House of Eratosthenes

We made an extended-family outing to see Star Wars: The Force Awakens, and then Mrs. Freeberg and I made a date out of seeing it a second time. We love it, and we especially like Rey, the butt-kicking female protagonist. Both the character and the actress. However — I am of the opinion that, as a model of “How to show the world that females can kick butt in movies,” the feature falls flat. My test of such offerings is not whether the female action hero beats up some bad-guys in a fight; that’s like being able to fly when you’re in the Justice League. My test is, rather, whether the balance has been achieved, by which I mean, did the female action star establish her cred without takng anything away from the guys.

Star Wars: The Force Awakens fails this test. Here is a list of what the guys do in this movie.

1. Get killed
2. Get captured
3. Get threatened
4. Get tortured and give up valuable information
5. Get depressed and frowny-faced, and take off, forcing everyone else to find them
6. Shoot some Stormtroopers dead…but let’s face it, that seems to be pretty easy
7. Throw temper tantrums
8. Become evil
9. Lose lightsaber duels
10. Get eaten
11. Take orders from females
12. Find ships that were stolen from them earlier (but it looks like the Wookie did that)
13. Talk down to other males
14. Talk about how women are generals
15. Talk about how women are royalty
16. Murder innocents
17. Torture innocents
18. Figure out…well…absolutely nothing. Zero resourcefulness demonstrated. The movie had puzzles and challenges to be solved, but the complexity of each was along the lines of “Go here.” And then the chick did that.

The item is not the eighteen points above. The item is that I went onto the Hello Kitty of blogging, and said a few words…it has since been pointed out to me, in a round-about way, that socially, I am not allowed to notice things like this.

It comes off looking like I think women suck. I’m just missing that brief flashpoint in time, in which men AND women could share an action movie together, and both kick butt. And figure out their way out of problems. When they could both be resourceful, and then tear up the sheets afterwards. Looks like that chapter’s closed. I am saddened about this, although I know it is fiction…then again, fiction does mirror real life, so it seems to me there is a lamentable event taking place on the plane of real life. Not sure when it happened, but it did happen.

And we’re not allowed to notice.

Item:

The President of the United States, to whom I sometimes refer as America’s First Holy Emperor, since He is regarded by many as a sort of “replacement Jesus” (although they don’t want to admit it, usually) is going to give His final State of the Union address in a bit over an hour.

This President has dark skin. He is, by descent, half-black although our mainstream media often refers to Him as “black.” I am grateful to Him for ending an era that has extended for far too long, in which when movies take place in the future and lazy, lazy scriptwriters want to find lazy, lazy ways of reminding the lazy, lazy audience that the story takes place in the future — they show that the President of the United States is black. I’m so thankful to Barack H. Obama for bringing that disgraceful period to an end. It is His one positive contribution to our country, our society and its culture.

Everything else, I think He’s been a disaster. He is, to leading this nation, what my first wife was to managing a checking account. That is not a compliment.

The item is: Because His skin is black, we are not allowed to notice.

Item:

Squid-like denizens of the Internet, filling out a group of unknown size and refusing to disclose their backgrounds, occupations, fields of knowledge or the like, and against my advice sharing a single account by the name of “Zachriel,” have taken it upon themselves to defend the long-discredited theory of “Nixon’s Southern Strategy,” a.k.a. the theory of “the two parties, Republican and democrat, switched sides sometime in the 1960’s.” I’m feeling lazy about embedding links at the moment, so I will leave it to the reader to look up the results of the presidential elections in 1960, 1964, 1968 and 1972. Also 2012. Keep an eye on how the Southern states voted. Yes it is true, they used to vote democrat and they don’t do that anymore.

The theory is that the South is, and has been, heavily saturated with bigoted “conservatives.” When Barry Goldwater ran for President in 1964, these “conservatives” stopped being democrats and started being Republicans. So a Republican in 1964 is what a democrat was in 1963, and a democrat in 1964 is what a Republican was in 1963. Kennedy got shot, and in that blink of an eye the ideological polarity got reversed, or something.

