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Saturday, November 15, 2014

It's Not Even Past

Let's not put too fine a point on it -- if the events and actions and social dynamics in the south over the past 150 have taught us anything, it's that Billy the Torch didn't go nearly far enough. The fact that there are still no shortage of fools in that region who persist in mythologizing what was nothing more (or less) than a brutal, racist, genocidal machine, a society built on nothing but the extracted blood and unpaid toil and pain of others, only reinforces that fact.

People like Jack Bridwell suppress and avoid those truths because they are inconvenient, difficult to accept. Republican politics since 1964 has taken advantage of that revolting, absurdist mentality, and owned the entire region since then. That is not a coincidence.

Nationally, that strategy has translated into soft-focus gimmickry, mostly revolving around mythologizing an America that never was. The verb that pops up most consistently in their marketing materials is "restore"; they continuously promise to "restore" "America," whether that's "values," "greatness," whatever. I think the word they're really looking for is "instauration," which is very similar but not precisely the same.

1 comment:

Brian M said...

The neocon apologists on the Billy the Torch story are naueseating.