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PaperclipPerfector  10mo ago (text post)   25097 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of December 25, 2023

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South's special position as a rebellious territory

Stop, your tyranny is showing.

First, the South was not a territory, the member states of the Confederacy were themselves independent states in their own right, and were not territories of anyone or anything. You can't seem to conceive of independent states voluntarily joining a union, and then deciding to withdraw from that very same union. I would suggest starting by forgetting what you think know and relearning from original sources, instead of projecting the 21st century backwards through time.

Second, the rebellious territories are all of these United States of America. Massachusetts was perhaps the MOST rebellious territory, the most specially positioned, not anywhere in the South. They were legitimately territories of Britain, and were legitimately rebellious.

Third, there was no reason for South Carolina or Georgia to agree to form a Union with Pennsylvania or Massachusetts without the very concessions they achieved, and when those concessions were ignored and trampled on, they voluntarily left the union they had voluntarily joined.

Fourth and finally, the biggest mistake of US statecraft was stopping at Berlin in 1945, instead of pushing to Moscow, but that was determined decades before because Roosevelt was a communist sympathizer whose administration was shot through with genuine communists and Soviet spies.

either Cavalier hedonistic indulgence papered over with cheap aristocratic pretension lacking any of the actual cultural roots that european aristocrats have; or hill people proud ignorance and shiftless rebellion against anyone who might have gotten any of that big city 'lernin.

It sounds like you just hate the South and hate Southerners. Your contempt is clouding your judgment and betrays your calls to vengeance for what they are.

I think the biggest mistake was the U.S. not joining the First World War at the outset. Teddy might have done it if he was president. American troops, ships, and materiel deployed at the outset would have given the Entente such a commanding advantage that the war would have been shorter and less brutal. Russian revolution would probably have been avoided, the Ottoman Empire dismembered in a less openly grasping way by Britain and France, etc. In general, American forces as expeditionary forces capturing littoral territories all over Europe Gallipoli-style would have been probably great for their long-term governance.

Huge missed opportunity.

Third, there was no reason for South Carolina or Georgia to agree to form a Union with Pennsylvania or Massachusetts without the very concessions they achieved, and when those concessions were ignored and trampled on, they voluntarily left the union they had voluntarily joined.

But none of those concessions were ignored or trampled on. The concessions made to the slave states in the Constitution were:

  • The trans-Atlantic slave trade not to be abolished before 1808 (spent by the time of the Civil War)
  • The fugitive slave clause (still operational on the eve of the Civil War)
  • The three fifths clause (still operational on the eve of the Civil War)
  • Implicitly, the fact that the powers of the federal government did not extend to regulating slavery within a slave state (something that the Corwin amendment, which Lincoln did not object to, would have made explicit and permanent).

The main stated grievance of the South in the 1850's was about the extension of slavery to the new territories captured in the Mexican-American war - there had already been a convention in Nashville in 1850 where several states threatened to secede if this was not permitted. But this issue was in effect resolved in favour of the slave states by Dred Scott. The stated grievance of the South in 1860 was that Lincoln's personal views on slavery made him an unacceptable president.

Unless you want to argue that Dred Scott was rightly decided (implying that the Northwest Ordinance was unconstitutional, despite being broadly supported by the same people who ratified the Constitution), secession was a fit of pique at losing an election, not a response to wrongdoing by the federal government.

Fourth and finally, the biggest mistake of US statecraft was stopping at Berlin in 1945, instead of pushing to Moscow

It genuinely astounds me that anyone thinks they could have actually done this. Sure, the Soviet Union had taken huge hits, but they still had a reservoir of experienced soldiers and a running wartime economy to supply them to at least adequately; certainly enough to put up a mighty struggle against any other invading armies. Apart from the British, maybe, the only other force the Americans could have mustered to fight besides them would have been the Germans, but at that point utilizing them would have been enough to turn everyone else, French and Italians included, to the Soviet side.

Even in America the country would have, in 1945, gone through several years of propaganda about how the Russian is Also Your Friend and Fights For Freedom, it's hard to see the country gearing up for several more years of war against them all of the sudden for no clear reason in sight at that point.

