Southern Aristocracy = Plantation USA

A friend in the UK, in a back-and-forth in the matters raised in the previous post, observed:

"The role played by capitalism -- the way it commodified people -- is hugely damaging. And the denial both of the ways in which slavery really worked and of the ways in which capitalism contributed, continues to be hugely damaging."

She went on then, to define damaging, in the way that it is used in her part of the world, which carries a stronger meaning than it does here in the U.S.:

"... 'damaging' = 'hugely destructive, undermining and evil attitude/force that does and continues to do dreadful things' ..."

So then, to further explain how the institutionalized southern states' slave society of the United States continues to be damaging, continues to do dreadful things, look here, at this article by Sara Robinson, at Alternet:

Conservative Southern Values Revived: How a Brutal Strain of American Aristocrats Have Come to Rule America -- America didn't used to be run like an old Southern slave plantation, but we're headed that way now. How did that happen?

The article may somewhat over-simplify matters, for example:

[ " Right now, a lot of our problems stem directly from the fact that the wrong sort has finally gotten the upper hand; a particularly brutal and anti-democratic strain of American aristocrat that the other elites have mostly managed to keep away from the levers of power since the Revolution. Worse: this bunch has set a very ugly tone that's corrupted how people with power and money behave in every corner of our culture. Here's what happened, and how it happened, and what it means for America now. " ]

Well, no.  The Southern aristocracy were in power right at the Revolution -- they made it as much as the Puritan elites who ran the Boston mobs.  And with making of the Constitution a slaveholders' document in their favor, and with four out of the five presidents holding slaves and being from Virginia -- how could she say that, I don't know -- and then followed by manifest destiny for the expansion of slavery presidents from Jackson up through Buchanan, I don't know either, but never mind.

What follows in her article is what we have concluded also from these years of study of American history:

[ " In the old South, on the other hand, the degree of liberty you enjoyed was a direct function of your God-given place in the social hierarchy. The higher your status, the more authority you had, and the more "liberty" you could exercise -- which meant, in practical terms, that you had the right to take more "liberties" with the lives, rights and property of other people. Like an English lord unfettered from the Magna Carta, nobody had the authority to tell a Southern gentleman what to do with resources under his control. In this model, that's what liberty is. If you don't have the freedom to rape, beat, torture, kill, enslave, or exploit your underlings (including your wife and children) with impunity -- or abuse the land, or enforce rules on others that you will never have to answer to yourself -- then you can't really call yourself a free man.

When a Southern conservative talks about "losing his liberty," the loss of this absolute domination over the people and property under his control -- and, worse, the loss of status and the resulting risk of being held accountable for laws that he was once exempt from -- is what he's really talking about. In this view, freedom is a zero-sum game. Anything that gives more freedom and rights to lower-status people can't help but put serious limits on the freedom of the upper classes to use those people as they please. It cannot be any other way. So they find Yankee-style rights expansions absolutely intolerable, to the point where they're willing to fight and die to preserve their divine right to rule.

Once we understand the two different definitions of "liberty" at work here, a lot of other things suddenly make much more sense. We can understand the traditional Southern antipathy to education, progress, public investment, unionization, equal opportunity, and civil rights. The fervent belief among these elites that they should completely escape any legal or social accountability for any harm they cause. Their obsessive attention to where they fall in the status hierarchies. And, most of all -- the unremitting and unapologetic brutality with which they've defended these "liberties" across the length of their history. " ]

There you have it, the southern style aristocratic manner of ruling by deliberately damaging - destroying liberties  and progressive, community good for all others in favor of Their Way, which is to accepted by all others others or else.  Or else from them means what it says.  Or else be beaten, whipped, sold down the river, raped and killed, as they choose.

Their system of enormous damage continues.  Not just us, but the planet cannot stand more of what they do, and do as their own perceived divine right to do so. When will we put a stop to their retrogressive brutality, cruelty and barbarism?  

Photograph of Our First Lady's White Ancestors

Follow-up to the NY Times article adapted from American Tapestry: The Story of the Black, White and Multiracial Ancestors of Michelle Obama by Rachel L. Swarns, published by Amistad, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.


A descendant of Michelle Obama's great-great-great-great grandfather, alerted by the story, sent a photograph to the author.

