HERE WE GO AGAIN

A large number of people think we are repeating the history of 1930s Germany. While that may be Trump’s goal, it is not the goal of the moneyed interests behind the Republican party. We are repeating our own history, the end of Civil War Reconstruction, by the same groups that did it just over 150 years ago, using many of the same methods.

Reconstruction radically changed the post Civil War South.  African Americans finally had the right to vote, could enter interracial marriages, could open their own businesses, and run for office. Hiram Revels and Blanche Bruce were even elected to the U.S. Senate.

This enraged the rich Southern planter class that owned  land and slaves. They now had to pay their workers and property taxes for the first time, which enraged them. They called themselves Conservatives and set about “redeeming” the South. They believed the federal government was a tyranny for its imposition of taxes, public schooling, and anti-racial discrimination measures – sound familiar?

These plantation owners ran the southern Democratic Party, notable for its hatred of Lincoln, President Grant, the Union and black people. They used propaganda (they owned the newspapers) terror (the KKK, Red Shirts and White League), voter suppression (poll taxes and literacy tests) and election theft (stuffing ballot boxes) to rig the system. The Conservative Democrats gained control and used it to pass Jim Crow laws throughout the South, ending reconstruction and relegating African Americans to second class citizenship for almost a hundred years.  As an added bonus, it allowed Dixie’s elite to split black and white workers apart, crushing the nascent labor movement in the former Confederacy.  Federal courts did nothing to restrain the cabal, who used the letter of the law to destroy the spirit of the law.

This system remained in place until the 1960s, when the Democratic Party under JFK and Johnson supported civil rights for African Americans. Once again, the southern elite grew enraged at the temerity of the federal government to support basic rights for citizens. When Nixon appealed to these racists in 1968, it began the wholesale migration of southern racists from the Democratic to the Republican Party.  The federal courts stymied their movement and prevented them from turning back the clock.

We see the same neo-Confederate inherited wealth at work today as the Republican party tries to turn back the clock and deny citizens their civil rights. Propaganda outlets like Sinclair, Fox News and Clear Channel feed the public with misinformation in pursuit of conservative goals. Intimidation comes in the form of online harassment, militia groups and hate rallies (many organized by the President).  Voter suppression is achieved through gerrymandering, voter purges and elimination of voting centers in minority districts. Election theft has been achieved through court decisions (Bush vs Gore) and electronically hacked voting systems (Georgia elections and possibly the 2016 elections).

The only thing holding back a further erosion of civil rights in the United States has been our federal court system.  That block on power is about to be removed if the neo-Confederates get their wish and confirm Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court.

Know that we’ve been here before. We must not let history repeat itself.  The only solution is to vote in such overwhelming numbers against the G.O.P. that the vote cannot be hacked.  Your rights depend on it.

Here We Go Again – The Hives