Category Archives: Current Affairs

Slavery and Confederate History Month

Americana, Current Affairs, Photography, War, What's a man?

To me, from now, from here, slavery seems so improbable. Not informal, chance slavery like bringing home a captured souvenir from winning a war; but institutionalized slavery. It requires a belief that the slaves aren't really as human as the owners – how does someone do that to a person they are living with every day (and, more than sometimes, having sex with), it requires complex laws to define who are the slaves and who are the owners, it requires an huge infrastructure to  keep the slaves from escaping, it must, I think, require a preoccupation that permeates every part of society. 

That is why the whole concept of slavery in the south is abhorrent but not really real. And that is why a post, entitled Honoring CHM: One Drop, on Ta-Nehisi Coates's blog, is so horrific. With little commentary, it shows a picture of eight people and reprints a letter asking for money to educate them. They are  emancipated slaves.- eight individual, traumatized, human beings.

8slaves

The letter describes each one of the people with passages like this

Wilson Chinn is about 60 years old, he was "raised" by Isaac
Howard of Woodford County, Kentucky. When 21 years old he was taken
down the river and sold to Volsey B. Marmillion, a sugar planter about
45 miles above New Orleans. This man was accustomed to brand his
negroes, and Wilson has on his forehead the letters "V. B. M." Of the
210 slaves on this plantation 105 left at one time and came into the
Union camp. Thirty of them had been branded like cattle with a hot iron,
four of them on the forehead, and the others on the breast or arm. 

I really recommend that you follow the link back to the original post. It is hard to read – at least it was for me – but it makes real what we often think of as abstract. Check it out.

General David Petraeus touting General U.S. Grant as an intro to a rant against “Confederate History Month”

Americana, Current Affairs, General U.S. Grant, Politics, War

Recently, Tom Ricks, who has an excellent blog called The Best Defense on the Foreign Policy website, in an interview of David Petraeus, asked this question:

BD:
We do a lot of reading lists on my blog. What is one book
you’ve read lately that you think should be better known?

General Petraeus: Bruce Catton’s Grant Takes Command (and
Jean Edward
Smith’s Grant). Both support historian Sean Wilentz’ recent
assertion that Grant was a truly great commander and president, vastly
better than historians assessed some years back. 

Grant 2

I am a big fan of General Ulysses S Grant and think that he is a greatly underappreciated  American hero  – in case, somehow, you didn’t know . I love that people are starting to relook at Grant and, in doing so, are seeing his humanity and greatness. But Grant being underappreciated is part of a bigger picture that includes Confederate History Month.

From – oh, say – the turn of the last century to  the 1950s, the southern revisionists rewrote both slavery and the Civil War. The novel, Gone With the Wind, with its defense of the Ku Klux Klan and depiction of happy slaves was an example of this. The crux of the revision was that the war was not about slavery and that the North, lead by the inept butcher, Grant, only won because they out numbered and out resourced the noble South and because Grant was willing to lose more men than the superior man and general, Robert E Lee.

That is hooey. The war was clearly about slavery, the abomination that had been tearing at the fabric of the United States since the 3/5’s clause was put in the Constitution. South Carolina was the first state to secede and, following its secession, South Carolina requested the other southern states to join them in forming a southern Confederacy. It said We . . . [are] dissolving a union with non-slaveholding confederates and seeking a confederation with slaveholding states.
Mississippi became the second state to secede, and it said Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery – the greatest material interest of the world. . . . [A] blow at slavery is a blow at commerce and civilization.
The other states that followed had similar statements. Fifty years later, these statements transmogrified into the so-called virtuous goals of states rights, independence, and the protection of traditional values. But those traditional values and states rights were slavery.

The North won the Civil War for lots of reasons including that it outnumbered and out resourced the South but the South had the advantage of being on the defensive. It knew the ground it was defending and always had shorter lines of communication and supply. It is much easier to defend a position than take it it.

