Posts Tagged ‘CIVIL WAR’
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In Bureaucracy, Business, History, Medical, Politics, Social commentary on September 18, 2026 at 12:08 am
Republicans have long tried to prevent or eliminate programs that aid the poor and middle-class, including:
- Social Security (since it began in 1935)
- Medicare
- National health insurance
- Food stamps
- WIC (Women, Infants, Children).
So why are so many poor Americans now flocking to this party’s banner?
Two reasons: Racism and greed. There are historical parallels for both.
First, race:
In 1999, historian Victor Davis Hanson noted the huge gap in wealth between the aristocratic, slave-owning minority of the pre-Civil War South and the vast majority of poor white Southerners.
Victor Davis Hanson
“Before the war in the counties Sherman would later ruin, the top 10% of the landowners controlled 40% of the assessed wealth.”
In contrast, “more than half of those who were lucky enough to own any property at all still possessed less than 15% of the area’s valuation.”
So Hanson asked: “Why did the millions of poor whites of the Confederacy fight at all?”
He supplied the answer in his brilliant work on military history, The Soul of Battle: From Ancient Times to the Present Day, How Three Great Liberators Vanquished Tyranny.
One of those liberators was General William Tecumseh Sherman, who led 62,000 Union troops in a victorious “March to the Sea” through the Confederacy in 1864.
So why did so many poor Southern whites literally lay down their lives for the wealthy planter class, which despised them?
According to Hanson: “Behind the entire social fabric of the South lay slavery.
“If slavery eroded the economic position of the poor free citizens, if slavery encouraged a society of haves and have-nots…then it alone offered one promise to the free white man—poor, ignorant and dispirited—that he was at least not black and not a slave.”
And the planter class and its allies in government easily fobbed off their poor white countrymen with cheap flattery. Said Georgia Governor Joseph Brown:
“Among us the poor white laborer is respected as an equal. His family is treated with kindness, consideration, and respect. He does not belong to the menial class. The negro is in no sense his equal. He belongs to the only true aristocracy, the race of white men.”
Arlington House and plantation, former home of Robert E. Lee
Similarly, poor whites now flock to the Republican Party—which holds them in equal contempt—in large part to protest the 2008 election of the first black President of the United States.
According to a Pew Research Center study released on July 22, 2011: “Notably, the GOP gains have occurred only among white voters; a 2-point Republican edge among whites in 2008 (46% to 44%) has widened to a 13-point lead today (52% to 39%).”
Since the 1960s, Republicans have pursued a campaign policy of “divide and rule”—divide the nation along racial lines and reap the benefits at election time.
- Republicans opposed the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
- Republicans opposed the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
- Republicans, with Richard Nixon as their Presidential candidate in 1968 and 1972, pursued what they called a “Southern strategy”: Use “code language” to stoke fear and hatred of blacks among whites.
- Republicans have falsely identified welfare programs exclusively with non-whites. (Of the six million Americans receiving food stamps, about 42% are white, 32% are black, and 22% are Latino–with the growth fastest among whites during the recession.)
Thus, in voting Republican, many of these poor whites believe they are “striking a blow for the white race.”
And they can do so in a more socially acceptable way than joining a certified hate group such as the American Nazi Party or Ku Klux Klan.
Since 2015, openly racist groups such as the Klan and the American Nazi Party have flocked to the banner of Presidential candidate mogul Donald Trump. By enthusiastically courting their support, the real estate mogul has made it possible for Republican candidates to openly display their own racism.
Now greed:
In the hit play, 1776, on the creation and signing of the Declaration of Independence, there is a telling exchange between John Dickinson and John Hancock. It comes during the song, “Cool, Cool, Considerate Men.”
Dickinson, the delegate from Pennsylvania, urges Hancock, president of the Second Continental Congress, “to join us in our minuet.”
By “us” he means his fellow conservatives who fear losing their property and exalted status by supporting American independence from Great Britain.
John Dickinson
Hancock declines, saying: “Fortunately, there are not enough men of property in America to dictate policy.”
To which Dickinson replies: “Perhaps not. But don’t forget that most men with nothing would rather protect the possibility of becoming rich than face the reality of being poor. And that is why they will follow us.”
Today, poor whites generally identify with the CEOs of powerful corporations. They believe the Republican gospel that they can attain such wealth—if only the government will “get out of my way.”
They forget—or ignore–the truth that government, for all its imperfections, is sometimes all that stands between them and a wide range of predators.
In return, the CEOs despise them as the privileged have always despised their social and economic “inferiors.”
Unless the Democratic Party can find ways to directly address these bitter, Politically Incorrect truths, it will continue its decline into insignificance.
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In Bureaucracy, Business, History, Medical, Politics, Social commentary on September 17, 2026 at 12:10 am
On July 22, 2011, ABC News carried the following story:
The Pew Foundation, analyzing voter identification, found “the electorate’s partisan affiliations have shifted significantly” since Barack Obama won office in 2008.
The GOP had gained strength among white voters, most specifically “the young and poor.”
A seven-point Democratic advantage among whites under age 30 three years ago had turned into an 11-point GOP advantage. And a 15-point Democratic advantage among whites earning less than $30,000 annually had swung to a slim four-point Republican edge by 2011.
In addition:
- The GOP gains had occurred only among white voters.
- Republicans had made sizable gains among white voters since 2008. Fifty-two percent of white voters called themselves Republicans or leaned to the GOP, compared with 39% who affiliated with the Democratic Party or leaned Democratic.
- Democrats had lost their edge among lower income white voters.
- In 2008, Democrats had a 15 point lead among white voters with family incomes less than $30,000. By 2011, Republicans had a four-point edge among this group.
- The GOP’s lead among middle income white voters had grown since 2008, and Republicans held a substantial advantage with higher income white voters.
- Republicans have made gains among whites with a high school education or less. The GOP’s advantage over Democrats had grown from one point in 2008 to 17 points in 2011 among less educated whites.
- Republicans had made smaller gains among whites voters who had college degrees.
What is fascinating about these findings is this: The Republicans have, since 1980, pursued a policy of gutting programs aimed at helping the poor—while repeatedly creating tax-breaks for the wealthiest 1% of the population.