Quoting Severian on this:

I don’t have Zachriel’s mad mind-reading skills, and I sure don’t have them at the distance of a century and a half, but I do know that the Democratic Party was only an electoral force in American politics thanks to its domination of the South…where Democrat governments passed Jim Crow laws, which increased inequality (freedmn going from “running places like South Carolina and Louisiana, and representing them in Congress” to “..slaves in all but name”) in the period 1866-1877 surely qualifies as “..increased inequality,” don’t you think?). It is truly, truly fascinating to hear that this “..conservative” result was brought about by a tiny minority.. in every Southern state… in every year from the end of Reconstruction (that’s 1877 in the standard textbooks, kids) to the Civil Rights Act of 1964. I mean that, kids — it’s fascinating. You have evidence for these extraordinary claims, of course, so you should type ’em up and send them on to the History Department at the nearest college. It’ll revolutionize our understanding of Gilded Age politics.

There is, of course, an answer to P_Ang’s “..magic party switch,” and the Cuttlefish actually know it, since they cite it all the time: Nixon’s “..Southern Strategy.” On their reading, Richard Nixon realized that the South was stem-to-stern racists; the natural home of racists is in the Republican Party; therefore, he openly said “..vote Republican to put the blacks in their place.” Ok, fine, but even if you grant that, it entails a huge problem — why oh why did all those liberal Democrats, whom we are informed on no less an authority than Zachriel him/her/their/itself were the majority in the Solid South, suddenly embrace their inner racist and vote GOP?

If you buy what Zachriel has been telling us, Jim Crow laws were imposed on the South by a tiny minority of “..conservatives” inside the otherwise pristinely liberal Democratic Party. But if that’s true, how did the great unwashed masses — who, remember, have always been liberals — suddenly find their voice and vote Republican? Remember, it’s not that the the tiny, Jim Crow-imposing “..conservative minority flipped and gave their states to Richard Nixon; Zachriel assures us that there was a “..massive demographic shift.” Which must mean — logically — that all those former liberals who couldn’t keep their states from imposing Jim Crow in the Gilded Age suddenly klanned up and went Republican in the years 1964-8, in the process somehow seizing the power that had been denied them all those years.

It connects back to the previous items this way: If one is to take the time to interview the knowledgeable, but make the mistake of interviewing the emotionally-invested who happen to lean left, one is almost guaranteed to blunder into all sorts of baffling bullshit. I refer back to my admonition that the reader should research the four or five elections mentioned above.

What do these three items have in common? They have this:

There is an identified class of oppressed persons: Females, blacks, democrats. There is a scheme hatched to bring these oppressed classes up to the level of the non-oppressed…and then, there is a narrative codified to confront any who do not whole-heartedly buy into the scheme. If you do not stand on your feet in the theater and fist-pump the empty air as Daisy Ridley kicks male rubber-mask butt in the new Star Wars movie, if you do not unflinchingly believe every talking point and bald-faced lie coming out of the lips of our black President, if you do not accept that the two major political parties switched sides in the 1960’s, then you are an “ist.” Racist, sexist, misogynist, cisgender, galvinist, Calvinist…blasphemist.

The democrats took the side of the feds, against the state sovereignty of the southern states, with the Civil Rights Act. Which was passed, mostly, with the support of the Republicans. But the Republicans were about fairness; the democrats were all about sticking it to the state sovereignty of the southern states. Since then, the democrats have had a tough time getting any support from the South. Shocker, right?

I’ve kept my silence on this aspect of it, since I was born in 1966. I don’t want to speak at length outside the perimeter of my personal knowledge. But today is within the perimeter of my personal knowledge…and today, liberals and democrats cannot distinguish between “I am opposed to the specific angle of attack you have assumed against this particular problem” and “I don’t want the problem to be solved.” They can’t see the difference between those two things. Even though a child qualified to graduate from the third grade, can.

This means, democrats figure — today — if you are opposed to the way they want to solve the problems, you must be a sexist and a bigot. And when this mythology first started about “the two major political parties switched sides in 1964,” they believed the same thing.

