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In reply to the discussion: The South was not sufficiently punished after the war [View all]Igel
(35,320 posts)Or intensely self-righteous.
With a lot of political supremacy built into it. Fortunately, Lincoln showed a bit more wisdom.
Unfortunately, it's the same effect as defeat for the Sunnis in Iraq. There is no reconciliation in such a values system: There is victory and there is humiliation that must be avenged. It's intensely silly.
It's a system that embraces one's inner genocide. It's a system that I find deeply offensive; it's a system that was standard among humanity for many thousands of years, and in some places still is standard. It's a system best subverted and undermined, replaced by cultural osmosis and pressure. It gave us Muslims massacring Serbians and vice-versa in the '90s. It gave us communal violence in India in '48 and still in Pakistan and India in 2015. Sadly, we have this weird idea (only sometimes, when it suits our politics) that that kind of cultural assimilation is somehow evil. It's a cultural trait that nation-states tried to overcome by moving the nexus of communalism to between states, not within cities or states. We decry that kind of jingoism and embrace it warmly when we see political or social advantage it in.
Some of the South and the mixed-legacy sons of the South have been culturally assimilated to the North. (Heck, not all of the North was fully assimilated; more than a few Irish and rural communities were left backwards.) "Southern pride" resists it, as do some other nationalist-pride currents in American thought. When it's held by anybody other than a white Southerner, though, it's not only given a pass but seen as "ethnic." So I guess I have to say that I'm Irish-American, so I'm allowed to diss Irish-Americans (that's how it works in that kind of communalistic thinking, right?)