Ruminations – 27jul18 (updated 28jul18)

George Rebane

The Opioid insanity.  We now are in courts suing the big pharma makers of opioid pain killers, accusing them of being the cause of the tragic opioid deaths epidemic across the land.  Big pharma neither delivers nor gratuitously promotes the delivery of opioids to those who die from their reckless use.  In the dissemination chain, the distributors and prescribing physicians are getting a pass from the righteous Left; why?  Because the Left is only interested in deep pockets which big pharma enjoys, and the leftwing sleazebag lawyers will enjoy a big hunk of those monies if they get the desired verdicts from stupid juries.

Big high-tech corporations lean markedly to the Left.  Most people with 3-digit IQs know that. So now we have these leftwing corporations bolstering their leftwing agendas by “shadow banning” conservative tweeters.  A list of Republican congress critters who promote Trump have already presented evidence of exactly this when they discovered that suddenly their accounts could not be found on Twitter.  Meanwhile the land’s lamebrains still believe the Zuckerbergs and Dorseys claiming that these social media sites are “platforms for free speech”.

The current Song of Socialists performed by talking heads is that ‘We’re not there yet’, when asked to talk about Trump’s progress toward everything from rapprochement with Russia, to denuclearization of the Fat Kid, to the promise of a new world trade order that benefits the US.  These deep thinkers are trying to convince their audiences that the administration and all Republicans are out there busy stocking up on firecrackers for the big celebration tomorrow night on the Capitol Mall, when that is not even close.  Bad mouthing what Trump gets done every day is the only thing left that they have to offer, because the Left has nothing short of Plan Venezuela to offer Americans.  And about that they know to keep their mouths shut.

[update] Speaking of the Great Divide, H.W. Crocker III writes ‘America’s Next Civil War Will Be Worse Than Our Last’.  He brings out some good comparisons between the America of 1860 and what we are today, but he does not call out the real important differences that have brought us beyond the tipping point.  And most significantly, if people break out their shootin’ irons this time, then the war will truly be a civil war and not the War for Southern Independence misnamed.  (H/T to reader on the article)

[27jul18 update]  Prescribed burns make all the sense in the world, and are worth the risk of unexpected losses.  But our federal and statewide governments are literally too stupid, and their politicians too cowardly to plan and execute prescribed burns.  It is a simple trade-off that politicians and lawyers have purposely made complex, and for them, profitable.  Through over-zealous fire abatement policies, we have let our public lands become over grown to an extent that nature has never permitted.  So when the expected wildfires come, they cause extraordinary damage to life and property at costs orders of magnitude above what controlled prescribed burns would cost.  And yet we continue year after year to spout fire prevention pabulum to homeowners in fire areas and suffer the ensuing wildfire, without doing anything to attack the fundamental cause of the fires – too much fuel too densely distributed in easy reach of the foolish and felonious.  (All this in the last great century of Man.)

Anti-Kavanaugh hyper-hysteria grows.  Sen Corey Booker (D-NJ) announced today (FN) that he opposes Judge Kavanaugh’s nomination on the basis that both the judge and his nomination to SCOTUS are “evil”.  He stongly exhorts his fellow Dems that there is “no middle ground” on opposing this nomination, you’re either for or against “evil”.  This is truly a twofer for Republicans – another Dem shows himself to be deranged in his service in Washington (why elect more of them?), and the confirmation that the Team Schumer/Pelosi has run out of substantive ammo, which they never had, to stop Judge Kavanaugh’s confirmation by the Senate before the midterm elections.

Comments

[’’’M’’’]

,,,George,,,re shadowbanning,,,looks like you have been hacked by Brietbat’s Milo Yiannopoulos!!!

,,,oh my, Milo has some unnamed sources!!!

https://www.breitbart.com/tech/2016/02/16/exclusive-twitter-shadowbanning-is-real-say-inside-sources/

I posted the non-trigger word, non-dog whistle article yesterday,

https://www.cnet.com/news/shadow-banning-what-it-is-and-what-its-not/

[’’’M’’’]

,,,re opioid lawsuits,,, are all lawyers leftists also??? Good to know that only left wing kids are dying from overdoses and no conservatives are pissed off.

The fentanyl that has been killing many is often made in China and smuggled in...nothing new here...

Kids are getting opioids from their parent’s medicine cabinet.

If there are black market opioids, pharmaceutical companies could put gps on their opioid shipments to see which trucks they fall off of.

[fish]

Posted by: ’’’M’’’ | 27 July 2018 at 08:11 AM

Kind of you dugglypoof! I know how easily triggered your intellectual ....heh....descendants can be!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZIpkdusnIkE

[scenes]

"Big high-tech corporations lean markedly to the Left."

I agree, but it's rather a shame that 'tech' has come to mean 'companies that build large software systems to sell ads on the internet'.

I wonder why that is sometimes. At first blush, perhaps the difference is one between people who work purely in symbols vs those whose work touches the real world. It's isn't like the folks at Schlumberger are going to trend radically (D) and I'd say there's as much 'tech' at an aerospace company as there is at google. To some extent it's a matter of semantics.

No doubt you could take a cheek scraping and see voting tendencies in DNA, and those people tend towards certain professions.

re: "M" @8:11AM Shadowbanning is real, but is a subtle idea. It's better just to view it all as censorship on web social media monopolies. The automatic censors are written by people with strong bias and sites with mobs produce predictable results (check out /r/politics on reddit sometime, it's all-trumphate all the time).

The thing that's a shame about all of this is that we live in an era when the Left (and it's as Left as it ever has been, pretty remarkable really) and the professional bureaucracy, allies for a while but not permanently, are being given the keys to a total surveillance society. It's probably our last chance to correct this, but my hopes aren't high.

[fish]

Posted by: ’’’M’’’ | 27 July 2018 at 08:23 AM

Oh there's that "brain" of yours again......beset by something.....!

[scenes]

As a side note, it's interesting to consider the parallel tracks of media censorship, partly exerted by biased human censors and partly software written by people with a POV vs. the uproar over AI, particularly the law enforcement type, which tends towards 'prejudice' when fed raw data.

How are these two cases different?

[’’’M’’’]

Trump Youth,,,I am beset by whatever GeorgeR is beset by...

[fish]

Posted by: ’’’M’’’ | 27 July 2018 at 08:45 AM

......beset......so often beset........woe.......

[George Rebane]

re M 811am - 'shaddow banning' is not the same as a site publishing politically one-sided content. Again, this is a nuance that some find hard to detect.

scenes 833am - yes, 'high tech' most often is the label for social media sites founded on simple hunches (and some fairly straightforward algorithmics), some of which catch on and grow and others don't. Thanks to my most recent business affairs, I'm very familiar with that game, some of its losers and winners, and generally its fortunes and failures. The great celebrated visionaries of outfits like Facebook and Twitter have less in their intellectual kits than meets their carefully cultured eyes. As Tevye has taught us, "... when you're rich, they really think you know."

[Don Bessee]

Its worth noting that the vast majority of OD/deaths are people who are not in a MD managed pain control regimen.