Should we buy what they’re selling? Well…it’s an addiction. We do not allow alcoholics to decide for us what alcoholism is. We do not allow kleptomaniacs to decide for us what kleptomania is. Any so-called “study” that looks into this, that does not specifically exclude self-identified “liberals” from the specimen, or from the expert conclusions, is invalid. Oh yes, I am heart-attack serious about that. Liberalism is the addiction, conservatism is the cure. You don’t ask addicts about the cure.

People disagree with me about that? Let them. I’m in the minority about that? So be it. Right is right even if nobody believes in it; wrong is wrong, even if everyone subscribes to it.

I have more items though.

Item:

Bird Dog at Maggie’s Farm puts up quite the link-list, yesterday. First thing he wants to know:

Can Somebody Explain The Loathing Of The Successful To Me?

It goes like this…

But to Sanders and others on the Left (another example is Elizabeth Warren), the financial business is the embodiment of evil. Here is the Washington Post yesterday, quoting a Sanders campaign speech:

Democratic presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders took aim at the nation’s financial sector in a fiery speech Tuesday, declaring that “fraud is the business model of Wall Street” and calling for regulatory reforms to address “a lot more illegal behavior than we know of.” Speaking just blocks from Wall Street, Sanders vowed to break up banks that are “too big to fail,” jail unscrupulous Wall Street executives and provide an array of new protections for consumers.

“Fraud is the business model of Wall Street” — where does he come up with that? He is accusing multiple hundreds of thousands of people of systematic illegal conduct. Does he have any evidence to point to? What I know is that the Justice Department and U.S. Attorneys spent billions in the aftermath of the 2008/9 financial crisis in a lawless political quest to pin the crisis on Wall Street scapegoats, and they came up almost entirely empty handed. Yes there was a series of shakedowns of the big banks, in which those banks seriatim paid a billion or two or five to settle some endless phony investigation, in almost every case without any actual individual getting charged with wrongdoing. And there was Preet Bharara’s insider trading jihad, which substantially fell apart when the Second Circuit finally ruled that a huge part of it did not represent a violation of the law at all.

Like a Dark Linus at Negative Christmas, I grab my blanket and intone “Yes Charlie Brown, I will explain to you why they loathe the successful”…

…and in order to do so, I draw on the wisdom of Captain Capitalism.

Item:

Criticize her as you may, Oprah [Winfrey] is a genius because she realized people would rather feel good than actually achieve good in their lives. And thus, she went out and told millions of women for over 20 years what they WANTED to hear, not what they NEEDED to hear.

You’re not fat, you’re beautiful inside!
Your husband should love you for who you are!
Follow your heart and the money will follow!
You deserve it girl!

For this she was rewarded billions of dollars in net worth.

The problem is high IQ people (unless they jettison their morals) simply can’t do this which puts them at a disadvantage in the employment world.

First they cannot keep up the charade or façade of emotional interest. It just isn’t in their nature and it’s simply too taxing mentally. High IQ people can plainly see a problem for what it is, what logical decisions need to be made in order to solve it, and can remove any emotional or psychological preferences they might have about it. They offer direct, blunt, emotionless solutions that are guaranteed to solve the problem, but unfortunately step on people’s precious little toes.

This then leads to a second problem, because not only does the majority of clients prefer good feelings over production, but so too does the majority of co-workers and bosses. Your entire employment environment is driven by everybody’s insistence you place feelings and emotions over reality and truth. This is simply maddening for smart people because what needs to be done in the real world counters what your boss, co-workers, and clients are demanding of you.

Item:

Posted the following to the Hello Kitty of Blogging:

If you want to win the lottery, you have to buy a ticket. That’s just how it works.

And if want to win ALL of the arguments…well…Step One is, you have to do some actual arguing. That is how it works.

You could take that to be one of my many assaults on the “rednecks”…for whom I know, I should be using a different word. My complaints are against those who do not build, who seek to destroy, those who see disgrace in investing any effort into anything. Those who glorify laziness.

I know I should not use this word to describe those people. There are rednecks who work their asses down to the pelvic bone, I know this. I have met them.

But…we do need the word, if “redneck” is not it. We have those people who seek to win arguments — who cannot define any notion of “truth” any other way, they’re just going through life, alienating people, “So-there!!”-ing their way toward the tumultuous end of every conflict that arises, which is something that happens several times daily.

