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Comment by seneca | Hacker News Reader

Having spent significant time in the South, but not being from there, I have conflicting feelings about the civil war.

The divide that existed then is a permutation of what bitterly divides the US now. People outside the South seem to despise southern people and their values more than ever, and the south is no closer to sharing their values.

I often wonder if we would have been better off fighting the war to free existing slaves, embargoing further slave trade, and just leaving the Confederacy alone as its own country.

(With apologies for responding more to the theme than to the article itself, which is a nice summary.)

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There's truth to the statement that the divide then is a permutation of what divides us now. But the south isn't monolithic, so when non-southerners paint the south as a single thing, they're disregarding the experience of a large portion of southerners who don't believe in the lost cause myth or other harmful/racist opinions. That's especially true for black southerners, but there are also white southerners who don't fall under that flag either. Then and now.

If we left the Confederacy alone, then we would've left those people behind. As a white southerner who doesn't fit into the majority worldview of other white southerners, I'm glad to not be left alone.

People outside the South seem to despise southern people and their values more than ever, and the south is no closer to sharing their values.

Just speaking personally, this doesn't align with my experience. It might be the parts of the south I lived in. But the values of urban North Carolina and the values of urban Ohio seemed quite similar to me, and many people seemed to happily move back and forth between the Midwest and South without suffering any culture clash. Coastal California values do feel quite different from either of those, though, although I wouldn't say most Californians "despise" the red states.

What notion of the Confederacy exists outside of the institution of Slavery? It's so core to the DNA of the founding of the Confederacy that it almost seems nonsensical to suggest waging a war to free existing slaves, when that would've led to the same outcome of the total dissolution of the Confederacy.

Yes, perhaps so. I suppose what I mean to say is that it seems misguided, in hindsight, to treat preserving the Union as some ultimate good. 150 years later, and all we have is two groups that seem to bitterly hate each other still and a dysfunctional government incapable of reconciling the two different value systems.

The Confederacy may well have dissolved, as you said, but the rest of the Union would be left a whole lot more coherent and ideologically unified.

To wildly over simplify it, it strikes me as a bit like going to extraordinary lengths to save a marriage to a spouse you hate.

We can potentially say that in hindsight but politicians at the time could not come to that conclusion. After 80+ years the US was still the only major democracy and it was teetering. Unionist politicians, embodied by Lincoln, were afraid that letting the US fall apart would deal a blow to democracy everywhere. Lincoln so eloquently voices this concern in the Gettysburg Address.

Historian Joseph Ellis said (I think in his book "Founding Brothers") that we now take democracy as the inevitable conclusion of liberalizing politics but that formed only after the US Civil War.

(This also doesn't address the moral horror of allowing slavery to continue for who knows how many years in the Confederacy.)

The "split" isn't north vs south though, nor is it based on slavery or the Mason-Dixon line.

Our government is dysfunctional because the main structure of government was created before the industrial revolution. The writers of the constitution couldn't envision just how little of the population would be engaged in an agrarian lifestyle. The US government is broken because all three branches are, at least some of the time, minority rule.

The actual split in America is largely those areas that are economically advanced and those that are not. Places that support conservative candidates tend to be poor, mostly uneducated, and religious while the opposite is true for liberal candidates. Voters in Atlanta have more in common with New York City than they do voters in Lumber City.

I'll also point out that there isn't much hate for rural people in the cities. You have at best indifference. The hate is very much one sided.

Yeah, no hate in terminology like hicks, hillbillies, flyover country, deplorables, etc. etc.

I mean, I grew up in what is now trump country in a rural area and heard the term 'hicks' and 'hillbillies' as self-descriptors and descriptors of others but I now live in an urban area and never hear those terms. Its just projection bud.

Now deplorables is a different story. Supporting racists/misogynists' is deplorable and Hillary Clinton was right on the money with what she said. But again, most urban folks just have anger and confusion on why rural people consistently vote against their own interests and support racists like trump. It's not really a 'hate' thing. I don't see people from urban areas travelling to rural areas to attack people and hold hate-rallies.

People like Hillary Clinton have never voted consistently in the interests of people who voted for Trump. It's under her own husband's presidency that many of those people's jobs were shipped abroad. Under her former boss's Presidency that the banks who made them lose their homes were bailed out. Not saying Trump's presidency was any more beneficial, both parties don't give a shit about the little guy, but calling 30 million people "deplorable" certainly qualifies as broad brush hate.

>People like Hillary Clinton have never voted consistently in the interests of people who voted for Trump.

Examples? I'm not a Clinton fan personally but Clinton and the rest of the Democrats have consistently proposed and voted for legislation that heavily benefit rural voters including importantly the ACA and Medicaid expansion which trumps base heavily relies on for access to medical care.

