What is wrong with these people There are more of us than there are of them.
— Cheryl Rofer (@cherylrofer.bsky.social) 2026-05-08T01:41:06.608Z
Cheryl’s absolutely right — there are more of us than there are of them. But they care more. Let’s start with “them”. Adam Silverman has a good thread about this, responding to this post by Paul Waldman. It’s only visible to BlueSky users so I’ll copy it down here:
This follows from a categorization error that the Confederacy lost the Great Rebellion now d/b/a the Civil War. While the Army of Northern Virginia surrendered at Appamattox & of Tennessee at Greensboro, the Confederacy won the post-war peace & its politics have dominated the US ever since. 1/
As soon as the war ended on the battlefield, the Confederate dead enders shifted to a low intensity insurgency against Reconstruction, which is how groups like the Klu Klux Klan were born. At the same time a political effort was made to immediately begin subverting Reconstruction to fail it. 2/
That effort succeeded with the Compromise of 1877 & the institution of Jim Crow. Shortly thereafter Professor William Archibald Dunning established the revisionist history/historiography that would become the Dunning School of American history. 3/
Dunning & his adherents white wash the Confederacy, the road to secession, the Great Rebellion, & the anti-Reconstruction efforts, firmly cementing the Lost Cause lie as legit US history, which is part of the reason we call the Civil War the Civil War & not the Great Rebellion. 4/
Even once the Civil Rights & Voting Rights Acts were passed, the Confederacy was only partially beaten back politically, socially, & educationally. States like AL & MS were allowed to drag their feet on integration for decades. 5/
Once the only 2 political parties we allow ourselves resorted themselves post CRA & VRA with the GOP becoming the home for almost all the racists, the Confederates had full control over a US political party once more. 6/
They then doubled down on their subversion via electoral, judicial, educational, & informational efforts. You know what isn't in the Confederate constitution? Promoting the general welfare. One of the few things the Confederates deliberately chose not to copy from the US constitution. 7/
One of the hallmarks of both Republican politics & FedSoc judicial scholarship & jurisprudence for the past 40 years is that there IS NO SUCH THING AS THE GENERAL WELFARE in the US!!!! Which is why passing any legislation that benefits the majority of Americans is verbotten! 8/
Some of us were lucky. We got to live the majority of our lives so far in the period between the passage of the CRA & VRA & when Trump came to power. And many of us got to live at least parts of them in states that were not part of the Confederacy. But that turned out to be an interregnum. 9/
The Confederacy didn't lose, except on the battlefield. It won the overall war because it won the post-war peace. Every single time it has been faced with a defeat it doesn't accept that loss, just like it didn't accept the surrenders at Appomattox or Greensboro. 10/
Instead it regroups, reorganizes, & fights back. Even when it loses, as it did with the CRA & VRA, its adherents immediately set about subverting (read that as out administrating) the conditions of the defeat. 11/
The Confederacy didn't just reappear w/last week's ruling, it has been here all along riding first one party, then parts of both, then the other as a parasite hollowing out American state & society from w/in. It changes its names, how it presents itself, but it has never gone away. 12/
Until/unless we figure out how to defeat it once & for all, how to ensure that those raised w/in its ideology, doctrine, sociology, religion, & economy are abjectly, completely defeated in such a way that it can't return, every victory is temporary. 13/
Every victory is temporary because the unfortunate reality is that the United States of America, with the exception of the period from 1865 to 1977 & 1965 to 2016, was & now is again the Confederate States of America. 14/
Until someone can find a way to permanently defeat the Confederacy this will be the American reality. Our forebears failed in 1865 & 1877. They failed again during the New Deal. They failed to fully enforce the CRA & VRA. And the result is the Confederacy won again last week. 15 & end/
This is the fundamental issue: there’s some percentage of the population (27%?) that’s incredibly motivated to keep the Confederacy status quo. There are also a good number of folks who feel some “ick” voting for a Democrat who who’s not a white male that will soft pedal the reckoning that this country desperately needs. The Biden Presidency was a great example of that — Biden wasn’t ready to go full retribution on the January 6’ers, so he nominated a milquetoast AG and also didn’t make retribution a major part of his administration. He was, like every other Democrat pre- and post- LBJ, kicking the can down the road.
LBJ, an accidental President who had his issues, at least knew the powder keg he was igniting with the Voting Rights Act and the Civil Rights Act. He knew that he had lost the South for at least a generation, but he didn’t know that he had created a hard-shelled minority that would do anything to reverse his signature accomplishments as President. If we all accept that LBJ had an ego — the least controversial statement every published on this blog — I hope we can understand that he had the right kind of ego for a politician. He was more concerned with his legacy and actually getting shit done than he was about, say, the kind of ego gratification that Trump is interested in. He, unlike Trump, understood that he had to do some hard things to make a legacy. After his presidency, which was ruined by his bad judgment about Vietnam, he went back to his ranch, grew out his hair, and died pretty quickly (cause of death: Winston menthols and Cutty Sark) because he thought that he had ruined his legacy.
The other day, I watched the interview of Obama by Stephen Colbert. Here’s one video, the rest are linked to it. Obama is following the norms, making a few soft criticisms of the current administration while promoting his library and striking a positive note. I don’t have any real beef with Obama. I was an supporter from the start, and he did his best. But it wasn’t in his nature to do what LBJ did. He, like the majority of his party, thought that the way to fight the rump of the Confederacy was to move forward, give people a few good things, and look the other way. The whole interview with Colbert was essentially whistling past the graveyard, as far as I’m concerned. Given our common disaster, I didn’t enjoy the humor, and I won’t be visiting that library.
Obama is exactly my age and he’s a smart guy. But I’m at a loss to understand his “let’s keep everything civil” attitude towards guys like this:
NEW: Chief Justice John Roberts bemoans that Americans don't understand how the Supreme Court operates and see justices as "political actors". The court at times simply has to make "unpopular" decisions, he adds: www.nbcnews.com/politics/sup...
— Lawrence Hurley (@lawrencehurley.bsky.social) 2026-05-07T00:02:43.440Z
John Roberts started his career, and he’ll end his career, trying to take voting rights away from minorities. I’m sure he wishes that the states that are ripping representation away from black folks would be a little more subtle — and a little less gleeful — about it, but that’s only because he’s a member of the upper class of Confederates, the ones who infiltrate “polite liberal society.” Because these high-class Confederates have good company manners, they receive a unmerited assumption of good faith from nice polite liberals. I don’t know if Obama believes in his heart that Roberts is a fair actor, but he sure treated him a hell of a lot nicer than Roberts deserved.
Obama is a generational political talent, but he didn’t define the mission correctly, and in the end he failed. Our challenge is that we need a generational political talent who “gets it” about the Confederacy, who will gird us for the fight, and will carry it through. We need a LBJ without his distractions. We need a FDR who’s willing to fight the Confederacy head-on. If you’ll pardon my Mexican obsession, we need AMLO followed by Claudia.
