Shelby Foote

The Netherlands were once an imperialistic power. Historically of course, the Dutch were damn smart traders and had their own empire of the seas for centuries; making its mark all over the world.

I remember traveling to the Netherlands a few times during the 90's. A couple of those visits involved business contacts and I even attended a small convention there. I only bring this up because I was able to have drinks with some youngsters there, getting their view of things. They were more interested in what was happening in the States than sharing their own cultural issues; although everybody seemed to look down on the Belgians. Go figure?

I also met with some businessmen and even saw some housing developments that startled me. I mean it looked like West Bloomington, Minnesota. You know, the structures were relatively new and there were three car garages and stuff.

The issue there, at that time, involved the Jamaicans. These Islanders ended up there for God Knows What reasons and found themselves poor, unemployed and unappreciated. These are generalizations for sure, and I have done no research to discover why THEY were there.

The businessmen were upset because THEY all seemed to huddle around a monument of some sort right smack in the middle of one of the town crossroads.. And the businessmen were upset that their tax dollars were supporting THEM.

It seems that THEY would actually urinate upon the edifice.  You could see the stains in broad daylight; on a structure, that some would contend is a sacred object in the Netherlands.

We cannot get away from racial bias.  At any rate, even the Netherlands, this most liberal of places in the Western World, had racial tensions.

England is having one hell of a time with its new Muslim population as are the French.  Europe has, for sometime, enjoyed pointing at the States as being a peculiar seat of racism. The United States is not alone in its attempt to deal with racial strife.

America is not therefore, the only nation to have trouble with racial issues or religious bias.  And sometimes I think factions of the Left ignore this fact of life. While I write this, a limey on a Christian channel is narrating a show that has the sole purpose of demonstrating that John Shakespeare, the father of William Shakespeare, was Roman Catholic. Hahahahahahaha  And it is not some half hour documentary. IT IS A SERIES. And, if I recall correctly, there is only one mention of Sir Thomas More in all 37 plays, and that mention comes at the time of More's execution in the play. This all strikes me as hilarious. On the other hand, having done my own cursory research concerning the Bard years ago, it certainly could be of interest as to what Shakespeare's religion was.  That is, while examining the plays.

Did you know that George W. Bush actually read three of William Shakespeare's plays?

And while Shakespeare is writing his plays during the last half of the 16th century and a few years into the 17th century, this country is about to greet its first European settlers (with apologies of course to the Spaniards) who would be strict anti papists.  The sects that came here of course hated each other for the most part, but they could all agree on the evil nature of the Roman Catholic Church as well as the Hebrew Faith.

I have always been fascinated by The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down:

Virgil Caine is the name and I served on the Danville train
'Til Stoneman's cavalry came and tore up the tracks again
In the winter of '65, we were hungry, just barely alive
By May the tenth, Richmond had fell
It's a time I remember, oh so well

The night they drove old Dixie down
And the bells were ringing
The night they drove old Dixie down
And the people were singing
They went, "La, la, la"

Back with my wife in Tennessee, when one day she called to me
"Virgil, quick, come see, there go the Robert E.Lee"
Now I don't mind choppin' wood, and I don't care if the money's no good
Ya take what ya need and ya leave the rest
But they should never have taken the very best

The night they drove old Dixie down
And the bells were ringing
The night they drove old Dixie down
And all the people were singing
They went, "La, la, la"

Like my father before me, I will work the land
And like my brother above me, who took a rebel stand
He was just eighteen, proud and brave, but a Yankee laid him in his grave
I swear by the mud below my feet
You can't raise a Caine back up when he's in defeat

The night they drove old Dixie down
And the bells were ringing
The night they drove old Dixie down
And all the people were singing
They went, "Na, na, na"

The night they drove old Dixie down
And all the bells were ringing
The night they drove old Dixie down
And the people were singing
They went, "Na, na, na"

Robbie Robertson

Joan Baez of course, loved this song, and made some money off of it. Joan, who is a goddess in my mind, has been booed for singing it.

Me? I love this song. Always have. And always will. But why?

I also worship General Sherman along with his boss, General Grant. I mean the Civil War just went on and on and on. Only not 'over there' but over here. In my cursory review of Shelby Foote's trilogy, Lee and his minions would take brief sojourns up north, cause havoc and run back into their own territory--which they knew very well.

