We are having a cold civil war, not between two armies, between this.

[fightforfreedom]

The truth tellers and the liars.

Our civil war in the 1860s was a war between two armies, the North and South. However it was also a war between truth tellers and liars. The leaders of the South for years leading up to the war, lied to the people of the South. Their propaganda spread like a wildfire throughout the South.

Most of the men who fought for the South never knew the truth until it was too late. When they did learn the truth many of them deserted, which was punishable by death. Others chose to ignore the truth, they were fighting a rich mans war. They were fighting for the rich slave owners.

In time the truth tellers are going to win the cold civil war we are facing now. As a matter of fact, the liars are on the run as I type this.

[sanatanadharma]

1. I'd suggest the schism is between those in the world who are relatively-objective and others who ...

I'd suggest the schism is between those in the world who are relatively-objective and others who are totally-subjective.

[Butterflylady]

2. The truth always wins. It may take time, but it ALWAYS wins.

[Bernardo de La Paz]

3. Slavery was explicitly mentioned in many of the documents of secession. . . . nt

[live love laugh]

20. So truth--and its absence--is a historical issue. ✔️

[PJMcK]

4. One problem with your thesis

There are many Southerners who still refuse to acknowledge the truth of the Civil War (the South shall rise again, Confederate flags, etc.) and they refuse to see the truth of the Trump era.

This cold civil war hasn’t even really picked up steam yet. I believe there is more trouble to come. Until the MAGA crowd faces reality, we’re in for a bumpy ride.

[NoMoreRepugs]

5. THIS.

[The Jungle 1]

7. The MAGA crowd is a creation of the republican party.

Just like the woke movement and all the wedge issues created by republicans who have no message.
The MAGA movement will disappear just like the teabaggers.

The republican party only works for the rich. The rest of their platform is a diversion to keep us fighting. The republican party is selling the exact same empty sack the southern plantation owners sold.

This is just the way I see it.

[fightforfreedom]

9. You got it.

[Artcatt]

8. MAGAT "brains" by now are chemically re-wired,

and changing them is less likely, imo, than flying to Jupiter by flapping your arms.

[ananda]

6. And it's brutal and messy.

For the liars, there is no low too low to achieve their destructive potential, which seems to be insatiable.

[barbtries]

10. it's more than that.

it's between empathetic people longing for civilization and sociopathic people devoted to greed and power. it's between love and hate, evolution and devolution, the common good and the good only for certain (white, rich, male) people. it's between empiricism and delusion or blind faith. it's between the nice people and the ugly people. it's between critical thinking people and people content to let others do their thinking for them. it's between history and fantasy.

it's a lot actually.

[Evolve Dammit]

14. well said.

[Grins]

11. Yes. And well-explained the book: "The State of Jones"

The people living in Alabama who saw it for what it was and refused.

Book is non-fiction but reads like a novel.

Authors: Sally Jenkins and John Stauffer

[Pepsidog]

12. I know quite a few Republicans and almost all of them are not

good people. They go to church and invite you to various functions at their homes. Still, almost all the ones I know, family included, are greedy, intellectually ignorant, and cannot think for themselves.

[Sympthsical]

13. Well, that's a take

Not one based in history, but a take nonetheless. Kind of the problem when trying to fit square history into the round hole of present use. If you sand off the corners and hope no one notices, maybe it works.

The Civil War, at its most fundamental and visceral level of the common person, was fought over economics. The wealthy, the property owners, the people at the highest levels of government battled over slavery because the South's economy was underpinned by it. The North was concerned with labor. Read Lincoln sometime and the ideas of free labor. They weren't all abolitionists. In fact, many Northerners feared freed slaves would take their jobs - particularly immigrants. (The Irish in the North were super fun about this).

We like to romanticize and mythologize our own history into notions of good people and bad people, heroes and villains, easily digestible chunks of narrative. But reality is messy, people are self-interested, and you can get anyone to do anything as long as you can otherize a different political tribe efficiently enough that they'll act in your interests rather than their own.

Southerners didn't fight because they were lied to. They fought because they came from a cultural foundation - largely based on slavery - that upheld the superiority of white men and their right to retain their own sovereignty (including sovereignty over their slaves). They saw the North as aggressors and invaders. And they had a very specific honor system steeped in their culture they were enthusiastic about defending.

They knew what they were doing.

Of course, once they were losing, starving, dying, plenty of them figured, "Fuck this. I'm out. Y'all deal with it without me." War has a way of diminishing fervor. They were told, and they had reason to believe, that they would win. The war did not go well for the North at all in the early years. Much of the commentary about the North's victory being inevitable is firmly rooted in historical hindsight. It was only later it all fell apart as the Union finally started getting its shit together (perfecting the blockade, getting better generals, etc, etc.).

It isn't about liars and truth-tellers. If it were, most of the internet and all of cable news would've been burned to the ground by now. It's about where people perceive their interests - cultural, economic, and political - and how hard they're willing to defend them.

Unfortunately, we live in a culture where a lie is only ever a lie if you don't believe in it. If you believe in a lie, then it isn't. So that's going to keep going for some time. Mainly because human nature.

[fightforfreedom]

15. Most of the men who fought for the South never owned a slave in their life.

What were they fighting for? Then there was the twenty slave rule. That must been a hell of a shocker for the thousands of poor white dirt farmers who never owned a slave who were forced to fight.. Rich slave owners sons didn't have to fight, poor people had to fight. The southern newspapers back then were like Fox News. The people of the South were fed propaganda for years.

