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Monday, January 23, 2023

A Second Civil War — Aidan Simardone

The article is really about the economic "war" underway in the US between rural and urban areas rather than mostly political differences. So was the Civil War, which was about the abolition slavery, a political matter, but emancipation resulted in huge loss of capital. The Civil War was also about the urban-rurual divide, with the urban North dominated by factories and the rural South dominated by agriculture, chiefly cotton production.
According to Bouie, slavery’s abolition was an existential threat to White slaveowners, whereas he’s “not sure there’s anything in American society right now that plays the same role”.

Bouie is right. Ideas and beliefs are important, but without an economic basis, they cannot generate war. However, he is wrong that post-1991 polarization has no economic basis. There are real economic interests that divide Democrats and Republicans. In the 1860s it was between North and South. Today it is between rural and urban capitalists....
The analysis is interesting not so much for the conclusions as the information used to substantiate them.

Counterpunch
Aidan Simardone

6 comments:

  1. It’s largely political differences wrt the 2nd amendment…

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  2. And what recently really pushed things was Covid. The really scary start of the Pandemic was urban. Most rural areas were safe early on, and easily swayed into believing that gov't/media were behind the apparent global scam to oust Trump.

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  3. All those riots in US cities in May/June 2020, with corrupt health officials giving their blessing... no scam there, right?

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  4. Urban summers of stagnation causing riots is no new thing. Being from Chicago and seeing a few riots first hand in the '70's, the stuff we saw in Portland in 2020 was like the guy showing Paul Hogan his knife!

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  5. Did the 1970s riots receive blessings from politicians?

    In 2020, there was supposed to be a pandemic, yet health officials declared that protesting injustice (George Floyd) was more important. I agree that those protests were more genuine than a Covid PCR test.

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