The U.S. Culture(s) thread

I read somewhere that this mentality is still present, and causes people who are below taxation to vote for less taxes.

"And as long as a sack of shit is not a good thing to be, chivalry will never die."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LfgSEwjAeno

John Oliver theorizes that it's due to American optimism — the belief in the American Dream.

Disgusted, but not surprised

That the South was filled with poor, landless farmers that didn't own any slaves doesn't mean that they were against slavery, though. There's more to the self-actualization of a human being than their relative economic worth. In the antebellum South, the mere fact of being white gave inherent privileges that a Northern victory would remove. If it really was a case of Southern planters against poor people, white and black, you'd assume they would have made common cause, but that's not how it works, and even today, working class whites are some of the most pernicious enemies of civil rights movements. In fact, it's probably more accurate to say that the cause of the Union was not entirely abolitionist than it is to say that the Confederacy was not entirely pro-slave.

"For all those whose cares have been our concern, the work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives, and the dream shall never die."

Mmm, a rather disturbing portion of the abolitionist movement of the day had the notion that as soon as the war was over the slaves would be packed up and shipped to Liberia "where they belong." Canada is something of an unsung hero for taking in so many former slave refugees when no one else would tolerate their existence.

I remember reading somthing Lincoln said, which basically amounts to "[Black people] dont belong with us, we dont belong with them, it will only lead to more suffering, send them to africa so everyone will be fine'

Also from stuff i read, appearently Sherman's March To The Sea is also quite a factor in how the south looks at things.

Well, abolitionism itself changed. The movement to get African-Americans back to Africa is more emblematic of the 1830s than of the 1870s, where blacks had voting rights and were winning seats in government. Also, quoting Lincoln's views on black rights from before the Civil War as an indicator of his overall views is intellectually dishonest, as it omits the fact that his opinions changed.

"For all those whose cares have been our concern, the work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives, and the dream shall never die."

IIRC, Northern manufacturers endorsed abolitionism on the basis that they'd be able to gain access to a readily available pool of cheap labor.

Well, yes and no. New York was basically Copperhead City because their mayor at the time, Fernando Wood, was pro-Confederate, and there was an economic incentive to continue trading for Southern cotton. Also, Irish immigrants used to be a pretty big source of Union Cannon Fodder. Ultimately, the New York City Council decided not to secede from the North as a city-state.

"For all those whose cares have been our concern, the work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives, and the dream shall never die."

In reality, there were multiple separate back-to-Africa movements.

The first did come before the Civil War, and started as an attempt to get rid of cheap free black labor in the North. (Sounds familiar.) However, well-meaning religious groups took over, seeing sending them back to Africa as the best approach to ending slavery. The end result of all this was the founding of the country of Liberia in Africa, whose history...did not go so well. (I won't go into the details, since it would be off-topic.)

The second movement arose in the late 1870s, when the KKK and the like were making life really bad for them. However, it died after about 20 years, because a lot of fraudsters seized the chance to screw those people over even further. Yay. A third movement flared up again in the 1920s in the Northern U.S., due to the lack of social rights. While they were better off financially, it wasn't equal, and they were still treated poorly.

Ultimately, the failures of Liberia and general bad status of life in Africa made it so the majority of blacks still preferred to focus on improving life in the United States. This eventually led to the Civil Rights Movement.

Expergiscēre cras, medior quam hodie. (Awaken tomorrow, better than today.)

That explains quite a bit really.

It was in a "Lincoln was as bad as everyone else!!!!" reply under a "William Tecumseh Sherman is a real american hero who did nothing wrong" post.

There's actually some really interesting studies that show the areas of the South with the least amount of black people were also the areas where the white population was least likely to support the Confederacy. Essentially that without the slave class to lord over, poor whites had nothing to bond over with the plantation owners and realized their interested were totally opposed.

Hence you had strong Union loyalists in places like West Virginia and eastern Tennessee. They were still generally racist, but without slaves as part of their day to day lives, poor whites had to focus their frustrations elsewhere, in this case gains the Slave Power aristocracy holding them down.