To say the people of the South were not lied too is absurd.

Yes the civil war was complicated, I was bringing up one point. The rich slave owners owned most of the slaves. Their families had lived like kings for decades. They didn't want to give up. They had to convince the poor white man to fight. to commit treason, to turn their backs on the constitution. In some cases to turn their backs on their family members who were against the war, who wanted slavery ended. They did not convince poor people with the truth, they used propaganda. scared the shit of them. made them angry.

Did you ever look up the 1860 census of the Southern States. They counted the slaves. The large majority of the people of the South did not own slaves. You can tell slavery was a rich mans game.

[Sympthsical]

16. I explained what they were fighting for

It's difficult to understand from a modern perspective, because most of us don't live or think that way anymore. But these people were steeped in a culture of honor, they were given a sense of their own sovereignty, and they saw themselves as dual-citizens - both of the country and of their states. We largely do not think of ourselves in this way. I live in California. Being a Californian is not in any sense a part of my personal identity. It has nothing to do with anything. Maybe I like avocados too much.

However, being a Virginian or a Kentuckian, etc. was a very, very, very big deal for even the poorest and most common people. State pride was akin to, and in many cases superseded, national pride. That was their team, their culture, their land, and their kin.

America wasn't just made, tada, in 1776. It was a decades long process of integrating the colonies, states, and regions that unfolded over time. In hindsight and with the glow up of time and distance, seeing everyone involved as white and vaguely Anglo is a gross over-simplification of their reality. These were very disparate people, cultures, and groups who had very, very different ideas of how the country should be run and what kinds of say-so the individual states had about their policies. They still had Jefferson ringing in their ears - the man had only been dead thirty years - and the rhetoric of things like the Virginia-Kentucky Resolves was real and tangible with the Nullification Crisis part of relatively recent history.

You're trying to make a Right/Left argument out of what is a top/down argument. You bemoan the lies of the Right vs. I guess the virtue of our side? At the end of the day, it's always about the powerless acceding to the lies of the powerful.

You think only your opponents succumb to lies and propaganda as the wealthy do whatever they want to line their pockets? Because, I have an entire Congress I'd like to introduce you to and what they've been up to for the past fifty years . . .

Ask yourself a very simple question: Why do you identify with power? What do the powerful dictate down, in ideas, media, and culture that get you thinking, "Yes, we have to do this," even when it's not really in your interest to support it? The people on cable news ain't there because they care about you, I promise.

We all do these things to a degree.

I think the idea that, "The other side has all these failings. We're the awesome side without any of these bad human behaviors!" is weird.

Because, you know, that isn't even kind of true. And it isn't useful to tell ourselves that kind of story. It would be . . . a lie.

[fightforfreedom]

18. I understand what you are saying.

The reasons for the civil war, the American Revolution were very complicated. I have read many books on both events. I was just bringing up the fact the people of the South were fed propaganda by the rich powerful slave owners, Southern politicians. for many years. That propaganda was normalized over time. Some of that propaganda still lives today.

I have read some articles from Southern newspapers back then. Some crazy shit that was. Yes, the Northern newspapers also spread propaganda, but not at the same level of madness of the Southern newspapers.

[Sympthsical]

19. Oh, the whole thing was crazy

And Southern papers absolutely . . . uh, painted things a certain way. To them, the North was unmitigated evil and they made sure to portray everything the North was doing as a violation of Southerners' inherent natural rights.

Shitty propaganda - but incredibly effective propaganda.

I would ask - and it was the purpose of my initial reply - that maybe examine what you're saying. "They lie. We tell the truth." They're evil and traitors. We are the good and the virtuous. I see this sentiment multiple times a day in this space, this extreme characterization. The angels and the demons, the just and the wicked.

When we think of this Manichean view in contemporary politics, aren't there maybe some lessons to be drawn from history about why we engaging in it isn't a great idea? When you describe Southern propaganda of the age and how they characterized their opponents, is that a good thing to emulate in any capacity?

I'm not asking about the topics they were fighting over, but results of the exercise. The inflaming of passions to the point of violence, the guarantee that divides could not be bridged, the dragging people to the brink where war was the only answer, because the problems could only be solved by defeat and conquest.

At the end of the day, we should always ask what purpose our words serve and whether or not we are prepared and satisfied with where they might lead. Because, I think a lot of the people who indulge in this rhetoric tend to do so from the safety of a refuge where they think they will never be obliged to be one of the people holding the musket in a dirty field and going to bed hungry.

For some inevitable reason, it's always other people who bear the harshest consequences for the easy words of others.

[ThoughtCriminal]

21. More than you might think

The percentage of white southerners that owned slaves is a misleading statistic because only the head of the household was considered the owner (and families were generally large)

"According to the 1860 census, taken just before the Civil War, more than 32 percent of white families in the soon-to-be Confederate states owned slaves. Of course, this is an average, and different states had different levels of slaveholding. In Arkansas, just 20 percent of families owned slaves; in South Carolina, it was 46 percent; in Mississippi, it was 49 percent."

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2015/09/slavery-myths-seven-lies-half-truths-and-irrelevancies-people-trot-out-about-slavery-debunked.html