I'm not really interested in debating the merits of HRC because she's just slightly less conservative than the GOP in general.

> Not saying Trump's presidency was any more beneficial, both parties don't give a shit about the little guy

One party has proposed voting rights bills, a massive infrastructure program that would provide jobs and opportunity for millions of rural people, bills that would massively lower the costs of prescription medicine, and bills expanding access to medical care for millions of impoverished Americans. The other party was in power for four years and only accomplished one massive tax cut for the ultra wealthy. The "both sides" thing is bullshit. The Democrats aren't perfect and lord knows that the Democratic leadership needs to go but to pretend the Democrats and republicans are the same is delusional.

>but calling 30 million people "deplorable" certainly qualifies as broad brush hate.

Here is the actual quote

“You know, to just be grossly generalistic, you could put half of Trump’s supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables. Right?” Clinton said. “The racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamaphobic—you name it. And unfortunately there are people like that. And he has lifted them up.”

She's not wrong about that. trump is a hate monger and his supporters reflect that. The last time I checked, HRC wasn't a tastemaker. The question was whether urban Americans hate rural Americans and they just don't. Most people just want to reduce the influence rural Americans have over the majority of Americans lives. If people in Alabama want to live in a religious back-water, that's their call, just stop dragging the coasts down with you.

And yet despite three Democratic presidential terms since 1992, the average American is way poorer and sicker than they were 30 years ago. The consistency of these Democratic congregations is undermined by rotating villain strategies where actually beneficial pieces of legislation are weakened and made toothless. The ACA and Medicaid expansion you listed as things that the Democrats have done for their constituents both were undermined by a lack of a public option and healthcare costs for the average American are no better than they were 30 years ago.

Frankly I don't care about proposals for bills. The Democrats deserve some praise for the infrastructure bill, but in the end that was a massively stripped down bill that only accomplished a fraction of its proposed aims. For a party in total power over government that's a whole long list of proposals without much to show for it.

I don't even claim that the Republicans are much better, but at least Trump's rhetoric over cleaning house in Congress and draining the swamp is admitting that there is a problem in the government, and not claiming oh-so-righteously that the Democrats would solve all our problems were they just given all the electoral tools needed to do so. They've had those tools at multiple times the last 30 years and utterly failed in their aims.

It's incredible that you claim urban Americans don't hate rural Americans and then condescendingly dismiss Alabama as a religious back-water and that they need to stop dragging the glory of the coasts down with them. The people who live in "religious back-waters" like Alabama are some of the most disadvantaged people in the country who've grown steadily and steadily poorer as the wealth of the nation flows in one direction (or two) towards the coasts. Maybe that's not hate, maybe that's more indifference, but to the people at the losing end of an economic rebalancing I'm not sure that's all that different. No wonder they're all so angry if this many people outright dismiss the struggle half this country seems to be going through.

>And yet despite three Democratic presidential terms since 1992, the average American is way poorer and sicker than they were 30 years ago.

I'm not advocating the neoliberalism on the 1990s, I'm talking about the modern day Democratic party but lets be real about we are talking about. since 1992, A Democrat has been President 17 of those years. They've had control of Congress and the Presidency maybe four or six of those years. Of the last 30 year, the GOP has had control of the house for twenty of those years and they had control of the Senate 16 of those years. The POTUS is part of the executive branch, the legislative branch. The GOP has had control of the legislative branch for the majority of the last 30 years and done absolutely nothing.

Obama, for all his flaws was able to get the ACA passed, which is probably the most important, best piece of legislation to come from the US government since the Carter administration.

>Frankly I don't care about proposals for bills. The Democrats deserve some praise for the infrastructure bill, but in the end that was a massively stripped down bill that only accomplished a fraction of its proposed aims. For a party in total power over government that's a whole long list of proposals without much to show for it.

Who do you think stripped out all the good stuff? It wasn't progressive Democrats. The Democrats are not in 'total power' and never have been. Like I said in my original comment, the US government is extremely biased towards minority rule. republicans hold 50 Senate seats but the states they represent only make up 43% of the country. That in itself isn't terrible because the Senate was always intended to represent states, not people. What is actually terrible is the House of Representatives. The House, also known as The Peoples House is supposed to represent the people and give more representation to states with more population. Because the House is capped, smaller states are over represented in the House. Brookings estimated that the GOP got an extra 21 seats in the 2016 election due to conservative over representation

https://www.brookings.edu/blog/fixgov/2017/02/22/misrepresen...

It's really hard to get enough of a majority when every elected part of the government is biased to benefit the minority of Americans. Democrats are at the mercy of their most conservative members and always will be because West Virginia and Alabama get far more say in America than California.