For Republicans, the patron saint of this “love-the-rich-screw-the-poor” ideology remains Ronald Reagan–two-time governor of California and twice-elected President of the United States (1981-1989)
Ronald Reagan, who taught Americans to worship the wealthy
Among those charting Reagan’s legacy as President was former CBS Correspondent David Shoenbrum.
In his bestselling autobiography, America Inside Out: At Home and Abroad from Roosevelt to Reagan, he noted:
- On January 28, 1981, keeping a pledge to his financial backers in the oil industry, Reagan abolished Federal controls on the price of oil.
- Within a week, Exxon, Texaco and Shell raised gasoline prices and prices of home heating oil.
- Reagan saw it as his duty to put a floor under prices, not a ceiling above them.
- Reagan believed that when government helped business it wasn’t interfering. Loaning money to bail out a financially incompetent Chrysler was “supporting the free enterprise system.”
- But putting a high-profits tax on price-gouging corporations or filing anti-trust suits against them was “Communistic” and therefore intolerable.
- Tax-breaks for wealthy businesses meant helping America become stronger.
- But welfare for the poor or the victims of a predatory marketplace economy weakened America by sapping its morale.
“In short, welfare for the rich is good for America. But welfare for the poor is bad for America, even for the poor themselves, for it encourages them to be shiftless and lazy.
“Somehow, loans to the inefficient management of American corporations would not similarly encourage them in their inefficient methods,” wrote Shoenbrun.
Republicans have sought to dismantle Social Security ever since that program began in 1935. And Republicans have furiously opposed other programs aiding the poor and middle-class—such as Medicare, food stamps and WIC (Women, Infants, Children).
In short, this is not a political party with a history of rushing to the defense of those most in need.
So the question remains: Why are so many poor Americans flocking to its banner?
The answer lies in the history of the American South—and slavery.
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In Entertainment, History, Military, Politics, Social commentary on June 29, 2026 at 12:10 am
Major Dundee is a 1965 Sam Peckinpah Western focusing on a Union cavalry officer (Charlton Heston) who leads a motley troop of soldiers into Mexico to rescue three children kidnapped by Apaches.
Along the way they liberate Mexican villagers and clash with French lancers trying to establish Mexico as a French colony under would-be emperor Archduke Maximilian 1.
The Wild Bunch is universally recognized as Peckinpah’s greatest achievement. It has certainly had a far greater impact on audiences and critics than Major Dundee. According to Heston, this was really the movie Peckinpah wanted to make while making Dundee, but he couldn’t quite get his mind around it.
As a result, Dundee’s virtues have been tragically overlooked. It has a larger cast of major characters than Bunch, and these are men whose character an audience can truly admire and identify with:
- The charm of Benjamin Tyreen (Richard Harris), a Confederate lieutenant forced into Union service;
- The steady courage of Sergeant Gomez (Mario Adorf);
- The quiet dignity of Aesop (Brock Peters), a black soldier;
- The quest for maturity in young, untried bugler Tim Ryan (Michael Anderson, Jr.);
- The on-the-job training experience of impetuous Lt. Graham (Jim Hutton); and
- The stoic endurance of one-armed Indian scout Sam Potts (James Coburn).
These men are charged with a dangerous and dirty mission, and do it as well as they can, but you wouldn’t fear inviting them to meet your family.
Major Dundee (Charlton Heston)
That was definitely not the case with The Wild Bunch, four hardened killers prepared to rip off anyone, anytime, and leave a trail of bodies in their wake. The only place where you would have felt safe seeing them, in real-life, was behind prison bars.
The Wild Bunch
Dundee is an odyssey movie, in the same vein as Saving Private Ryan. Both films start with a battle, followed by the disappearance of characters who need to be searched for and brought back to safety.
Just as Dundee assembles a small force to go into Mexico, so, too, does Captain John Miller (Tom Hanks) do the same, with his hunting ground being France.
Dundee’s men retrieve the kidnapped children and survive a near-fatal battle with Indians. Miller’s men twice clash with the Germans before finding their quarry, James Ryan.
Before Dundee can return to the United States, he must face and defeat a corps of French soldiers. Before Miller can haul Ryan back to safety, he must repulse a German assault.
Both groups of soldiers—Dundee’s and Miller’s—are transformed by their experiences in ways neither group could possibly articulate. (Miller, being a highly literate schoolteacher, would surely do a better job of this than the tight-jawed Dundee.)
Dundee’s soldiers return to a United States that’s just ended its Civil War with a Union victory—and the death of slavery. Miller’s soldiers return to a nation that is now a global superpower.
Of course, Ryan was fortunate in having Steven Spielberg as its director. With his clout, there was no question that Ryan would emerge as the film he wanted.
Peckinpah lacked such clout. And he fought with everyone, including the producer, Jerry Bressler, who ultimately held the power to destroy his film. This guaranteed that his movie would emerge far differently than he had envisioned.
Sam Peckinpah
In 2005, an extended version of Dundee was released, featuring 12 minutes of restored footage. (Much of the original footage was lost after severe cuts to the movie.)
In this new version, we fully see how unsympathetic a character the martinet Dundee really is. Owing to Heston’s career of playing heroes—such as Moses and El Cid—it’s easy to overlook Dundee’s arrogance and lethal fanaticism and automatically view him as a hero.
If he is indeed that, he is a hero with serious flaws.
And his self-imposed mission poses questions for us today:
- Where is the line between professional duty and personal fanaticism?
- How do we balance the success of a mission against its potential costs—especially if they prove appalling?
- At what point—if any—does personal conscience override professional obligations?
Whether intentionally or not, in Major Dundee, Peckinpah laid out a microcosm of the American history that would immediately follow the Civil War.
Former Confederates and Unionists would forego their regional animosities and fight against a recognized mutual enemy—the Indians. This would prove a dirty and drawn-out war, stripped of the glory and (later) treasured memories of the Civil War.
Just as Dundee’s final battle with French lancers ended with an American victory won at great cost, so, too, would America’s forays into the Spanish-American War and World Wars 1 and 11 prove the same.
Ben Tyreen’s commentary on the barbarism of French troops (“Never underestimate the value of a European education”) would be echoed by twentieth-century Americans uncovering the horrors of Dachau and Buchenwald.
