A pig in a poke is something offered in such a way as to obscure its real nature or worth. (Merriam Webster) “Poke” is an old English word for sack. (Photo of pig by Kimberly Lake on Unsplash)
Is the South a democracy an article asked some months ago. I answered no then and this article says the South is still functioning as an oligarchic aristocracy. https://aeon.co/essays/capitalism-and-underdevelopment-in-the-american-south?utm_source=Aeon
Excerpts from above cited article–
…deindustrialisation of the 1990s devastated rural areas. Since then, hospitals and medical clinics have closed in record numbers, and deaths of despair (those from alcohol, drugs or suicide) have skyrocketed, as has substance abuse. Southerners in general are isolated and lonely, and wealth and power are heavily concentrated: there are a few thousand incredibly wealthy families – almost all of them the direct descendants of the Confederacy’s wealthiest slaveholders – a smaller-than-average middle class, and masses of poor people, working class or not. The South, with few worker protections, prevents its working classes from earning a living wage. It’s virtually impossible to exist on the meagre income of a single, low-wage, 40-hour-a-week job, especially since the US has no social healthcare benefits.
The American South is typically defined as the states of the former Confederacy, stretching north to the Mason-Dixon line separating Maryland from Pennsylvania, and west to Texas and Oklahoma. Today, one-fifth of the South’s counties are marred with the ‘persistent poverty’ designation, meaning they have had poverty rates above 20 per cent for more than 30 years. Four-fifths of all persistently poor counties in the nation are in the states of the former Confederacy. The data is clear that most Southern states continue to be impoverished and politically backwards. Whether measured in terms of development, health or happiness, the region is bad at everything good, and good at everything bad.
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...if we turn from looking at planters to studying labour, we see that elite capture of the state is bad for democracy and worse for development. (Emphasis added)
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That land eventually became the richest white people’s main source of power, owned by the few and guarded like a religion. Elite white southerners were obsessed with intermarriage and have kept their fortunes intact for generations. While they hoarded riches and resources for themselves, they neglected to invest in the communities in which they lived. With few improvements in technology and development, the South’s dependence on slavery enriched enslavers and their descendants, but it left the rest of the region, both people and resources, deeply and cyclically impoverished.
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While the North had made fantastic gains over the previous decades by investing in its people, from education to infrastructure, the South lagged far behind. The wealthy enslavers refused to invest in the poor and middling-class whites surrounding them, finding no compelling reason to put money into communities they would move away from…
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The northern and even western US had been investing in building schools and providing free public education, but the cotton South left its people to fend for themselves: education was reserved for the rich. The North built hospitals, asylums and places for the invalid and indigent; the South built jails and prisons.
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The wealthiest slaveholders wielded immense and pervasive power as lawmakers, law-enforcers, judges and even jury members. They dominated the region’s politics and devised multiple ways to disenfranchise their poorer fellow countrymen. The oligarchic structure of the 19th-century South meant that the men who controlled government also controlled everything else in society, from rental properties and bank loans to arrest warrants and vigilante violence.
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The South’s ruling elite eventually regained complete control of the region, disenfranchising the masses, terrorising the leaders and the intellectuals and the brave, and undergirding this shadow world of unfreedoms with the ever-present threat of violence.
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‘A low-wage region in a high-wage country,’ the South industrialised in a way that preserved and reinforced the class and racial status quo, even when corporations were owned by men from outside the region. Instead of being an agent of radical change, southern industrialisation preserved the region’s legacies of low taxes for the wealthy, heavy-handed labour control, and little in the way of governmental oversight or regulation.
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...the region remained impoverished, infrastructurally stunted, and underdeveloped. Even the golden era of the sunbelt South came to a bitter end by the close of the 20th century. Rural developmental problems began as far back as the 1980s, as local banks began shuttering and hospitals closed. Things worsened in the 1990s, as the economic growth the South enjoyed for decades came crashing to a halt when federal trade deals eviscerated manufacturing. The racial tolerance and progress made possible by labour unions and working-class solidarity began to erode; deindustrialisation profoundly changed the region. Never having invested much in public services, state governments continued to slash budgets through the 2000s. This not only stalled new development, it also let much of the states’ infrastructure, education and healthcare plans fall deeply into trouble, perhaps disrepair.
