• WeirdyBeansAt@lemmy.zip
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      2 days ago

      These guys are the progeny of those who have been itching for a civil war since The New Deal. The Business Plot failed because Smedley Butler refused to play along. Then The John Birch Society failed after gaining some ground. Nixon courted Dixie racists with The Southern Strategy. Then Reagan came along and got Evangelicals and saw the rise of union busting. Prosperity Gospel messaging replaced loving thy neighbor. Then Newt Gingrich and Rush Limbaugh ruled the 90s. Then Obama got elected and people’s brains broke and then shit ratcheted up even more. The right wing realized over the years that the only way they will stay in power is if they appeal to people’s worst impulses. They proliferate hate and fear. They are aesthetic with no substance creating a feedback loop to be exploited.

    • SherBeareth@mastodon.world
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      2 days ago

      @tonytins They have just been biding their time.

      It’s easy to see why we couldn’t abolish slavery by legislation. The hate runs deep and the greed is plentiful.

          • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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            2 days ago

            That goes beyond the legislative outlawing slavery. A big cause belli for the war was insurrectionist abolitionists (John Brown, most notably) threatening the possibility of a national slave revolt. Also, slave trafficking in northern states, as the courts dismantled all the regulation against interstate traffic. New York, for instance, was the largest slave trading city in the US on the eve of the civil war.

            The Southern response was to impose material law on the north, through the Fugitive Slave Act and then the armed rebellion.

            This was long before any legislation was under consideration. Hell, it was before Lincoln had even taken office.

            The question, in 1860, was not whether to outlaw slavery nationally. It was whether anti-slavery laws could be enforced anywhere, even regionally.

    • jordanlund@lemmy.worldM
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      2 days ago

      These guys have been craving for another civil war since Trump’s first term. the last one. FTFY. :)