And America would learn to project its formidable military power at great cost. Toward the end of the movie, Teresa Santiago (Senta Berger), the ex-patriot Austrian widow, asks Dundee: “But who do you answer to?”
It is a question that still vividly expresses the view of the international community as this superpower colossus hurtles from one often-disastrous conflict to the next.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Military, Politics on June 26, 2026 at 12:05 am
On October 7, 2023, about 2,500 Hamas terrorists launched coordinated attacks on Israeli outposts and settlements, firing over 5,000 rockets and burning houses.
They killed over 1,139 people, of which 695 were civilians—including women, children and the elderly. They also kidnapped over 250 others—including 30 children—to Gaza.
Most of those hostages were subsequently murdered.
Palestinians celebrating the attack on Israel
Israel pounded Gaza with bombs, missiles. tanks and soldiers. By May, 2026, Palestinian health authorities claimed that Israel’s ground and air campaign had killed more than 72,000 Palestinians.
Among the reactions to this conflict:
- The World Court ordered Israel to immediately halt its military offensive in the southern Gaza city of Rafah.
- Liberal Democrats demanded that President Joseph Biden stop shipping military equipment to Israel.
- Three European countries—Spain, Ireland, and Norway—announced that they would recognize a Palestinian state.
- Across the United States, scores of university students protested Israel’s retaliation against Gaza.
- Among the universities targeted: Columbia, Harvard, Yale, the University of Texas at Austin, the University of Southern California, Emory University in Atlanta, Boston’s Emerson College.
- Columbia University, Barnard College and the University of Southern California canceled their graduation ceremonies owing to fears of violent protests by terrorism-sympathizing students.
Such holier-than-thou attitudes ignore three important truths:
First: Soldiering is by its nature a brutal business.
- The purpose of boot camp is to “break down” the restraints of pacifism and individuality and turn “boys” into “fighting men.” This must be done in weeks, so the process is shockingly brutal.
- Recruits are repeatedly taught such maxims as: “Ambushes are murder—and murder is fun.”
- Denigrating the enemy is a time-worn habit in all armies—including the American army. During the Indian wars, soldiers referred to Indians as “Red niggers.”
- In World War II—the “Good War”—America’s servicemen fought “Japs” and “Krauts.” During the Vietnam war, Vietnamese became “dinks” and “gooks.”
Marine drill instructor
- Today’s servicemen and women routinely (but unofficially) refer to their Islamic enemies as “ragheads” or “sand niggers.”
- Soldiers who aren’t toughened by boot camp are by the battlefield. As General George S. Patton often warned: “When you put your hand into a bunch of goo, that a moment before was your best friend’s face, you’ll know what to do.”
- Those who are demanding that Israel “pause” its offensive against Gaza ignore that when Allied armies were closing in on Berlin, the capitol of Nazi Germany, Americans did not demand that Nazis be given a chance to reorganize and counterattack.
Second: Atrocities in wartime are nothing new—including for U.S. forces.
- During the Mexican War, Texas Rangers accompanying the U.S. Army acted as commandos—and exacted reprisals against Mexicans engaging in terrorist acts.
- During the army’s wars against the Indians, soldiers and scouts—such as William F. “Buffalo Bill” Cody—routinely took scalps as trophies.
- During World War II, Marines posted in the Pacific rarely took prisoners. The reason: Japanese soldiers often pretended to surrender––and thus lured American troops into ambushes.
Waffen-SS soldier
- GIs fighting in the European theater generally shot fanatical Waffen-SS soldiers—including those who tried to surrender. This was especially true during the Battle of the Bulge, when Germans dressed in American uniforms stirred panic among Allied forces.
- During the Vietnam war, some “grunts” made necklaces of ears taken from dead Vietcong. Vietnam Correspondent Michael Herr, in his book Dispatches, relates the story of a grunt who was “building his own gook” from actual body parts.
Third: Those who provoke war do not have a right to dictate how their opponents should defend themselves.
- In 1815, just before the Battle of New Orleans, General Andrew Jackson ordered American snipers to harass invading British forces—and especially to take out officers. The British commander angrily protested this “barbarism.” Jackson sent back a message of his own: “You have invaded our country and we will defend ourselves as we see fit.”
- William Tecumseh Sherman, defending the conduct of his men during their legendary “March to the Sea” through Georgia, said: “Those people made war on us, defied and dared us to come south to their country, where they boasted they would kill us and do all manner of horrible things. We accepted their challenge, and now for them to whine and complain of the natural and necessary results is beneath contempt.”
William Tecumseh Sherman
- Israelis have learned to deter Palestinian suicide-bombers by the use of police dogs. Muslims protest because they consider dogs defiled—and defiling—creatures. Islamic terrorists fear that blowing up themselves near a dog risks mingling their blood with that of the dead or wounded animal—thus forfeiting their opportunity to enter Paradise and claim those 72 willing virgins.
- In early November, 2001—two months after 9/11—Muslims throughout the Islamic world demanded that the United States halt its attacks on Taliban forces in Afghanistan out of “respect” for Ramadan, the Islamic month of fasting.
- In short: Islamic “holy warriors” could launch attacks that murdered thousands of innocent men, women and children. But “infidels” were supposed to defend themselves according to Islamic rules.
- The United States wisely refused to bow to this Islamic version of “political correctness.”
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Military, Politics, Social commentary on June 4, 2026 at 12:10 am
Upon being sworn in as the nation’s 46th President on January 20, 2021, Joseph Biden faced the most important decision of his life.
On July 1, 2024, the Republican-dominated Supreme Court conferred almost unlimited criminal prosecution immunity to Presidents. This gave Biden the opportunity—and authority—to save, at least temporarily, the American republic.
Joseph Biden
Instead, he chose to go down in history as the man who presided over the end of the American republic.
To save it, he could have:
- Purged, through arrests and trials, almost the entire treason-conspiring Republican party, starting with Donald Trump, its Fuhrer-in-waiting.
- Done this officially, because the Court had ruled that he (and future Presidents) could only be prosecuted for unofficial acts.
- Done this while he still commanded the full resources of the military and Justice Department.
- Swept clean the Federal courts of all Right-wing, treason-supporting judges—such as Aileen Cannon, who had repeatedly thwarted efforts to try Trump for stealing and hiding almost 300 highly classified government documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate.
