I know you will reject any nuance, and therefore any challenge to your views, but feel compelled to counter some of the distortions in your post.
First, a question. What are we talking about?
Speaker to Animals wrote:It's just so much blame shifting. Democrats protected slavery and fought a civil war to preserve it.
The Democratic Party split into two parties because of the Civil War. A Northern wing that supported the Union, and by extension did not support at the expansion of slavery. The Southern wing supported slavery's continued existence, and expansion.
Democrats created Jim Crow. Democrats repealed the first civil rights act that the republicans passed. Democrats created the KKK as the terrorist arm of their party to inflict political violence upon their opponents.
I do not think that the Democratic Party itself created the Klan. However, once the Klan formed to effective re-enslave Blacks, and destroy their allied Whites supporters in the Republican Party, they became natural allies of the Southern wing of the Democratic Party. Furthermore, the Republican Party, the party of Lincoln, and of the Union was well, and truly hated by Southerners, and the only other major party was the Democrats'.
Democrats opposed giving women the right to vote. Democrats created segregation. Democrats were the ones who attacked and murdered civil rights workers in the 1960s. Democrats were the primary opposition to the second civil rights act.
True this. The Republican Party was the supporter of Reconstruction. Until the two parties had a quid pro quo to end Reconstruction in exchange for Rutherford B. Hayes becoming President. Basically the Federal troops, and other support was withdrawn from the South, and the Blacks, and their White supporters were left to die, very often literally.
However, the extreme polarization currently of our parties is very, very unusual in American history. Both parties had both liberal, and conservative, wings in their parties as well as familiar political inclinations, or positions. The Republican Party was more pro business, and the Democratic Party was more pro farmer. The Democratic Party was more regional(remember Republicans led the fight to destroy the Confederacy), while the Republicans were more national. Both also had reformists, and later Progressive, wings as well.
Not only were the parties were far more of a mix than the current parties, they were in a different political environment especially racially. Racism was much, much, much more common, and extreme then as compared to now. The further back you go in time the worse it becomes. The Irish, the Italians, the Greeks, everyone not Nordic, English, French, or German, was often not of as White. Catholics, and Jews, were thought of as a bad influence. The modern Alt Right would be moderates then.
Their tactics involve blame shifting responsibility away from the democratic party. They claim slavery was a "southern issue", even though most southerners didn't own slaves and the democratic party in the north supported slavery.
Who supported the Iraq War? How did Bush the Younger start the damn war? A war on a country that had nothing to do with 9/11? It is about power, influence, wealth, propaganda.
The owning, use, and selling of human beings was very, very profitable. The South was the wealthiest part of the country because of it. The Slaveocracy wanted its expansion. The institution almost demanded its expansion by its very nature. There were plans to expand it into the Southwest, and then conquer the rest of Mexico, and later Cuba, and perhaps delusionally later go from there, in order to create more slave plantations.
However, there was a growing belief that Blacks, despite being inferior, perhaps barely human, were human. Are not humans beloved of God, or endowed by their creator the rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness? With another Great Awakening, with the belief in the validity of the Preamble of the Declaration of Independence, it became harder to accept anymore the expansion of slavery. Especially with the British Abolitionist Movement's successes.
The issue polarized the country. Due to the political strength of the South, very, very unpopular laws were passed to protect slavery, it destroyed the Whig Party, split the Democratic Party, and create a few temporary parties. Then with election of Abraham Lincoln, the Southern leadership, one could say the 1% of the day overreacted.
They claim there was this "switch" so they can blame republicans for their long history of evil.
There was a switch. The civil rights supports in the Democratic Party, under President Johnson, with help from the civil rights supporters in the Republican Party pushed through the final civil rights laws. As Johnson said, his party lost the support of the South. He thought it was only going to be for a generation. I think he underestimated the length of time. The Republican Party, under Nixon's leadership saw their chance, and started to pull in Southern Democrats.
Even now, when we discuss the insane policies of the Obama administration -- including the creation of ISIS -- they blame shift by generalizing responsibility to all of America. They say America did this. No, THEY did this. This is all the democratic party.
This is a scrambled mess. I must ask how did the Obama Administration responsible for ISIS? Did not the Bush Administration do most of the work? And did not the Iraqi government order the American military to leave? Which it could do under the terms of the treaty.
And I'm sorry to say we Americans elected the people who did this. It was our elected American government, supposedly for the American people who did this, so we Americans did this. We, you and I, all of us. We own it.
