Basically, a bunch of racists-who-realize-being-racist-is-uncool had a ball. Because "balls" are cool. Not as cool as cotillions, but still... cool.
Problem is, the ball celebrates South Carolina's secession from the United States.
You read the dumb fuckers who are celebrating and you come across quotes like this:
“We are celebrating the bravery and the tenacity of people who were protecting their homes from invasion,” said Michael Givens, commander-in-chief of the S.C. Sons of Confederate Veterans, a major sponsor of the ball.
And you think... Well, who wouldn't protect their homes from invasion? I mean, what if it were... I dunno... zombies? Certainly, we would want to protect our homes from the invasion of the walking dead.
And this goes to why I am a history teacher.
I always get this question from students: "Do we have to know dates?" And I always say the same damned thing: "No, specific dates are not important, but the cause and effect of events that happen in a sequence is very important."
Knowing that the Kansas-Nebraska Act happened in 1854, whereas the Dred Scott decision was handed down in 1856 is less important than knowing that both were in the lead-up to the Civil War.
Apparently when the Mayor of Charleston (motto: "Now 50% less secessionistic!") said that the cause of the Civil War was slavery, he was booed.
We live in a world where people are booed for speaking facts. Facts.
The South seceded because Abraham Lincoln - who only refused to allow slavery to spread into new territories (acquired by pillaging Mexico of the half of their country with all the good PAC-10 schools) - was elected President.
Put another way, the Civil War was caused by people who couldn't abide by losing an election that turned almost entirely on the issue of the spread of slavery. Not the existence of slavery. Lincoln would move very slowly on the issue of existent slavery ("I would like to have God on my side, but I have to have Kentucky.").
No, those dim-witted, hair-trigger traitors in South Carolina who finally succeeded in dragging the still young country into the conflagration of civil war were upset that Lincoln wouldn't allow slavery into New Mexico. Not that the Catholic Hispanics that lived there wanted slavery. It was the principle - THE PRINCIPLE - that mattered.
As an aside, anyone that wants to start a war that will kill hundreds of thousands of people because of an abstract principle should be the first sonofabitch to march into battle. Sadly, this is rarely the case.
Secession is treason. Slavery is a moral abomination.
But I don't need to say anymore about it. Because there was this country bumpkin who said some shit. He spent some of his youth leaving in a lean-to and learned to read because a neighbor lady took pity on him. The bumpkin said this:
On the occasion corresponding to this four years ago all thoughts were anxiously directed to an impending civil war. All dreaded it, all sought to avert it. While the inaugural address was being delivered from this place, devoted altogether to saving the Union without war, urgent agents were in the city seeking to destroy it without war—seeking to dissolve the Union and divide effects by negotiation. Both parties deprecated war, but one of them would make war rather than let the nation survive, and the other would accept war rather than let it perish, and the war came....
(The) slaves constituted a peculiar and powerful interest. All knew that this interest was somehow the cause of the war. To strengthen, perpetuate, and extend this interest was the object for which the insurgents would rend the Union even by war, while the Government claimed no right to do more than to restrict the territorial enlargement of it.
But what the hell did HE know?
I remember heading north to school, and my grandmother warned me about the "Yankees". I figured she didn't mean Don Mattingly. I had an ancestor who lead a charge at Malvern Hill for Robert E. Lee. He was wounded and therefore promoted and lingered in agony for so long they promoted him to Brigadier General. I imagine I have other ancestors who wore grey 150 years ago.
But the warning my grandmother should have issued was against "facts". Those facts will mess you up.
And the fact is that the Civil War was a war over slavery. It was started by people who wanted to extend slavery into areas where it did not exist. And it became a war to free ALL the slaves.
We are entering the sesquicentennial of that conflict. We have - you may have noticed - a President who is of a darker hue than his predecessors. We have segments of the country who are profoundly "not OK" with that, and we have this little anniversary.
Fifty years ago, we had sit-ins and Freedom Riders. Maybe some of you remember those?
In a saner world, we could have a fascinating and open discussion of our nation's history.
But we won't.
More Americans are immune to facts than they are to swine flu.
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