The US had the atom bomb which the Soviets didn’t - together with no Lend Lease this would have made the USA unbeatable.

I don't think that the US atomic bomb production was at that point at the phase where they could produce more than an occasional bomb, and in any case - as the movie Oppenheimer showed - a huge amount of the folks related to the weapons development in this arena were in it specifically to beat the Nazis and would have pulled brakes on the programme hard if the US had suddenly palled with the Nazis to attack the Soviets.

The United States basically had plans and the means to produce one A bomb a month basically indefinitely in 1945.

Indeed they had zero bombs for a few months after V-E day -- I'm sure they could have managed to stall or otherwise create chaos for a while, but it would have been an awfully big risk to take on that basis considering that hardly anyone even knew about the thing, and those who did couldn't really be sure that it would work.

It may make sense militarily but how in the hell do you sell it politically?

How do you not look like a duplicitous bastard of a nation for the next century? Let alone justify the horror if prolonging the most destructive war of all time for a good few years?

A more realistic alternative would have been halting Lend-Lease after Stalin didn't provide any support for the Warsaw Uprising. That would have limited the USSR's expansion.

Marching to Moscow wouldn't make sense. The war against Japan was still ongoing.

Plus, there were already riots by soldiers in 1945 over not being demobilized. World War II was sold on beating the Japanese and the Nazi's. Not continuing on to Moscow.

Even in America the country would have, in 1945, gone through several years of propaganda about how the Russian is Also Your Friend and Fights For Freedom

You can push the failure of statecraft further backward in time if you like. The premise is the same: if we fought on the side of the Soviets, we were fighting on the wrong side. After all, the Soviets and Nazis were allied for two years, from 1939-41.

Also, I was of the understanding that USSR was reliant on lend-lease for the materiel necessary to wage war, and that while they had the manpower, they didn't have the weaponry.

Apart from the British, maybe, the only other force the Americans could have mustered to fight besides them would have been the Germans, but at that point utilizing them would have been enough to turn everyone else, French and Italians included, to the Soviet side.

I can't imagine the Italians fighting on the side of the USSR to keep American out of Moscow. I'll have to take your word for it.

P.S. Patton seemed to think it could be done, and he knew more than you or I. Others disagreed, but if someone who was actually in charge of troops thought it could be done, and should be done, then I'm willing to entertain the possibility.

You can push the failure of statecraft further backward in time if you like. The premise is the same: if we fought on the side of the Soviets, we were fighting on the wrong side. After all, the Soviets and Nazis were allied for two years, from 1939-41.

The US didn't get to choose which side they fought on, or even whether to fight - Hitler's ally bombed Pearl Harbour and Hitler honoured the alliance by declaring war. Assuming that Barbarossa happens in any alternative timeline, the only way the US avoids ending up on the same side as the Soviet Union is to cut a deal with Japan such that Pearl Harbour never happens.

The world where the US gives the Japanese explicit permission to carve up the European colonial empires in Asia as long as they stay away from the Philipines and supports the Nazis over the Soviets in post-Barbarossa Europe is obviously worse for humanity (either the Nazis win, or WW2 is even bloodier because it takes the Allies longer to win). I don't think either result looks good for the US either. In both cases, the US ends up as the weakest of three blocs (with the other two allied), doesn't have access to the Middle East oilfields, and is almost certainly on the wrong end of a nuclear monopoly. (The Allied bomb effort in our timeline was dependent on refugee talent who went to Los Alamos specifically to oppose Nazi Germany - if the US is neutral, then the Allied bomb project ends up in some suitably out-of-the-way part of the British Empire, and the German bomb project has more time and resources).

Shortly before Patton's untimely death in a traffic accident, he was going on about how the Jews he was assigned to 'liberate' were loathsome and subhuman, how he much preferred Nazis. That's why he got dismissed from commanding his army.

Either we trust Patton and drop the retrospective moral justification for the war in the garbage, or distrust him.

Either we trust Patton and drop the retrospective moral justification for the war in the garbage, or distrust him.

Patton had been fighting the Nazis for years and respected them as opponents.