Remember, all 50 republicans opposed a massively popular infrastructure bill. Only 2 Democrats opposed it. That doesn't sound like 'both-sides' to me. It sounds like our broken system of government is failing us.

>I don't even claim that the Republicans are much better, but at least Trump's rhetoric over cleaning house in Congress and draining the swamp is admitting that there is a problem in the government, and not claiming oh-so-righteously that the Democrats would solve all our problems were they just given all the electoral tools needed to do so. They've had those tools at multiple times the last 30 years and utterly failed in their aims.

trump is the swamp though. I don't think Democrats pretend that everything is okay in Washington and if you have some primary sources indicating that they do, I'd love to see it. I've also never seen Democrats claiming they "would solve all our problems". I usually see Democrats pushing specific legislation and talking about the benefits of that legislation. They've had control of both the Presidency and congress for what, 4 years in the last 30. And in that time they passed a landmark health care bill that has saved thousands of lives. What have republicans done? The republicans only do well in opposition because they have no ideas. We can see this today. We have a President who is working on legislation that is both popular and sound and we 50 republicans who vote no in lock stop because they don't want Biden to succeed. The GOP is more than willing to hurt Americans if they think it'll help them in the next election and we are seeing that right now.

>It's incredible that you claim urban Americans don't hate rural Americans and then condescendingly dismiss Alabama as a religious back-water and that they need to stop dragging the glory of the coasts down with them.

Firstly, I didn't claim they were religious backwater, I said if they want to be one, they should do it without dragging down the coasts. Secondly, I feel you have a deep misunderstanding of what the word "hate" means.

Hate is "intense or passionate dislike". I don't hate Alabamans. I think they are as a group politically foolish. I think they have, as an aggregate, a terrible value system. I think they make terrible electoral choices over and over again that hurt them. There are good people in Alabama, they are just greatly outvoted by people who love hate mongers like trump.

>The people who live in "religious back-waters" like Alabama are some of the most disadvantaged people in the country who've grown steadily and steadily poorer as the wealth of the nation flows in one direction (or two) towards the coasts.

I agree! That's why it's in their best interest to vote for people who want to help them because its the modern economy that caused the wealth to flow to the coasts, not a political decision. trump did well because he lied to them and told them what they wanted to hear. He sold the lie that they could live their whole life in a tiny town with no economy and make a living wage. These small towns can survive but only if they modernize their economies. They need real leaders, not ones who spend their time fear mongering about Critical Race Theory in schools where it isn't taught in the first place.

>Maybe that's not hate, maybe that's more indifference, but to the people at the losing end of an economic rebalancing I'm not sure that's all that different. No wonder they're all so angry if this many people outright dismiss the struggle half this country seems to be going through.

The Democrat infrastructure would have been an economic boom for rural parts of the country. All 50 GOP Senators opposed it. A lot of working class people who would have benefitted from the infrastructure projects that the country overwhelming supports voted for the people who killed the project. They will vote for them again because they will be afraid of whatever boogyman the GOP uses for the mid-terms. That seems foolish to me.

I guess it's just that deplorables and coal miners live in rural areas. The people in cities don't hate them, just want them unemployed, disarmed, disenfranchised and re-educated.

I guess if that's the conspiracy theory driven world you want to live in, that's your right but thank you for perfectly illustrating how the "split" is largely in the imagination of rural voters.

The majority of the people in those groups don't like each other because they've been pit against each other by the media and corporate interests who know a divided house is easier to rule.

There’s a strong counter factual argument that can be made that if the Confederacy was allowed to exist seperately, then when we go into WW2 Hitler counts them as an Axis ally. Having a direct Axis ally on the continent probably means he can defeat the US, causing the Allied powers to lose the war. So: if the American Civil War had come to a draw, you can make a convincing argument the fascist powers (Germany, Japan, Italy, and a Confederate US) would dominate the world now. A scary thought.

That's a very interesting thought. Given the poverty the South was left with even with Reconstruction, I think you're right that a defeated-but-intact Confederacy could have potentially been an Axis power.

It's difficult to extrapolate out details though. It's certain American history would be drastically different, but predicting how is near impossible.

Southern states were British colonies also. There's very little likelihood they would have aligned with their enemy during such a war.

They would have aligned with Mexico and the Caribbean by the time WWI happened - the social structure would have been very similar in both, due to the institution of slavery. The Northern states would perhaps have aligned closer to Canada. This would have had interesting implications well before WWII or any 'Axis'.

>Having a direct Axis ally on the continent probably means he can defeat the US,

I don't think I've ever heard an argument as weak as this...

None of this would have happened, because the butterfly effect would have wiped Hitler from existence, not to mention the U.S. being split across two polities would also have significant consequences for European history.

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