The South Will Rise Again: Trump Will Lead the Way

One thing that has rarely changed is the South has always viewed America differently than other parts of the country especially the Northeast and the states bordering the Great Lakes. My good friend E. H. has suggested to me that I read a couple of books – which are not available at the libraries because the libraries are closed – one tells about the different cultural areas of America and the other about a trip through the South prior to the Civil War.  I’ve ordered them and will let you know the highlights.

I laugh when I read that some people suggest the Republican Party today somehow has a connection with Abe Lincoln beyond the name Republican Party. Between 1875 and the election in 1900 of McKinley the South had voted pretty solidly Democratic because, precisely because, they had a great disdain of Lincoln. There was one time in 1872 when one of the old Confederate States of America cast its vote for Ulysses S. Grant – the Union general responsible for their downfall – which seems at first thought a mistake. How would a Confederate State vote for a victorious Union general one would ask? It turned out that the Army was still in that state ensuring all got the franchise – by all I mean men since women were not considered capable of voting – which meant that black citizens could also vote along with the Carpetbaggers and Scallywags who were really Union men.

Today the South still votes pretty much in a block but they are no longer vote as Democrats. When the Democrats pushed the Civil Rights legislation which gave our black citizens the rights of the white citizens the Southerners went to the Republican Party the home of Richard Nixon with his Southern Strategy, Pat Buchanan with his similar ideas, and so on until we ended up with Trump – the one who believes America is great again if we go back to the antebellum days. Where’s Scarlett and Brett?

When the railroads first traversed America many people dated things by saying “it was before the railroads came.” I expect soon we’ll be talking about the anteTrump America wishing for the good old days.  Reading an anteTrump book written in 1955 I came across this which is pertinent to today.

The  author  wrote, “In truth we may well sympathize with the Populists and with those who have shared their need to believe that somewhere in the American past there was a golden age whose life was far better than or own. But actually to live in that world, actually to enjoy its cherished promise and its imagined innocence, is no longer within our power.”

That’s what the Trump folks are yearning for: the time before the Civil War, or as they prefer to call it “The War Between the States.” They live in the myth of a Deep State which to my mind if it existed it surely would not have let Trump become president. It’s like the unmasking of Traitor Flynn, as a Globe writer noted the unmasking could not have been directed toward Flynn (who sat next to Putin at a Moscow dinner) because before you unmask (that is learn the identity of) you don’t know who is sitting behind the mask.

I know the ears of the Trump camp are closed to logic. They would rather live in the land of the aggrieved Tweeter in Chief. He’s been in office three years and is blaming his failures on his predecessor who, along with his prior opponent and future opponent he wants to put in prison. Oh yes, has anyone used the new word of the day required of all the unthinking Trump clan: Obamagate. I’ll have to check back.

Anyway It’s 1861 again – the Trump clan having lost the first go around wants to take another shot at winning – but they should keep in mind there are others who like the man who was “the third child of six of John and Mary Meenagh . . . , Irish Catholic immigrants from the parish of Killinkere in County Cavan, Ireland” ready for whatever they think they can throw at us.

15 Comments

  1. What is the state interest in having Trump’s name on a government check? Beyond campaign literature? This guy thinks his office only exists for him.

    How outrageous must Trump’s request be if Barr told him to take a hike?

    Why does Trump want to bail out Carnival Cruise Lines, a non US Flag ship owner, foreign registry, and primarily non-American workers?

  2. william m. connolly

    In general, the Country is overrun by leftists in the MainStreamMedia (a majority of them) and leftists in Academia (a lot of them.)
    They are OBSCURANTISTS and REVISIONISTS and PROPAGANDISTS.

    In my book Mac the Dog, I identified the evil ones: The new M.A.F.I.A.A.

    M = MEDIA who are lying to us and propagandizing us
    A= ACADEMIA (the leftist activists therein) they too are lying to us.
    F= the FEDS, the overfed, fat cat power abusing Feds, e.g. Prosecutors, Activist Jurists
    I = Interventionistic Internationalists including the NEOCONS on the right & Globalists
    A=that segment of Atheists who are Atheistic Antagonists, bent on destroying religion and American Traditions.

    All are enemies of the U.S. Constitution and enemies of We The People. All intend the destruction of America as we’ve known it since its Founding; all hate American traditions and America’s form of constitutional, representative government, and all demean America’s valiant history to redress wrongs and preserve freedoms.

    M.A.F.I.A.A. or M.A.F.I.I.A.A = the true threat to Americans freedoms.

  3. william m. connolly

    Matt, correct me if I am wrong but I think that Turk that you accuse General Flynn of conspiring with somehow, had his conviction overturned by an appeals court which decried the Prosecutor’s Case and Jury’s Decision as based on too thin, too weak evidence.
    Sounds like what they tried to frame Flynn on.

  4. wa-llahi! Bill, you are against subtlety? How do you feel about nuance? Sophistication? Homer disliked those notions, too. He liked to put everything out on front-street, no adumbration, or, foreshadowing, in the Iliad. When the heroes bare their souls, they vomit out their emotions (Nietsche: Birth of Tragedy). Everything is immediate, very, much, what you liken the “stream of consciousness” style of writing to be. Perhaps, your niece has a copy of the Iliad lying around. Check it out

  5. Hi Matt,
    Trump didn’t create the divisions in US society, but he has certainly widened the gulf with his overheated rhetoric. But words can’t paper over his failure to provide leadership at a time when a calm, reassuring voice is needed to ease apprehension about the Coronavirus. Polls show Trump is trailing among voters who are prime targets of the virus, those 65 and older.
    (I deeply doubt these elderly voters feel safer when they see a MAGA man stroll into a Subway with a rocket launcher strapped to his back.) Trump is also losing to Biden in key swing states like Pennsylvania. With Joe safely locked up in his basement, this should been a moment in history for Trump to shine. But he’s failed miserably.

