Before I start let me say that I am not a fan of “Ancestory.”
I have never worn a pair of lederhosen and the cold air that would flow over my
more tender parts caused by wearing a kilt leads me to wonder about the
judgment of grown men who prance around explaining they were confused about who
their ancestors were but have now been saved by the magic of genetic analysis.
Indeed.
The best I can tell, based on family stories, is that I have
ancestors. Quite a few in fact. Since a generation, the average time it takes
to produce children, is about 25 years, then if I go back 250 years, 10
generations, then I have 2048 great, great, great, etc., grandparents.
And since I don’t have three eyes and twitch when I walk I
believe it was a diverse group.
On a more recent note the story is that one of my great
granddaddies fought for the South, was wounded in the Battle of Corinth,
captured, escaped, married a Indian woman and lived more or less happily ever
after. There’s more to it but since I foresee your eyes slamming shut I will
spare you the details.
But one of the more interesting things is that he was born
and raised on a small farm in western Kentucky and, like some 90 plus percent
of Confederate fighters owned no slaves. Given that standing up and shooting at
each other using 58 caliber rifles, dying of diseases, starving on short
rations, freezing in the cold and other assorted ways of dying is quite nasty,
the question is, “Why in the world would the 90% do this for the 10%?”
That question has been asked for years by the more thoughtful
among us. My great grandfather had no “skin in the game” so why did he fight?
Let me ask you people who claim it was to keep slaves.
Really? He had no slaves. The answer is more complex than “slavery.”
We can start with why did the North Vietnam peasant fight to
install communism? Why did the average German fight to keep Hitler in power.
Why did the Germanic tribes resist Caesar?
Why does the average Muslim fight?
The answer is so simple that all the “jerks under pressure,”
aka “experts,” will reject it. Because the enemy was there.
Oh, there is more to it than that. The 10% manipulate the 90%
through various methods. The radical Islamic leaders use religion. The West has
been very effective in using “patriotism.” But the base is “because they were there.”
Roosevelt, even though it was obvious we had to rescue Europe, was wise enough
to wait until the homeland was attacked.
On a side note Bush did nothing until 9/11 but by 2008 the
surrender monkeys and America haters managed to help the Islamist enough to get
us into a SOFA agreement in Iraq that Obama gratefully signed thus birthing
ISIS.
Of course any dummy could foresee that. Even me. Here’s a
comment I made in 2007 on the Left’s
website, TalkLeft.
Actually we could argue
over the reasons, but so what.
The issue now is that when the Surrender Party pulls out of Iraq
the world will see us as weak.
Weak people and lambs get attacked.”
But I digress. Let’s get back to the Confederate flag, diversity
and Vanderbilt.
Just as I don’t wear lederhosen or kilts; I do not fly the
Confederate flag. Never have. But, unlike the Left wingers who trill
diversity’s false song, I understand why some people do.
To frame that, you’re going to have to understand that the “War
Between the States” wasn’t over when Lee surrendered. In the phase called
“Reconstruction” the south was overrun with Carpet Baggers with various amounts
of political influence who took power and did various illegal and immoral
things. This resurrected the “because they are here” base. The result? The KKK
and associated pieces of trash who wanted to get their power back. That is the
base reason that the leaders of the local KKK’s were the power holders and
brokers in southern society.
The results were just like the “War Between the States.” The Yankee’s were the cause because they
were, if not physically then in spirit, “there” and were the reason that
Brother died at Shiloh and Uncle is crippled and we have “10 cents cotton and
40 cents meat and how in the world can a poor man eat?”
The South was devastated and remained a rural agricultural
society while the North lived through the age of the Rockefeller and Vanderbilt
peasant rulers and while Teddy Roosevelt had Southerners in his “Rough Riders”
the reforms he preached hardly made an impact below the Mason Dixon line. It
took a couple of wars and a revolution in agricultural equipment making the
poor white and black sharecroppers unneeded and forced to leave the “frosty morns” of the
South and move to the soot covered snow
of the industrial north.
Think I overstate? Well, drive south on US 61 from Memphis
into what was once the poorest county in the US, Tunica…that also had the
highest number of millionaires per capita.
What you will see now is monster tractors tilling thousands of acres while
the grand children shoot and kill each other in Chicago. But the millionaires are
mostly still there along with a new set. Casino types making a living off
welfare money from the Memphis area.
But I’m getting ahead of myself.
Starting in the 50’s, business being business, factories
followed the Mississippi river down to the cheap labor and started locating in
the south. In the small town and surrounding county I live in by the mid 60’s
there were 5 factories employing some 7000 people. And compared to chopping
cotton these were good paying jobs. Some were union some not. New homes were
being built. Downtown’s were thriving. Businesses were opening. Population was
expanding.
But by the mid 70’s the trend was starting. Stores in the city core were closing in the
face of competition from the big department stores in the expanded shopping
center 15 miles away. A factory closed because it couldn’t match the lower
price from foreign competition and by the end of the 70’s the largest employer
closed and merged two divisions into one. Again foreign competition. 3000 jobs
just gone.
And the Republican leadership didn’t do a damn thing.
Nothing. Zero. Nada.
Oh, wait. They did managed to get together with the Democrats
and open the immigration floodgates
In between times we fought the Vietnam War and the Democrats surrendered
while the Republicans wrapped themselves in the flag. When communism collapsed
the radical islamists hopped up to become the villain of the day and Bush declared
a “War On Terror “ that had been started by members of “The Religion of Peace.”
Yeah. I also find that confusing.
And the immigrants just kept on coming. Eleven million
illegal and about a million a year legal.
Before long the “trades” were wiped out along with meat
packing, yard care and almost any service type work that didn’t require good
English and was mostly out of the public’s eye.
The WOT continued and Obama was elected and the economy collapsed
and it was all the Republicans fault and don’t say Merry Christmas and we now
have more genders that Carter had Little Liver pills and the jobs kept on
disappearing while the unemployment rate kept on rising and Obamacare helped
some and hurt many but don’t mention Universal Health Care because it doesn’t
work in Canada and the rest of the world.
We even lied on our Presidential Approval Poll. I mean when everyone says the country is
going in the wrong direction but the President is at a 55%.....they gotta be
lying…one way or the other.
So with everyone but our Dear Leaders recognizing that we
have more problems than a pregnant nun the election comes and they offer us
more of the same.
And they can’t understand why Trump won. Or why some folks
fly the Confederate flag.
It is simple.
Let me educate you.
It is because “they” are here. And we are damn well tired of them.
"Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them." - Karl Popper