- This would have included the six Right-wing Supreme Court Justices who have given future Presidents the legal authority to assassinate rivals, take bribes and/or foment coups.
If Biden had done this, he would have been damned as the first President since Abraham Lincoln to brutally crush political opposition.
But he would also have been hailed for having—at least temporarily—prevented a wholesale Right-wing takeover and dictatorship under Project 2025. Its’ goal: Replace existing federal civil service workers with tens of thousands of radical Right-wingers.
To preside over the end of the American republic, all Biden needed do was what he had done for the previous three years: Nothing.
Example #1: Only on November 18, 2022, did then-Attorney General Merrick Garland appoint Jack Smith Special Counsel to investigate Trump’s attempt to overturn the legitimate results of the 2020 Presidential election and become “President-for-Life.”
This was clearly treason—and Garland should have appointed Smith, at the latest, by mid-2021.
Merrick Garland
Example #2: Trump’s accomplices included 147 members of Congress who voted to invalidate the 2020 Electoral College vote count. A total of 139 served in the House of Representatives, and eight served in the Senate.
To date, not one of these accessories has even been indicted, let alone convicted, for treason.
Arguably, Biden’s worst appointment was Merrick Garland as Attorney General.
In 1961, when Robert F. Kennedy became Attorney General, he moved quickly and forcefully to wage war on America’s organized crime syndicates. Unprecedented numbers of mobsters found themselves facing vigorous FBI investigations, indictments and/or convictions.
By contrast, Garland’s timidity in prosecuting the crimes of Right-wing Republicans served as not only a national embarrassment but a mortal threat to national security.
On May 30, 2024, a Manhattan jury convicted Donald Trump of 34 felonies for falsifying New York business records in 2016. He had done so to conceal his hush money payoff to porn “star” Stormy Daniels for his extramarital tryst with her.
Donald Trump
Even though the Biden administration had nothing to do with the case, Republicans immediately blamed the President—and demanded wholesale prosecutions of the Left.
Right-wing propagandist Charlie Kirk urged Republican prosecutors to get “creative” in bringing charges: “Indict the left, or lose America,” he said on X.
And Trump quickly issued his own calls for “vengeance”:
“Wouldn’t it be terrible to throw the president’s wife and the former secretary of state, think of it, the former secretary of state, but the president’s wife, into jail? Wouldn’t that be a terrible thing? But they want to do it,” Trump said in an interview on Newsmax.
“It’s a terrible, terrible path that they’re leading us to. And it’s very possible that it’s going to have to happen to them.”
Nor did Trump forget former Republican Representative Liz Cheney, who chaired the House 1/6 Committee investigating the Trump-inspired attack on Congress.
“ELIZABETH LYNNE CHENEY IS GUILTY OF TREASON,” Trump posted on his social media website Truth Social. “RETRUTH IF YOU WANT TELEVISED MILITARY TRIBUNALS.”
There could be absolutely no doubt that Trump would pursue “vengeance” against everyone who has ever opposed him if he was re-elected President.
There could also be no doubt that he would remain in office until he died as “President-for-Life.”
When Andrew Jackson, seventh President of the United States from 1829 to 1837, was close to death, he asked his doctor: “What act of my administration will be most severely condemned by future Americans?”
“Perhaps the removal of the bank deposits,” said the doctor—referring to Jackson’s withdrawal of U.S. Government monies from the first Bank of the United States.
“Oh, no,” said Jackson, his eyes blazing. “I can tell you. Posterity will condemn me more because I was persuaded not to hang John C. Calhoun as a traitor than for any other act in my life!”
John C. Calhoun had once been Vice President under Jackson and later a United States Senator from South Carolina. His fiery, pro-slavery rhetoric and radical theories of “nullification” of Federal laws played a major role in bringing on the Civil War (1861-1865).
Like Jackson, Biden had a chance to prevent catastrophe. But through his own natural decency, he brought catastrophe to the country he loved.
Like Jackson, he will be simultaneously praised and damned by future generations of Americans.
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In Entertainment, History, Military, Politics, Social commentary, Uncategorized on December 5, 2025 at 12:11 am
Southerners have long claimed—falsely—that the Civil War was not about slavery.
Steven Spielberg’s Lincoln proves that, from first to last, the cause of the Civil War was slavery.
According to The Destructive War, by Charles Royster, arguments over “states’ rights” or economic conflict between North and South didn’t lead 13 Southern states to withdraw from the Union in 1860-61. It was their demand for “respect” of their “peculiar institution”—i.e., slavery.
Daniel Day-Lewis as “Lincoln”
“The respect Southerners demanded did not consist simply of the states’ sovereignty or of the equal rights of Northern and Southern citizens, including slaveholders’ right to take their chattels into Northern territory.
“It entailed, too, respect for their assertion of the moral superiority of slaveholding society over free society,” writes Royster.
“It was not enough for Southerners to claim equal standing with Northerners; Northerners must acknowledge it. But this was something that the North was increasingly unwilling to do.”
Finally, its citizens dared to elect Abraham Lincoln as President in 1860. Lincoln and his new Republican party damned slavery—and slaveholders—as morally evil, obsolete and ultimately doomed. And they were determined to prevent slavery from spreading any further throughout the country.
Southerners found all of this intolerable.
The British author, Anthony Trollope, explained to his readers:
“It is no light thing to be told daily, by our fellow citizens…that you are guilty of the one damning sin that cannot be forgiven. All this [Southerners] could partly moderate, partly rebuke and partly bear as long as political power remained in their hands.”
It is to Spielberg’s credit that he forces his audience to look directly at the real cause of the bloodiest conflict on the North American continent.
At the heart of Spielberg’s film: Abraham Lincoln (Daniel Day-Lewis) wants to win ratification of what will be the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. An amendment that will forever ban slavery.
But, almost four years into the war, slavery still has powerful friends—in both the North and South.
Many of those friends belong to the House of Representatives, which must ratify the amendment for it to become law. Some are hostile to Lincoln personally. One of them dubs him a dictator: “Abraham Africanus.” Another accuses him of shifting his positions for the sake of expediency.
Other members—white men all—are hostile to the idea of equality between the races.