;-)

[Don Bessee]

Did this -

3. Tweets from bad-faith actors who intend to manipulate or divide the conversation should be ranked lower
How is it not terrifying to have a mega-corporation run by those who live in a Silicon Valley bubble choosing who is acting in bad faith? And what is Twitter’s definition of “manipulate or divide”? Is challenging the conventional wisdom, throwing a figurative rock through the window of the status quo, considered “manipulative and divisive”?
So, thanks to this statement coming straight from the horse’s mouth, we now know for certain that Twitter is not only shadow banning — and shadow banning tweets from specific accounts we have requested to see in our feeds — Twitter is going much, much further with this corporate censorship than many imagined.

https://www.breitbart.com/tech/2018/07/27/twitter-you-may-have-to-do-more-work-to-find-people-that-definitely-arent-shadowbanned/

Cause this?

https://www.breitbart.com/tech/2018/07/27/twitter-stock-drops-more-than-18-in-morning-trading/

;-)

[Bill Tozer]

Shadow banning does not exist. It’s a glitch!

Take a nice Mom on Twitter. Has a following, not a huge following, but a decent following nonetheless.. Not a flamer, not a hater, never uses profanity. She is invisible to the outside world. Not banned, account not suspended. The problem is she is a pro-life advocate, complete with pics of cute babies. She is shut down. Not shadow banned, it’s a glitch! Can’t be seen no more outside of her friends.

Take a conservative site like The Blaze. Not huge, but has a tailored following nonetheless. They claim that 5% on the links and content they post on their FB page actually can be seen by outsiders. 5%. It’s not shadow banning, it’s a glitch! Just on FB, not their other domain site.

Take me. I hear a interesting story on the radio or a video montage. So I want to check it out for myself. I Google the site, complete with the name.com. The first five “news”items that pop up are various fact checker sites warning me it’s fakenews, beware, not recommended to go there. After that, the next two “news” sites are alternative choices. May we interest you in these, instead? Finally, on the lower half of the page I find the site I am seeking, spelled exactly as I typed it in, complete with the name.com. Not banned, just harder to find. Hide and seek.

It’s akin to walking into a diner and ordering a chicken fried steak smothered in gravy. Thick gravy. The waitress pauses and suggests perhaps I would like a nice big bowl of delicious soup. I say “thank you, but i’ll take the chicken fried steak.” She asks if I would like the fresh salad bar instead. Nope, and I would like extra gravey on that chicken fried steak if possible. She then suggests I might be more interested in the skinless chicken breast on a bed or rice. “No thank you and good bye.”

Funny that Zuckenberg testified how important it is to him to protect user privacy, stop hate speech, and rid FB of fakenews and Russian bots to ensure the integrity of our sacred elections. Fakenews really was a criticical issue to him and the Senators. Such a top priority and heartfelt concern that he sent teams out to fan across the nation to pick the brains of the best and brightest in our nation for their expertise, thoughts, and ideas to weed out fakenews. Yep, those experts all were esteemed professors found on our elite college campuses. Therein lies the problem.

It’s not shadow banning, it’s a glitch. Nothing wrong with the input. Must be a disgruntled factory worker. The Matrix is not perfect.

https://patriotpost.us/articles/57352-new-revelations-of-twitter-facebook-censoring

Companion article.:
“But add to that Facebook’s poor handling of the disinformation controversy — its new algorithms have proven to throttle traffic on conservative feeds and it even blocked the Declaration of Independence as “hate speech” — as well as the massive cost increases to advertise on the website. With all that blundering, it’s not surprising to see the company taking this hit.”

https://patriotpost.us/articles/57388-facebooks-face-plant

["M"]

George,,,doesn't your 928 belong in the Fairness and Leftwing talk radio???

Isn't '''a site publishing politically one-sided content''' what all people on both sides of the political coin accuse the The Union and all other media outlets in print, on the air, or through the fiber???

[rl crabb]

Once again, George shows his true colors by attempting to define the Civil War as "that war of southern independence" rather than a war that freed millions of indentured slaves. Yes, there really is a Great Divide here.

[Walt]

You would know plenty about "shadow banning" Dougy, MANY have done that to you. And so have I. All your sock puppets have been blocked.
(well,, most anyway.) I know when you around,, plenty of "this user blocked".

["M"]

,,,lol waller,,,you just can't handle the truth plain and simple,,,

yours, Lavender

[Gregory]

The black slaves freed by the Union weren't "indentured", Crabby. Indentured servants in north America were mostly white folk who sold their future work for a chunk of change to buy passage to the new world... and were freed by the Revolutionary War, called a war for independence by we, the victors.

The indentured signed a contract not so curiously called an indenture.

[Walt]

Right Dougy. All that TROLL cr*ap is truth? Really?
Funny, Trump is still President. Handle THAT truth.

[Bill Tozer]

Speaking of the War Between the States, or commonly known as The Civil War, get ready of Civil War 2.

https://pjmedia.com/trending/democrat-on-campaign-trail-calls-2018-midterms-civil-war-2/

[scenes]

"The current Song of Socialists"

Here's the current song. The hullaballoo starts at about 6:00

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aPhmk4ZiVJM

lol. It's a beautiful thing.

[George Rebane]

rl crabb 104pm - My "true colors"??? You really don't know, do you? Your ignorance of slavery (gregory 214pm) and the economic and political motivations for the 'war between the states' (a most innocent label) is on display here. To understand anything close to my true colors on the topic, you should spend some time with the late Shelby Foote who was America's foremost historian on the Civil War (sic), and whose works were featured in a long-running series on PBS.

Sadly in you limited purview, understanding that conflict in a manner other than that taught by the socialist Left is proof enough that racism is afoot.

As a bit of departing pedagogy, a civil war is one in which two factions within a country (kingdom, nation-state, ...) fight to gain control of the country and re-establish/retain its government. It is an historical reality that the US has never fought a civil war since the Confederacy never intended or wanted to rule the American landmass of 1860; they wanted to secede, per their interpretation of the Constitution, and become an independent state. And yes, slavery would have survived for a few more years in the CSA had they been successful.

Today's debate, apparently of which you are not a qualified participant, is whether such a secession is still permitted by our Constitution. Time to get a grip Bob before claiming to recognize other people's "true colors". Nevertheless, I fully agree with your last statement, and thanks for sharing your insights.

[George Rebane]

M 1234pm - You are confusing the desire and actions to restrict speech by the 'other side' with outlets that take a decided bias in their coverage and commentary. The former is bad, the latter is engaging in free speech. Capice?

My comment here expanded the consideration of restricting online free speech surreptitiously, and does not focus on how and why broadcast talk radio favors the Right. Hope that helps.

[Gregory]

GR 250pm

I figured you'd be good for a spirited defense of yourself, but some do define "civil war" to be inclusive of wars for regional independence, so we have Crabby claiming you to be a racist because he defines the word one way (through knowledge or ignorance) and you claiming him to be ignorant of the true definition which is not universally held to be so.

I'll bet you and Crabby crack your eggs on different ends, too... me, I crack them in the middle. The Big-Endian/Little-Endian debate continues on in Intel vs. Motorola data ordering.

[Walt]

The great news Leftist media won't let you hear.
https://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2018/07/27/alfredo-ortiz-trump-is-vindicated-on-tariffs/

Trump's tariff war has been won! So much for the LIB and neverTrump doom and gloom.
"This relationship will increase markets for U.S. small business exporters, who face E.U. tariffs that are roughly 40 percent higher than those imposed by the United States, according to World Trade Organization data. It will also allow U.S. consumers to purchase European goods at cheaper prices, putting more money in their pockets and stimulating the U.S. economy. Notably, the deal also includes promises from the E.U. to import more soybeans and natural gas."

Every attck on Trump or what he does, has come back to bite.. In spades.

