Plantation America

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Plantation America

How the South rose again

By Romantic Heretic

Politics • June 2012 • Views: 2,636

An interesting article on the two major elites of America, their cultural differences and their conflicts.

Recent Pages by Romantic Heretic:
Why Capitalism Needs Socialism to Survive 'Blue Lies' May Explain Why Trump Doesn't Lose Support The Psychological Explanation for the Age of Trump Trump Is the Champion of the Shallow State Opinion: We Have to Stop Playing Into the Alt-Right's Hands

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27 comments

aagcobb Sat, Jun 30, 2012 11:49:46am

Fascinating and frightening article. I continue to be astonished at how middle and lower class whites identify with the 1% and vote against their self-interest.

Dark_Falcon Sat, Jun 30, 2012 4:22:24pm

One big anti-Southern hit piece. It's author may proceed to take a long walk off a short pier.

Dark_Falcon Sat, Jun 30, 2012 6:32:02pm

I'm going to use two paragraphs of this vile screed to show just how dishonest and hateful it is. All bolding is mine:

From its origins in the fever swamps of the lowland south, the worldview of the old Southern aristocracy can now be found nationwide. Buttressed by the arguments of Ayn Rand -- who updated the ancient slaveholder ethic for the modern age -- it has been exported to every corner of the culture, infected most of our other elite communities and killed off all but the very last vestiges of noblesse oblige.

Ayn Rand's Objectivism is a very wrong-headed philosophy, but it takes an utterly dishonest reading of her to say that she "updated the ancient slaveholder ethic for the modern age". If anything, her biggest heroes in The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged in no way express the idea that their success should be attributed to anything but their own ability, unlike the aristocrats of the Old South. Nothing in either book can be read as Rand's support of hereditary aristocracy. Thus it may be safely said that this paragraph cannot stand because part of its argument is an outright lie.

It's not an overstatement to say that we're now living in Plantation America. As Lind points out: to the horror of his Yankee father, George W. Bush proceeded to run the country exactly like Woodard's description of a Barbadian slavelord. And Barack Obama has done almost nothing to roll this victory back. We're now living in an America where rampant inequality is accepted, and even celebrated.

To say that George W. Bush, a modest-self effacing man who has never in his political career indulged in naked self-aggrandizement, acted as a "slavelord" while he was president can only be the product of a severe case of Bush Derangement Syndrome. George W. Bush is far more the product of the 'Yankee' mentality than any ideals from the South.

Torture and extrajudicial killing have been reinstated, with no due process required.

One might concede the point on torture, but people who scream about "extrajudicial killing" fail to offer a viable alternative. We cannot simply defend ourselves against organized terrorism, we have to hit back and must do so effectively. Ms. Robinson should propose an alternative way to kill or cature terrorist leaders, until then she's just whining.

Dark_Falcon Sat, Jun 30, 2012 7:17:53pm

re: #3 Dark_Falcon

Why the downding, PS? I was addressing specific points made by the author of the piece.

Interesting Times Sat, Jun 30, 2012 7:38:05pm

re: #4 Dark_Falcon

Why the downding, PS? I was addressing specific points made by the author of the piece.

Because I get exasperated by the "can't see the forest for the trees" method of argument you use in cases like this, i.e. cherry-picking two points and subjecting them to the most narrow interpretation imaginable while failing to see the big picture.

For example, how do you get "support of hereditary aristocracy" from the author's Ayn Rand's comments? To me, the natural interpretation is ditching old-style justifications for slavery (like hereditary aristocracy) and substituting something more "modern", like "captains of industry" having the right to lord it over "lesser" types, who should know and accept their natural place.

And how is this paragraph, immediately following one that you quoted, in any way inaccurate?

The wealthy and powerful are free to abuse employees, break laws, destroy the commons, and crash the economy -- without ever being held to account.

That's what the piece is really about. I've never seen you address or even acknowledge this world-destroying problem, no matter how much evidence is supplied.