To them, ending slavery means opening the door to interracial marriage—especially marriage between black men and white women. Perhaps even worse, it means possibly giving blacks—or women—the right to vote.
Members of Lincoln’s own Cabinet—such as Secretary of State William Seward—warn him: You can negotiate the end of the war immediately—if you’ll just let Southerners keep their slaves.
After the amendment wins ratification, Lincoln agrees to meet with a “peace delegation” from the Confederate States of America.
At the top of their list of concerns: If they persuade the seceded states to return to the Union, will those states be allowed to nullify the amendment?
No, says Lincoln. He’s willing to make peace with the South, and on highly generous terms. But not at the cost of allowing slavery to live on.
Too many men—North and South—have died in a conflict whose root cause is slavery. Those lives must count for more than simply reuniting the Union.
The South has lost thousands of men (260,000 is the generally accepted figure for its total casualties) and the war is clearly lost. But for its die-hard leaders, parting with slavery is simply unthinkable.
Like Nazi Germany 80 years into the future, the high command of the South won’t surrender until their armies are too beaten down to fight any more.
The major difference between the defeated South of 1865 and the defeated Germany of 1945, is this: The South was allowed to build a beautiful myth of a glorious “Lost Cause,” epitomized by the Margaret Mitchell novel, Gone With the Wind.
In that telling, dutiful slaves were well-treated by kindly masters. Southern aristocrats wore white suits and their slender-waisted ladies wore long dresses, carried parasols and said “fiddle-dee-dee” to young, handsome suitors.
One million people attended the premier of the movie version in Atlanta on December 15, 1939. The celebration featured stars from the film, receptions, thousands of Confederate flags, false antebellum fronts on stores and homes, and a costume ball.
In keeping with Southern racial tradition, Hattie McDaniel and the other black actors from the film were barred from attending the premiere. Upon learning this, Clark Gable threatened to boycott the event. McDaniel convinced him to attend.
When today’s Southerners fly Confederate flags and speak of “preserving our traditions,” they are actually celebrating their long-banned “peculiar institution.”
By contrast, post-World War II Germany outlawed symbols from the Nazi-era, such as the swastika and the “Heil Hitler” salute, and made Holocaust denial punishable by imprisonment.
America has refused to confront its own shameful past so directly. But Americans can be grateful that Steven Spielberg has had the courage to serve up a long-overdue and much needed lesson in past–and still current—history.
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In Uncategorized on December 4, 2025 at 12:13 am
Steven Spielberg’s 2012 film Lincoln is more than a mesmerizing history lesson.
It’s a timely reminder that racism and repression are not confined to any one period or political party.
At the heart of the film: Abraham Lincoln (Daniel Day-Lewis) wants to win ratification of what will be the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. An amendment that will forever ban slavery.
True, Lincoln, in 1862, had issued the Emancipation Proclamation. This—in theory—freed slaves held in the Confederate states that had seceded from the Union in 1860-61.
But Lincoln regards this as a temporary wartime measure. He fears that once the war ends, the Supreme Court may rule the Proclamation unconstitutional. This might allow Southerners to continue practicing slavery, even after losing the war.
To prevent this, Congress must pass an anti-slavery amendment.
But winning Congressional passage of such an amendment won’t be easy.
The Senate had ratified its passage in 1864. But the amendment must secure approval from the House of Representatives to become law.
And the House is filled with men–there are no women members during the 19th century–who seethe with hostility.
Some are hostile to Lincoln personally. One of them dubs him a dictator—Abraham Africanus.” Another accuses him of shifting his positions for the sake of expediency.
Other members–white men all–are hostile to the idea of equality between the races. To them, ending slavery means opening the door to interracial marriage—especially marriage between black men and white women.
Perhaps even worse, it means possibly giving blacks—or women—the the right to vote.
In fact, the possibility that blacks might win voting rights arises early in the movie. Lincoln is speaking to a couple of black Union soldiers, and one of them is unafraid to voice his discontent. He’s upset that black soldiers are paid less than white ones—and that they’re led only by white officers.
Lincoln says that, in time, maybe this will change. Maybe, in 100 years, he guesses, blacks will get the right to vote.
(To the shame of all Americans, that’s how long it will eventually take. Not until the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 will blacks be guaranteed legal protection against discriminatory voting practices.)
To understand the Congressional debate over the Thirteenth Amendment, it’s necessary to remember this: In Lincoln’s time, the Republicans were the party of progressives.
The party was founded on an anti-slavery platform. Its members were thus reviled as “Black Republicans.” And until the 1960s, the South was solidly Democratic.
Republicans today boast that their party freed blacks—and Democrats were the ones defending the status quo—slavery.
This is true—but misses the point: When a Democratic President—Lyndon B. Johnson—rammed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 through Congress, the South sided with Republicans, who opposed civil rights.
So it’s a matter of mentality, not party. If Republicans became pro-civil rights, most Southerners would turn to a different party.
Watching this re-enactment of the 1865 debate in Lincoln is like watching a 21st-century Presidential campaign. The same mentalities are at work:
-
Those (in this case, slave-owners) who already have a great deal want to gain even more at the expense of others.
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Those (slaves and freed blacks) who have little strive to gain more or at least hang onto what they have.
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Those who defend the privileged wealthy refuse to allow their “social inferiors” to enjoy similar privileges (such as the right to vote).
During the 2012 Presidential race, Republicans tried to bar those likely to vote for President Barack Obama from getting into the voting booth. But their bogus “voter ID” restrictions were struck down in courts across the nation.
Listening to those opposing the amendment, one is reminded of Mitt Romney’s infamous comments about the “47%”:
“Well, there are 47% of the people who will vote for the president no matter what….
“Who are dependent upon government, who believe that—that they are victims, who believe that government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they’re entitled to healthcare, to food, to housing, to you name it. But that’s—it’s an entitlement. And the government should give it to them.”
Put another way: “Who says people have a right to obtain medical care, food and housing? If they can’t inherit unearned wealth the way I did, screw them.”
In the end, it’s Abraham Lincoln who has the final word—and leaves his nation the better for it. Through diplomacy and backroom dealings (trading political offices for votes) he wins passage of the anti-slavery amendment.
