Posted on 06/26/2007 5:17:28 PM PDT by Mamzelle
Over the past months of this nightmare of immigration scofflawry, listening to the rhetoric from the aristocratic Republican elites--I’ve been carried back to the Magnolia Melodramas I enjoyed reading as a teenager. Gwen Bristow’s “Plantation Trilogy”; Frank Yerby’s “The Foxes of Harrow” and the magnificent mother of them all--Margaret Mitchell’s “Gone With The Wind.”
George Bush once said, “I’m not a southerner, I’m a southwesterner.” He was trying to distance himself from the south and the taint of racism, a “compassionate” insult to every southerner who voted for him. But he has every resemblence to the linen-suited julep-drinking Massa of the Old South.
And the dynamic of the Elites verses Middle-class Conservatives is exactly like the plantation owner and his nearest inelegant neighbors...White Trash. Scots-Irish subsistence farmers couldn’t afford to the leisured fineries of the Planter Class because they were trying to eke out an existence in competition with the institution of slavery.
Remember the characters of the Slatterys and the Macintoshes, Gerald and Scarlett O’Hara’s WT neighbors? Not only did the O’Haras hold them in contempt for being so hardscrabble, tacky and rough-textured, but the slaves themselves of the plantations held themselves in higher esteem than “po’ whites.”
And the Massa with the Big Heart dearly loved his servants, loved condescending to them--What treasures! Just like members of the family! Not that he set them free, or ate at the same table. There are limits to paternalism and noblesse oblige. But Massa and Missus were unfailingly thankful that Mammy and Pork picked up Scotty’s poop off the Big House lawn.
The irony--it’s the Southern middle class that makes up a lot of the soldiers who trusted him enough to serve in Iraq.
George Bush thinks he can afford to openly display the contempt he has always felt for Joe Redneck...er...Sixpack. His chief overseer, Tony Snow, let us in on the secret in the wee hours after election day. He can now concentrate on indulging his oozing childhood sentimentality by handing his house servants a deed to America.
I’m reminded of another scene from Gone With The Wind--Scarlett was being lectured by an elderly matriarch about Trash. “And when you’re done with them--kick them away and do it thoroughly, because Trash clinging to your coattails can ruin you.”
I have entered into many discussions about illegal immigration with a comment--housework and yardwork are political. This is a class issue between overlord elites who can’t conceive of a life spent actually cleaning up after themselves. They break the laws, then have to justify the transgression by accusing the law of being bad. That’s why they become insulting and defensive when requested to obey the law.
I’m done with Bush. I don’t trust him--or any member of his Indolent family.
Now why don't you run off and jump to some more conclusions?
There are no classes in America...
If you honestly believe that you must lead one of the most isolated, insular lives in the history of our country, or maybe just an incredibly flawed way of looking at things. I'll stick with pragmatism, thanks.
He also gave us no child left behind, huge SS prescription drug plan, bloated budgets (he never vetoes anything), was not able to achieve permanent tax cuts and now finally amnesty for illegals-terrible bill-completely bogus. He through us a crust of bread with the stem cell veto. He thinks we are ignorant, and this will be sufficient. There is a big surprise coming in 2008 for the Republicans. They betrayed us and will pay a price. I am done with President Bush and the Republican Party. I was one of the Bushbots in 2000 and 2004 telling people we had no choice-no more fear voting. It’s useless to vote for these people who absolutely will not govern properly.
Dixie Ping
As a descendent of only the *finest* of Virginia Blue Ridge foothills “Caucasian recyclables”—the politically correct version of “white trash”—I agree with you.
}:-)4
No, you just don’t know what class means. Classes are legal distinctions. Go back and read your Marx, and leave America alone.
You know, I was a history and geography teacher. Your post was awful and inaccurate in ways others have noted. You are way out of your element. I don’t want to know more about someone who writes so badly about things I know a lot more about. I didn’t claim to know anything about you beyond what you wrote, and your claim to glimpse my character is more an insight into your inabiity to take the heat for what you wrote..
Agreed.
I shoulda phrased that better.....I meant anyone with your moniker is obviously southern
yep....Bush is pretty PC on southern heritage stuff
not good to me....at all...big red flag i noticed then
let’s face it....Bush did good with taxes and court
he rose to the 9-11 tragedy....I think most POTUS(s) would in this TV age with handlers
9-11 really helped him ...without that he woulda looked worse much earlier
sorry....I have plenty of kinfolks in Texas...
maybe cowboys in El Paso feel like you
my ex-girlfriend before my wife was from Anson...she considered herself southern
no doubt that Texas also has a distinct exclusive flavor to being a Texan aside from anything else but rare is a native Texan who says they are not Southern...many Oklahomans, southern Missouirians, nearly all Kentuckians....all claim Southerness and will tell you quickly.
scratch hard enough here and you can often find that the “Texans” who do claim not to be Southern do so because they disparage the South over racial issues as usual and wish not to be associated with it.
and they are often not native Texan.
