"Don't feel bad, most species of large mammal die off ... it's just our turn."
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Dr Herb Ruhs is The Compassionate Misanthrope "Don't feel bad, most species of large mammal die off ... it's just our turn." |
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The reality of the still un-reconstructed South by Herb Ruhs, MD, Unknown News Dec. 20, 2008 I grew up in the South -- Louisville, Kentucky, to be exact. I thought I knew something about racism and Southern backwardness, especially since my family was of lower class origins. But then I spent the worst year of my life, worse by far than any of the five years I spent in Viet Nam during the war, living in rural South Carolina. I rarely share my experiences there with people unless they have significant first-hand experience living in the rural South. My stories otherwise are just too incredible. So I advise people who read the well-researched and well-written article in The Nation article, entitled "Katrina's Hidden Race War" by A.C. Thompson, to retain an open mind and think perhaps that the journalist is, if anything, being overly restrained in his very professional journalism. Personally, I refuse to even travel to the South anymore. It is not my country. I do not belong there. I have come to believe that the North and the South (including the South West and now Southern California) were never effectively reunited with the North as a
I don't hate the Southern people. Some are fine, moral individuals. But those folks don't belong in a country dominated by white supremacist and violent racist feeling any more than I do. Likewise, many people now living in the North would be more comfortable living in the South, including some of my relatives on my mother's side who live in Chicago. I would be glad to help with a program of relocation, in both directions, that lets people decide if they want to live under a ethos of white racist feudalism or pluralistic, democratic, Constitutional rule. When I look at the direction of government policy over the last half-century I am impressed by the fact that, following the assassination of John Kennedy in Dallas and the assassination of Martin Luther King in Memphis, the evidence points to an increasingly dominant influence of classic Southern values in government. I arrive at the conclusion that, whereas the skirmish of the Civil Rights Movement may have been won, the War Between the States has been finally lost. Officially sponsored racism, including public lynching, racist militarism, ethic cleansing of blacks, the disparagement of public education or any other social justice issues, vigilantism and terrorist gun use, the acceptance of torture and extralegal murder of non-whites, slavery (now represented by exploitation of illegal alien labor), concentration of wealth in the hands of a few families, and a prejudice against social mobility generally -- all these things characterize the culture of the Unreconstructed South. This culture now dominates our national government, as the locus of power has shifted from the North to the South, largely due to the Republican Revolution that ushered into government a sense of contempt for government itself, and a conviction that war spending and law enforcement are the only legitimate uses of tax money, and laws are meant only for the control of the undeserving lower classes. Little has been written to my knowledge that directly credits the South as having "risen again" (as one of the interviewees states in the Race War article) much less about how the South has finally won the Civil War, but the evidence is there. In particular I would refer readers to the fine book by Thomas Frank called The Wrecking Crew. I challenge you to search out the backgrounds and social attitudes of many of the most powerful actors mentioned in that book, and their backing. You will be surprised by how many are of Southern origins or display philosophies consistent with classical Southern values. Additionally, as has been well documented, the martial nature of Southern Culture has resulted in the domination of the Army by geographic Southerners. Many articles have been written recently about the prevalence of white supremacist activity within the military. The wars in the Middle East are have a marked racist element. The placement of the Northern Command within the U.S. borders could reasonably be described as the first steps of a military occupation of the country by the South which could be considered the formal effect of the loss of the War Between the States by the Union. I wear the invective of "wingnut" proudly, as I assert that the South won the war and now it is the turn of the North to attempt to secede. As events unfold even more dramatically in coming months and years, I suspect that increasing numbers of "wingnuts" will join me in my conviction. © by the author.
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