From Slavery to today, Southerners have read and acted from the same playbook. The Tennessee legislature has read this playbook and taken it to heart. When does an iota of intelligence begin to seep into the inbred consciousness of those wanna-be aristocratic oligarchs? Repeat, repeat, repeat equals the same result every time. I wanted to cite the above (lengthy, I know) because the article highlights the unchanged mindset of the whites who lived in the South in the 1800s to the whites who live here today.
Excerpt from:
Countries represented at the Berlin Conference
Fourteen countries were represented by a plethora of ambassadors when the conference opened in Berlin on November 15, 1884. The countries represented at the time included Austria-Hungary, Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Great Britain, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal, Russia, Spain, Sweden-Norway (unified from 1814 to 1905), Turkey, and the United States of America. Of these 14 nations, France, Germany, Great Britain, and Portugal were the major players in the conference, controlling most of colonial Africa at the time.
The General Act of the Berlin Conference on West Africa, 26
February 1885 was signed by the representatives of the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Spain, the United States of America, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal, Russia, Sweden-Norway, and Turkey (Ottoman
Empire. (emphasis added) A PDF of this codification of this theft of land and resources is located here–https://loveman.sdsu.edu/docs/1885GeneralActBerlinConference.pdf
After the Russian president showed pictures of a Black Jesus, disciples, etc., many seemed to think that Russia was some kind of friend to Africa because of those pictures and because it did not colonize the continent of Africa. However, Russia participated in the Berlin Conference and was a signatory as set forth in the previous paragraph. Russia would benefit from the privileges set forth in the Agreement. Further, there was a Russian colony in the Egyptian fort of Sagallo in 1889 which did not result in a permanent occupation of the area. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scramble_for_Africa Russia is no friend to any African country.
Merriam Webster’s definitions of honor–a keen sense of ethical conduct : Integrity; one’s word given as a guarantee of performance. A long time ago there was such a thing as “honor”, even among thieves. In this year of 2024, the sad excuses that the United States has elected as leaders in much of the country have no clue what the word means or how to act…with honor. Now, they lie with impunity, their acts are the epitome of cruelty, and they care only about that which feeds their greed. That is the sad state of the character of leadership in this country.
At about 2:55 p.m. CDT, there was a break in the cloud cover and I glimpsed the eclipse through my eclipse glasses. Awesome! Before, because of the cloud cover, I was following the eclipse through the N.Y. Times live feed. Not the same as being outside and experiencing the eeriness. There was total cloud cover during the totality of the partial eclipse in this area. So, it was not the same experience as in 2017. Looked outside around 4 p.m. and the cloud cover has lessened–now that the eclipse is over!!! Oh, well, a glimpse is better than nothing!
There will always be traitors. Perceived individual gain over the needs of the group will always be attractive to individuals who have no honor and lack character. Integrity is not a word in their limited vocabulary. What we must do is learn to recognize the traitors and shun them. They will spend eternity in that ring of Dante’s Inferno where there will be no respite from their earthly choices. There is no help for them. Let them go to the imagined greener grass that’s not even astro turf, but concrete painted with cheap green paint that upon close inspection has faded in the bright light of day.
While the billionaires, millionaires and corporations pay very little taxes, if any, I, a member of the hollowed out middle class, have to pay approximately 12% in income taxes and because of the former president’s gift to the rich and the corporations, i.e., tax reform, there are few ways for me to reduce that tax burden. This is the season where I am not a happy camper. Mainly, because I just don’t see my taxes working for my benefit. I know a lot of what I do see is because of the State I live in. Federal money is either rejected or funneled to the benefit of certain people in the State. And the people in need keep voting for the ones who will take away what little they have. That is the Neo-Jim Crow State I live in.
To resist the influence of others, knowledge of self is most important. Teal’c Stargate
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