They want to win all the arguments without doing any arguing.

The President of the United States is due to begin His State of the Union speech, His final one, in 26 minutes now. He works so hard to look like He doesn’t think through His various problems like some hayseed hick. I’m deeply ashamed when I realize He does exactly that, labors long and hard to fool people about it, seems to think He is successful in this pursuit. It’s embarassing to watch. Like seeing an ostrich flee its predator by sticking its face in the sand.

What the above items have in common is that they are argued by people who cannot argue. They say “accept what I have to tell you, and I shall accept you, otherwise I shall reject you.” They can offer fellowship in some unspecified group, or enclave. They can’t offer anything else, and they can’t argue the point.

Someone posted the following Monty Python clip, from way back in the 1960’s:

Sorry to say, accurate as this was for its time, it has grown obsolete. Today it is about as current as a four-barrel carburetor. People don’t argue just for the sake of arguing anymore…and we wish they did.

Today, it’s all about “That’s the way it is! And if you don’t agree then there’s no point discussing it with you!” That’s what passes for arguing these days, in the Obama era…

…and Socrates wept. Spun away, like a turbine, in whatever passes for his grave. Ideas no longer arise to challenge other ideas. Today they seek to claim the high ground, and immediately after that, to ostracize. So that their advocates do not have to concern themselves with facts, conclusions, logic, mutual exclusives, Occam’s Razor, any of that tedium. We’re just way too busy. Today, it’s all just: Accept what I have to say, unhesitatingly and uncritically, or you shall be banished from further discussion.

When we reverse-course and pull out of the cul de sac, that’s when life starts getting better again.

What it seems to boil down to is that the deep thinkers of the left — who always tell us that “nuance” and “science” are their BFFs — have to reduce everything to one, and only one, metric, and sticking with that metric in the face of all evidence, argument, and common sense.

For Bernie Sanders, it seems, that one metric is “capitalism.” He’s convinced himself that every dollar that isn’t a government handout is illegitimate. Never mind that the man has never held a real job in his life (he’s been a professional politician since his college days in the early 60s, when he was an amateur politician). He can’t grok the first thing about how wealth is actually generated, and no argument will sway him — how could it, when he’s convinced that his straight-outta-1899 platform is a radical new idea?

For Zachriel, it seems, the metric is their obsessive need to assign all good things in the world to the Democratic Party, and all bad things to the Republicans. This leads to some laughably ahistorical claims, which combine with boneheaded illogicality into one retardedly partisan stew. They claim, for instance, that liberals “advocate greater equality.” Which would make the Republican Party the liberals for the first hundred years of its existence — going to war to free the slaves, amending the Constitution to enfranchise freedmen and women, and passing every single civil rights law on the books would certainly qualify in most people’s minds as “advocating greater equality.” Similarly, the Democrats would be the conservatives in that scenario, since Democrat-controlled governments passed Jim Crow laws, instituted poll taxes and literacy tests, and ran on charming slogans like “segregation now, segregation forever!” But… no dice. The party that elected half the Confederate high command to Congress throughout the Gilded Age was the liberals; the party of the Freedman’s Bureau and the Civil Rights Act was the conservatives, because reasons.

In reality, of course, the terms “left” and “right,” “liberal” and “conservative” were all but meaningless in 19th century America. It wasn’t until after WWI that a notion of a European-style “left” (i.e. revolutionary socialism) really filtered down into the public consciousness, and it wasn’t until the hippy-dippy “New Left” of the Sixties did the terms take on their more-or-less modern meanings. For all their usefulness in understanding the century after the Civil War, you might as well be talking about Green and Blue factions in the Hippodrome.

But hey, that’s just basic history, of the kind you used to be able to get in any reasonably thorough high school class. Mere facts, in other words. And mere facts don’t stand a chance against “standard definitions” from “experts” and “practical lexicographers.”
- Severian | 01/12/2016 @ 20:26
mkfreeberg: “Zachriel,” have taken it upon themselves to defend the long-discredited theory of “Nixon’s Southern Strategy,” a.k.a. the theory of “the two parties, Republican and democrat, switched sides sometime in the 1960’s.”