Seeing Jews coming out of the camps in terrible shape triggered his disgust reflex.

An ideal person would have reflected on that. But he was an Army General, not some humanitarian leader.

Either we trust Patton and drop the retrospective moral justification for the war

I, for one, trust George Smith Patton when it comes to war in Europe.

Also, I was of the understanding that USSR was reliant on lend-lease for the materiel necessary to wage war, and that while they had the manpower, they didn't have the weaponry.

At least according to this, Lend-Lease made up 10-12 % of Soviet production during WW2. More than I remembered, but could have been replaceable, and the Soviets would have been fighting a defensive war instead of an offensive one again.

I can't imagine the Italians fighting on the side of the USSR to keep American out of Moscow. I'll have to take your word for it.

Italy was on the verge of Communist takeover after WW2, with the main things making that not happen being herculean American effort under the scenes to support DC and other non-Communist parties, as well as Stalin's reticence. If US had actually attacked the Soviets, especially together with the Nazis, I don't think they would have had the moral credibility to do the former, and the latter certainly wouldn't have been a factor. Same might apply to France in lesser decree. Once firmly Communist they would have participated on the Soviet side one way or the other.

It sounds like you just hate the South and hate Southerners. Your contempt is clouding your judgment and betrays your calls to vengeance for what they are. I do, actually. I find southern identity and culture alternately shallow or ridiculous or gross, but my complaints are separate from that. I would grit my teeth and bear the culture I dislike if the rest of my complaining was addressed, even if it meant my leftist politics were defeated more often.

The north had it's own set of piccadillies and fucked up bullshit, but the south was uniquely bad at elite generation outside of specific, narrow fields (cavalry and cavalry officers). It's why they lost the war even when the majority of the professional military class defected; why the north had time to spin up an entire new military and MIC after dumpstering two or three armies one after another.

It's not even that the south was poor, the south had tons of money at the begging of the war. It's that the south was committed to a form of social organization that had become outdated decades before they decided to have a war over it.

Stop, your tyranny is showing. No, it really isn't. The war started at all because the south decided it had the right and privilege to dictate the laws of the rest of the union; and there was no allowance to succession in the constitution. If the south had the juice to win the war they would have established that right, but they didn't and it wasn't. Your revisionist take ignores the massive concession made to the south up to the very line of "we get everything we want, and you get nothing you want"; and just kinda avoids thinking of the moral crime of chattel slavery. If you want to defend the peculiar institution be my guest but don't just pretend it wasn't there.

Fourth and finally, the biggest mistake of US statecraft was stopping at Berlin in 1945, instead of pushing to Moscow Yes, the US would defeat the 12 million man soviet army, the most powerful in the world at the time, in a land war in russia. Be serious, my dude. We would have gotten BTFO because the idea was clearly stupid; which is why nobody of substance gave it any thought at the time. The winning move was to clearly wait, build up a stock of a-bombs, and dictate terms from a place strength. The fact the Soviets got them from us torpedoed this, but the alternative plan was even more impossible.

Your quote formatting is messed up, you need an empty line between the quote and your response.

specific, narrow fields (cavalry and cavalry officers)

You mean warriors and soldiers? You mean the people who conquered the continent, defeated the Spanish empire, and were the majority responsible for the expansion of the very territory that they were then denied access to?

The best statesmen in the country came from two places: Virginia and Massachusetts. The first president not from one of these two places was from Carolina. I think the south was worth considerably more to the American elite than simply cavalry.

that had become outdated decades before they decided to have a war over it.

They did not decide to have a war. They decided to secede. Abraham Lincoln and the New England puritans who backed him decided to turn a secession crisis into a war. It truly was the War of Northern Aggression, or the War Between the States, but as Richmond never deigned to assert control of Washington, I don't think it can be called a civil war.

Be serious, my dude. We would have gotten BTFO because the idea was clearly stupid;

Indeed, Hitler had just failed at this very objective with a much larger army, far better supply lines and a much less prepared enemy a few short years ago. Why would the USA think it could do any better?

Hitler wasn’t facing an enemy that he supplied with materiel and had just lost 10 million people?

