The necessary evil
You can’t make an omelette without breaking eggs, ya know?
The Arkansas Republican senator Tom Cotton has called the enslavement of millions of African people “the necessary evil upon which the union was built”.
Cotton, widely seen as a possible presidential candidate in 2024, made the comment in an interview with the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette published on Sunday.
He was speaking in support of legislation he introduced on Thursday that aims to prohibit use of federal funds to teach the 1619 Project, an initiative from the New York Times that reframes US history around August 1619 and the arrival of slave ships on American shores for the first time.
Well that’s certainly urgent at this time of a pandemic, massive job loss, people on the edge of being unable to pay their rents or mortgages, children unable to go to school, and oh by the way climate change hasn’t paused to wait for all this to go by.
“The entire premise of the New York Times’ factually, historically flawed 1619 Project … is that America is at root, a systemically racist country to the core and irredeemable,” Cotton told the Democrat-Gazette.
“I reject that root and branch. America is a great and noble country founded on the proposition that all mankind is created equal. We have always struggled to live up to that promise, but no country has ever done more to achieve it.”
On the proposition, yes, but on the reality, obviously not. It’s easy to say noble things, but they count for less if you are at the same time paying for your luxuries out of the forced unpaid labor of other people.
In June, the Times was forced to issue a mea culpa after publishing an op-ed written by Cotton and entitled “Send in the troops”. The article, which drew widespread criticism, advocated for the deployment of the military to protests against police brutality toward black Americans.
Times publisher AG Sulzberger initially defended the decision, saying the paper was committed to representing “views from across the spectrum”.
Yeah? Like kill all the Jews for instance? Like invade a small impoverished country and torture most of its population to death and steal all its wealth? Views like that? Especially from serving US senators, who could actually attempt to put such “views” into action?
I’m thinking no, Sulzberger didn’t mean that. Let’s come up with a rule: the no-Cotton rule. Works for me.
And he’s running in 2024? I do not wish to be in the land of Cotton.
If he likes him some slavery, he’s gonna love the genocide, as it was even more foundational to the establishment of the United States. Without the displacement and eradication of the continent’s original inhabitants, there would be no United States, and no Canada.
Necessity? Plenty of other countries made it to modernity without the ‘necessity’ of a slavery stage. Scandinavia for instance. Ireland. Scotland. Canada. The Australian colonies excepting Queensland..
Slavery if anything delayed the decline of feudalism, and thus delayed the passage to modernity.
But if it hadn’t been for slavery, think of all those poor souls who wouldn’t have found Jesus.
And it also helped create a permanent white underclass, because the jobs they would have been paid to do were being done by enslaved persons. Plus, the plantation owners managed to acquire huge spreads, which meant that smaller scale operations would struggle to compete, creating a monopoly and concentrating wealth.
It was “necessary’ only for rich men to get richer without having to pay labor or do the work themselves.
Iknklast @5, I seem to recall reading somewhere that the ‘upper class’ in the South intentionally sowed racial discord between poor whites and poor blacks by telling the poor whites that they were racially superior to black people. Early on many people were more bound together by their economic circumstances than by colour and understood who their joint oppressors were.
Rob, I’ve heard that, too, and I think there is a lot of truth to it. You keep the poor whites poor and use them at will. You keep the poor blacks poor and use them at will. Then you convince them to fight against each other instead of teaming up to fight the rich guys that are their real enemies.
Also, the poor whites can be brought on side and encouraged to take a certain security from the demonstrable fact that they are not at the absolute bottom of the social heap. There is a whole layer below who can be looked down upon and regarded as social inferiors, thus giving them a shred of hope to cling to, and building the poor whites into to social system.
WaM @#4:
They found a bit more than Jesus there.
But looking on the bright side, as Jesus and God are one, and God created Covid-19 (along with the rest of the Universe) it follows that Jesus can cure the whole church of it, down to the very last sinner. They just have to pray a bit harder. I’m sure that will do the trick.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jul/27/coronavirus-alabama-covid-19-baptist-church-revival
Perhaps Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States (particularly chapter 2)?
Also online.
Omar,
That touches on something that’s always confused me about Christians, at least in the US. They all seem to be convinced that they’re “going home”, “to a better place” when they die, so shouldn’t they be looking forward to it? I’d think they’d take the pandemic as a blessing.
WaM: Yes. Though personally I would never challenge anyone’s belief system; particularly if it is all they have to support them in a crisis like terminal disease. (If they are out to convert me to their religion, that’s a different story.)
In such situations, it’s whatever floats your boat.