You are confusing cause and effect. The Southern Strategy was an explicit policy to attract southern whites to the Democratic Party.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_strategy

Lee Atwater, Reagan campaign advisor: You start out in 1954 by saying, “Nigger, nigger, nigger.” By 1968 you can’t say “nigger”—that hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like forced busing, states’ rights and all that stuff. You’re getting so abstract now you’re talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is blacks get hurt worse than whites.

This resulted in a realignment of the parties, southern whites moving to the Republican Party, and blacks and other minorities moving to the Democratic Party.

mkfreeberg: Yes it is true, they used to vote democrat and they don’t do that anymore.

Hence, by definition, southern whites realigned from the Democratic Party to the Republican Party.

mkfreeberg: When Barry Goldwater ran for President in 1964, these “conservatives” stopped being democrats and started being Republicans.

No. Most stayed registered Democrats, but voted for Goldwater, who opposed the Civil Rights Act, which would end segregation and guarantee the rights of blacks to vote.

mkfreeberg: So a Republican in 1964 is what a democrat was in 1963, and a democrat in 1964 is what a Republican was in 1963.

That is incorrect. As just pointed out, most remained in the Democratic Party. Local politics were dominated by the Democratic Party, so the realignment took place over a period of time.

mkfreeberg: The democrats took the side of the feds, against the state sovereignty of the southern states, with the Civil Rights Act.

Southern politicians, Democratic and Republican, generally opposed the Civil Rights Act. Non-southern politicians, Democratic and Republican, joined forces to pass the Act.

mkfreeberg: Which was passed, mostly, with the support of the Republicans.

Republican support was essential, but most of the votes were from Democrats.

mkfreeberg: But the Republicans were about fairness; the democrats were all about sticking it to the state sovereignty of the southern states.

Southern Democrats continued to support states’ rights. Liberal Democrats did not.

This is the same mental block you exhibited before. The Democratic Party from FDR to the Civil Rights Act, was a coalition of both conservative and liberal elements, including Southern whites, liberals, and labor. Similarly, the Republican Party was a coalition of conservative and liberal elements, including Main Street and Wall Street.
- Zachriel | 01/13/2016 @ 07:46
Z: You are confusing cause and effect. The Southern Strategy was an explicit policy to attract southern whites to the {Republican} Party.
- Zachriel | 01/13/2016 @ 07:50
Ah yes. This horrible, horrible racism is no doubt why Nixon implemented the nation’s first Affirmative Action program (the so-called “Philadelphia Plan”). And why George Wallace ran for President as a Republic…

…oh, wait, he didn’t — he ran as a Democrat. Twice. Including 1972, which, as astute students of history will recall, is after 1964. It’s also fascinating to see that a mere campaign consultant is the official voice of the Republican Party, while the famous words of a two-time Democratic presidential candidate — “segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever!” — are just some random guy’s private opinions.

I trust y’all have evidence for these fascinating claims…. other than citing yourselves again, of course?

[Seriously, dude/s, what’s up with that? You feel the need to quote yourself four minutes after cutting and pasting some other stuff from yourselves? Try hashing things out in a team meeting before one of y’all straps on the Special Keyboarding Safety Helmet and rolls over to the computer.
- Severian | 01/13/2016 @ 11:46
“Red necks”?
Folks that work outside actually producing something.?
SEE: Pump Boys and Dinettes. “Farmer Tan” (Act 2)
Can’t find the lyrics on line, for “free”, anywhere.
related: (Tractor Trailer) Truck Drivers Tan. Left arm, and left side of neck and face, only.
In My Humble Opinion: There’s no way to describe any “rent seekers” (economics) as actual red necks, or rednecks.
Trailer trash?
Joe Six pack? (nah, too easily confused with “Metero” {sic} urban gym queens), perhaps some “traditional” dietary peculiarity? Yep, up to you to coin some other term to “…tell us what you REALLY mean”.
Even if it simply implies- mere “common sense critics- of progressive big idea demands, to address “issues” that don’t actually exist. ESPECIALLY without wasting time with excruciating minutia of rules of rhetoric, Parliamentary Procedure, or Code Duello.
“Just plain folk.”? Not to be confused with “Just PLAIN folk!”
- CaptDMO | 01/14/2016 @ 09:00
The underbelly of society. Couch-sitters. Excuse makers.

