If anyone has ever read a book or seen a TV show based on life in the “contemporary” Southeast, sooner or later The Civil War comes up. It’s as if the writer—who probably “isn’t from around here”—is itching for the moment to work this into the narrative. Even otherwise great books and television series go so far as to work in a painfully oddball Civil War re-enactor character, the kind present in quirky depictions of Southern life (moonshine may also be mentioned) that no longer exists in the new age of crystal meth. Sure, some people do dress up as confederate soldiers and go to painstaking lengths to recreate a Civil War battle that the South actually lost.
Why people want to glorify a war their side lost is unknown to me, but the South has a hard time letting things go. That much was evident last year when after the massive BP oil spill that ruined much of the Gulf Coast—some of the most beautiful and non-crowded beaches in the country are in Alabama—actually had some people near oil rigs defending offshore drilling. Some were mad at BP, placing the blame where it ought to go, but others were mad at Obama for “trying to tell BP what to do” or threatening a temporary ban on offshore drilling. Before Obama could even put up a halfhearted fight to stop offshore oil rigs, a fight he had no real interest in winning if we’re being honest, people in the gulf who had just lost their livelihood or home due to lack of tourism for the summer months all beach towns thrive on, were ready to side with the oil company. The pretext being that any ban on oil rigs would hurt jobs. Never mind that less than half a percent of the men in those areas actually work on a rig and over a third of those same towns do work in tourism that was destroyed by the spill, they were ready to take up for the minority profiting over their own interests.
This made me think of another event in Southern history that had people choosing economic gains over the right thing. Of course I mean slavery. Even though I have never met anyone whose job is Civil War re-enactor or even whose hobby was I cannot think of a single Southern person who hasn’t referenced the Civil War to me at least once in my lifetime. If you discuss what actually caused the war it will inspire vehement disagreements.
First is the opinion that the “War of Yankee Aggression” broke out over taxes the Southern states were tired of paying. Second is the opinion that the “Second Revolutionary War” was because the Southern states were not being given equal treatment in the federal government and they wanted to strike out for more representation. Third is the opinion that the “War Lincoln Started” was against the election of Abraham Lincoln and slavery was just a sideshow. Fourth is the opinion that the “War Between the States” was fought over such a complex web of motives and conflicting ideologies that any one reason is impossible to—oh fuck it, it was slavery. The fifth reason also happens to be the truth which is that the South did not want to lose its primary economic advantage: slavery.
Slavery made rich men filthy rich men but with the “minor” quibble of raping, pillaging, and trying to systematically dehumanize a race of people. Not completely unlike oil makes rich companies filthy rich but with the “minor” quibble of dumping millions of gallons of toxic sludge into what was once Alabama’s coastline.
Slavery was evil but since it was economic evil you had an entire war fought to preserve that system and a region of the country left behind to defend the reasons of the war in the first place. Much is true of the fight oil companies, coal corporations, and the others that specialize in destroying the planet are willing to fight a legislative/economic war with the alternative energy providers trying to muscle in on their territory. To start the fight, they’ve flooded the market with bullshit “science” trying to get people to believe climate crisis isn’t real.
They’ve paid Republican politicians handsomely to say that the “Science isn’t in on global warming yet” which is true if you count all the Dr. Easy Paychecks sponsored by the oil companies who are being paid to say the science isn’t in yet, their climate studies degree from Beer Keg University in San Antonio. They’ve paid other Republican politicians obscenely to say global warming is “global goofiness” (using the 3rd grade insults debate) and that “if global warming is real why is this winter so cold?” This would make you laugh if you didn’t realize they were being serious.
I feel stupid for even having to say this but climate crisis (previously known as global warming) triggers irregular weather patterns like the snow storms you’re now seeing in the Southeast. Just like when they say “well, the Earth’s temperature rises and falls in a cycle” but there is nothing cyclical about the carbon emissions in the air which have never, ever, I’ll say never again for good measure, been higher. Just like parts of the South will probably argue for another hundred years about the necessity for the Civil War or what caused it, there will be parts of the country that will argue if climate crisis is real long after the battle has been fought. [Hearing some Republicans talk about their hatred for the federal government makes you realize we aren’t much more sophisticated today than when Southern farmers were afraid of having their crops burned by carpet baggers] But change is inevitable and it must happen before it’s too late.
Ending slavery was initially expensive to the South, but it had to be done. The system they had in place wasn’t sustainable and it was a moral cancer that seeped into everything. The assassination of Abraham Lincoln only made reconstruction harder for the South when they should have just embraced the reforms he was putting forward. Obama is trying to make it easy for us to change to electric cars and solar powered generators, but we have to meet him halfway.
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