Do not be fooled by some Civil War accounts that nothing happened that was good for the Union before Gettysburg for heavens sakes. I mean the Union had destroyed the Western Confederacy. Louisiana had already been conquered and a make shift government was being run by a rather incompetent and racist northern general, but that is another story. The war in the West was over early on with the Siege of Vicksburg being the one remaining task to finish it off and that was done during the Battle of Gettysburg.  And the South by that time had been corralled pretty much in a few states.  Remember, Lincoln had secured Maryland at the onset of the war. Since DC is really in Maryland, that was a good thing.

Lincoln, after being a little irritated with General  Meade  for 'letting Lee get away' after that horrendous loss of men on both sides. But Grant had finally wrapped up Vicksburg, and the General received great press following the victory.  Grant was chosen as leader of the Union forces.  Grant would use any means necessary to finish this war.

The North had the technology--trains and telegraph and arms--and the industrialization that made victory a certainty. But battles would continue, Confederate troops would return home, receive the sustenance they needed and continue their forays against the Union.

Sherman wanted to make the march to the sea. He had to talk Grant into it. But once Sherman started the march, nothing would stop it.

I make this 8th grade historical overview simply to underline how important it was for Grant and Sherman to do what they did. The war would have continued for more years than it did if it weren't for this new plan of action. You had to hit the enemy while they were down. Sherman, during his march, saw younger and younger Confederates and well as older and older Confederates. You had to destroy the locations that kept on supplying the insurgents.  Oh and Foote will even point out, although other tomes do a better job, that Sherman never ordered the burning of Atlanta. But there is no time to get into such things here.

THE SOUTH WILL NEVER DIE.

Come and get us was the attitude of the South. Now I am born 90 years after this mess. But if I can feel bad about Socrates, I certainly can have feelings about the South. And THE SOUTH SUCKED IN THE 19TH Century. No doubt about it. Not in my mind. No two sides to every story. Not this one.

But the song. I can sympathize with Virgil Caine. Just like Joan--a lady who is probably more liberal than me. The individual caught up in the carnage. A dispute started by leaders who thought they were acting valiantly under ancient Roman Rules. And war is hell. By the way, if you are interested I found the most exciting history of Virgil Caine. It really is only ten pages or so. But it kind of goes through the song line by line, demonstrating the strict historical inaccuracies etc...A fun read. http://theband.hiof.no/articles/dixie_viney.html

There are factional strifes in parts of Europe and Asia that go back thousands of years.  The scar left on the South during our Civil War is there for all to see and will be forever.

Which brings me to another subject. Americans are obsessive/compulsive. One reason we conquered the world. Star Trek has 70 some scripts that were put on screen. And people immediately memorized every single line. Every episode was dissected. I think the Cling-On language was being spoken before Star Trek Generation ever came out. Hahahaha.

And there are Civil War nuts. I mean we have people in this country, most of whom are located in the South, who know every battle, every general, every gopher that ever ran into enemy fire. People stage old battles and will spend hours in bars arguing every stage of every battle. They know it backwards and forwards. Like Richard III knowing that it was the defective shoe that broke the horse's leg, which led to the fall of Richard as well as the loss of the battle and ultimately the war.

Shelby Foote, many years after completing his trilogy on the Civil War was interviewed on CSPAN shortly before he died and indicated that he would have fought on the side of the Confederacy because he was a son of Mississippi. See, he held onto those old Roman ideals; this aristocratic fiction of honor and such. When I heard that I jumped right out of my seat.

He said some other things of interest to me related to this revelation. He spoke of a 'Gentleman's Agreement' between the North and the South following the war and the Hayes election in '76. THERE ARE CERTAIN THINGS THAT SHOULD NO LONGER BE DISCUSSED.  And then Foote lets loose with a fart so intense, the stench came right out of my TV. That gentlemen's agreement has been breached in recent years.  Think about that and then you will realize why he would have signed on as a Son of Mississippi.Now here was a guy who came up with a way of presenting a complicated war that recounted the morning for Lincoln in his household and then recount the same morning for Jefferson Davis.

Folks, the Gentlemen's Agreement was this:

Negros do not count for much anyway. You do not care for them. We certainly do not care for them.  Most of THEM live with us anyway. We will handle it. Leave us alone.

I am writing this after the single most surprising election of my entire life. In 2007 when I saw this man give a speech across the street from a Lincoln residence in Chicago, Illinois, I KNEW he could never be elected President in this country. I never cheered so hard and cried so hard at the same time in my life as I did in November of last year.  It still does not make any sense to me. Hahahahahaha

If I was and am that surprised, what on earth do the racists in this country feel?