Everybody’s got at least one relative like this. You keep your stuff secret from them, not because you’re afraid of them finding out about your failures, but because you’re afraid of them finding out about your successes. Because the conflict doesn’t start until they find out someone else applied more effort…and everybody applies more effort. They putz along in the fast lane of life, at 30mph or less.

Pig knuckle eaters.
- mkfreeberg | 01/14/2016 @ 18:12
“the two major political parties switched sides in 1964,”

This is usually applied to the South, where it is said that the passage of the Civil Rights Bill in 1964 caused the South to switch from Yellow Dog Dominant Democrat to [Racist] Republican. It is very easy to refute this, by looking at the historical data on the Presidential vote for the 11 states comprising the former Confederacy.

% Republican Vote in Presidential Elections in the South [11 former CSA states]
1940 21.6%
1944 25.2%
1948 26.5%
1952 48.1%
1956 48.9%
1960 45.6%
1964 48.7%

Note that by 1952, the South was no longer Yellow Dog Dominant Democrat. The big increase in the Southern vote for Republican Eisenhower compared to previous Presidential elections came largely from migrants to the South, from the better educated, and from Border States. Eisenhower took Virginia, Florida, Texas, and Tennessee in 1952. From 1952 on, the Republicans were competitive in Presidential races in the South- well before Goldwater ran for President in 1964.

Also note that Eisenhower- the Eisenhower who sent troops to Little Rock to enforce Brown Vs. Board of Education- got a higher percentage of the Southern vote in 1956 than Goldwater did in 1964. Yet the liberal narrative is that the Southern reaction to the 1964 Civil Rights Bill is what changed the South from Yellow Dog Dominant Democrat to Republican.

The Myth of the Racist Republicans points out that while Nixon may have pursued the Southern vote, he enforced school desegregation in the South.

Election data: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_election,_1952 and others

xxx
- Gringo | 01/27/2016 @ 14:15
“the two major political parties switched sides in 1964,”

It took decades for the Southern congressional delegations and the state legislatures to switch Republican.
- Gringo | 01/27/2016 @ 14:35
But you see, Gringo, those are mere facts. “Everyone knows” that the Republicans are the racists — it’s the “standard definition,” from “practical lexicographers” in “peer-reviewed journals” — so mere facts don’t count.

I wish I’d have known that trick back in college — I would’ve aced every History class. “But you see, Professor, what I wrote in my blue book is what really happened, because I just feeeeel sooooo haaaaaard!!! that it’s true!”
- Severian | 01/28/2016 @ 06:51
Gringo: This is usually applied to the South, where it is said that the passage of the Civil Rights Bill in 1964 caused the South to switch from Yellow Dog Dominant Democrat to [Racist] Republican.

Something to keep in mind is that many Southern blacks were disenfranchised before 1964.

As you note, the switch was gradual, but Truman’s desegregation of the military was a seminal moment. You can see that in your figures above. In 1948, disaffected Southern Democrats voted for the Dixiecrat segregationist party, then many started voting Republican after that. Democrats were still competitive, though, until the Voting Rights Act. Since then, Democrats have been relegated to a minority among Southern whites. For instance, Carter won Alabama and Mississippi, but they have voted for the Republican in every election since then. Clinton did well in Louisiana and Georgia, but they have large black populations.

There’s no doubt there has been a demographic shift as white Southerners switched their allegiance from the Democratic Party to the Republican Party.

Gringo: It took decades for the Southern congressional delegations and the state legislatures to switch Republican.

That’s right. While Southern whites began to vote Republican in presidential elections, local politics remained dominated by the Democratic Party for historical reasons.
- Zachriel | 01/28/2016 @ 08:35
local politics remained dominated by the Democratic Party for historical reasons.

Which were……?

[N.b. they can’t answer this question honestly without completely undermining their utterly fascinating theory of political history.

N.b. also that it’s now Truman’s desegregation of the military in 1948, NOT the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which caused the switch.