    • Afterthought: I love “Obamagate.” I don’t think Biden is capable energizing black voters, so it’s comforting to see Trump and the usual chorus of angry white men do Biden’s work for him with this lunatic attack on the former president. I see Sean Deep State” Hannity has taken to calling him “Barack Hussein Obama.” Ah, the good old days. Goodbye, President Trump!

  6. Bill Delahunt sat next to Johnny Martorano in a cafe. What does that indicate? Guilt by association? Sitting near someone proves their culpability? Ludicrously illogical. To call Gen. Flynn a traitor is a vile smear. He served the country honorably for 30 years but had a different view of things than the Obama people and was targeted by the Stasi ( FBI, CIA DOJ). His talk with the Russian envoy which was completely legal, was illegally disclosed to the Post and the plot to oust him was underway. He was a victim. A good man was framed by bad men. Flynn was in the same position as the Probation Officials and the Duke lacrosse players. Innocents abused by unethical prosecutors. See Sydney Powell’s book License to Lie. 2. Unmasking was a calculated effort to circumvent the Bill of Rights and the Constitution. No need to get a warrant from a Court to wiretap just go to NSA or CIA and unmask. No probable cause. No problem. OBAMAGATE is clearly the biggest political crime in American history. The Russian Collusion Hoax was exposed. The investigation of the Trump campaign was based on no credible evidence and the Deep State knew it. See Glen Greenwald’s story on Flynn. 3. Graham Green was asked why he was a liberal. He said it was because he was against dictatorship. Shouldn’t liberals be against the abuse of power by the State? Where are the ACLU, the law schools, Academics and Media? If Obama used J. Edgar Hoover tactics to spy on his political opponents it is O K but when Nixon used them it was to be denounced. Great crimes were committed by Nixon but similar or worse abuses by Obama and Biden are ignored. Obama’s acts were those of a Police State Dictatorship and violated all Constitutional principles. It was an Orwellian nightmare for it’s victims.

  7. William M. Connolly

    Once again, Matt deploys, a bit more subtly this time, the liberal Democratic, the leftist’s tactic, the slur, the mud slinging, the character assassination: ALL REPUBLICANS ARE RACISTS WHO WANT TO TAKE US BACK TO PRE-CIVIL WAR TIMES.

    Too bad, Matt, you have not read Pat Buchanan, Thomas Sowell, and a host of non-leftist historians who correctly perceive Today’s Republicans are fully for equality for all, fully for equal justice, fully for the right to life for all human beings from conception to natural death, fully against Big Orwellian Government, fully against the Socialistic State, fully against the Neocon’s perpetual wars, fully against more taxes, and fully in favor or President Trump, Vice President Pence and the great team they assembled to give America the strongest economy in history, to strengthen our military while keep it out of wars, and for fighting a most valiant and effective war against Covid-2.

    No, Matt, today’s liberal Democrats (mostly leftists with exceptions like Steve Lynch) are not morally superior nor intellectual superior to conservatives, moderates, independent and Republicans who voted for Trump and will vote for him again, although it is a common conceit of Leftist Dems that they are.

    Up the Republic. God Save American from Leftist Democratic Cant and Propaganda.

    We see through the Leftists’ high falutin distortions; we see through the Leftist Revisionists attempt to rewrite American history and paint so many fellow Americans black, paint it black, as the Rolling Stone sang, and you do.

    As Lynyrd Skynyrd sang in Sweet Home Alabama, Southern Man don’t need you finger pointing hypocrites up North hanging round. And in Free Byrd Lynyrd Skynyrd said the same thing, in other words. We Americans, South and North, East and West, want to be free of Oppressive, Freedom-Crushing, Big Government Leftists.

    We’ll see who the traitors are. Remember, Benedict Arnold was once hailed, before he betrayed America, Time has redeemed many men and women falsely accused and burnt at the stake. Time is on our side. Time has come today. Time for real patriots to take back America from Hillary’s Hillarians, from the flagrant violators of Constitutional Rights, from the perjurious Brennan, the crooked Comey and Muellar and their crooked acolytes, from all that SCUM, those Power-Abusing Persecutorial Deep State Feds in paintywaist and those leftists in three piece suits. Take back America for the people; dismantle D.C.’s Deep State and its OVER-FED pack of BureaucRATS; take back America.
    Re-elect Trump-Pence in 2020, the Right Vision for America. Live free or die.

    Sometimes you have to fight fire with fire; sometimes, for others sake, you don’t turn your cheek against mud-slingers, but you give them a little taste of their own poisonous rhetoric. Sometimes, when you throw stones, Davids pick them up and strike down the Deep State Goliaths, and the rat-infested, over-FED, overly bloated Bureaucracies in D.C, that are sapping the soul of America, sneakily depriving Americans of their Constitutional and God Given Rights to due process, and fair trials, and equal treatment under the law.

    God bless America, land that we conservatives, moderates, independents, Republicans, most of us, love and some Democrats love, too, while sadly many loathe it, including most leftist democrats, including many in the MainStreamMedia and many in Academia, and including I’d venture to guess the historians you are about to read or misread, loathe it.

    Amen.

    • “As Lynyrd Skynyrd sang in Sweet Home Alabama, Southern Man don’t need you finger pointing hypocrites up North hanging round.”

      If you know anything about the song Sweet Home Alabama you would know that the meaning to that line has nothing to do with your definition. Ronnie Van Zant liked Neil Young and was saddened that people misunderstood what he said.