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LET’S EXAMINE THE LINK BETWEEN MAGA AND THE OLD SOUTH – BATTLING
THE SECOND GREAT INSURRECTION  
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Thom Hartmann
June 19, 2024
The Hartmann Report
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_ We face a second insurrection today, and most people have no idea
how closely it’s modeled on the first one. The new GOP motto might
as well be, “We don’t need no stinkin’ issues; we just want
power and revenge for the heroes of the Old South.” _

A man in a vest carries a Confederate flag over his shoulder in a
room hung with historical portraits., (Saul Loeb/Agence
France-Presse(AFP) // The New Republic)

 

Have you noticed how rarely Republicans talk about actual issues?

— They rant about brown people pouring over the southern border but
refuse to even discuss what could be done about it. In fact, when the
Senate came up with a workable solution, Republicans in the House
killed it at the insistence of Donald Trump. No policies, no solutions
other than a Nazi-like round-up of 11 million people and a series of
concentration camps.

— They complain about the state of the economy, but have no
arguments about what can be done to enhance the economy other than
more tax cuts for billionaires, who are already paying a
pathetic average 3.4% income tax
[[link removed]].

— They whine that our students aren’t doing well but refuse to
engage in any serious discussion about how to take us back to the era
when America had the newest and most successful public education
system in the world.

— They’ll yell about prescription drug prices and the high cost of
insurance, but their only policy suggestion is to end Obamacare and
Medicaid. 

— They love to slander BLM and big cities with large Black
populations but refuse to even entertain a conversation about healing
the racial divide in this country; instead, their efforts are directed
toward outlawing or decertifying Black History classes, as just
happened
[[link removed]] in
South Carolina.

ALL OF THIS IS BECAUSE THE GOP IS NOW A POST-POLITICS PARTY.

The reason why is simple and straightforward: The people who’ve
captured the Republican Party envision a day when they won’t have to
even pretend that they’re engaging in good-faith political
discussions or negotiations because they will have outlawed,
sidelined, or intimidated their opposition into impotence and silence.

THEY’RE USING OUR POLITICAL SYSTEM THIS ELECTION YEAR, IN OTHER
WORDS, SO THEY CAN SEIZE ENOUGH POWER TO DESTROY OUR POLITICAL SYSTEM.

AND THEY HAVE A MODEL THEY’RE USING FOR WHAT THEY WANT TO REPLACE IT
WITH: THE CONFEDERACY.

In the first decade of the 19th century, the invention of the cotton
gin transformed the South, as I detail in _The Hidden History of
American Oligarchy
[[link removed]]_.
The machine could do the work of 50 enslaved people, so the wealthiest
plantation owners could wipe out thousands of small farmers and other
competitors.

Now that one machine could clean as much cotton as fifty people, every
cotton plantation faced the possibility that it could produce 50 times
as much cotton (and profit), if only it had 50 times as much land to
grow the cotton on and 50 times as many people to pick it.

The wealthiest among the Southern oligarchs colluded on price-fixing
to bankrupt and then buy out small farms and plantations for pennies
on the dollar. Within a few decades, by the early 1840s, a handful of
fabulously wealthy families had seized complete control of the
economic and political systems of each state in the Old South.

AND THEY BROOKED NO OPPOSITION: WHITE MEN WHO DARED RUN OR VOTE
AGAINST THEM IN ELECTIONS WERE OFTEN ASSASSINATED OR LYNCHED;
NEWSPAPERS WERE SEIZED AND HANDED OVER TO OLIGARCHS FRIENDLY TO THE
PLANTATION OWNERS; ELECTIONS BECAME A MERE CHARADE. THEY EVEN
MONITORED THE MAIL: IF YOU WROTE A LETTER TO A FRIEND COMPLAINING
ABOUT THE END OF DEMOCRACY YOU’D FIND YOURSELF IN PRISON OR HANGED
FROM A TREE.

DEMOCRACY IN THE SOUTH, BY THE 1850S, WAS COMPLETELY DEAD. THE
CONFEDERACY HAD BECOME A POLICE STATE. AND THEN THEY REACHED OUT TO
TRY TO END THAT PESKY REMNANT OF DEMOCRACY IN THE NORTH, AS WELL.

IT’S NEARLY EXACTLY WHAT THE MAGA GOP IS TRYING TO DO TODAY.

As historian Dr. Forrest A. Nabors wrote in his brilliant book _From
Oligarchy to Republicanism: The Great Task of Reconstruction
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richest families in the South had replaced democracy with a violent
oligarchy, what today I’d call fascism:

“A new generation of rulers reshaped the South around their new
ruling principle. … The development of Southern oligarchy portended
the rupture of the union, regardless of the ties that bound them
together, because no ties, physical, legal, or otherwise, can overcome
the difference between fundamentally opposed types of political
regimes.”

ILLINOIS’ REPRESENTATIVE JOHN FARNSWORTH NOTED THAT HISTORY IN
HIS 1864 SPEECH
[[link removed].] ON
THE FLOOR OF THE US HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES:       

“[With t]he invention of the cotton-gin, … the greed for power
took possession of the slaveholders, and the avarice of these men
overleaped itself…

“Then it was, Mr. Speaker, that the slave power got the control of
the Government, of the executive, legislative, and judicial
departments.

