrimination by race, by some people, in law enforcement, prosecutions, and incarcerations. It is an attempt to change the subject, to divert attention from the outrage of gunned down, wrongly convicted, and disproportionately imprisoned black citizens. If guardians of the status quo can get people to make that shift, then they don't have to deal with the issue of injustices specifically to blacks. They can avoid the subject entirely--yet again-- and do nothing. The fact is that all lives cannot matter until Black Lives Matter. If we allow white politicians, civic officials, and TV demagogues to throw their whitewash over a very real and very serious social injustice, we are not assuaging, but inflaming justified anger and resentment. The only way to end a problem is to deal with it, not to deny it. When Black Lives Matter, then All Lives can.

HIJACKING THE BANDWAGON

The little flap du jour about Donald Trump is supposed by Pinko Liberals to signal the beginning for the end for Trump's candidacy. (In this case, the term "Pinko" refers to their rose-colored spectacles). It won't hurt Trump with his constituency any more than any of the previous mis-statements he's made. Does anyone really expect an apology, back-pedal, or even correction from this sociopath? By his own statement, he's never confessed such even to God--because he's never been in the wrong! For anyone who has awakened just today from a coma, I am referring to The Donald's failure to correct the bigot who so confidently "posed a question" to him in which he asserted that Muslims are the problem, and that President Obama is a Muslim and a foreigner. (Trump continues "not to know" if the President was born in the U. S.) Recent polling indicates that 43% of Republicans believe Obama is a Muslim (29% of Americans), and 20% of Americans believe he was born outside the United States (CNN/ORC poll). What occurs to me is that, if this idiocy does not bring down the American republic, it may bring to an end the Republican Party. Yet it is the result of a deliberate, sustained plan for overcoming the majority of Americans who call themselves Democrats and retaking control of the national government in all three of its balancing branches. For many years, the strategy has worked remarkably well. The Tea Party, scary as it is, may be the Bridge Too Far that collapses the whole plan. Better than anyone, they reveal the core of the strategy. Remember when white Southerners were Yellow Dog Democrats? ("'You'd vote for that yeller dawg.' 'Wal, just as long as he wuz a Democrat.'") Now, the southern states are red states. What happened? The Civil Rights Act, that's what happened, sponsored and passed by the Democrats, along with the Voting Rights Act and other "liberal" legislation, all opposed by the Republican Party. In the 1960's, the GOP Bandwagon pulled up at the South's town square, and all the Yellow Dogs climbed on. There were never enough fiscal conservatives to win an election, local or national. The 1% are certainly not enough. WASPs are not enough. Generally traditionally-minded people are not enough. The GOP had to, and still has to, boost the number of its monied base by recruiting all the racists, neo-Nazis, Xenophobes, chauvinists, homophobes, misogynists, and Christian Triumphalists it can muster. These are people for whom voting Republican means voting against their own economic self-interests, but fear and anger can cause people to do just that. The strategy worked so effectively, it even brought together Protestant Evangelicals and traditional Roman Catholics, an amazing feat, and the leadership of both groups became the GOP's most ardent campaigners. Of course, it was never the plan that this motley assortment would assert its own will, or even have a will, or set of wills, of its own. It was supposed to be completely malleable, led by the nose-ring of its own prejudices and fears, as was the case for several decades. The Tea Party Movement, whose heart is mainly in opposition to any taxation to benefit the public as a whole, fired the first shots of the rebellion. But they set off a chain reaction, which alienated the more socially-reactionary element. The result is that at the moment, no one who has ever actually served as an elected GOP office-holder is worth considering to be the party's nominee for President of the United States. The Tea-Party-driven strategy of taking over the reigns of government by grinding it to a halt has backfired so badly that even the socially-conservative Republicans rate Congress as a total bust. Thus the Establishment let onto their Bandwagon a rabble of people with whom they would rather not associate normally, in order to use their fear, anger, and gullibility to their own advantage, only to find that very rabble now hijacking the Bandwagon. In effect, the Republican Party of Eisenhower, Goldwater, Ford, and even Dulles no longer exists. It has gone the way of the Whigs before them, in every way but (so far) its name. The question now is more complicated than who the nominee of the Republican Party for President will be. It also is yet to be determined who the Republican Party will be. Can it hold itself together one more time, or will it split, and if so, into how many pieces? The Conservatism of the remainder of this century will, no doubt continue, but what form or forms will it take? Even Mr. Trump, for all his loquaciousness, will not be able to give us the answer to that one.