Post by artraveler on Aug 15, 2023 10:55:47 GMT -8
All Over Again
The great Yogi of baseball, not religion, one said of the French term “Déjà vu, all over again.” Meaning something seems familiar even if it is not. Yogi Berra simplified into terms any American can understand and referred to the French term as all over again. Mark Twain once said, “history does not repeat itself, but it often rhymes”.
One of the most explosive periods of American history was the period from 1830 to 1861. Spanning the rocky presidency of Andrew Jackson to the shabbiness of James Bucannon. Our nation expelled natives from large areas of land in the South, Georgia and Alabama, and hundreds perhaps thousands died on the infamous “trail of tears”. We added new states among them gold rich California after the Mexican war. We began to lead the world in industrial production and build an impressive rail network across the east coast from Chicago to NYC. South Carolina claimed, with legal justification, that individual states formed the federal union and individual states had the right to nullify federal laws. This issue was put to test under the Jackson Administration when unfair tariffs were imposed, and South Carolina refused to administer them. Andrew Jackson sent the army and SC compromised, but not after having called on other southern states to support them. True Civil War was just avoided in 1832/33. However, the underlying tensions remained and lunged out 30 years later.
In the agricultural South demand for Southern cotton formed our textile industry and in England, caused to expanded the evil of chattel slavery as far west as Texas and built massive plantations in Mississippi, Alabama, and Southeastern Arkansas. These were turbulent times. In 1856 the US elected one of the most ineffectual, brain dead, politically foolish presidents ever to hold the office until 2020. And compared to our current president Buchanan was a genius.
Over the last thirty years Americans have seen our cities, once the pride of the world, decline into hell holes comparable to those in third-world countries. There is not much difference between Los Angeles and Bangladesh except the rich in Los Angeles are further from the slums of central LA. Cities across the country have proclaimed, contrary to law, that they are sanctuary cities and exempt from federal law enforcement dealing with illegal non-citizens.
Residents of Las Angeles, Stockton, Fresno, Sacramento, San Francisco, Portland, Seattle, Chicago, Detroit, Cleveland, New York, and Baltimore along with many others are voting with their feet and leaving for safer, more normal homes in the South. The regional differences that had clearly been healing during the 20th century are now becoming stronger and more extreme. The comparisons, while not exact, are there for all to examine. We are no longer one people. The idea of the American nation has been degraded into hundreds of political and ethnic clans competing for federal dollars.
George Santayana said, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it”. We are in the middle of a time when memories of the past are quaint and only for the very old. There are large parts of the past that I do not chose to remember, but even more that I want back. Do I want my youth back? No, not really what I want is the essence of youth. I desire, even for just a day to taste the joy of freedom while growing up in the South. To smell the south in full bloom honeysuckle and feel the love our people for their homes, family, and neighbors. Even in the south we have lost a critical part of life. Old southerners refer to it as a “sense of place.” The places where we grew up, went to school, and yes, fell in love. The graveyards where our ancestors wait patiently for our arrival. The left is angry and don’t want to wait.
What is it the left doesn’t want to wait for? Is it equal justice under law? Thirty years ago we were closer to that then today. There is no equal justice today. If your political views do not align with leftist ideology; expect to be trampled by leftist judges and state’s attorneys. If your social views don’t align expect to be pilloried on social media, blacklisted, and made a non-person. Nothing is allowed to stand against the leftist ideology. Their sole goal is the power to compel obedience. In this our neo-left and radical right are like the extremists of the 1850s, north and south. There is no war they will not contemplate. No outrage they will not aver even activity peruse.
I fear our children will, as the Chinese saying goes, “live in interesting times”. The America that emerges from these troubled times will not be the America we grew into. Our sense of place has been eroded into ever smaller plots, ultimately 6X6X3. If we do not regain our sense of place the country called America may continue but the nation of Americans will be lost. A philosopher once commented that he stood at the edge of the abyss looking down, and the abyss looked back. America is standing on the edge.