Dark_Falcon Sat, Jun 30, 2012 8:04:20pm

re: #5 Interesting Times

Because I get exasperated by the "can't see the forest for the trees" method of argument you use in cases like this, i.e. cherry-picking two points and subjecting them to the most narrow interpretation imaginable while failing to see the big picture.

For example, how do you get "support of hereditary aristocracy" from the author's Ayn Rand's comments? To me, the natural interpretation is ditching old-style justifications for slavery (like hereditary aristocracy) and substituting something more "modern", like "captains of industry" having the right to lord it over "lesser" types, who should know and accept their natural place.

And how is this paragraph, immediately following one that you quoted, in any way inaccurate?

That's what the piece is really about. I've never seen you address or even acknowledge this world-destroying problem, no matter how much evidence is supplied.

But Rand was a supporter of the idea of people advancing by their own merit, nor did she believe that "prime movers" should be able to break contracts they had agreed to. Neither of those two things (advancement by merit and redress in case of double-cross) were things the slaveholders of old favored. The hereditary component of the planter class cannot be separated from their outlook on life. That hereditary holding of position is not something the Republican party has ever believed in. Thus I again conclude that Ms. robinson is letting her political preferences blind her to reality.

Interesting Times Sat, Jun 30, 2012 8:07:14pm

re: #6 Dark_Falcon

Thus I again conclude that Ms. robinson is letting her political preferences blind her to reality.

Pot-kettle-black. And again you ignore the big picture.

Dark_Falcon Sat, Jun 30, 2012 8:10:33pm

re: #7 Interesting Times

Pot-kettle-black. And again you ignore the big picture.

No, sir! She expressly linking the aristocracy of the Antebellum South with today's conservatives, in fact that is the main thrust of the whole article. But at no point does she mention the differences between the two nor does she do a good job drawing the linkages.

Interesting Times Sat, Jun 30, 2012 8:19:13pm

They countered Yankee hegemony by building their own universities, grooming their own leaders and creating their own media. By the 1990s, they were staging the RINO hunts that drove the last Republican moderates (almost all of them Yankees, by either geography or cultural background) and the meritocratic order they represented to total extinction within the GOP. A decade later, the Tea Party became the voice of the unleashed id of the old Southern order, bringing it forward into the 21st century with its full measure of selfishness, racism, superstition, and brutality intact.

Dark_Falcon Sat, Jun 30, 2012 8:38:20pm

re: #9 Interesting Times

I hear that last line, but I do not agree with it.

Moreover, I'd argue that the 'Yankee' areas of the Northeast had become weak in heart after World War II, no longer willing to do what was needed to maintain America's independence against the Soviet threat. Indeed, there were a few such Yankees like Alger Hiss who were prepared to betray their country and burn America's tradition of freedom to the ground. The northeast also stopped taking effective action to try to uplift the poor, and instituted a massive but poorly designed welfare expansion that ballooned both the government and the national debt while making the poverty that still existed worse by fostering the growth of illegitimacy. Lastly, but especially damningly, far too many northeastern elites turned against the idea of keeping order, thus condemning the poor and middle class (and sometimes even the rich) to suffer under an onslaught of crime. And when men like Rudy Guliani and William Bratton finally took effective action against that crime, people like Ms. Robinson attacked them and tyrants and fascists.

Sara Robinson would likely assign William Bratton's methods of policing to the "brutal South", but they reduced violence sharply in both New York City and Los Angeles and ultimately those policies lead to far fewer poor people being the victims of violence. In New York, they ultimately caused a massive fall in people being shot by the police and so worked to the benefit of even crime-prone.

Prideful, Arrogant Marriage Equality Advocate Sat, Jun 30, 2012 9:32:10pm

re: #10 Dark_Falcon

I am not sure how i feel about your assessment of the south. My Father who was born before the depression and my grandparents who were born in the late 1800's had a closer view of the south and believe me when i tell you that the level of poverty, particularly in the south has gotten MUCH MUCH better since the introduction of welfare. Crime is another area i am not sure i agree with you on because the violent, ignorant, exploitative character that was celebrated in the south was one of the biggest reasons he left after he turned 16, and took his family, brothers and sisters with him. He could not get over the law and order of the North and how you could actually trust authority figures more often than not! Whereas in the south you could not trust anyone but your own family.