“Then it was that they got possession of the high places of society.
They took possession of the churches. They took possession of the
lands. Then it became criminal for a man to open his lips in
denunciation of [them].

“Then followed … the throttling of the right to petition;
suppressing the freedom of the press; the suppression of the freedom
of the mails; all these things followed the taking possession of the
Government and lands by the slave power, until we were the slaves of
slaves, being chained to the car of this slave Juggernaut…”

THIS IS THE MODEL THAT TODAY’S GOP, THE REINVENTED CONFEDERACY, IS
USING TO REPLACE MODERN AMERICAN DEMOCRACY.

And they’re not even bashful about it: It’s why ten
Republican-controlled states officially commemorate the Confederacy
with state holidays every year and six refuse to recognize Juneteenth:
Florida, Mississippi, Alabama, Arkansas, South Carolina and North
Carolina.

REAGAN’S MASSIVE TAX CUTS (AND BUSH’S AND TRUMP’S) HAD THE SAME
OLIGARCH-PRODUCING IMPACT AS THE COTTON GIN; BEFORE REAGAN,
BILLIONAIRES WERE VIRTUALLY UNKNOWN AND FEW WEALTHY PEOPLE WERE
POLITICALLY ACTIVE. TODAY, THEY OWN CONGRESS, OUR SOCIAL- AND
NEWS-MEDIA, AND THE SUPREME COURT.

The billionaire-funded _Project 2025_ is this generation’s version
of John C. Calhoun’s nullification speech and South Carolina’s
secession proclamation.

In this brave new world run by Citizen Trump and the MAGA GOP:

— Slave labor is replaced
[[link removed]] by
the perpetual poverty and servitude of a $7.25 minimum wage and Red
state laws hostile to unions. Children are encouraged to leave school
and enter the workplace in dangerous jobs like slaughterhouses.

— Quality education becomes exclusively the province of the rich and
white as public schools are gutted by voucher programs while college
tuition explodes.  

— Healthcare is a luxury only available to the wealthy as insurance
becomes unaffordable, Republican governors refuse to expand Medicaid,
and medical practices are acquired by hedge funds and converted to
concierge practices with $3000/year annual fees.

— Media that speaks truth to power are bankrupted by new libel laws,
taken over, and turned into Republican propaganda machines.

— Women, people of color, and religious minorities are made
culturally and legally subordinate to white “Christian” men.

— In any Republican-controlled part of the country where there’s a
chance a Democrat could win an election, the voter rolls are purged of
Democrats and those voters who survive the purges find increasingly
complex barriers to casting a ballot.

— And, of course, they want to preserve the Confederate names and
monuments still extant and bring back the monuments that have been
removed. As we saw on January 6th, the Confederate battle flag is one
of their favorite totems.

The new GOP motto might as well be, “We don’t need no stinkin’
issues; we just want power and revenge for the heroes of the Old South
and the New Insurrection.”

It’s why they lie so easily on the Sunday talk shows and in
political campaigns: They don’t give a damn about issues. All they
care about is power.

And their base is with them. As Oliver Markus Malloy wrote in the
headline for his _Bad Choices
[[link removed]] _Substack
newsletter yesterday, “MAGA dumbfucks are so fucking dumb, they have
no idea that the pro-slavery Confederates were the bad guys!”

In fact, they know what the sides were in the Civil War, and they are
intentionally choosing — embracing — the Confederacy.

DEMOCRATS — AND AMERICANS MORE GENERALLY — MUST FINALLY REALIZE
THAT TRUMP’S MAGA GOP IS NO LONGER INTERESTED IN POLICY OR POLITICS
BUT SOLELY WANTS TO SEIZE ABSOLUTE POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC POWER TO END
OUR DEMOCRACY AND REINVENT THE CONFEDERACY.

ONLY _THEN_ WE CAN BEGIN A DISCUSSION ABOUT HOW TO DEAL WITH THIS
SECOND GREAT INSURRECTION THAT THEY HOPE WILL REBOOT THE CIVIL WAR
ONLY — NOW OUTFITTED WITH DEADLY BUMP-STOCKS — THIS TIME WITH A
DIFFERENT OUTCOME.

Until then, as we try to debate “issues,” we’re merely engaging
in meaningless political theater. Instead, we must identify,
ostracize, and politically and legally crush this growing and violent
insurrection against America and her traditional ideals.

_[THOM HARTMANN [[link removed]] is a New York
Times bestselling, four-times Project Censored Award-winning author,
and host of THE THOM HARTMANN PROGRAM, which has been broadcasting
live nationwide for 20 years on AM and FM radio, SiriusXM satellite,
and as video on Free Speech TV, Facebook YouTube, and Twitter/X.]_

* Insurrection
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* coup
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* Confederacy
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* Donald Trump
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* MAGA
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* Fascism
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* Racism
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* slavery
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* Slavocracy
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* Capitol Siege
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* Capitol riot
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* Jan. 6
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* High Crimes and Misdemeanors
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* South
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* Old South
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* Income Inequality
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* wealth gap
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* 1%
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* top 1%
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* GOP
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* Make America Great Again
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* Proud Boys
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* Republican Party
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