But the North had better generals in Grant, Sherman, Sheridan, and Thomas, among others. Especially Grant. The generals on the North were younger, they were more adaptive and more inventive, and they had a more compelling vision.    As always happens – given enough time – the future won over the past.

So now I come to Confederate History Month – which I don’t understand any more than I understand displaying the confederate battle flag. As an aside. Often people who display the confederate battle flag have the common decency to also display the swastika so, at least, we know that they are just pissed at everybody. End aside.

But why Confederate History Month? What is it about a feudal society that supported itself by slavery that they find so compelling?  The Virginia proclamation, which seems to have received the most PR, starts out WHEREAS, April is the month in which the people of Virginia joined the Confederate States of America in a four year war between the states for independence that concluded at Appomattox Courthouse;
As Reagan once said There you go again…. Here we have the war between the states for independence that concluded at Appomattox. Concluded? As when Lee surrendered? So, I guess, it makes sense if the celebration is for a war of independence that was not lost, but just, you know, concluded. I think we should celebrate a North Kicked the South’s Ass Month to celebrate that the war concluded for Virginia when Bobbie Lee surrendered his sorry, whooped, ass to General Ulysses S Grant.

 

 

How does Apple get such great PR? iPad edition

Americana, Current Affairs, Television, Web/Tech

I am constantly amazed at the great PR Apple gets: this week the iPad was on the cover of Newsweek, Steve Jobs was on the cover of Time and Stephen Colbert gave the iPad the best plug I have ever seen.

The Colbert Report Mon – Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c Stephen Gets a Free iPad www.colbertnation.com
Colbert Report Full Episodes Political Humor Health Care Reform

The Taliban’s problem

Current Affairs, Film, Music, War

When we read about the war in Afghanistan, we almost always read about it from the US point of view – duh! – or a Marines point of view, or a NGO peace workers point of view.

A couple of days ago, I read a blog in the NY Times (it is amazing how much good stuff is in the Times, I wonder, and not in a good way, where it will go after the Times folds – if it doesn't just disappear) that talked about why the Taliban are such poor shots. And it sort of talked about it , inadvertently, I think, from the Afghans point of view. Among a long list of problems like having and using equipment in poorly maintained condition, relying on automatic fire rather than aiming, using mismatched and bad ammunition, was

a matter of public health. Many Afghans suffer from
uncorrected vision problems, which have roots in factors ranging from
poor childhood nutrition to the scarcity of medical care.

Sunday afternoon, while the rain feel all afternoon, I watched Afghan Star


The two of them, together, left me with an almost overwhelming feeling of how poor Afghanistan really is. Not We have no doctors, poor. but We have no good sanitation poor. Afghanistan is one of the poorest countries on Earth. So poor, most of the adult population can't see very well.

And there is a huge minority of the Afghan population that is afraid to move away from that poverty,. Afraid that they will lose more than they will gain. Maybe they are right – they will lose community, they will lose their convictions and answers – I don't think they are right to be afraid, but, then, I've eaten from the apple a long time ago. I am biased.

Bob White, RIP: probably the greatest pilot you have never heard of*

Americana, Current Affairs, What's a man?

* with the same caveat that I had for Lynn Hill

Bob White, or – if you like – Robert Michael White, died last Wednesday, March 17 2010. He died peaceably, presumably in his bed, at the age of 85.

Given Bob White's life, that was a pretty unlikely event. When he was twenty, he was flying P51 Mustangs in combat over Germany. He was still only twenty when, after 52 missions, he was shot down and taken prisoner. Then he flew in combat over Korea. Then he became a test pilot, eventually flying the X-15.

X-15 Flying
While flying the X-15, on November 9, 1961, White flew at 4093 mph. That is over 68 miles a minute. That is six times the speed of sound. At one point, the shock waves and vibration did this to his canopy.

X15 Canopy

And White still landed the plane safely and lived to die, peacefully, at 85. I hope we are all so lucky.