Personally I think this resurgence is a highly specific cultural moment that is coming as religion dies off and the white population of America teeters toward minority status. Since the US birth rate began to decline (natural phenomenon that happens to all developed nations) its string immigration has held it up. But that has had an accumulating demographic effect. White people lost their official hegemony a long time ago but now they are facing the prospect of losing their simple majority and it scares the living shit out of them. It’s not just because privilege sees equality as oppression. It’s also because they know that they have treated others incredibly badly, and deserve to be castigated should they lose power.
That’s why this Trump admin is so ugly. It’s the death spasm of a dying culture. That’s why this Trump admin is hollow at the center: it’s backed by a group that has no future and can only harken back to the past.
This too shall pass, but at great cost. The USA is the greatest political prize there has ever been and it won’t be let go of lightly.
Lost_My_Mind@lemmy.world 3 days ago
I would say it’s been coming since BEFORE the civil war.
People always take my words out of context when I say that life in general would have been better for everyone long term if the south won.
People take that to mean that I’m pro-slavery. I’m not. If the south won, slavery would have died out naturally by the early 1900s (assuming confederate america lasted that long)
But if the south had won, and been able to leave the union? I feel like they’d have made the worst possible choices for their country on a repeated basis. I feel like their country would have crumbled and disolved into multiple smaller countries. The united states would have continued expanding out west. Texas is probably the only former state that wouldn’t have crumbled.
The rest of the confederate states? They’d be struggling to survive, last in the world in education, terrible healthcare, basically a bunch of 3rd world countries. But the rest of the USA? SO MUCH HEALTHIER FOR IT!!! All these cancers trying to tear down OUR country today, wouldn’t be part of our country. They can go fuck up the country of Alabama. Go nuts.
The pure amount of butterfly effect policies that would be different is mind blowing.
To me, the south winning isn’t about slavery. It’s about taking this large lump sum of the worst people in the country, and cutting them free like you cut away a tumor to get rid of cancer.
NocturnalMorning@lemmy.world 3 days ago
This is complete hogwash speculation. You have no idea what would have happened to the North if the split had been permanent.
ShepherdPie@midwest.social 3 days ago
I mean it’s very obviously speculation because nobody has a crystal ball to see the outcome of decisions that never happened. It’s just an interesting thought experiment and something to ponder.
anomnom@sh.itjust.works 2 days ago
You haven’t factored in the the north’s economy was based on manufacturing things using materials from the south. Industrialists got rich from it and that’s a major factor in why New York cops were returning slaves before the war.
The Industrial Revolution was powered by coal from the south.
Before the public works and refrigerated train cars that made California a farming state, a lot of food was grown down there.
Semjaza@lemmynsfw.com 3 days ago
On the one hand… First World War would’ve ended very differently.
On the other… Maybe eugenics would already be discredited by the 20s with how it went in Dixie.
prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 days ago
Do you have access to some alternate timeline or something? Where can I get this secret information that you have?
Clent@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 days ago
The civil war itself destroyed the south’s market for cotton. The number of slaves that fled was ever increasing and the war made it even easier.
If the north and south were separated they would have continued to come north but would then be asylum seekers.
The north of the south would have been the main producers of economic growth as mineral exports from that region exploded after the civil war. Based on this alone it’s not certain the confederacy would have actually collapsed.
It would take someone with deep historical knowledge of that era to make any realistic predictions of what would have happened.
For instance, the likelihood of the confederate states not further splittering isnt known. And then there are issues such as if the west coast or other regions would do attempt the same break from the union.
There are all sorts of trade imbalances that would be in play. But it’s hardly an idle thought experiment. There are simply too many pieces.
RippleEffect@lemm.ee 3 days ago
You say this but it’s hardly just the south that voted for trump. As you mentioned, the butterfly effect could have changed things dramatically. Things still could have turned out worse for everyone.
Though things are pretty crap now so I can definitely relate to your thought process.
scarabic@lemmy.world 3 days ago
How exactly would slavery have died out “naturally” in a union made up entirely of slave states who’d just fought and won a war to defend it? I get your point about letting the south stand in its own so it could fall, but you are too casually sweeping aside the issue of slavery. “Yeah yeah - that would pass naturally - now let me tell you my MAIN point….”
Aqarius@lemmy.world 2 days ago
Frankly, it’skind of the opposite: the slavery part of the argument is obvious, simply because IIRC the model of chattel slavery the US south operated on was only viable through the constant flow of new people to feed into the meatgrinder. The “better off” part is kinda dubious.
scarabic@lemmy.world 1 day ago
I’m afraid you do not recall correctly. One of the features of American slavery is that it was population self-sustaining. You can see #4 on this UNESCO page. I like the way they put it: American slavery created a people where there was none before.
tan00k@lemmy.world 3 days ago
Northerners weren’t simply more high minded than southerners concerning slavery - industrialization lessened their dependence on slaves to the point where they could abandon slavery without the economy crumbling.
Presumably this would happen in the south as they industrialized as well.
scarabic@lemmy.world 2 days ago
Agriculture still has not eliminated manual labor, son.
Seleni@lemmy.world 3 days ago
To be fair though, Texas seceded once already and within a year or two was begging to be taken back. They probably would have crumbled too.
TeamAssimilation@infosec.pub 3 days ago
What if this is karma for invading and taking half of Mexico? There weren’t slavers or shittier-that-usual people in the region before that.
db2@lemmy.world 3 days ago
You’ve convinced me. I hadn’t thought if it quite that way.
(The previous comment was unedited at the time this was written, just in case)
IDKWhatUsernametoPutHereLolol@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 days ago
In this timeline, nazis got the atom bomb and rule the world because no “United” States
BrainInABox@lemmy.ml 3 days ago
Lol. Americans continuing to vastly overestimate their contribution to WW2
Deceptichum@quokk.au 3 days ago
That’s like every alt history book ever.