“Disgustus and his
movement represent the past burying the future”
---from “The
Quotations of Chairman Joe”
Thomas
L. Friedman has reduced to one small paragraph, indeed one long
sentence, that which besets the Middle East. Friedman, of course,
has long reported on the region and is one of the world's foremost
authorities. Comparing the region to Asia, another area in the world
beset by ethnic strife, poverty and all the ills of mankind Friedman
in one of the most penetrating comparisons ever written, drew the
contrast most eloquently:
“The
region of the world that should be naturally rich has made itself
poor by repeatedly letting the past bury the future and the region
that is naturally poor has made itself rich by letting the future
bury its past.” (1)
It is not a terrible intellectual reach to draw the same
comparisons between regions of the United States.
When Cotton was King, the South was the richest region
in the world. But it impoverished itself by hanging on to its past,
embroiling then destroying itself by the war it brought and leaving
it, for a century under Jim Crow, lagging behind the rest of the
nation. Even the New Deal couldn't reverse the trend, although it
brought employment and investment—the T.V.A.--which brought
electrification making industrialization possible. But it was the
Civil Rights movement and the changing social attitudes that it
brought that made the area attractive to industry and investment,
fueling the modern industrialization and prosperity. Only by letting
the future bury the past could the South move forward.
That problem never plagued the already industrialized
North. After the Civil War, northerners just went back to doing what
they do best—make money. In the North the future quickly buried the
past. We never really comprehended the South and what appears to us
xenophobic and reactionary cultural leanings. We never harbored
their resentments. We never longed for Dixie. We saw no point in
it. We moved on.
Now we are beset by a movement born in the fevered
swamps of the Okefenokee that by revering an idolized past is busy
about burying the future. It's hallmarks are a clarion call to 'Make
America Great Again' by repealing the twentieth century and going
back to Jim Crow, if not a restoration of the plantations of the
antebellum—figuratively, if not literally. Repeal the 14th
amendment, labor laws, environmental regulations, financial
safeguards, and the social safety net. We have seen in recent
months, as the rest of the world moves ahead, the return of coal,
dirty air and water, and even asbestos.
“Make America Great Again” is not the call of a
pregnant future but the ghost of the dead past. The regional
politics that was the South has become—through the manifestations
of Nixon's Southern Strategy—effectively nationalized. Now the
dead past is dragging us, inexorably, into our grave. It has happened
because the modern Rescumlickan Party has nationalized the politics
of the region in ways that hasn't been seen in a century. The flags
and trappings, the nullification's, the no-nothing/know-nothingness,
the xenophobia, the anti-catholic/anti-masonic rumblings, the
paranoia about the 'Illuminati', the bat-shit craziness that has
plagued the region for over a century now spreads across the land.
The past now threatens to bury the future. If you want
to see where this leads, Look Eastward Angel. Or, perhaps, the fetid
graveyards of the Okefenokee
'An Br'er Putin, he jus' laugh and laugh”
Impeach
and Imprison.
____________- Friedman, Thomas L. “Crazy Poor Middle Easterners” The New York Times. Wednesday, September 5, 2018. Page A23
No comments:
Post a Comment