As far as your Soviet-weak-north assertion, i am not sure what that is even suppose to mean. But i think i might blow your mind if you knew how many white southerners were sympathetic to communism during the turn of the century, including my Grandfather for precisely the reason that welfare and all the other public works were eventually instituted for. They were sympathetic to it because they were desperate and powerless to the powerful southern institutions that were exploiting them and had been exploiting them, to the breaking point.

Obdicut Sat, Jun 30, 2012 10:04:39pm

re: #10 Dark_Falcon

Moreover, I'd argue that the 'Yankee' areas of the Northeast had become weak in heart after World War II, no longer willing to do what was needed to maintain America's independence against the Soviet threat.

Fuck you for impugning the patriotism of an entire region, including my grandfather in the Merchant Marine.

The northeast also stopped taking effective action to try to uplift the poor, and instituted a massive but poorly designed welfare expansion that ballooned both the government and the national debt while making the poverty that still existed worse by fostering the growth of illegitimacy.

The welfare expansion did not foster the growth of illegitimacy, and I have no clue where this goddamn idea got started from. It's an article of faith, apparently, and it's a really fucking misogynistic one, too.

Lastly, but especially damningly, far too many northeastern elites turned against the idea of keeping order, thus condemning the poor and middle class (and sometimes even the rich) to suffer under an onslaught of crime.

No fucking clue what this is about, either.

Dark, this sounds like something I could have read on Free Republic. It condemns with a broad brush, makes bald assertions without even the shred of proof, and is misogynistic as hell.

Think about why the fuck you said this dumb shit. My respect for you just dropped significantly.

wheat-dogg Sun, Jul 1, 2012 6:29:50am

I can't remember which book I read long, long ago in AP American History, but some of what is in this Alternet piece reminds me of what I read back then. There were really two USAs, long before the Civil War. And the radically different worldviews, politics, economies, and religious perspectives made founding the nation a big headache. The northerners had to compromise on many things, not the least of which was slavery and the whole 3/5 of person thing, to produce a document that all 13 colonies would ratify.

I'm from the North (Long Island, yo!) but I've lived out West and in a border state (Kentucky), so I'd like to think I've sampled different "flavors" of America. We'd like to imagine there is one "American culture," but it just ain't so. People just *act* differently in LI, Wyoming and Kentucky. Religion in the last two plays a much deeper role in daily life than it does on LI (unless you're an observant Jew), and there's more of the "who's your family?" question in KY and WY.

Romantic Heretic Sun, Jul 1, 2012 6:46:06am

As my favourite writer points out the United States is:

Several completely separate countries unified only by two mechanisms: an internal market, gigantic, rich and varied enough to make foreign markets of little importance; and a mythology so brilliant and pure that it can never interfere with real life.

He also notes it is:

A profoundly divided nation destined for civil war.

This is the inescapable result of building a nation on the enslavement of one part by another. Those who see society as a living organism cannot help seeing organized mass slavery as a self-inflicted wound that can never heal. The larger and stronger the body grows the more it will feel pain and bleed. Humans learn to live with agony and violence. We are a species as adaptable as rats. But the violence of America must be in some way the inheritance of its economic creation.

From what I've seen of America I can see his points. As near as I can tell there's only one thing all Americans share in common. They love their cars.

Dark_Falcon Sun, Jul 1, 2012 7:08:22am

re: #12 Obdicut

Fuck you for impugning the patriotism of an entire region, including my grandfather in the Merchant Marine.

If you're going to say that, then you should extend any condemnation to Sarah Robinson, as her attack on the South is far more damning than anything I've said and on worse ground factually. I'll go on to say that many in the Northeast are still firm of heart, and that the elites that I criticize had no dishonorable intentions, save for the relatively few traitors like Hiss. But they came to be unwilling to fund the military needed to face down the USSR, favoring instead negotiations whose failure they would never attribute to Soviet belligerence.

By her words, Sara Robinson insulted my mother and her entire family, who hail from the region of Asheville, North Carolina. I'm not Rush Limbaugh and will not simply go on a nasty tirade against a woman. But I did find this article personally insulting, and that makes me extremely hostile to it.