The great Yogi of baseball, not religion, one said of the French term “Déjà vu, all over again.” Meaning something seems familiar even if it is not. Yogi Berra simplified into terms any American can understand and referred to the French term as all over again. Mark Twain once said, “history does not repeat itself, but it often rhymes”.
One of the most explosive periods of American history was the period from 1830 to 1861. Spanning the rocky presidency of Andrew Jackson to the shabbiness of James Bucannon. Our nation expelled natives from large areas of land in the South, Georgia and Alabama, and hundreds perhaps thousands died on the infamous “trail of tears”. We added new states among them gold rich California after the Mexican war. We began to lead the world in industrial production and build an impressive rail network across the east coast from Chicago to NYC. South Carolina claimed, with legal justification, that individual states formed the federal union and individual states had the right to nullify federal laws. This issue was put to test under the Jackson Administration when unfair tariffs were imposed, and South Carolina refused to administer them. Andrew Jackson sent the army and SC compromised, but not after having called on other southern states to support them. True Civil War was just avoided in 1832/33. However, the underlying tensions remained and lunged out 30 years later.
In the agricultural South demand for Southern cotton formed our textile industry and in England, caused to expanded the evil of chattel slavery as far west as Texas and built massive plantations in Mississippi, Alabama, and Southeastern Arkansas. These were turbulent times. In 1856 the US elected one of the most ineffectual, brain dead, politically foolish presidents ever to hold the office until 2020. And compared to our current president Buchanan was a genius.
Over the last thirty years Americans have seen our cities, once the pride of the world, decline into hell holes comparable to those in third-world countries. There is not much difference between Los Angeles and Bangladesh except the rich in Los Angeles are further from the slums of central LA. Cities across the country have proclaimed, contrary to law, that they are sanctuary cities and exempt from federal law enforcement dealing with illegal non-citizens.
Residents of Las Angeles, Stockton, Fresno, Sacramento, San Francisco, Portland, Seattle, Chicago, Detroit, Cleveland, New York, and Baltimore along with many others are voting with their feet and leaving for safer, more normal homes in the South. The regional differences that had clearly been healing during the 20th century are now becoming stronger and more extreme. The comparisons, while not exact, are there for all to examine. We are no longer one people. The idea of the American nation has been degraded into hundreds of political and ethnic clans competing for federal dollars.
George Santayana said, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it”. We are in the middle of a time when memories of the past are quaint and only for the very old. There are large parts of the past that I do not chose to remember, but even more that I want back. Do I want my youth back? No, not really what I want is the essence of youth. I desire, even for just a day to taste the joy of freedom while growing up in the South. To smell the south in full bloom honeysuckle and feel the love our people for their homes, family, and neighbors. Even in the south we have lost a critical part of life. Old southerners refer to it as a “sense of place.” The places where we grew up, went to school, and yes, fell in love. The graveyards where our ancestors wait patiently for our arrival. The left is angry and don’t want to wait.
What is it the left doesn’t want to wait for? Is it equal justice under law? Thirty years ago we were closer to that then today. There is no equal justice today. If your political views do not align with leftist ideology; expect to be trampled by leftist judges and state’s attorneys. If your social views don’t align expect to be pilloried on social media, blacklisted, and made a non-person. Nothing is allowed to stand against the leftist ideology. Their sole goal is the power to compel obedience. In this our neo-left and radical right are like the extremists of the 1850s, north and south. There is no war they will not contemplate. No outrage they will not aver even activity peruse.
I fear our children will, as the Chinese saying goes, “live in interesting times”. The America that emerges from these troubled times will not be the America we grew into. Our sense of place has been eroded into ever smaller plots, ultimately 6X6X3. If we do not regain our sense of place the country called America may continue but the nation of Americans will be lost. A philosopher once commented that he stood at the edge of the abyss looking down, and the abyss looked back. America is standing on the edge.