[fish]

THE BEST AND THE BRIGHTEST: Surveillance footage shows one of President Obama’s senior officials following a woman around a DC Metro station and taking a picture up her skirt with his cell phone. A friend on Facebook comments: “See, this is how it works. Obama officials who get arrested and convicted of even pervy crimes get no news coverage at all. As the story says, ‘His arrest and conviction were never made public until DailyMail.com acquired the report of the investigation and the footage through a Freedom of Information Act request.’ Don’t tell me no White House reporter knew about this in July 2016. They knew. And now they’re too busy going after Brett Kavanaugh’s wife to even follow this up. The bastards.”

Best and brightest indeed!

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5997025/Obama-advisor-William-Mendoza-seen-taking-picture-womans-skirt-DC-Metro.html

[Gregory]

A clarification before someone else gets to it... I went looking for backing afterwards, and found it wasn't so clear cut that indentured servitude went away after the Revolution.

While I had remembered being taught that indentured servitude was abolished after the Revolutionary War, but apparently not. Investors during and after the revolution didn't think it a good bet and so incoming indentured fell off drastically, but the indentured already here stayed and indentures were legal. Good masters did see the contracts fullfilled and let the servants go, but not all. An 1833 federal law that abolished debtor's prisons did away with most enforcement of indentures, and some states followed suit, but it did not go away completely until Abolition was made law.

[George Rebane]

gregory 344pm - Labelling any and all conflicts with established authority of a jurisdiction a 'civil war' tremendously reduces the info carrying capacity of our language. Doing that would equate the Green Mountain Boys rebellion and other minor standoffs in our history with the 1860-65 war, and call all of them civil wars, when the proper definition prevents any of them being so.

England did not see our revolution as being a civil war, which wasn't, but simply an insurrection occurring in their sovereign territory. But Cromwell's successful revolution felling the monarchy and establishing the 'Commonwealth of England' for a period was a true civil war; and so, of course, was the French Revolution.

[Don Bessee]

You got that right girlfriend!

https://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2018/07/27/ann-coulter-trump-putin-hysteria-will-be-nothing-compared-to-trump-replacing-ruth-bader-ginsburg/

;-)

[Account Deleted]

I can see certain points made about what exactly constitutes a 'civil war' but I'll side with George on this one. The southern states wanted to secede from the Union, not take over the entire US. THAT would have constituted a civil war. They formed their own country complete with their own currency and army and began to wage war against the US. The coming (or here already) conflict will involve the entire country for the complete control of the country. Our military will be fractured along political lines and will not unite in one side or the other.
The north's purpose in our country's bloody war of re-uniting the south by force was not to end slavery. Abe Lincoln said so. But of course, what the hell does he know?

[George Rebane]

ScottO 559pm - Yep, ol' Abe made it clear that his reason to fight that terrible war and sacrifice all those lives was "to preserve the Union". Making the 1863 Emancipation Proclamation real was a collateral benefit.

[Steve Frisch]

While you guys are debating the nuance of how historians of different eras define a civil war (which is as much contextual as it is a matter of the scale of the conflict as well as defined by the taking up of arms against each other by citizens of the same nation) you're missing the bigger point, that George's use of the "War of Southern Independence" is a reflection of his racist world view.

This is evidenced by the "Civil War was not about slavery" bullshit you guys are spouting here.

The entire economic system the agrarian south was fighting to retain was built on human bondage and white supremacy, thus when you hear 'they were fighting for economic reasons' it was based on race.

The entire southern social system was premised on the supremacy of white workers and landowners over blacks, including their exclusion from wages, property ownership, education and even family and marriage rights. Thus when you hear, "they were fighting for their way of life" it was based on race.

The entire doctrine of states rights was premised on one right, the right of the states to perpetuate slavery; that was how it was embedded in the constitution, how it became a mantra of southern politicians, and how it has been used to excuse the fact that the RIGHT the states were seeking to reserve was the right of white supremacy.

I might also add that the states that made up the Confederacy were not only seeking to retain slavery, they were seeking to expand and extend it as new states were formed out of the American west, which kind of puts rest to the 'they just wanted to be left alone' nonsense. Yep, they just wanted to be left alone--so they could own other human beings.

George's entire position can best be characterized as Confederate denialism, the perpetuation of a myth, and a shameless intentional race based historically inaccurate perversion of the truth.

[Gregory]

Ah, Steven Frisch. Perhaps you'd like to debate your claim that this note of yours under Crabb's Commiefornia post didn't have any personal attacks within:

Steve Frisch says: May 14, 2017 at 3:35 am I almost added a caveat to this little essay, that I fully expected a small minded troll who views the world through a lens of self appointed intellectual superiority and a single minded jihadist focus on climate change, would find the spelling error. Oh, BTW, “worshiping at the altar of Smith…” wasn’t referring to you. I was really thinking way behind the tiny world of Goodknight.

I am amazed every time you comment at just how small you are.

...

Greg Goodknight says:
May 14, 2017 at 9:14 am
RL, that 5:29 am warning of your would have been more effective had there truly been a personal insult in my 5:42 pm, or had there been anything but personal insults in Frisch’s 3:35 am.

Reply
Steve Frisch says:
May 14, 2017 at 9:25 am
There were absolutely no “personal insults” in my 3:35 am post...

Hmmm?

Reading the comments at Crabb's led me to Crabby's BFF Chris Peterson trying to place a $20 bet with me that Trump wouldn't make it to November 2018. Now that it's all but assured that Trump will still be President in four months it would appear it would have been a good bet... if I thought Peterson would pay up.

[Gregory]

"...you're missing the bigger point, that George's use of the "War of Southern Independence" is a reflection of his racist world view.

This is evidenced by the "Civil War was not about slavery" bullshit you guys are spouting here."

-Frisch 544am

English MF... do you speak it?

I don't see the quote "Civil War was not about slavery" anywhere here outside your dredging it up out of whole cloth. More Frischian putting words in other's mouths.

Yes, the Civil War was about slavery and a number of other things, mostly involving the movement of little green pieces of paper.

[Steve Frisch]

The entire set of comments by George and others is implying that the civil war was a question of secession and states rights and not white supremacy.

You can't dance with white nationalists like you usually do and not get dirty boys....if you act like racists we are going to call your racism.

[fish]

Posted by: Steve Frisch | 28 July 2018 at 07:36 AM

Good day for Steve......got to call his political adversaries racists! Down side....only about 8 people in the world are ever going to see it.

Still about twice the exposure he would get by posting at Pork Linkersons site. So there’s that.

[Gregory]

"The entire set of comments by George and others is implying that the civil war was a question of secession and states rights and not white supremacy."

-Frisch 736am

Stop splashing the mud around, Steve. Write without making up words to go into the mouths of others.

[scenes]

GeorgeR: "Labelling any and all conflicts with established authority of a jurisdiction a 'civil war' tremendously reduces the info carrying capacity of our language."

That's an interesting point, although you aren't feeling enough guilt for having people who weren't your ancestors own slaves. It's rather like trying to decide whether Ceres is a planet.

Maybe people like to think of a 'civil war' purely in terms of scale rather than as a conflict designed by both sides to take over the whole state. The intensity is another matter as you could argue that we are in a civil war right now. The history of slavery is, of course, just another weapon in that fight, so it's hard to take anyone's argument too seriously.

In terms of the American Civil War (in common parlance), finding a one sentence 'reason' is as silly as usual. Slavery was as much a symptom as a cause and the split was for a mish mash of practical and emotional reasons. It isn't like an infantryman from Iowa found himself burning houses with Sherman in order to bring freedom to slaves, you can easily see that in contemporary writings. By the same token, your average CSA soldier didn't have much of a dog in that particular fight aside from a feeling of riding the tiger. The minute you let the slaves go all hell is going to break loose.