Presumably, strategic bombing including with nukes. London-Moscow is around the same distance as the Enola Gay flew AIUI.

Not saying it would have been easy, but it's plausible that the WAllies could have done it.

It sounds like you just hate the South and hate Southerners. Your contempt is clouding your judgment and betrays your calls to vengeance for what they are.

That's opposition to some specific subcultures and political tendencies, not the South and Southerners overall. Plenty of us don't like those tendencies of aristocrats and anti-intellectualism.

You can't seem to conceive of independent states voluntarily joining a union, and then deciding to withdraw from that very same union

Fourth and finally, the biggest mistake of US statecraft was stopping at Berlin in 1945, instead of pushing to Moscow

Right, so the law of nations is determined more by military might than mutual consent. If you can invade one sovereign nation because it's in your eyes immoral, why not another? (to be clear, i'm not defending OP's claims)

Stop, your tyranny is showing.

So many historical revolts and risings in the name of 'freedom' are really calls for petty local tyrants to maintain their personal absolutisms in the face of a greater central authority threatening to temper their abuses. The Southern slaveholders revolting for the freedom to tyrannize their slaves (and to a lesser extent, everyone else in the antebellum south, which was a pro-slavery police state where it was literally illegal to be anti-slavery) is the best-known and most relevant example of this dynamic for an American audience, but there are also any number of European aristocratic revolts against some horrible tyrant king whose crime is trying to circumscribe the power of the landed nobles over their subjects, or even the conspirators who killed Julius Caesar.

Often 'tyranny' is narrowly defined as the tyranny of the centralized state, while the tyranny of clerics, slave masters, regional notables, the paterfamilias, etc. are defined as 'liberty.'

Often 'tyranny' is narrowly defined as the tyranny of the centralized state

I approve of this definition, and would add that centralization is necessary for tyranny. Your examples are all centralized, after all.

Tyranny is the undue restriction of liberty, and especially historically, there are many powers besides the state that can restrict liberty. However, as the state expands, it generally displaces and destroys these smaller power centers, which is generally a good thing.

I can't find a definition of "tyrant" that skips over the requirement that they are (or are similar to) a ruler. "Tyranny" is a bit less specific, but it still tilts heavily towards oppressive power from a specific centralized source.

Yes, you can have a tyrannical boss or romantic partner, but that's generally exaggeration for effect instead of a true description.

In the modern developed world we've mostly but not entirely gotten rid of non-state tyrannies. In the past, I think it would be appropriate to refer to a slaveholder or a the head of a clan as a tyrant over his subjects.

And yet all the places people want to live have such governments...

Not by choice.

There are places with weaker and stronger governments on the earth and generally people do not move from places with stronger governments to places with weaker governments.

and generally people do not move from places with stronger governments to places with weaker governments.

Which is why Chinese immigration is constantly overwhelmed with applicants while basically nobody bothers trying to come to the US.

No, "strong" and "weak" are doing a whole lot of heavy lifting and also don't evenly distribute across populations. One could argue that the South African state, and a significant cross-section of its citizens, form a significantly "stronger" oppressive government bloc from the perspective of a smaller fraction of citizens who have enough time preference to prefer electricity tomorrow over the maintenance costs of that infrastructure today than can be found in any other Western nation, whose governments (and supporting citizenry) are much weaker in that regard.

Those citizens are all emigrating to countries with "weaker" governments in the sense that that government is either unwilling or unable to enforce similar terms- in essence, the taxes are lower. Sure, the (example) Australian government and people are very awful in a number of other ways, but until they start shutting the power off every night because muh carbon or fail to enforce law and order because muh racism (the latter is still a thing in any US-aligned nation, but to a much smaller degree than it is in SA), they're better masters than their fellow South Africans (and their government) would be, hence their migration.

lol, lmao even.

I guess it's easy to argue for anything when one ignores all the parts of history that don't fit it. But I somehow am not convinced that exit from overbearing centralized governments is something that doesn't deserve consideration because you personally don't consider it "general" enough.

I'm sorry but I just find it ridiculous to argue that fleeing conscription and taxes isn't a common reason for migration throughout history. People have been doing it ever since either were invented.

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