Another Response to all the Sons of the South and Their "Lost Cause"

Just posted on Tumblr:

The next time some cracker-assed Son of the South tells you the Civil War (or more accurately the Southern Insurrection) wasn't about slavery, it was about Lincoln's unfair tariffs, remember the following.

In 1860, there was no federal income tax.  The federal government paid its way with land sales and tariffs.  Tariffs on imported and exported goods.  Goods produced domestically for domestic consumption didn't involve tariffs.  Goods produced domestically for export did.  This included manufactured goods, but as the US was still very much an agrarian economy, manufacturing wasn't the tariff generator you might expect.  Most tariff revenue came from agriculture, especially the Big Three export crops: cotton, tobacco, and rice.  And cotton was the overwhelming export leader.

In the 1860 election Republicans campaigned on raising tariffs, which were about the lowest in the industrial world.  They had reasons ranging from protecting domestic industry to expanding federal projects.  And Southern legislatures and newspapers immediately started decrying these tariffs as being unfair to Southern farmers.  But wait, most people in the North were farmers.  Weren't the tariffs also unfair to them?  No.  And they weren't unfair to actual farmers in the South either.

As in the North, the vast majority of farms in the South were small.  And as in the North, these farms produced effectively nothing for export, so tariffs didn't affect them at all.  So what farms were being targeted?  The ones that were producing the Big Three.  The plantations.  Which were no more farms than a Monsanto factory cropping operation is now.  They were industrial sites, like coal mines and steel mills.

For most Northerners, and a number of Southerners, increasing the tariffs seemed eminently fair.  To their minds, this class of Southern industrialists, the plantation owners, were receiving preferential treatment.  They got to sell to British buyers at prices New England buyers couldn't match.  They got to pocket just about all that profit because tariffs were so low.  And oh yes, they got to pocket that profit because they owned their workforce.  Northern industrialists figured that, if Southern industrialists wanted to have slavery instead of paying their workers (however poorly), they should have to pay some sort of premium to even things up.

The plantation owners saw this as an attack on the economic viability of slavery and just another step in the Great Yankee Conspiracy to destroy their cherished and peculiar institution.  They saw it as an attack on owning slaves.  A "personal property tax", if you will.  And they went on the attack, careful to couch the debate as much as possible in terms of tariffs.

And Sons of the South (SOTS) go, "See, the South, slave owner and non, rose up over tariffs!"  Which of course ignores about every piece of evidence there is.  It ignores the actual rhetoric in legislative debates and newspaper opinions where slavery was expressly an issue.  It ignores that the plantation class controlled the legislatures and owned the newspapers.  It ignores that the plantation class owned or controlled most of the mechanisms and institutions Southern towns and small farmers depended on to survive.  And it ignores the actual language of the secession documents.  But "Lost Cause" proponents have never let facts and reality stand in the way of their moonlight and magnolias romanticism.  The problem is they're still given platforms to shovel this bullshit, when the only "platforms" they should have are the walls of the padded cells they've so thoroughly earned.

"Successful" Millennials

Just posted over on Tumblr about yet another article about a Millennial "making it on their own" when Mummy and Daddy are quite obviously propping them up.  It's ridiculously easy to demolish these propaganda puff pieces, and it's exasperating that no one bothers.

Today’s Episode of…

…Sorry Millennials, But There Are a Butt-Ton of us Boomers Who Know EXACTLY What You’re up Against.  I receive newsletters from a website called “Bon Appetit”.  It’s pretty chi-chi, but it has some fun recipes, and it’s free, so there it is.  “Bon Appetit” has a series called “The Receipt”, articles about what subscribers eat and how much it costs.  Today the newsletter contained an article titled “How a 24-year-old Waitress Eats on $18K/Yr”.  I thought, “Oh, this is going to be good.”  And by “good” I meant “ungood”.  It did not disappoint. Or it completely disappointed, depending on POV.  I’m not providing a link because: 1) the person who wrote this did so anonymously, so screw them; and 2) drivel like this does not deserve more of a platform than it already has.

The lady in question lives in Durham, North Carolina, and just received her masters in linguistics (Although she says she’s still working on her thesis.  There was a time when getting a masters before even finishing your thesis, let alone defending it, was a laughable proposition.  Further evidence of the crapification of US education, even at a place like Duke.). She is looking for a job in her field, and is supporting herself by waitressing and teaching pottery.

Then she lists her expenses, and the red flags become unmissable.  Her rent is $800.  In a college town.  How many people live in that apartment with her?  Or does she live with her parents, and this is the token rent they charge?  $76 for car insurance.  Which means she doesn’t have collision insurance, which means she doesn’t have a lender’s lien on her title, which means she paid cash for the car.  Or somebody did.  Or she’s just driving one of her parents’ cars, and she’s paying Daddy a little toward insurance.  I’m inclined toward this last option because her budget includes neither maintenance nor fuel.

Speaking of items omitted from her expenses, no health care.  No health insurance.  She’s 24 and just graduated.  Bets she’s still on Mummy and Daddy’s plan?  No student loan payments either, not even a projection for them when they kick in in a couple of months.  But she tips her hand here, admitting she has $15,000 in savings, the bulk of it being what’s left over from what her parents gave her for school.  JFC.  And let’s not forget her pottery teaching.  No expenses listed for that.  Not studio rental.  Not equipment and supplies.  Nothing.  Which in all probability means Mummy has a pottery hobby, and daughter is free-riding on it.

Which means she isn’t living on $18K.  She’s living on Mummy and Daddy, just like every other “successful” Millennial not engaged in overt criminal activity.

And now a message for my age cohort.  Just shut your pie holes with the “Well if she can make it, other Millennials should too” stuff.  Seriously, just STFU.  If you can’t see the parade of bullshit flags flying over articles like this, you don’t get to have an opinion.  You have no excuse.  You’re not as senile as the folks or as callow as the kids.  You should be seeing this propaganda for what it is.  Up your game.