The ownership of human chattel is finally an ugly memory of the American past.
The movie closes with a historically-correct tribute to Lincoln’s generosity toward those who opposed him—in Congress and on the battlefield. It occurs during Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address:
“With malice toward none, with charity for all….To bind up the nation’s wounds. To care for him who shall have bourne the battle, and for his widow and his orphan….”
Watching Lincoln, you realize how incredibly lucky America was as a nation to have had such leadership when it was most urgently needed.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Politics, Social commentary on October 17, 2025 at 12:06 am
On September 2, 1964, the FBI launched a full-blown counterintelligence program against the Ku Klux Klan—COINTELPRO–WHITE HATE in FBI-speak.
Tim Weiner, author of Enemies: A History of the FBI, chronicles the methods used by the Bureau:
“WHITE-HATE intensified in the fall of 1964. It involved all the techniques in the FBI’s long-running attack on the Left. Once a week….FBI agents interrogated all known members of the White Knights of the KKK, blaming other Klansmen for being snitches and naming names, sowing deep suspicion among Klan members. Few knew who was an informer and who was not.
A Ku Klux Klan meeting
“The FBI dangled small fortunes before potential Klan informers, offered outright bribes to Klansmen who could serve as double agents inside state and local police forces, planted bugs and wiretaps in Klaverns, carried out black bag jobs to steal membership lists….”
Other tactics included:
- Contacting the news media to publicize arrests and identify Klan leaders;
- Informing the employers of known Klansmen of their employees’ criminal activity, resulting in the firing of untold numbers of them;
- Breaking up the marriages of Klansmen by circulating rumors of their infidelity among their wives.
“When the Klan reached 14,000 in the mid-sixties, I asked to take over the investigation of the Klan,” recalled William C. Sullivan, who headed the FBI’s Domestic Intelligence Division in the 1960s. “When I left the Bureau in 1971, the Klan was down to a completely disorganized 4,300. It was broken.”
William C. Sullivan
According to Neil J. Welch, the retired Special Agent in Charge (SAC) of the FBI’s Buffalo, New York office:
“A Klan Bureau of Investigation (KBI) was created to counter the FBI, and its members placed the wives and children of agents under surveillance, harassing them with taunts and anonymous phone calls,” wrote Welch in his memoir, Inside Hoover’s FBI.
“It was a serious miscalculation. The most dangerous members of the KBI were systematically identified and assigned to agents selected solely because they were comparatively dangerous. The agents had full discretion.
“During the next few months, a number of men previously involved in Klan violence around the state seemed, by remarkable coincidence, to experience misfortune. Some disappeared from the area. Some were forced to leave Mississippi for health reasons. A few took unplanned trips to places like Mexico and seemed to lose all interest in the Klan upon their return.”
Under a Democratic President, a similar effort, focusing on Right-wing terrorism, could include the following:
- The FBI’s designating Right-wing political and terrorist groups as the Nation’s #1 enemy.
- Reviving the FBI’s legendary COINTELPRO (“Counterintelligence Program”) that destroyed the Ku Klux Klan in the late 1960s. Among the methods that can be used:
- Turning the Bureau’s powerful arsenal—bugs, wiretaps, informants, SWAT teams—on them.
- Buying the cooperation of informants within Right-wing organizations.
- Conducting “black bag jobs” to steal membership lists of of Right-wing organizations.
- Breaking up the marriages of prominent Right-wingers by circulating rumors of their infidelity among their wives.
- Informing the employers of known Right-wing terrorists of their employees’ criminal activity, resulting in the firing of untold numbers of them.
- Contacting the news media to publicize the arrests of prominent Right-wing leaders.
- When Right-wing terrorists target Federal law enforcement agents and/or their families for harassment or worse, they can be targeted for similar intimidation or removal.
FBI SWAT member
A revised COINTELPRO could be supplemented by the following:
- Creating tip hotlines for reporting illegal Right-wing activities—and offering rewards for information that leads to arrests.
- Prosecuting militia groups for violating Federal firearms laws.
- Treating calls for the murder of members of Congress—as Georgia Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene has done-–as felonies punishable by lengthy imprisonment.
- Prosecuting Right-wing leaders involved in the treasonous assault on the United States Capitol Building.
- Prosecuting as “accessories to treason” all those Republican members of Congress who stoked Right-wing anger by lying that the 2020 Presidential election had been stolen from Donald Trump, although every objective news source proved he had lost.
- Directing the Treasury Department’s Terrorist Finance Tracking Program (TFTP) at fundamentalist Christian churches that finance Right-wing terrorism—just as it halts the financing of Islamic terrorist groups by Islamic organizations.
- Using drones, planes and/or helicopters to provide security against similar Right-wing terror demonstrations—especially in Washington, D.C.
- Using the Federal Communications Commission to ban Fox News—the Nation’s #1 Right-wing propaganda network—from representing itself as a legitimate news network, and requiring that its stories carry labels warning viewers: “This is Right-wing propaganda, NOT news.”
- Encouraging victims of Right-wing hate-speech to file libel/slander lawsuits against their abusers—such as the parents of murdered children at Sandy Hook Elementary School successfully did against Alex Jones.
- Using Federal anti-terrorist laws to arrest, prosecute and imprison Right-wingers who openly carry firearms and threaten violence, even if states allow such display of firearms.
- Seizing the assets of individuals and organizations found guilty of Right-wing terrorism offenses.
When you are constantly looking over your shoulder, your enemies are winning. When your enemies are constantly looking over their shoulder, you are winning.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Politics, Social commentary on October 16, 2025 at 12:10 am
In 2022, Donald Trump’s followers did what even the Mafia had never dared: Threaten the lives of FBI agents and openly challenge the authority of the Justice Department.
On August 8, 2022, the FBI, under a search warrant issued by the Justice Department, seized 11 sets of classified documents from the former President’s home at Mar-a-Lago. These included four sets that were classified as “top secret,” according to the unsealed search warrant.
Trump’s legions of fanatical Right-wing followers then vented their fury at a wide range of their self-declared enemies: President Jose[h Biden, Democrats, Attorney General Merrick Garland, the Justice Department—-and especially the FBI.
