Personally, I will measure the end of democracy to the day the circus-like Arizona audit results were announced and Donald Trump claimed victory. Republican silence and complicity is staggering. How can we have unabashed espousal of anti-democratic rules?
It seems to me the Civil War carryover is the continuing saga of the Lost Cause. The heroes of the South rewrote the whys and hows and the results, and won the peace. The heroes of the South desired statues and universities named for them. This continuing narrative of normalizing slavery — via convict labor in the present day — and lynchings (4,000) after the Civil War has breath in today’s world.
One observation: The armed services seemed overrepresented in the Jan. 6 mob. Why? Could the reason be that 70% of military have a southern connection? And the Lost Cause narrative lives on. Gandhi said it best: “Behind every conflict is an untruth.” To the extent high schools don’t teach the Lost Cause history, we have undereducated people voting their biases. Is that good for democracy?
— Mark Wohlgemuth
Anchorage
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