Also, it isn't like a large scale conflict is need for emancipation. Both Brazil and Russia pulled it off with the same problem of stealing property and power from the elite.

Don't get me wrong, slavery was obviously the major point of difference between the two sides.

It always interested me that large scale anti-slavery philosophies hit at about the same time as the industrial revolution, a time when the economics of slaves would have become less favorable...however it really hadn't hit hard at the agrarian level yet. There's a logic in there somewhere, but I'm not sure what.

[fish]

Posted by: scenes | 28 July 2018 at 07:48 AM

Funny that .......how the whole practice was about to get wildly inefficient due to mechanization.

.....and what are we going do with all of these people?!

First rate post!

[scenes]

Gregory "Stop splashing the mud around, Steve. Write without making up words to go into the mouths of others."

Oh well, it's hard to lose a fight when your opponent is made from the finest straw.

[fish]

Slavery was as much a symptom as a cause and the split was for a mish mash of practical and emotional reasons.

Expand upon this if you are so inclined.

[Bill Tozer]

Bill Tozer
Steve, I think everyone is missing the point. While I prefer to call the Civil War as The War Between the States and World War I as The Great War and refuse to ever label the Lebanese civil war as a ‘civil war’ (it was an attempted genocide against Arab christians, not a wretchly misnamed civil war ), the real point is IF or When will the Great Divide with its irreconcilable differences between the two sides break out into a true civil war??When? Are we close? Are we already past the tipping point? It and when it happens, it will truly be a civil war.

Now, we all know that the War Between the States was a bloody secession attempt by 11 states. Lincoln sought to preserve the Union, the confederacy sought to break away and become independent from The United States, not all that different from the goals of Catalonia to free itself from Spain or even Calexit to secede from the Union.

The practice of slavery as the sole or primary catalyst or not is not the point. Read what was going on in the 1830s with tariffs that favored the Northeast over the South, the famous John C Calhoun-Daniel Noah Webster debates on interpretations of the Constitution and role of the Federal government, etc. But, all that is also missing the point.

“And most significantly, if people break out their shootin’ irons this time, then the war will truly be a civil war and not the War for Southern Independence misnamed.” Dr. Rebane.

That is the point. If I call the bloodly conflict where countrymen took up arms against fellow countrymen as The War Between the States or The War for Southern Independent
or even the commonly accepted misnomer ‘The Civil War’, the point is the next one will be truly a civil war.

Now, Crabb (or you) can hear the phrase ‘War of Southern independence’ as the proof positive dog whistle for KKK or White Supremists or not so thinly veiled racism til the cows come home. “Aha, gotcha now. I knew it and now I got the evidence! The War was about freeing millions of slaves, not States Rights or Presevering the Union! Rebane hates Negros! He won’t even acknowledge why the 11 states proclaimed independence from the USA and wanted to go their separate ways. It was all about race, duh!”

The point is are we getting closer to a true Civil War. What comes after ‘beyond the tipping point’? Not a question that can be readily answered. Everybody acknowledges that the Great Divide appears beyond normal remedies...even Crabbie. The last comment on Scattershots (July 23) reads:

“BillT 631pm - Mr Tozer, how close do you think we are to starting to man the ramparts?
Posted by: George Rebane | 26 July 2018 at 06:40 PM”

That is the question (which I cannot answer with my cloudy ball) and that IS the point. When? How close are we? What will the next ‘Civil War’ look like? What will be the catylsis? The impetus?

Dunno the answer. In the short term, the 2018 mid-terms can be boiled down to its bare essentials. It will be a vote for if you want open borders or not. That’s it,

[Account Deleted]

"...that George's use of the "War of Southern Independence" is a reflection of his racist world view."
Uh - so, the southern states weren't seeking independence?
My, my, my.
I suppose when you lack any real facts to back up your name-calling, you go with anything you can invent.
The north was not particularly kind to blacks - especially during some of the worst rioting in NYC's history. Please Google 'New York City Draft Riots'. There were, of course, thousands of white men that eagerly fought and died for the North in order to to free the slaves, but the Emancipation Declaration wasn't issued until well into the war.
The vast majority of soldiers in the south never owned slaves and had no financial interest in the matter. (slavery actually hurt most southern white males financially). They felt that the northern states (govt and financial institutions) held too much power over them and they didn't feel properly represented in the fed govt.
Quite obviously, for slaves, the main benefit of the Civil War was that they were now free, although it would take decades for them to achieve a full measure of their civil rights. Denying them their rights under the 2nd A was critical for the bigots to keep them deprived of their other Constitutional rights.
Here's an interesting quote from Lincoln - "Do the people of the South really entertain fears that a Republican administration would, directly, or indirectly, interfere with their slaves, or with them, about their slaves? If they do, I wish to assure you, as once a friend, and still, I hope, not an enemy, that there is no cause for such fears."
https://rogerjnorton.com/Lincoln95.html
Even though Lincoln clearly did not approve of slavery, he was still a politician and managed to talk out of both sides of his mouth.

[Gregory]

Let's remember Steven Frisch's handiwork... the virtually lilly-white Sierra Business Council (remember... it isn't a council of businesses) in virtually lilly-white Truckee.

http://sierrabusiness.org/who-we-are/people/staff

SBC itself is mostly white (just one candidate for a non-beige person of color) and female, while the board is lilly white and 80% male.

[scenes]

"Slavery was as much a symptom as a cause and the split was for a mish mash of practical and emotional reasons.

Expand upon this if you are so inclined."

A tiny over-simplistic example and probably a somewhat inaccurate opinion, and not new with me. Wars tend to break out and nations are made (for self-defense if nothing else) on cultural fault lines. One major fault line was the split between north and south in terms of what we usually think of as a colonialist relationship. One place has value-added manufacturing and capital, the other has the ability to produce raw materials but lacks power as a result (and is usually miffed about it). A side effect of large scale resource extraction is that slavery isn't a bad way to go, at least for the people doing the extraction, social side effects are ignored. So, the place that feels like it's getting the raw end of the deal (so to speak) will tend to want to break off from the relationship. My guess is that it's a situation that has a bit in common with the British in India.

Using that line of thinking, slavery is just an indicator for deeper differences, like a language or religion might be.

But hey, these are big feed back loops. Abolitionists were a significant factor too.

[scenes]

BillT: "How close are we? What will the next ‘Civil War’ look like? What will be the catalyst? The impetus?"

Well, it certainly ain't going to be those screeching Occupy ICE wimminz in Portland. How embarrassing is that?

Maybe this guy'll start it. I had to laugh at the end when he gets his mitts on a bullhorn near the end.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4y4yE1ggbpg

[fish]

Posted by: Gregory | 28 July 2018 at 08:42 AM

WOW! I’d forgotten just how white the staff of the SBC was....that’s KKK National Board of directors white! That’s have to defend yourself against the SPLCs Heidi Beirich on TV white! That’s Pennsylvania Dutch country white!

Steve couldn’t import a single black guy or gal from Sac or Reno for a little plausible deniability?

[scenes]

re: Fish@9:01AM

I think that all the young women make up for the lack of POC, there's some sort of scoring system in the world I expect.

Hmmm, lotta young people there. Cult? Hiring practices based on age discrimination?

I digress, there's no point in driving off Mr. Frisch. He's the only Progressive here that writes in complete sentences.