Along with the photograph, the descendant says this:

[ " When I spoke to Jarrod by phone, he told me that he hoped that he might be able to meet his extended black family, he said of the descendants of the slaves his ancestors had owned. “I always really wanted to say I was sorry. I also wanted to let them know that we’re glad that you’re part of our family, however it came about.’’— Rachel L. Swarns " ] 

Jarrod's response to this information is very different from that of another descendant quoted in that Sunday article:

[ " “I don’t think there’s going to be a Kumbaya moment here,” said one of Charles Shields’s great-grandchildren, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, fearful that the ancestral ties to slavery might besmirch the family name. " ]

Now, as then, mixed responses, mixed reactions, even within families

This is perhaps the most pertinent of the lines included in the article:

[ " Such forbidden liaisons across the racial divide inevitably bring to mind the story of Thomas Jefferson and his slave Sally Hemings. Mrs. Obama’s ancestors, however, lived in a world far removed from the elegance of Jefferson’s Monticello, his 5,000-acre mountain estate with 200 slaves. They were much more typical of the ordinary people who became entangled in America’s entrenched system of servitude. " ]

What I am guessing is this news, this book, is going to make concrete, real and understandable for a large number of us this most fundamental fact of the centuries of institutional slavery -- that the white owners raped their enslaved property.  That it was a matter of fact behavior, so much so, that it wasn't even talked of within the communities of their peers, whatever class their peers were in. This fact has been blocked out, ignored and denied both within and without the families whose ancestors possessed slaves.

I base this guess on this, again from the article:

[ " “You really don’t like to face this kind of thing,” said Mrs. Tribble, whose ancestors owned the first lady’s great-great-great-grandmother." ]

And on this, what the physician, who was prodding my back. said, the Wednesday after the article ran in the Times:

[ " My family only came here after the War -- meaning WWII, refugees from war-devastated Europe -- I had no idea about any of this.  The Civil War, what is that? Slavery in this country? It's not real to me. But wow -- a First Lady who had an ancestor who was a slave and who was raped by her owner?  When you think about it, that wasn't so long ago."] 

Of course, what we will be seeing a whole more of now too, is this:

[ " “To me, it’s an obvious love story that was hard for the South to accept back then,” said Aliene Shields, a descendant who lives in South Carolina. " ]

I.e. it wasn't rape at all, but like old Tom, master on his Virginia mountain, and his wife's half sister slave, Sally, and his own daughters' aunt, a grand Romance.  Can this country rewrite history on a dime or what?


This is not to state categorically that love couldn't or didn't ever grow in these conditions. Love is that miracle that will spring up in the most hostile of environments.* What I will categorically state however is that we cannot know, because the women were in no position to leave us a record of what they thought and felt. As well, the habit that formed part of their toolkit for surviving slavery, of never expressing to anyone in any way what they thought or felt, even to their children and grandchildren, continued even after slavery was done and gone -- so to speak -- as Jim Crow apartheid's sun rose, to take slavery's place.

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* The award-winning novel, Sally Hemings: A Novel, by Barbara Chase-Riboud (of mixed ancestry herself), does advocate that Jefferson and Hemings's story is a love story.

In the Beauty of the Pollen Was Born Life

What happens in your garden when you're not looking?

Outrageous!

A whole passel of el V's jazz musician buddies will be in Luanda when he comes back to the city from the northwest -- hanging out and playing gigs AFTER the city's big jazz fest, which he will miss, being out of Luanda.

When you're a musician you meet your friends all over the world, no matter where in the world you are ....

Doing Horses Wrong - *Brave*

Many criticisms have been leveled at the first Pixar to feature a female protagonist, proving it not to be as high quality as the best of the Pixars which all, incidentally, feature male protags.

But nobody's criticized the choice for Angus, Merida's equine companion, transport and Greek chorus. He's a Clydesdale! Clydesdales and their distinctive fetlock feathering did not exist until fairly late in the 18th century.*

The first trailer for Brave prompted me to wonder how such a tiny person could keep her seat astride such a wide-backed horse (in later trailers Merida appears older than she did in that first one -- in which she seemed to be 9 at the oldest). But I didn't realize the horse was a particular breed, rather than the the generic Great Big Horse.

Never forget ladies and gentlemen: movies exist to tell you lies!
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* From wiki: The Clydesdale takes its name from Clydesdale, the old name for Lanarkshire noted for the River Clyde.^[2] In the mid-18th century, Flemish stallions were imported to Scotland and bred to local mares, resulting in foals that were larger than the existing local stock.

Angola, Packing For

A month's stay.