N.b. further that the same “disaffected” Southern white racists who voted Dixiecrat in 1948 somehow got over it to vote for Ike in the Fifties, and his vice-president in 1960. I guess Little Rock didn’t get them as riled up as the desegregation of the military, but slightly more riled up than the Civil Rights Act. Who knew racist voting was so complex?

N.b. finally that one might question just how the Democratic Party managed to so thoroughly dominate local politics, especially in such a heavily segregated area as the South, but somehow lost their grip when it came time to vote for President… especially a President like Nixon, who enacted the first Affirmative Action plan in American history and enforced school desegregation in the South. I guess it turns out that racist voting is even more complex than we thought.

Maybe the racist, racist Republicans gave Nixon a pass on all that Affirmative Action and desegregation stuff because he was getting so many brothers killed off in Vietnam? Whatever it was, I’m sure Zachriel’s mad mind-reading skills can tell us exactly what everyone was thinking half a century ago.
- Severian | 01/28/2016 @ 09:42
Hey Morgan, since you’re already compiling Make Bigger Mistakes, More Often, and Without Any Doubts: The Zachriel Weltanschauung, you should really think about publishing a companion volume: The Zachriel Political History of the Modern United States. It goes something like this:

1866-1900: The Democratic Party, which is only an electoral force thanks to its control of the Solid South (and which regularly sends half the Confederate High Command to Congress) vetoes the Freedman’s Bureau, passes black codes and Jim Crow laws, guts the Civil Rights Acts, votes against the Klan Acts, lauds Plessy v. Ferguson, and generally “increases inequality,” such that the freedmen who shared in political control of most Southern states after the Civil War are fully segregated by the turn of the century. But they’re the liberals, because reasons.

1900-1912: Progressives nearly seize control of the Republican Party, leading to the exodus of the Progressive wing into the “Bull Moose” Party in 1912 and handing control of the White House to Woodrow Wilson, a noxious racist whose racism is so noxious that the good liberals at Princeton are trying hard to get his name off their School of Government. Once again, though, it’s the Republicans who are the racists, because reasons.

1932-1947: Democrats are in complete control of all branches of government, but for no reason at all, nothing happens on the civil rights front.

1948: Harry Truman desegregates the military. This causes the South to turn Republican forever.

1952-1959 All the racists vote for Eisenhower, because racism, despite the fact that Ike called out the National Guard to enforce school integration and the Democrats’ candidate for both elections, Adlai Stevenson, “urged the government to “proceed gradually” on school desegregation in deference to the South’s long-held “traditions.”” Oh, wait… same source says “Stevenson carried most of Dixie in the fall campaign.” So Southerners didn’t vote for Eisenhower, but for the guy who promised not to use force to enforce Brown. But whatever; all the racists voted for Ike, because reasons. This causes the South to turn Republican forever.

1960: All the racists vote for Richard Nixon, Ike’s vice-president, because reasons. This causes the South to turn Republican forever.

1964: Republicans pass the Civil Rights Act. All the racists in the South hate it. This causes the South to turn Republican forever.

1965: Lyndon Johnson endorses the Voting Rights Act, claiming it will “have those n*****s voting Democrat for two hundred years.” Which is not racist, because reasons. This causes the South to turn Republican forever.

1968: The Republicans run some guy named Lee Atwater for President. All the racists vote for him. George “Segregation Forever” Wallace receives no votes for his third-party run. Richard Nixon wins, though, and pushes through the Philadelphia Plan, the first Affirmative Action program in American history. He also defends school desegregation. This causes the South to turn Republican forever.

1972: The Republicans run Lee Atwater again. George “Segregation Forever” Wallace again receives no votes, and he’s certainly not doing extremely well in the Democratic primaries, especially in the South. Richard Nixon somehow wins again. This causes the South to turn Republican forever.
- Severian | 01/28/2016 @ 12:34

Leave a Reply

You must be logged in to post a comment.

Recent

Items of Interest

Monthly Archives

What They Say

Links

Winning All the Arguments, Like a HayseedTuesday, January 12th, 2016

Winning All the Arguments, Like a Hayseed
Tuesday, January 12th, 2016