So why am I writing all this background, when I have probably lost half my audience? Because there is a fiction being perpetrated by the MSM including the most liberal of them: MSNBC. Jughead is right at this moment denying that beck or rush and any of the radio right are racist, that these demagogues have said anything racist. And the entire morning show is dedicated to the proposition that President Carter and Speaker Pelosi are out of their cotton pickin' minds to even suggest that these teabaggers, that these armed chanters, that these base human beings are racist.

THIS IS PURE DENIAL BY SCARBOROUGH AND HIS TROOPS TO THE POINT OF MAKING ALL OF THEM RACIST. That is how bad this miscalculation on their part makes them look.

BIRTHERS

I will not spend much time on this. ALL BIRTHERS ARE RACISTS. Period, end of discussion. If McCain were president, NO ONE WOULD BE LOOKING FOR PANAMA BIRTH CERTIFICATES. Never. No way. No how. You can make the joke that no one would because we would end up with someone even dumber than w--Sara Palin.  But, are you telling me that the Birthers would settle for Biden for any other reason than race?  Any rate, many sites on this crap.

SECESSION

Secession is a term that is strictly racist in nature besides being treasonous. There was one secession in this country and it was over slavery. Period. End of discussion.

Glenn beck likes to say 'secession' and that the Constitution is not a suicide pact.

Demint, Senator from our first secessionist SC, has spoken of secession. Real surprise that one.

MUSLIM FASCIST

Brendan Steinhauser the Director of Federal and State Campaigns for FreedomWorks, which orchestrated the march and calls the shots for its subordinate group, Tea Party Patriots has called Our President a Muslim fascist.

Rush Limbaugh has called Our President a Muslim fascist.

Glenn beck has called our President a Muslim fascist.

Take a look at how repubs are picking up on rush's cues here. I mean rush actually said that he never called Obama Hitler (which is a lie by the way but who cares in this context) but rather rush claims he only calls Obama a racist, fascist, communist.....blah blah blah:

The County Times of St. Mary's County, Maryland, reported on an appearance that Sauerbrey -- a former two-time GOP nominee for governor -- put in at a local Republican dinner this past Saturday. The paper reports that Sauerbrey said that President Obama was surrounded by a cult-like following, edging towards that of Juan Peron or Adolf Hitler. She told the paper that she was not making a comparison between Obama and Hitler, but instead saying that the conditions in this country were such that a dictator could usurp the rights of citizens:

She said that the Obama administration advanced "fascist, socialist ideals."

"I'm really afraid for the future of our country," Sauerbrey told attendees at the annual Lincoln/Reagan Dinner of Sept. 12 in Callaway. "Our Constitution is indeed being dismantled."

In an interview with TPM, Sauerbrey disputed some of the article -- but made clear the dangers of economic fascism and a breakdown in economic freedom and the rule of law.

"My point was very clearly not trying to compare our president to Eva Peron or Juan Peron or Adolf Hitler," Sauerbrey told me. "My point was that when certain policies are implemented by any administration -- and I also said, I think later to the reporter in chatting with him afterwards, that I was equally unhappy with the out of control spending in the Bush administration -- when you start down this road of these kinds of policies, you are on the road to destroying what has made this a great country."

Sauerbrey said she probably did refer to a cult-like following, "because this is typical of any time you get a strong leader." But her discussion of Juan Peron's Argentina was an example of what happens when big government causes hyperinflation of a currency -- which she sees as a real danger here.

"I never mentioned Hitler's name other than when the reporter came up to me afterwards," she said. "And I said, look, I am not making a direct comparison Obama and Hitler. I'm making a comparison between policies in countries, and that history has a way of repeating itself.  http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2009/09/former-bush-administration-official-warns-against-economic-fascism-under-obama.php?ref=fpa

In other words, the point here is to call Obama a fascist/communist/foreign-like.....

REPARATIONS

Reparations is a term that rush really likes lately. All government programs that help people are only reparations to Blacks for harms committed upon them as slaves and as de facto slaves.

The Gentlemen's Agreement has been broken.  Some sixty years ago by my calculation as soon as HST signed the military desegregation order.

But all rules concerning political correctness and basic human decency are currently out the window.

I will continue this discussion in Part 2.