[Steve Frisch]

Yeah, we are going to hear it all now...

Scott & Scenes with their twist on semantics and historical revisionism...the southern economy was based on white supremacy, it is what made the south agrarian, slavery was not a symptom it was the cause...

Greg with an attack on my business affiliations....

Fish with his inane humor...

Todd will chime in with his, "Hey I can't be a racist I once had a black girlfriend..."

...and ultimately George and his restrained speech attempting to appear like some kind of conservative intellectual...with apologetics and white supremacist memes about it being a constitutional crises not slavery...of course the entire constitutional crises was about slavery...

...but the person who has it correct is Fish who points out that this is a site with 8 like minded supremacists briefly interrupted by a few outliers weighing in to stir the pot...

...lay down with white nationalists....take on the issues of white nationalists...argue the case of white nationalists...promote the next civil war...cheer on the great divide...call Bundy a hero...stand with a racist shit heel we have as President who inflames and dog-whistles white nationalism...claim the right to have George's utopian enclaves of like cultured people...which is code for segregation...

...do all that stuff and you're just a bunch of un-American racists.

Each of you is so disconnected from the values that really makes this country great that you make me sick...well, really bored...because after all as Fish pointed out, you're all irrelevant.

Hey Crabb, you do realize that you stood up for these guys for years saying my identification of their dog whistle racism was unwarranted, right?

[Bill Tozer]

Scenes @ 8:58 am
Lol. Well, if you put it that way....

Scenes @ 8:51.
Reading it from that angle, it wasn’t about slavery. It was all about economic survival...and the all mighty dollar imperative to said survival. Also, reading it from the Colonialist point of view, it’s amazing that the Constitution was ever ratified by the thirteen colonies in the first place considering the same unresolved issues they had when they signed the Constitution were the same unresolved issues between the more industrial north and agricultural south that sparked the Civil War.
One can easily argue that the War Between the States was just resolving some of the issues that where kicked down the road when the Constitution was ratified, speciallily slavery and the bigger question of if states that got together to form a federal government are free to individually dissolve that relationship with the Federal government of which they previously created. Those issues are now resolved.

Domestically, the issues of the rural vs urban, the Red States vs the Blue States, the farm belts vs the city dwellers, the centers of power in economic power centers ruling over the rest (less populated regions) remain to this day. You see this played out whenever the talk of abandoning the electoral college makes the rounds. Ironically, when the Constitution was ratified, Virginia was the most populous colony of the thirteen, but that tidbit is just something to put in the Encyolpedia of Worthless Information.

Unresolved issues, power sharing, the Great Divide. Hmmm. A spring board into a myriad of thoughts, topics, and POVs. Ok, how about two.

1). Politics is downstream from culture. A farmer may hate his father, but he got the love of the land from his father. It’s now in his blood.

2) whatever don’t break ya with make ya. Pain is the touchstone to growth.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=koaP6eAHObg

[Account Deleted]

"Scott & Scenes with their twist on semantics and historical revisionism..."
facts, sir - facts. What 'twist' on semantics' - what 'revisionism'?
"Each of you is so disconnected from the values that really makes this country great that you make me sick..."
Hmmm - freedom? liberty? personal responsibility? opportunity?
The Bill of Rights? The Constitution?
This makes Frisch sick?
Oh dear.

[George Rebane]

Re SteveF’s 544am – Mr Steve Frisch swings through here occasionally to grace us with his presence and to set straight a grievous error or two, and sprinkle around some indecorous appellations so that we understand clearly at whom his remediating wisdom is directed. Correspondents and commenters tell us that he more regularly takes us to task on other venues. The occasional RR reader is reminded that Steve is one of, or even possibly, the leading intellectual light of Nevada County’s population of progressives. He is a champion of distal central planning and the proximal control of lives lived for the greatest good.

As again demonstrated in his referenced dissertation along with his many contributions that decorate these pages, Steve is also a clairvoyant – no matter your spoken or written word, Steve has always been able to peer underneath it all to extract and report what you were really thinking and what you really meant. His semantics brook no dispute; like the Queen of Hearts, his words mean exactly how, when, and what he wants them to mean – and here he considers my (our?) understanding of America’s ‘civil war’, and, again, his pronouncement that I, and many of us, are thereby again confirmed racists.

First, let us be clear that for Steve anyone is a racist simply because Steve says he is a racist; that is sufficient on its face (or prima facie in lawyer talk). And when a man speaks mostly ex cathedra, he is not to be trifled with. In his current comment he deigns to draw a slight tendril from my “use of the ‘War of Southern Independence’ (that) is a reflection of his racist world view.” How he uses his manifold skills to connect those dots is not for us to ask.

On some of Steve’s substantive comments he correctly reminds us that “the entire economic system the agrarian south was fighting to retain was built on human bondage and white supremacy”. And that it indeed was so in 1860 is a given of American history. But then his progressive revisionist history begins to depart from the rails. Where for him, the causes of the war were the North’s intense and singular desire to abolish slavery in the land, the actual causes were several (which most well-read students of American history can cite). And of those, slavery entered in primarily as a factor in the effects of its non-containment in the South. Save for the zealous abolitionists and their considerable anti-slavery propaganda, almost all northerners were quite sanguine about the South’s slave-based agrarian economy that reliably fed feed, fiber, and cloth to the North’s mills and farms, as long as it remained contained.

The North didn’t want to lose control of the economic benefit the South provided, and relinquish the strategic gateway seaport of its great Mississippi-Missouri agricultural and commercial basin and riverine transport system, and anticipate continued competition for control of its western lands. Of course, the South’s wealthy elites did not want to go through the social risk of freeing their slaves and the commercial risk of increasing their labor costs, and the South’s poor did not look forward to a newly freed cohort on the labor markets to depress already low wages. So they discovered secession in the Constitution, and opted for becoming a sovereign nation-state. Nevertheless, most southern thinkers knew that slavery was on its way out no matter what hand history would deal them.

So when the South lit the match at Ft Sumter, there was no northern unanimity in going to war. Nor was there from the outset much unanimity for preserving the Union, and most certainly not for freeing the slaves – all that even after serious combat started between large marshalled forces. Moreover, students of history know that the conflict was visibly opposed and called by large factions of northerners and the president’s political foes as ‘Mr Lincoln’s War’, the first 'modern war' that devastated the manhood of the North’s farms and factories.

Perhaps the most persuasive argument about the war’s causes and its economic portents is gleaned from the clear sentiment of the times, the North would have attacked the South in order to prevent secession (i.e. Southern independence) even if the latter had promised to emancipate its slaves.

Steve Frisch and his ideological contemporaries see none of this, because it is not permitted in today’s progressive narrative of America’s dastardly past that has given rise to the perpetual victimhood the Left has implemented on our minorities to cultivate, succor, and grow its reliable political constituencies – what the Right calls ‘perpetuating the plantation’. America’s Left-controlled schools have spewed out this new history that is now firmly resident in the minds of two generations of public school students.

In such debates, we can expect no polarized minds to depolarize. The coming Great Divide just draws confirmation and strength from these exchanges that illuminate the wasteland of no shared thought that separates our distinct and disparate worlds, facts, histories, and visions.

Finally, as all’s said and done, I always welcome Steve Frisch to these pages when he is able to share his thoughts within the (rather loose) bounds of civility we observe around here. In addition to his illumination of the progressive mind, the man also often provides both diversion and sport in the dharma battles he instigates.