Also interesting to note that I studied a little bit american history as part of my curriculum at school (I live in Brazil, just to reiterate) and at no point was I ever under the impression that it WASN'T about slavery.

I don't think any of my teachers ever sugarcoated it by talking about states' rights or whatever, I distinctly recall it being framed as the South being very interested in keeping their slave economy alive, which I suppose is where my fascination comes from about all this lionizing of a morally bankrupt society.

edited 18th Oct '16 2:40:31 PM by Draghinazzo

Hell, West Virginia even seceded from Virginia to go back to the Union.

"I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work." -Thomas Edison

There were tiny rural pockets of dirt-poor subsistence farmers throughout the poorest Appalachian areas that tried to take a sort of "leave us out of it" attitude and refused to offer material or manpower support to either side and were often accused of harboring deserters. The Confederacy in western NC, east Tenn, and northern Ga eventually started organizing squads (often composed primarily of Native American collaborators, partially for the deniability; "oh it wasn't us it was the dirty savages that did it") to pillage them into obedience.

Actual deserters and loyalists in the region eventually formed "bushwacker" guerilla groups and started raiding Confederate assets once it was made clear that the confederacy's days were sorely numbered in the final year of the war.

edited 18th Oct '16 8:06:57 PM by carbon-mantis

Nationalism and patriotism.

I myself was never taught in school (I live in Oregon) that the civil war was not about slavery.

"Any campaign world where an orc samurai can leap off a landcruiser to fight a herd of Bulbasaurs will always have my vote of confidence"

I've always found the concept of "Southern Pride" strange.... taking pride in "what? the democratic vote went against us? LETS FUCKING SECEDE FROM THE NATION!!" while many of its supporters complain if people peacefully protest when candidates they do support win

advancing the front into TV Tropes

It's mostly because we never actually sat down and solved the big race issue after the Civil War and instead least the Lost Cause types grow and worked around keeping the South's ego all nice and safe.

Oh really when?

The North didn't exactly help that either from what I read. They allowed the Lost Cause to spread to make relations between them easier...and by "them" I mean north and south whites.

For the sake of "political expediency", minorities in America have been routinely thrown under the bus.

Well, if you think of the economy as a zero sum arena in which people are divided into rival communities which have to compete with each other for access to economic opportunities, such that gains made by one group can only come at the expense of another, then the opposition of working class whites toward civil rights for minorities makes a tragic kind of sense.

Which is how Demagogues in America and abroad are positioning it:

"If other people get stuff, WE can't get stuff."

And how Globalization and Automation have buttfucked a large number of people, someone has to be blamed.

edited 27th Nov '16 4:46:54 PM by PotatoesRock

I think that "political expediency" doesn't necessarily get at the heart of why Reconstruction fell short. It accurately describes the corrupt bargain that put Hayes in power, but ending Reconstruction was also supported by Charles Sumner, a great man who once was bludgeoned on the floor of the Senate for his anti-slavery rhetoric. He was anti-slavery before it was popular, and I doubt he was ready to abandon black people — or that his actions in opposing Reconstruction after 1877 would be tantamount to exactly that. I think the problem was that the Grant administration was so mired in corruption that moderate Republicans started feuding with it, and there was a fair amount of naivety, some of it endemic to the American mindset, that the South had been redeemed after slavery was ended and victory for the Union was won.

Woops.

edited 28th Nov '16 6:36:22 AM by CrimsonZephyr

"For all those whose cares have been our concern, the work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives, and the dream shall never die."

There was also a certain amount of "Reconstruction weariness" in the North. Grant complained that it was getting harder to get support for every military intervention he sent south because the people, and presumably their Congressmen, were getting tired of the constant flare ups down there.

What's up with the US's fascination with Ayn Rand and her work?

Well, it's not really the US that has a fascination so much as a minority of the right wing political wonks and libertarians that do. She appeals, at her worst, to the "fuck you, got mine" crowd, and at her most benign to the thought that those who have merit will naturally rise to the top and defeat the looters of society.

It feeds into the desire for low taxes and little government interference.