On August 12, 2022, the FBI and Department of Homeland Security [DHS] issued a joint Intelligence bulletin warning of the increased threats aimed at federal law enforcement agencies.
FBI seal
“Since 8 August 2022, the FBI and DHS have identified multiple articulated threats and calls for the targeted killing of judicial, law enforcement, and government officials associated with the Palm Beach search, including the federal judge who approved the Palm Beach search warrant.
“The FBI and DHS have also observed the personal identifying information of possible targets of violence, such as home addresses and identification of family members, disseminated online as additional targets.”
“These threats are occurring primarily online and across multiple platforms, including social media sites, web forums, video sharing platforms, and image boards. The FBI and DHS would like to ensure that law enforcement, court, and government personnel are aware of the range of threats and criminal and violent incidents.
“The FBI and DHS have observed an increase in violent threats posted on social media against federal officials and facilities, including a threat to place a so-called dirty bomb in front of FBI Headquarters and issuing general calls for ‘civil war’ and ‘armed rebellion.'”
Even the Mafia—with one or two exceptions—never threatened the lives of FBI agents. And when individual mobsters did, they found the consequences frightening.
In April, 1963, four New York mobsters knocked FBI agent John Foley to the ground, and then severely beat and kicked him. Foley had been conducting surveillance at the Brooklyn funeral of Carmine “The Doctor” Lombardozzi, a capo in the Gambino Mafia Family.
The FBI retaliated by launching an all-out war against the Gambinos. Agents leaned on the cartel’s boss, underboss, counselor and lieutenants. The Bureau also intensified the use of illegal electronic surveillance (wiretaps and hidden microphones) against the mobsters.
Map of Mafia families
Angelo Bruno, the boss of the Philadelphia crime syndicate, unwittingly informed a hidden microphone about how the FBI brutally drove home the message to “boss of all bosses” Carlo Gambino:
BRUNO: “They [the FBI] went to Carlo and named all his capos [lieutenants] to him. The FBI asked him: “Did you change the laws in your family, that you could hit FBI men, punch and kick them? Well, this is the test—that if you change the laws, and now you are going to hit FBI men, every time we pick up one of your people we are going to break their heads for them.’
“And, really, they picked up our guy, they almost killed him, the FBI. They don’t do that, you know. But they picked up one of his fellows and crippled him. They said, ‘This is an example. Now, the next time anyone lays a hand on an FBI man, that’s just a warning. There’s nothing else we have got to tell you.'”
Word traveled quickly through the nationwide organized crime network—and its leaders decreed there should be no further assaults on FBI agents.
Under a Democratic President, the FBI could be ordered to wage war on the radical Right. And it could be done the same way the FBI destroyed the Ku Klux Klan in the mid-1960s.
Klansmen had shot, lynched and bombed their way across the Deep South, especially in Alabama and Mississippi. Many Southern sheriffs and police chiefs were Klan sympathizers, if not outright members and accomplices.
On June 21, 1964, three civil rights workers disappeared in Philadelphia, Mississippi.
President Lyndon B. Johnson called J. Edgar Hoover, the legendary director of the FBI, and ordered an all-out investigation: “I want you to have the same kind of Intelligence [on the Klan] that you have on the communists.”
Poster for missing civil rights workers
For decades, Hoover had refused to tackle white hate groups. And, in truth, no President had been willing to give him the order to do so. But now a President had given him such an order.
In August, the FBI uncovered the bodies of the three missing civil rights activists—Michael Schwerner, Andrew Goodman and James Chaney.
On September 2, 1964, the Bureau launched a full-blown counterintelligence program against the Klan—COINTELPRO–WHITE HATE in FBI-speak.
Tim Weiner, author of Enemies: A History of the FBI, chronicles the methods used by the Bureau:
“WHITE-HATE intensified in the fall of 1964. It involved all the techniques in the FBI’s long-running attack on the Left. Once a week….FBI agents interrogated all known members of the White Knights of the KKK, blaming other Klansmen for being snitches and naming names, sowing deep suspicion among Klan members. Few knew who was an informer and who was not.”
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In Bureaucracy, History, Military, Politics, Social commentary on September 3, 2025 at 12:09 am
It’s commonplace to read about the role sex plays in motivating behavior. But the power of ego to determine history is often ignored.
Consider the role that ego played in igniting the American Civil War (1861 – 1865).
According to The Destructive War, by Charles Royster, it wasn’t the cause of “states’ rights” that led 11 Southern states to withdraw from the Union in 1860-61. It was their demand for “respect,” which, in reality, translates into “e-g-o.”
“The respect Southerners demanded did not consist simply of the states’ sovereignty or of the equal rights of Northern and Southern citizens, including slaveholders’ right to take their chattels into Northern territory.
“It entailed, too, respect for their assertion of the moral superiority of slaveholding society over free society,” writes Royster.
It was not enough for Southerners to claim equal standing with Northerners; Northerners must acknowledge it. But this was something that the North was less and less willing to do.
Finally, its citizens dared to elect Abraham Lincoln as President in 1860.
Abraham Lincoln
Lincoln and his new Republican party damned slavery—and slaveholders—as morally evil, obsolete and ultimately doomed. And they were determined to prevent slavery from spreading any further throughout the country.
Southerners found all of this intolerable.
The British author, Anthony Trollope, explained to his readers: “It is no light thing to be told daily, by our fellow citizens…that you are guilty of the one damning sin that cannot be forgiven.
“All this [Southerners] could partly moderate, partly rebuke and partly bear as long as political power remained in their hands. But they have gradually felt that this was going, and were prepared to cut the rope and run as soon as it was gone.”
Only 10% of Southerners owned slaves. The other 90% of the population “had no dog in this fight,” as Southerners liked to say.
Yet they so admired and aspired to be like their “gentleman betters” that they threw in their lot with them.
There were some Southerners who could see what was coming—and vainly warned their fellow citizens against it.
One of these was Sam Houston, the man who had won Texas independence at the 1836 battle of San Jacinto and later served as that state’s governor.
Sam Houston
On April 19, 1860, addressing a crowd in Galveston, he said: “Let me tell you what is coming. After the sacrifice of countless millions of treasure and hundreds of thousands of lives, you may win Southern independence if God be not against you.