I have been seeing this here on occasion for 7 years....even had some tell me that the Lone Star flag had no realtion whatsoever the Bonnie Blue which they considered a slave flag....even though the Bonnie Blue was an old independence flag in the old southwest from which many of the settlers came to Texas....and that several Texas regiments used the flag as regimental or company colors in the WBTS
PC conservatives are depressing...not you....I don’t know...I know your username though
not trying to pick a fight but to declare Texas not Southern is kind of nonsensical.....
as for BBQ.....it’s different everywhere.....as are southern accents.....I can tell Mississippi from Tennessee
speaking of which...where do most Texans come from ?...aside from Mexico...Tennessee
“No, you just don’t know what class means. Classes are legal distinctions. Go back and read your Marx, and leave America alone.”
What a nasty person you are. You know good and well there are different SOCIAL classes of people in this country and every country that contains more than two families. Being stubbornly obtuse about it in order to appear to have some intellectual or moral superiority is pathetic. You taught children? No wonder this country is so screwed it that it ignores reality in favor imagined idealism.
Typical edu-crat. Telling people, “Read your X” instead of engaging in an intellectual discussion. Perhaps if you spent more time thinking instead of reading other people’s words you would be able to form your own thoughts and not have to reference others’.
Larry Sabato
This is a good point, and worth a further comment.
To argue a syllogism, if I need a chair today, it doesn't help to point out that a) Chippendale made great chairs, b) I'm not Thomas Chippendale, and c) the chair I just made for myself (or contracted out to X) isn't as good as Chippendale's, or as classically well-proportioned, or, frankly, a Chippendale.
If I need a chair and supply my own need, my doing so is no less valid because someone else did it differently in the Federal period and garnered great praise for doing it his way (which great praise Thos. Chippendale himself might have been somewhat surprised to hear about, btw).
This is called the cultural error of classicism. Roman letters declined, it is now acknowledged, from the moment that Roman rhetors and pedagogues embraced that mistake by enshrining Cicero and Caesar. Who were, after all, practitioners not idealizers, and living men, not icons.
If someone asked me are you a Yankee or a Reb I would say Reb. If you asked me if I was Southern in a cultural way I would say no, I am Texan.
Texas didn't get the brutal brunt of the Civil War even though they fought for the South. I think there is a different view of things from Texan point of view.
I would agree that someone like Bush would distance himself from the South for political reasons and unfortunately Bush has shown to be a poseur in a few ways.
LOL! EX-cellent retort.
Stephen F. Austin was from out-of-state, too.....although he wasn't a U.S. citizen during much of his career. He was a citizen, a Virginian educated in Connecticut and Kentucky (Transylvania University graduate,) until he and his daddy Moses emigrated to New Spain (of which Texas was a part) and became Spanish empresarios. As Spanish "officials" they were no longer citizens by reason of holding an office of honor and favor from the Spanish crown. Moses Austin died immediately after returning from Texas to Missouri, but Stephen F. Austin accomplished the colonization of Texas -- with new Spanish subjects who all agreed to become Catholic and learn Spanish (he did). He died in the Republic of Texas when it was just a few months old.
One thing I will add. Santa Anna was acoward and any Mexican who is angry about losing parts of Mexico (which was independent for only 16 years before Texas won its independence) should be mad at Santa Anna who gave up all of Texas, Oklahoma, parts of Colorado and Utah to save his own life. The Mexican army was still intact and fighting but Houston basically said,"sign over Texas and we will let you go." I seriously doubt Washington or Jefferson and obviously guys like Crockett or Travis would be so cowardly.
My question is, why does Kennedy?
That one was answered in the 1930's, when the Mexican government nationalized the oil leases (or concessions, I'm not sure which they were, legally) in the Golden Lane Trend and around Poza Rica. That U.S. oil companies cannot own Mexican oil reserves in the ground is now an article of the Mexican constitution.
Years earlier, Pancho Villa had made a habit of executing American mining and railroad engineers whenever he could.
In what dream world do you circulate where you get to misuse terms and then call people nasty when they call you on it? Words have meaning and class means somethings specific that are NOT applicable in America. The main attribute of class is inabiity to change. Telling people who are not in classes that they are is nasty. And where do you come off being so abusive when you don’t know what you are talking about, at all! Marx defined class conflict and sociologgy studies it. I guess you know little of either.
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