[fish]

Posted by: Steve Frisch | 28 July 2018 at 10:17 AM

Why are you so spun up? I mean there is no reason for such a happening "mover and shaker", a man with his finger on the pulse of the nation to go into such over the top histrionics as this post. You look like my ex-wife being told she can't have that new car! We are just 7 or 8 guys with opinions that differ from yours.....and truth be told most of the upcoming demographic....take solace in the fact that you should have some success with them.

At least until Washingtons checks stop clearing and then hide....they are a bunch who you don't really want to piss off!

[Account Deleted]

I know I've asked before, but since Frisch has brought it up again - does anyone out there know how I can get a copy of the 'white racist dog whistle' dictionary? Or possibly an online version? Some folks seem to have the official version and know all the secret words and phrases to avoid.

[fish]

Posted by: Scott Obermuller | 28 July 2018 at 11:22 AM

That's the beauty of it Scott.....there is no official version! It's whatever happens to make you upset at the time!

A Living Document if you will!

[fish]

Posted by: George Rebane | 28 July 2018 at 11:13 AM

Finally, as all’s said and done, I always welcome Steve Frisch to these pages when he is able to share his thoughts within the (rather loose) bounds of civility we observe around here. In addition to his illumination of the progressive mind, the man also often provides both diversion and sport in the dharma battles he instigates.

Now I like to think that "our side" has comported itself well today.....with only a minimum of "inane humor" on my part and the sufficient decorum as Scenes has called for given that, and as he stated "at least Steve responds in complete sentences" where as the usual suspects seem unable to do so.....even with one having a masters degree from Northwestern!

[Walt]

Stevey leaves out a VARY impotent part in his rant.
DEMOCRAT.
How come Stevey? Forget Lincoln was a Repub? (or a closet DEM?)
Never mind your LIB side still tries to keep the minorities on the ol' plantation. ( Out of work, and on welfare.. And the promise of free shit. That Obama-phone worked wonders)

Just checking the SBC tax docs,,, Hummm... Uh,, how many paid employees?? And not vary transparent as a (HA!!) "non profit*" should be.
Looks like you fit into the "hiding in a dark basement, sitting at a computer alone, in one's underwear" kind of "council".
(*: shell corp.)

Useless Tax leaches like SBC will be on Trump's radar soon enough.

[Bill Tozer]

Steve @10:17 am
Have to disagree, not split hairs. You seem to insert the word (bad word?) White as an adjective preceding the nouns. Nationalism? No, it’s White nationalism. Supremacy? No, it’s White supremacy. Nationalism is bad, I reckon, often confused with that dog whistle “patriotism.”

Now, this one is one I cannot sweep under the carpet because it’s sticking one’s head in the sand.

“claim the right to have George's utopian enclaves of like cultured people...which is code for segregation.”

That is simply choosing to turn a blind eye. Steve, you have been around. Go to LA. You have the groups of those of like culture living in the same neighborhoods by choice. Armenian communities, Jewish communities, Russian communities south of Portland, Korean communities in Tacoma, Chinese communities in the San Gabriel Valley, Myong communities in the San Joaquin Valley, and on and on it goes. Birds of a feather flock together. Nothing new. Heck, the small Latino community is clustered together in Kings Beach.

Nevada City would have a conniption fit is someone tried to put up a big stucco building with a Spanish tile roof next door on the corner of E. Broad St and 49. Why? Culture. What is all this talk about “cultural appropriation” that the likes of Lena Dunham was screaming about in school and after college? What, a Mexican can’t make sushi and a Irish lady can’t peddle burritos? What is that fuss about? Is it not cultural segregation?

Why are we building black only dorms across our land? Because the black students have demanded it. Why? Because they feel more comfortable being around folks like them with a shared background and life experience....and culture. Why, for example, are certain campuses providing “safe places” for blacks only or LGBTQQ students only?Their safe place for them only, no one else allowed? Why, why not use the other safe places? Because they feel more comfortable and safe with “their own kind (a trigger phrase) than anywhere else, including the other safe places.

I have sounded the alarm that we are moving more towards segregation for months, gleamed by not only what is happening on campuses widespread across our nation, but seeing what is going on in communities across the fruited plains. Our melting pot is being replaced with a tossed salad. And it’s not because we are a generous country where all are equal under the law. It’s culture. It’s tribal. It’s not even xenophobic. Everyone seems to be put in a group, a herd, and it’s dangerous out there when you leave the herd. This is not me that is saying the above sentence. It’s what our society is saying.

One point I strongly agree with Dr. Rebane on is when one lives with those of the same culture is there is a degree of expections and familiarity of the behavior of others. If I go down and sleep in a homeless camp, I know I may (will) get hit up for a plug off the jug or ripped off of some meager material possessions, but I also know I won’t have my throat slashed while I sleep. In a weird way, I know we have each other’s back...at night. They are watching out for me, and I them. Not a paradox at all. All are in the same boat, sub-culture if you will, no repector of persons, race, or creed. Being familiar with that culture. I expect to be ripped off during the day when I am not around. There is a comfort to it all because it is familiar. And they have an expectation of me to share what I have. It’s a cultural thang. Not the best example, but you get the drift. Look around at your neighborhood or community, Steve. Is it not birds of a feather flock together all in all? Is not there a degree of familiarly and expectations of those you run concerning values, behavior, and common norms? That be culture, your herd, your group. And, is it not in the larger picture, the choices where you choose to live and who to run with not a act of self segregation?

[scenes]

Mr. Frisch: "Scott & Scenes with their twist on semantics and historical revisionism...the southern economy was based on white supremacy, it is what made the south agrarian, slavery was not a symptom it was the cause..."

BS. Although you are hell on wheels for fighting strawmen.

The South was agrarian before the plantation system. I have plenty of ancestors who died trying to farm there back when the colonies were thin strips on the coast. It's just that it's cheaper to buy labor than to hire it, plus the original locals made crummy slaves.

It isn't like those folks had a bunch of slaves and then cast around for a way to earn a living on them. You also run into the unfortunate truth that big leagues slave ownership was a fairly limited pasttime. Typically, people would have a dozen children and would consider themselves well off to own even a single black human.

The real revisionism is yours, sir. These are complex systems, don't lend themselves well to simple causalities, and are fraught with the Historians Dilemma. I realize that the temptation is strong to cast the present in terms of the past (Trump = Hitler, Republicans = plantation slave owners, etc.) but it doesn't do you credit. Try again. Probably the best understanding is to read documents written at the time, not modern interpretations. Fill in your own blanks.

[scenes]

re: GeorgeR@11:13

It's a good post, but largely falling on deaf ears.

Mr Frisch did a nice sideways move from "why did the civil war start" to "was slavery important in the South".

The answers of course are "lotsa reasons" and "yes", but these are the types of arguments built to win a third, somewhat hidden, point. The fact that he lives in a whiteopia and is surrounded by white co-workers is a fun thing to bring up, but really is besides the point.

I'll post this up again, since I'm rather attracted to the idea. Building a new religious culture is tough work and it's interesting to think about how it happens.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NanumqpBDtA

[fish]

Posted by: scenes | 28 July 2018 at 12:37 PM

The fact that he lives in a whiteopia and is surrounded by white co-workers is a fun thing to bring up, but really is besides the point.

