Prometheus 6   

A small but powerful minority has succeeded in indoctrinating the nation into believing that its culture is equal to, if not better than, that of America as a whole. Although members of this minority consistently underperform the rest of the nation educationally, economically, and socially—witness their dismal school performance, their sky-high crime rates, and their chronic poverty—America continues to pretend that they are victims in need of a helping hand to overcome a legacy of misery, violence and corruption. To such a point where it can safely be said that this minority rules the country—they receive far more Federal aid than other Americans, and they form a powerful, monolithic voting bloc that national politicians ignore at their peril.

…They come from a culture where violence, revenge, and honor are paramount. Their values, rooted in ancient, barbaric superstition, can best be described as primitive. And yet they insist, almost to a man, that their special culture is worth defending and promoting, and loudly condemn any attempts to drag them into the modern world as “bigotry” and “discrimination.”

…As each competed with constituencies under the GOP umbrella, they also competed, to a degree, with each other for a greater voice in Democratic platforms. But the strongest group trumping them all in both parties has been a regional one: the South. More than half the states are located, in whole or part, north of Missouri, yet in the past half century, through 13 elections, only in one did a candidate living north of Missouri win the Presidency. And he didn't last even three years before being assassinated... by a Southerner.

Though the Civil Rights acts of the Sixties created the initial impetus, Dems have been visibly moving towards an umbrella that does not require that constituency for the past four presidential elections. It was not till the last, with Gore - a borderline Southerner - that the Dems came within a whisker of victory without a single Southern state in their column.

The polarization and hostility of American politics has escalated during this shift, much as it did in a previous time in US history, when it culminated in the election of a despised Northerner and a poorly named 'Civil' War erupted. The one day losses occurring in several battles of the Civil War remain the deadliest in our history, far surpassing the two worst in the 138 years since: Pearl Harbor and the 9/11 attacks.

Clearly, we face the sobering reality that it's time to stop glossing over this part of the national character and ask some hard questions. Some will protest this introspection, accusing those of us asking the questions of a regional bias.

…I'm certain I'll hear critics a'plenty for even raising these issues at the crux of the matter. After all, whether looking at the longer history or the past half century, it's clear that matters of regionalism and race have produced some of the most hateful and shameful acts in our history. From assassination attempts on Lincoln, to Long, Malcolm X, King, JFK, RFK, Wallace and others, from the Civil War to the Civil Rights Act and beyond, race hatred crops up repeatedly. But isolating these events to race alone continues to gloss over the clear evidence of the regionalistic differences that have been present in most of them.

Asking these questions and exploring these roots, I wonder if the polarization in American politics will again reach the explosiveness we've seen so many times before. After all, some politicians continue to exploit these divisions and fan the fires of race and regional hatred for their political gain. Yet even the cynical Machiavellian greed of such politicians relies on the existing raw material of a significant portion of the Southern citizenry.

We have seen and heard it all before, starting with the slaveholder Democrats’ secession from the Union in Charleston, December 20, 1860; to Strom Thurmond’s Dixiecrat desertion from the national party in 1948; to the wholesale southern white defection to the GOP that began with the Goldwater campaign of 1964 and continues without letup to this day.

At each of these historical junctures, the "progressives" of the time were urged to appease the ranting, rich white men of the Party and the stupid, racist poor white men and women who follow them. Lincoln tried, but (fortunately) the slaveholders insisted on war. In the following century, national Democrats resisted a civil rights platform as long as they could, but it took one speech from Hubert Humphrey to cause the Dixiecrats to bolt in 1948, anyway. Substantive civil rights legislation drove southern whites decisively to the GOP after 1964, firmly establishing the Republicans as the White Man’s Party of the South.