And I will modify my words regarding the Northeast as follows: Many of the elites in the Northeast became weak of heart, favoring 'soft' policies whose defects they were unwilling to admit, which left the US weakened against Soviet aggression.

HappyWarrior Sun, Jul 1, 2012 8:57:08am

One thing, I'd like to point out about southern history is that voter suppression wasn't merely used on blacks but also poor whites. The poll taxes were used as a means not just to keep blacks from voting but also poor whites who were disgusted with the policies often done by the state elites which favored them over the vast majority. There were a couple of instances when poor whites and poor blacks teamed together politically but the southern elites had a way of exploiting racial hostilities too. I'm not saying the South is evil but the South's history to me as a Virginian is something that I think that southerners and non southerners alike need to understand if we are to avoid the mistakes of the past. It still jars me up to think that the Emmett Till case or the Mississippi 3 case happened in my father's lifetime.

Prideful, Arrogant Marriage Equality Advocate Sun, Jul 1, 2012 9:03:04am

re: #15 Dark_Falcon

Was your Mother and her family a southern elite?
I don't recall the southern elites saving us from communism. I missed that.

HappyWarrior Sun, Jul 1, 2012 9:05:59am

[Link: en.wikipedia.org...]
This is a very interesting party that not too many even here in Virginia know about. I don't know about other states though.

aagcobb Sun, Jul 1, 2012 11:05:36am

Many of the elites in the Northeast became weak of heart, favoring 'soft' policies whose defects they were unwilling to admit, which left the US weakened against Soviet aggression.

As evidenced by the ultimate conquest of the globe by Soviet Marxism./ Where do you get revisionist crap like this, Fox News or David Barton? If anything, the Northeastern Elites who came to power with JFK were more hawkish than the Republicans, running on an imaginary missile gap. If JFK hadn't had more sense than his hawkish Northeastern elite advisors, we would've had WWIII in 1962, and they helped suck us into the Vietnam quagmire.

Genshed Sun, Jul 1, 2012 2:29:43pm

Many of us (by which I mean generally those to the left of Barry Goldwater) have an impression that the long-term goal of the current power elite (mostly, but not entirely, delineated by the possession of capital and/or political influence) is a two tier society, consisting of a resource and information rich elite, in control of mostly everything, and a resource and information poor plebeian class, controlled in mostly everything.

If this does NOT sound like the antebellum South to you, you read very different history books in school than I did.

There's a line in Voltaire's "Candide", when the title character is in Paraguay. A local explains the local system to him: 'The rulers own everything, and the people own everything else.' To me, that is not a system under which I would like to live, nor have my children live under.

Tiny Alien Kitties are Watching You Sun, Jul 1, 2012 5:26:46pm

re: #15 Dark_Falcon

If you're going to say that, then you should extend any condemnation to Sarah Robinson, as her attack on the South is far more damning than anything I've said and on worse ground factually. I'll go on to say that many in the Northeast are still firm of heart, and that the elites that I criticize had no dishonorable intentions, save for the relatively few traitors like Hiss. But they came to be unwilling to fund the military needed to face down the USSR, favoring instead negotiations whose failure they would never attribute to Soviet belligerence.

By her words, Sara Robinson insulted my mother and her entire family, who hail from the region of Asheville, North Carolina. I'm not Rush Limbaugh and will not simply go on a nasty tirade against a woman. But I did find this article personally insulting, and that makes me extremely hostile to it.

And I will modify my words regarding the Northeast as follows: Many of the elites in the Northeast became weak of heart, favoring 'soft' policies whose defects they were unwilling to admit, which left the US weakened against Soviet aggression.