Yes.....but it is so satisfying to bring it up! Not a single poster here is in favor of slavery and are dare I say embarrassed that as a nation founded upon personal liberty tolerated the institution as long as it did. Steve uses "racism" as a rhetorical cudgel and seems to lament that it doesn't work as well as it once did. Indicative of this is his use now of "Supremacism", a word used in serious tones only on college campuses and by vapid female actresses when trying to assure the world at large that they are "serious thinkers" thinking goodthinkfully!

I don't know why Steve gets so worked about this....I don't think any of the regulars here are racist. At least not qualifying for the white sheet racist.....given the sloppiness of the definition everybody is racist....white guy cuts you off in traffic....racist! A white guy isn't interested in reading the last Ta Nahesi Coates offering.....racist! Doesn't' go to see "Black Panther" movie more than once....racist! Complain about 10 200K "Diversity Officers" fueled by tax dollars at the local community college....racist!

[George Rebane]

scenes 1237pm - You are, of course, right Mr scenes, and I acknowledged as much. But as a point of passing interest to recall is that for me (and a close circle of others in which you may or not wish to be included) RR and its comment streams are a record of how such issues and sentiments were discussed in this day and age. SteveF may be and probably is a drive-by commenter who gains some pleasure in posting his repartees, but really has no longer term investment in what he writes or how he is here remembered. For us his value is his service as an existential sample of current sentiment, belief, and thought.

[scenes]

re: GeorgeRebane@1:07PM

I suppose the main problem is that it just burns Mr Frisch's ass that someone like me doesn't feel the slightest bit guilty about slavery and, as history problem, tries to think about it in context.

No doubt most of this is tied up in simple modern politics. You can manipulate voters through simple morality tales to do what you currently want, it's not much different than a church sermon. Personally, I get tired of non-domain experts lecturing on something like this when they have something like white guilt in mind. It gets tiresome

It's interesting to think about the economics of slavery in the South given the high quality of records (as compared to, say, the Roman Empire).

http://cliometrics.org/conferences/ASSA/Jan_00/rosenbloom.shtml

It's funny to consider the distortion in an economy you get when capital assets (in this case, bought and paid for humans) are themselves subject to speculation.

[scenes]

re: Fish - "I don't think any of the regulars here are racist. "

If someone defines the term, I'd be happy to own up to it or not.

The first hit on goduckgo on the term states: "A person who believes a particular race is superior to others"

A problem arises. In every IQ study I've seen, at it's probably the best studied thing in sociology, East Asians have a higher average intelligence than other racial groups.

So what happens when facts, or a good approximation to a fact, runs up against an epithet?

[Gregory]

"Greg with an attack on my business affiliations...."

-Frisch 1017am

Steve, that wasn't an attack on your "business affiliations", it was an attack on your choice to staff the SBC with white people (nearly 100%) while claiming the people hosting and commenting here at RR are racist.

Your hypocrisy is showing. Again. In a fair word fight, you lose.

[George Rebane]

scenes 129pm - For the record, I and all native Estonians are direct descendants of 'slaves' which is how the Swedes then Russian landowners in Estonia treated us natives. We were called serfs, but the economic, social, and punitive strictures on us were equivalent to the South's slaves - we were simply economic assets to be worked and traded as our masters determined. In czarist Estonia serfdom was (coincidentally) also ended in mid-19th century. But that only removed some of the more onerous parts of the relationship with our previous owners - nothing changed for us re our mobility and economic fortunes. For comparison, no Estonians today view themselves as victims of that era. This is not to be confused with Estonians' extreme distrust of Russia's demonstrated history and perpetual designs to again dominate them.

Re southern slaves. The discussion of their economic impact must always be considered strictly as commercial labor assets in an agrarian economy. This is very different from the use of slaves in ancient times where they were mainly employed in households. There was no major economy like the South's King Cotton based on mass employment of slavery. The only exception one could cite was the Romans north African salt mines worked by slaves, and motive power of galleons provided by slaves. But these slaves were derived mainly from conquests and criminal punishments, and did not involve a pejorative racial component.

[George Rebane]

For those interested, the definition of racism and considerations of ethnic-dependent IQs have been extensively discussed on RR. This is not this blog's first week in existence - citations and references to previous posts and commenters' contributions are always welcome. I give you an example or two -
http://rebaneruminations.typepad.com/rebanes_ruminations/2010/07/who-is-a-racist.html
And the definition of racist has always been in the RR Glossary. Readers should recall that I actually make a fetish of defining my terms, it was something that I was taught in the schools I attended, and something I put to extremely good use in my professional career. I don't intend to give it up now.

[fish]

Posted by: scenes | 28 July 2018 at 01:34 PM

If someone defines the term, I'd be happy to own up to it or not.

....and that's just it.....there is no agreed upon definition in common use! And by common I mean day to day use. Like obscenity.....they just know it when they see/hear it! Racism it seems is just the term one uses when they want to end the argument now and get a good group chant going!

Anyway...is the mere subscription to the notion: "A person who believes a particular race is superior to others" sufficient to be racist? If so the group who seems to like hurling the term so freely are in the deepest of trouble......1.2 billion Han Chinese trouble! I'm pretty that the Chinese as a group don't think particularly highly of white America! I can only guess what they think of black America (not very highly I imagine) and from what I read things aren't going all that well where the Chinese interact with actual African Africans!

Do I think that makes them "Racist"?

No....I think that makes them Chinese with all the attendant cultural quirks! Not just the Chinese.....most of East Asia seems to qualify for the DuckDuckGo definition. So it ain't just Whitey who has a problem though we are always portrayed as such!

So what happens when facts, or a good approximation to a fact, runs up against an epithet?

Seems like the facts lose rather handily!

[Gregory]

I nominate the following photograph to define "racist" or "white supremacist" when written by Stephen Frisch, six figure CEO of the wretchedly misnamed Sierra Business Council:
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0077745/mediaviewer/rm1070213376

[Don Bessee]

It smells so frishy in here I thought this was the sandbox! ;-)

[Bonnie McGuire]

Lincolns wife had seances in the White House on Friday nights. Lincoln was told that slavery in the United States was an abomination and to get rid of it. A nation of, by and for people, where as Lincoln put it...."ordinary people could achieve their dreams." Obviously slavery was a Constitutional contradiction that he had to deal with...regardless of what some say about it to make themselves look better. Surprising what you learn when you get out of the intellectual rut.

[Bill Tozer]

Re: Speaking of the Great Divide; the next Civil War will be worse than the last one....

“History is the present talking to the past.”

I will sidestep the last dust up over the primary cause of the Civil War with one sentence:
After reviewing tons of sites (most triggered by the Texas history “rewrite” textbook controvestary in 2015) ranging from editorials on Root to scholarly works to in between, I can see why many (most) see the the Civil War was fought to end slavery. The end.

—From a 1989 NYT editorial based on studying the five history textbooks used in 2/3 of the high school classrooms in the USA (at that time):

“One textbook that offers no biography of Lincoln devotes 24 of 43 pages about the Civil War to pictures, maps and special features. The longest profile of the 16th President in any of the volumes is six paragraphs.”

With that out of the way and no big fight to end slavery on the menu, I still wonder what the next Civil War will look like and what the most important major reason why it will be fought, be it bloody or bloodless. Like the State of Jefferson or Calexit, it is now more of an exercise of the imagination than anything else. Lumping it all under the heading ‘The Great Divide’ works for me (and most) at this moment it time. Like the last American Civil War, the seeds that led to Fort Sumter look decades in the making. At some point, it will only take but a mere spark to start the Inferno, whatever the particular event or circumstance will be. Akin to a police shooting in an already tense black neighborhood filled with distrust and strife.