Not easy.


The August Marfa video shoot, though, got postponed.  Which is a good thing under the circumstances.

The Slipstream Tour Brings In NYC Summer 2012

We're hitting 100° or good as today. The allergen male pollen-spewing elms planted to take the place of the non-allergen female seed pod bearing elms that the dutch elm diseased killed off in the 70's and 80's continue to spew. What they've been spewing for nearly 12 months already thanks to our warm to hot 2012 Climate Change winter, continues to blow around. This is by way of explaining why anyone with allergies in in NYC is so sick and so miserable, and has been for so long. Of course we must have pollen spewers rather than seed droppers, because sweeping up seeds for about two full weeks a year is outrageous!

So el V, who is terribly subject to pollen-triggered allergies, has been progressively sicker as these last months have rolled. I, my own boring back condition getting worse, began the day in pain, spent the day being pushed around, poked, prodded, hammered, etc. by doctors and technicians, and was hurting worse by end of that than when we began. This is how we went into Ms Raitt's concert and her opening act, the wonderful Mavis Staples, last night, the official opening of summer. El V started feeling better as the music continued – ay-up, he turned to me during Mavis Staples concert, with a smile. He’s not been smiling much these last days ....

Me? I oscillated between fighting off tears, having fun, and admiring Bonnie Raitt: as an artist, singer and songwriter, as guitar slinger*, as CEO and administrator. Re her stage presence, she got balls a big as any guitar slinger you can name but is more of gentleman than any of them, and she's all woman. This is what our young girls need to see. A woman of honed talent who owns not only the stage but her life. The foundations she supports do real good in the world -- they focus mostly on the environment and child hunger. She vets each one personally (she alone raised almost $400,000 for the New Orleans's musicians after the Failure of the Levees).

Her organization is hers. She owns it, she runs it. The organization in its various parts reflects its owner- operator -- runs smoothly, does a brilliant job, and the members are as fierce in their loyalty as are Ms. Raitt's fans. As it is with singers, their fans and audiences feel a very deep personal connection, a connection into which you plunge at every one of her performances.

Last night Ms Raitt threw out exuberant homage and credit to a wide range of other singer-songwriter-guitar slingers-musicians, from "my Celtic roots," Irish singers-songwriters, to Levon Helm, to the grand old bluesmen with whom she's spent so much of her life, to Mavis Staples and her father. When Mavis sang about we'll keep going on that freedom road, after speaking so movingly about Martin Luther King, I really did cry, if only because that freedom seems so much further away in too many ways now than ever. When Bonnie joined her "big sister" Mavis in "The Circle Will be Unbroken," I also wept -- which people who know me very well would never ever expect. It's because feel I understand these songs so much better at this period of our national life than I did earlier, even as the hope and optimism these songs embody has been torn to shreds by politicians and corporations and the media they own.

In her own part of the concert Ms. Raitt performed several cuts from the new album, Slipstream,some of the originals as well as some covers, including one of my favorite Dylan numbers from his own later albums. She moved effortlessly from raucous rock numbers whanging one of her many guitars, to the intimacy of sitting bare (i.e. sans guitars) and solitary on a stool in the dark, addressing a heart-wrenching lament of forgiveness and letting go to a lover who can't love the lyrics’ voice.

Every time I have had the opportunity to hear Bonnie Raitt there are new aspects of her shows to enjoy. She can be a sprite as much as she can be a comedian, a wielder of thunderous guitar power to – why, yes, she remembers your name! Touring and the stage are her life, and that means a meaningful social life. It allows her to keep up face-to-face with her many friends, the list which keeps growing, because she's that kind of person. You never know who will be with at her ‘parties,’ but you know you will know others there. There may be kids and babies too. Bonnie gives herself to her fans, the journalists, and the charitable foundations that she works with.

Last night someone in the audience yelled, "Bonnie for President." In all honesty, we could -- and we certainly are going to -- do much, much worse.

The tour, which started 2 months ago, goes through November, so there may well be opportunity for you to make this experience possible for your daughters ....
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*To see this petite, graceful flame-haired goddess with her signature front white witch locks in a guitar slinger circle of otherwise all guys, all of them at the top of the game of this kind of ballad-rock-blues musicianship is something every little girl should see before she's 12. In comparison to Raitt, those lip-synching stadium acts who depend on extremity of costume and vid projections for their fame and fortune look like what they are: faux musicians.