We here in the South of course realized the rot that had overtaken the Northern elite and stolen their will to face down our enemies from a belligerent and bullying position of strength. It is absolutely vital that every single Republican President start at least one war with a foreign country and preferably two, only then will our enemies fear us properly!
(Not to mention all the billions that flow to us thru the defense contractors)

Why if Reagan had not cut capital gains taxes while raising taxes on the middle class and the poor and still "somehow" manage to much more than double the federal deficit during his tenure due to spending on his "defense initiatives" the Soviet Union might have perhaps lasted three or four years longer before it went bankrupt while trying to match our insane armed forces build-up. (Only Reagan could think up spending billions to refurbish WW-II Battleships that had been rusting away in dockyards for thirty years and put them to sea again. If the Soviets hadn't been so paranoid about Reagan they would have simply laughed at the wasted expense/effort.)

I recommend that if Romney gets elected we find some excuse or pretext to go to war with Germany again, it will be just like the good old days of WW-II that all real red blooded Americans long for and also have the benefit of destroying Europes one richly stable and strong economy. Then we just have to figure out how to destroy China without taking unacceptable loses!

Then we will finally be more comfortable inside while being smug and superior to the rest of the world, because maybe then we will be?

///

Tiny Alien Kitties are Watching You Sun, Jul 1, 2012 5:36:10pm

re: #21 Tiny Alien Kitties are Watching You

Although come to think of it we might just also have to do something about Argentina and Brazil before too much longer, can't let them think they can catch up to us after all...

///

Destro Sun, Jul 1, 2012 8:45:26pm

This is something a lot of people have been noticing. The GOP has been taken over by the old Dixie-crats. One of the memes I notice that I feel has its origins in the old Dixie-crat Southern mindsets I see spreading out to the white-base of the modern GOP is "knowing your place". The whole Rick Santorum decrying the notion of people bettering themselves by getting a higher education and thus raising themselves to another socio-economic status is part of that. Now I know people reading this will point out the the GOP is all about people getting rich and rising up in the social class but that is the public face of the GOP. Deep down the right wing radio and Internet forums the real heated exchanges have to do with the white middle class (and it seems even the GOP poor whites think they are part of the upper middle class) are bat shit crazy afraid of losing their place in America.

Read all the articles by Pat Buchanan (yes, I know he left the GOP and all) about the demographic loss of whites, etc. There are other examples by mainstream GOPers as well about how they feel they are losing their place at the top of the American racial class structure.

Mostly sane, most of the time. Sun, Jul 1, 2012 9:23:59pm

Apparently the US stops at the Mississippi river.

What about the Pioneer/frontier ethos? It's what I was raised on, having had nothing but pioneer ancestors, and it matches neither description.

Interesting Times Sun, Jul 1, 2012 10:07:22pm

re: #24 Mostly sane, most of the time.

What about the Pioneer/frontier ethos? It's what I was raised on, having had nothing but pioneer ancestors, and it matches neither description.

The author was focused on competing views amongst the rich elites battling for control of the country. Not sure if "pioneer ethos" fits in to that mold (though you've certainly had said ethos exploited for propaganda purposes by rich, pampered, Ayn-Rand acolytes who, deprived of "the help", likely wouldn't do so well on an Oregon-trail type thing).

Romantic Heretic Mon, Jul 2, 2012 5:47:26am

In my opinion the frontier ethos is partly to blame for the souring of American politics.

There has always been a 'we hate government' movement in America. It has always lived at the frontier of America.

But the government always ended up moving west and when it does the anti-government crowd moved west too. But there is no frontier any more. I believe this is why the 'anti-government' crowd has wandered so far to the Right.

In an aristocratic society such as that represented by the Southern elite's views the attitude towards those beneath them is, "as long as you do why you're told and you don't challenge our power you can do whatever you want to one another."

This appeals to people whose worldview is that of the American Frontier. Such a society means that as long as they don't step on the wrong toes they can pretty much do what they want to who they want. The American West does have a tradition of rugged independence, but it also has a tradition of violence, cruelty and even ethnic cleansing.

boxhead Mon, Jul 2, 2012 6:07:24am

re: #26 Romantic Heretic

But the South was not frontier. Rural yes, but not living in the wild where rugged individualism was a requirement. And using the word "blame" I think is unnecessary. That implies fault. Without going into the morals of westward expansion, those traits made it possible. The South, on the other hand, had different morals that put them at odds with the rest of the Country.

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