[Arodex]

The Confederates' common folks tried to burn the USA to the ground to save their inalienable right to own slaves.

Who will listen to the "perception and needs" of the racist, misogynistic common folks who want to impose their religious liberty (by banning abortion) and and elevate their financial situation (by pushing downward brown and black people)? (The GOP, that's who.)

And don't you tell me it's a minority, when less than a week after the Supreme Court made the VRA null in practice, half a dozen states are rushing to eliminate any black representation. The whole GOP in those states (who already found a way to practice slavery through their carceral system - yes, there are black people picking cotton under the guard of armed white people on horses right now, today) is unanimous in erasing any power from black people. It is their first and foremost priority right now, despite everything else going on.

[JumpCrisscross]

> Confederates' common folks tried to burn the USA to the ground to save their inalienable right to own slaves

Something I learned at The Old Slave Mart Museum in Charleston [1] is that Southern slaveowners were almost all terifically leveraged. Slaves were purchased predominantly with borrowed money (from, I might add, the North). And slaves were expensive, making up a significant if not dominating fraction of estates' assets.

For Southern elites, therefore, abolition was an existential question. It meant bankruptcy and poverty, with insult added to injury in their creditors being Northerners. To my knowledge (and I'm no expert in this) the question of abolition paired with debt forgiveness was never seriously discussed by the Union.

So yes, Confederate racism absolutely condemns its common folk. But even a moderately well-read Southern commoner would understand that abolition meant financial crisis, taking out their communities' largest tax payers, donors, consumers and employers in one swoop.

I didn't walk away from the Museum sympathetic to slavery. But I did become more sympathetic to the South; in particular, to their bewildering decisions to continue prosecuting a war they were so very obviously, from a history textbook's perspective, losing. (To be clear, slavery is wrong. The South seceding was stupid. Not suing for peace after Gettysburg and Vicksburg stupider still.)

[1] https://theoldslavemartmuseum.org

[Arodex]

And yet once the South lost and slavery was banned, the financial crisis didn't happen...

It also doesn't explain what happened after the civil war: the KKK and Jim Crow. The only possible explanation for these is...

[Zigurd]

We need to finish Reconstruction. That sounds idealistic, even pie in the sky unrealistic. But we could certainly measure progress in that direction: US incarceration rates are insanely high, and the prison industrial complex is modern slavery. We would know victory when we put fewer people in prison than China, for example.

That's not the only symptom, or the only measure of progress. But it would be a good start.

[Levitz]

Calling out the GOP for imposing racism, sexism and ideology in a thread about US universities is certainly a choice.

[Arodex]

Are you equating sone teenage students shouting during a conference by some bozo on tour with every middle-aged political representatives from a single party rewriting the law to kneecap the fundamental civil rights of a third of their population?

[Levitz]

No, because I don't misrepresent reality to an absurd degree nor do I bring up unrelated stuff.

That seems all too nonsensical.

[registeredcorn]

I was puzzled if I was the only one wondering what in the world any of this had to do with MIT enrollment rates. Haha.

[noosphr]

The French revolted because bread was too expensive then guillotined more than half of their best and brightest.

I guess democracy was a mistake and we need to get back to inbread monarchy instead of the blood thirsty unwashed masses.

[Arodex]

Democracy is a mistake, which is why we have Republics, with rules and constitutions. Not "anything you can get a slim majority to vote for, once".

[noosphr]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_First_Republic