Key point for Trump's Confederate fans: Democrat = Yankee
This is what Trump has brought to full fruition! This is also what Civil War did to us the first time... not surprisingly over the same damned White Supremacist issues!
My mother and her family are from an area of North Carolina which I have researched for many years.. the Lower Cape Fear - an area that retained more of a South Carolina flavor than the rest of the state.
As I grew up, I had witnessed many clues to the white-supremacy of this region and have often felt the hatred and resentment of the old war had never died.
Understand that the Old South had never truly relinquished any significant amount of sovereign supremacy to the Union - the United States of America after 1865. You may have heard, as I have many times, that "The South Will Rise Again!" This is the cultural stubbornness that I witnessed on those many trips from my home in Fayetteville (a large city) to the rural Lower Cape Fear (LCF) to see my grandmother - we all have seen it in the plethora of Confederate statues at courthouses across the United States! Understand that this is virtual worship of a defeated traitorous nation.. on our current government soil! It would be merely uncomfortable anywhere else, but outrageous on government property!
Why did we allow this? I'll never quite understand that...
Illustrating Southern intransigence, there comes another personal tale. I once lived about two years with my cousin in the LCF, and my cousin had an aunt on the paternal side - descended from the aristocratic Hollingsworths in the Duplin-Pender County area. She was visiting with us one day when a guy I worked with in Wilmington (a large city in the LCF) had stopped by to tell me something. This fellow - I'll call him "John" - had always seemed like anyone else, regardless of his color (he was of African American descent). He, too, was from the Pender County area where we then lived.
As soon as John walked through the front door and saw the aristocratic iconic Southern woman - like Scarlett O'Hara - in all her glorified Southern majesty -minus the mint julep - in the center of the room, he immediately began to behave differently. They had obviously known each other.
Remember, I worked with John for months and he behaved like everyone else, so his mutation into... this something truly archaic was unbelievable!
I looked at him like he was a different person... had John lost his mind??! He was genuflecting strongly, his voice had altered to something resembling that of a child, or at least something quite subservient, and he was repeating the phrase "Yes, Miss Pearl, why it's good to see you Miss Pearl." The oddest part.. he sounded like a 19th century slave on the plantation!!! My cousin (from Fort Lauderdale, Florida) and I were both shocked that his demeanor would have changed so drastically.
After John left, the aristocratic Pender County socialite woman announced to us all - in a surprisingly tender way - that John had "always been such a nice young nigger boy!"
My citified mind went: Wham!!! John was 60 years old!!! The LCF was a virtual time capsule! But, it wasn't just in the LCF...
This was the paternal sense of white supremacy that has always pervaded the South - ever since Carolina was founded in 1671 by crude slaving Barbadians. Southerners of that ideology absolutely cannot see any other way to be! For them, whites are designated by God himself to rule over Blacks, Hispanics, Indians, and anyone else of color - until the end of time - which they would gladly welcome over "Negro Rule!"
My mother and her family have marinated in this hateful ideology all their lives. And, the election of Barack Obama to two terms as president of the United States simply confirmed to them how USA has defied God and his divine order! It is no surprise that these vengeful white supremacists elected Donald Trump - a man more like their biblical version of the "Anti-Christ" or "Deceiver," or "Man of Sin" in Revelations. Compare this "White Jesus" or Satan with the Socialist Jesus of Matthew 14, who fed the hungry, housed the homeless, and healed the sick... all non-grate, for no pay whatsoever!
After caging brown children for fear's sake, Trump just identified as "un-American" (read: "anti-Trump") four Congresswomen (two of whom are of Islamic origin) - as if they were enemies!! He was quite un-presidential and un-American when he pointed these women out to his violent followers. He, the South's "Anti-Christ" has just - after a whole 2.5 years of semantic shell-game - finally revealed the racist violent truth of his presidency - and their Confederacy!
Trump and his followers also see that their minority of racist voters will always stay in the minority and that American democracy - or rule by majority - will always disfavor them, so they need democracy to end! To equally-violent-minded "Lost Cause" adherents of the Old South, it was high time for another Civil War or perhaps the End of the World! So, bring on the Anti-Christ Donald Trump, no matter he chooses to collude with!
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A reflection on my grandfather's life experience with racism at the turn of the 20th century is quite instructive: https://bcbrooks.blogspot.com/2019/05/my-grandpa-progressive-liberal-minister.html
#Racism #WhiteSupremacy
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