“But I doubt it. I tell you that, while I believe with you in the doctrine of states’ rights, the North is determined to preserve this Union. They are not a fiery, impulsive people as you are, for they live in colder climates.
“But when they begin to move in a given direction, they move with the steady momentum and perseverance of a mighty avalanche; and what I fear is, they will overwhelm the South.”
Four years later, on April 9, 1865, Houston’s warning became history.
Confederate General Robert E. Lee surrendered the Army of Northern Virginia to Union General Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox Courthouse.
Huge sections of the South had been laid waste by Union troops and more than 258,000 Southerners had been killed.
And slavery, the mainstay of Southern plantation life, had been ended forever.
The South had paid an expensive price for its fixation on ego.
Even more proved at risk a century later, when President John F. Kennedy faced off with Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev.
John F. Kennedy
In August, 1961, faced with the embarrassment of East Berliners fleeing by the thousands into West Germany, the Soviet leader erected the infamous Berlin Wall, sealing off East and West Berlin.
Khrushchev pressed his advantage, threatening Kennedy with nuclear war unless the Americans abandoned their protection of West Berlin.
In April, Kennedy had been humiliated at the Bay of Pigs when a CIA-sponsored invasion failed to overthrow the Cuba’s Fidel Castro. So he was already on the defensive when he and Khrushchev met in Vienna.
Kennedy’s reaction: “If Khrushchev wants to rub my nose in the dirt, it’s all over.”
In short: Kennedy was prepared to incinerate the planet if he felt his almighty ego was about to get smacked.
Nuclear missile in silo
What has proved true for states and nations proves equally true for those leading every other type of institution.
Although most people like to believe they are guided by rationality and morality, all-too-often, what truly decides the course of events is their ego.
For pre-Civil War Southerners, it meant demanding that “Yankees” show respect for slave-owning society. Otherwise, they would leave the Union.
For Kennedy, it meant playing a game of “chicken,” backed up with nuclear missiles, to show Khrushchev who Numero Uno really was.
And during the Cuban Missile Crisis, in October, 1962, humankind almost disappeared as Kennedy set out to make Khrushchev “blink.”
It is well to keep these lessons from history in mind when choosing political leaders—and when making our own major decisions.
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WHY THE POOR VOTE REPUBLICAN: PART TWO (END)
In Bureaucracy, Business, History, Medical, Politics, Social commentary on September 18, 2026 at 12:08 amRepublicans have long tried to prevent or eliminate programs that aid the poor and middle-class, including:
So why are so many poor Americans now flocking to this party’s banner?
Two reasons: Racism and greed. There are historical parallels for both.
First, race:
In 1999, historian Victor Davis Hanson noted the huge gap in wealth between the aristocratic, slave-owning minority of the pre-Civil War South and the vast majority of poor white Southerners.
Victor Davis Hanson
“Before the war in the counties Sherman would later ruin, the top 10% of the landowners controlled 40% of the assessed wealth.”
In contrast, “more than half of those who were lucky enough to own any property at all still possessed less than 15% of the area’s valuation.”
So Hanson asked: “Why did the millions of poor whites of the Confederacy fight at all?”
He supplied the answer in his brilliant work on military history, The Soul of Battle: From Ancient Times to the Present Day, How Three Great Liberators Vanquished Tyranny.
One of those liberators was General William Tecumseh Sherman, who led 62,000 Union troops in a victorious “March to the Sea” through the Confederacy in 1864.
So why did so many poor Southern whites literally lay down their lives for the wealthy planter class, which despised them?
According to Hanson: “Behind the entire social fabric of the South lay slavery.
“If slavery eroded the economic position of the poor free citizens, if slavery encouraged a society of haves and have-nots…then it alone offered one promise to the free white man—poor, ignorant and dispirited—that he was at least not black and not a slave.”
And the planter class and its allies in government easily fobbed off their poor white countrymen with cheap flattery. Said Georgia Governor Joseph Brown:
“Among us the poor white laborer is respected as an equal. His family is treated with kindness, consideration, and respect. He does not belong to the menial class. The negro is in no sense his equal. He belongs to the only true aristocracy, the race of white men.”
Arlington House and plantation, former home of Robert E. Lee
Similarly, poor whites now flock to the Republican Party—which holds them in equal contempt—in large part to protest the 2008 election of the first black President of the United States.
According to a Pew Research Center study released on July 22, 2011: “Notably, the GOP gains have occurred only among white voters; a 2-point Republican edge among whites in 2008 (46% to 44%) has widened to a 13-point lead today (52% to 39%).”
Since the 1960s, Republicans have pursued a campaign policy of “divide and rule”—divide the nation along racial lines and reap the benefits at election time.
Thus, in voting Republican, many of these poor whites believe they are “striking a blow for the white race.”
And they can do so in a more socially acceptable way than joining a certified hate group such as the American Nazi Party or Ku Klux Klan.
Since 2015, openly racist groups such as the Klan and the American Nazi Party have flocked to the banner of Presidential candidate mogul Donald Trump. By enthusiastically courting their support, the real estate mogul has made it possible for Republican candidates to openly display their own racism.
Now greed:
In the hit play, 1776, on the creation and signing of the Declaration of Independence, there is a telling exchange between John Dickinson and John Hancock. It comes during the song, “Cool, Cool, Considerate Men.”
Dickinson, the delegate from Pennsylvania, urges Hancock, president of the Second Continental Congress, “to join us in our minuet.”
By “us” he means his fellow conservatives who fear losing their property and exalted status by supporting American independence from Great Britain.
John Dickinson
Hancock declines, saying: “Fortunately, there are not enough men of property in America to dictate policy.”
To which Dickinson replies: “Perhaps not. But don’t forget that most men with nothing would rather protect the possibility of becoming rich than face the reality of being poor. And that is why they will follow us.”
Today, poor whites generally identify with the CEOs of powerful corporations. They believe the Republican gospel that they can attain such wealth—if only the government will “get out of my way.”
They forget—or ignore–the truth that government, for all its imperfections, is sometimes all that stands between them and a wide range of predators.
In return, the CEOs despise them as the privileged have always despised their social and economic “inferiors.”
Unless the Democratic Party can find ways to directly address these bitter, Politically Incorrect truths, it will continue its decline into insignificance.
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