I’d rather see platinum coins and an insurgency in South Carolina than the current package.
I think too many people are convinced Obama can magically wave the 14th amendment wand and all our debt ceiling problems disappear.
Lum
1963
Bachmann especially is notorious for ‘staying on message’, ignoring actual questions, to the point that a frustrated Chris Matthews once asked if she had been hypnotized. (She didn’t answer that, either.)
Or, on the crazed Tea Party side, they want him to wave that wand so they can open impeachment proceedings (which will obviously fail in the Senate, but they don’t care).
They don’t “disappear,” it’d be an absolute shitshow, but if the Democrats - or someone - doesn’t fight right wing fire with centre-left fire America is going to be utterly ruined.
Lum
1966
The last one went so well!
I know you’re being ironic, but really, it did. The most intractable issue facing our nation, a shameful sin enshrined in the Constitution itself, was finally eliminated, though at a horrible cost. The increasingly bitter partisanship that we’re witnessing now has some uneasy similarities to antebellum America…
Exactly.
I know you’re being ironic, but really, it did. The most intractable issue facing our nation, a shameful sin enshrined in the Constitution itself, was finally eliminated, though at a horrible cost. The increasingly bitter partisanship that we’re witnessing now has some uneasy similarities to antebellum America…
Not just the partisanship. The way the majority ignominiously dances to the tune of a petulant, tyrannical minority is the part that I find so damned familiar.
Houngan
1969
Yep, it was really great for Northern whites, obvious success. The holocaust was really pretty good for Israeli real estate values as well, huge success!
Perspective, people. It may have been a necessary civil war but it wasn’t all roses for the losers or the slaves.
H.
Update
Republican aye votes starting to roll in. They support bill 28-11 so far (@thehill). Ds staying very quiet. Now projects to pass 227-204.
Some infections have to be cut out. Compromise is not always possible. Historians have argued the topic for generations, but given southern attitudes, the Civil War was, if not inevitable, damn close to it.
Houngan
1972
No argument from me, but the casual hatred of the South around here gets tedious.
H.
It does, yes, and I’ve lived in Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, and Louisiana, so I have more than a little first hand experience with the region. Sure, there’s bigotry, but I see just as much prejudice against Hispanics in the Southwest as I did against blacks in the South.
The lordly, intransigent 1860 Southern political elite =/= the South. Prejudice against the later is obviously stupid and illiberal.
Enidigm
1976
Interestingly, Russia didn’t dissolve into Civil War until WW1 knocked them flat, and they had (arguably) far more of their population enslaved than in the US, albeit the relative condition of a serf on average was probably better, and there was a lack of a distinct ethnic component. And they ended up enfranchising their serfs at just about the same time. Obviously, though Apples vs. Oranges.
Houngan
1977
And yet they were just conflated in this thread as a desirable outcome of the debt ceiling debate, with “an insurgency in South Carolina” being preferable to passing the legislation. Many hands were clapped at this idea.
H.
But presumably less crazies in congress.
It was a joke. Civil war reference, South Carolina still quite conservative, bossy minority of conservatives in antebellum south, bossy minority of conservatives today (much less geographically constrained.)
I’ll strive for more historically rigorous one-liners in future.
Lum
1980
Russia also had an absolute monarchy, one of the last in Europe. Truly democratic elections didn’t take place until 1917, at which point the Communists who had taken over a month prior promptly annulled them. Not comparable at all, really.
