The New Civil War

Much of the hostility is based on the refusal of the Ruling Elite and the Media (but I repeat myself) to disregard their prejudices against Southerners and Rednecks, but to, instead, make that the central starting point of any political discussion.

As Jake said in "Sweet Home Alabama",

Just because I talk slow doesn't mean I'm stupid.

For the Ruling Elite, the opposite is a Fundamental Act of Faith. I'm relatively immune from that bigotry, as the daughter of a WV expatriate. I saw the blatant, rude assumption of intellectual and moral superiority first-hand in my childhood.

I asked him, once, if it didn't bother him to be slighted. He smiled, and told me, that, yes, it was irritating, but that he got even. He took special pleasure in getting into a poker game with bigots, and playing the rube.

My dad was especially good at math, particularly probability. He cleaned up in those matches.

Read Chicago Boyz for a long essay on the still-simmering War, which has moved from Slavery and Jim Crow to its essence - the right to determine one's own destiny.

Once of the comments (don't skip them) brought up a facet of the Original Civil War causes that I didn't know - or had forgotten:

The North and the South became VERY different societies and cultures, that fought a Cold Civil War for decades before the hot one, not unlike today. The issue of slave -v- free states was an issue in and of itself; but it was also a proxy for political power.

Up until the Civil War, the only sources of tax revenue for the Federal government were excise and import tariffs. The South sold its agricultural goods overseas. The world monetary system was not up to transferring money except in the form of cash, so Southerners would buy goods overseas and ship them home. The South paid over 60% of the taxes supporting the Federal government. The more numerous Northern states spent the money, on the North and West. The argument over slave and free states was also an argument over who the new states would side with in control of the treasury. Cold Civil War. 

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