So, here are the seeds that have been sown as of today, IMHO.

http://buchanan.org/blog/will-tribalism-trump-democracy-129792

Which brings me to a news item that came out yesterday. In view of the above link, it makes sense.

“Because most of the federal land would include conservative-leaning portions of California, the plan also would create a “buffer zone between Donald Trump’s America and the new independent California Republic,” another co-founder of the initiative, Marcus Ruiz Evans, said in a statement.”

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2018/07/31/calexit-supporters-revamp-campaign-with-plan-to-convert-half-california-into-autonomous-native-american-nation.html

Another quote in the common vernacular: “We are always fighting the last war”.

[Russ]

Governor Brown:

"since civilization emerged 10,000 years ago, we haven’t had this kind of heat condition, and it’s going to continue getting worse and that’s the way it is."

https://sierrafoothillcommentary.com/2018/07/11/if-planet-is-warming-why-are-ca-max-temperatures-declining/

He does not know what he is talking about, it was warmer in the 1930s that it is now. July 2018 in CA was only the 18th warmest according to Joe Bastardi at Weather Bell.

Fake News from the Governor.

[Gregory]

Besides the 1930's, it was hotter during the Holocene Climate Optimum (like 8000 to 5000 years ago) and the Roman Warm period (oh, 2500 years ago), but Brown listens to Bill McKibben (a journalist by training before he pulled 350ppm out of his arse to name his group) over geophysicists.

[scenes]

re: The US Civil War.

It seems to me that a good compromise on all of that would be to write histories that simply report the facts of the matter and don't spend a minute of time 'interpreting' it. The Historian's Dilemma is probably impossible to avoid entirely, but you can sure chop away at it.

Doubtless, bias can still be introduced by exactly *what* you report, but it's a darned sight better than finding faces in clouds. The whole notion of 'why' seems bankrupt to me when you consider the complexity of the aggregate actions of millions of people. 'Why' is the kind of thing an individual thinks, not a group.

Of course, the Frisch's of the world will go on thinking 'Civil War' = slavery, end of story, but there's nothing I can do about that. It's their loss. I suppose we all need to think in terms of models in order to grasp the world.

[George Rebane]

scenes 806am - What you are suggesting is the banishment of history. We recall that the recording of "simply facts of the matter" was/is the job of chroniclers, but it is the job of historians to relate such facts/events to their antecedent causes and then to subsequent facts/events to paint an integrated picture of the flow of human events. In olden times chroniclers from both sides would often set themselves up on some vantage high ground to observe the battle and record it, compare notes, and then go their separate ways. Their safety was honored by both sides since the information they provided was valuable in its own right for further strategizing, accounting, and, of course, propagandizing.

[Bill Tozer]

The changing face of Lincoln to fit the times...via textbooks.

“A better balance began to appear in schoolbooks by the late 1990s. Historians recognized that social history without political history is only partial history, and that leadership sometimes does indeed flow from the top down. In this altered historiographical context and the altered historical context after September 11, 2001, a new perspective on Lincoln has emerged in the schoolbooks. As always, the current Lincoln reflects historical scholarship and contemporary American life. For all our protestations that historians are “originalists,” that is, we study historical figures only within the context of their times, we are affected by the world around us. This enables us to view historical figures from shifting perspectives and to ask new questions of them and of the documents they have left behind. As long as the present does not become the agenda for the past, such presentism can be informative and helpful, especially for students who are constantly asking us, “why is history relevant to our lives?”

Last paragraph:

One thing is certain and that is the image of Abraham Lincoln in American schoolbooks will continue to evolve. In America, we write history backwards. We begin with the needs of our students and the great issues of contemporary American life and we ask how history can help us understand both who we are and what is happening to us. It means that the history in schoolbooks is never static, but always serves a contemporary purpose.

http://www.asjournal.org/53-2009/lincolns-image-in-the-american-schoolbook/

From another site I found this letter more in line with my personal POV early in the war.

“Abraham Lincoln had long been under pressure to make the war into a crusade against slavery. But he had resisted. To Horace Greeley, whose newspaper strongly criticized him for not freeing the slaves, Lincoln had written in August 1862:

My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or destroy Slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave, I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves, I would do it; and if I could do it by freeing some and leaving others alone, I would also do that. What I do about Slavery and the colored race, I do because it helps to save this Union; and what I forbear, I forbear because I do not believe it would help to save the Union.”
———————————————————
But in 1863, after volunteering had slackened off, Congress passed a federal conscription law for the first time on a nationwide scale in the United States. . .

The draft was especially damned in the Democratic strongholds of the North, notably in New York City. A frightful riot broke out in 1863, touched off largely by underprivileged and anti-black Irish-Americans, who shouted, “Down with Lincoln!” and “Down with the draft!” For several days the city was at the mercy of a burning, drunken, pillaging mob. Scores of lives were lost, and the victims included many lynched blacks. Elsewhere in the North, conscription met with resentment and an occasional minor riot.15

—My thoughts: As the election (reelection) approached and the North finally won a couple of desperately needed victories on the battlefield. the moral issue of slavery in a Christian Nation took on a larger role, theme, and importance. As the War progressed, the cause against slavery also progressed. So, my thoughts are that slavery evolved into the central theme of the Civil War, as did public opinion, later during the War and more so as the War was drawing to a conclusion. But it wasn’t always the central theme.

https://americanvision.org/15212/textbooks-dont-tell-lincoln-war/

[scenes]

"It means that the history in schoolbooks is never static, but always serves a contemporary purpose."

That is a sentence worth considering.

[Bill Tozer]

@Scenes
Yep, included on purpose and directed to you and Dr. Rebane (hoping you would find it) after reading the Medieval Studies link you so graciously provided. I got that one stuck in my mind and will go back to it again and again. Saved it in favorites. Also included in my mini-essay from the first link is another sentence worth considering,

“As long as the present does not become the agenda for the past, such presentism can be informative and helpful, especially for students who are constantly asking us, “

That is from the writer’s point of view, but in today’s SJW world, how do we keep the present from becoming the agenda of the past? Or how do we keep the past from becoming the agenda of the present? Tear it down! Burn, baby, burn.

[Bill Tozer]

Opps
Present becoming the agenda for the past....not agenda of the past....

[Bill Tozer]

Concering update: prescribed burns make sense

“Our forests are dramatically overcrowded,” said Krystal Beckham of the Little Hoover Commission, an independent California oversight agency that has called for major changes in the state's forest management practices.”

“We’ve yet to see the worst of forest fires. The climate is drier and warmer, and that leads to more fires,” said Rep. Bruce Westerman, R-Ark., a licensed forester. "But the forest doesn’t stop growing, and the trees don't start crowding each other. Until we realize that, we will continue seeing the devastation we are seeing right now.”

“The federal government has only so much power in fighting and preventing fires.

Of the dozen or so wildfires currently burning in California, National Interagency Fire Center spokeswoman Jessica Gardetto said, only five are on Forest Service land. Others are on state or private land, or a mix of jurisdictions.”

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/policy/energy/mismanaged-overcrowded-forests-provide-fuel-to-historic-california-wildfires-experts-say

Well, carbon taxes will prevent forest fires in CA, lol. In the bigger picture, can anyone name on thing the State manages well? Roads, bridges, dams, voting, fighting crime? The homeless scourge? Affordable housing? Illicit drugs? The only thing CA does well is levy and collect taxes. Besides the Franchise Tax Board, can you name one State Department that is managed well and, in turn, manages its charge well?