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TUCSON: TIME FOR ANOTHER EXAMINATION OF CONSCIENCE
By Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
On November 22, 1963, Mummy picked me up early from Sidwell Friends School in Washington, D.C. Driving home to Hickory Hill in northern Virginia, I noticed that all the District flags were at half staff. Mummy told us that a bad man had shot Uncle Jack and that he was ( Read more... )
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And what's depressing is that I honestly don't think this is going to cause the "examination of conscience" was so desperately need--already, the man who did it is being Othered as a mentally-ill, lone gunman crackpot, and all those responsible for the rhetoric are pulling guilting tactics to silence people, like Palin's "blood libel" shit, and saying the deplore violence, and how dare the left use this for political gain...and people are soaking it all in and accepting it as surely as they soaked in and accepted the miasma of rage that's infused politics now. :/ I hoped at first this would spur some introspection, but it doesn't seem like it is.
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“These explanations are flatly wrong. High tariffs had prompted the Nullification Crisis in 1831-33, when, after South Carolina demanded the right to nullify federal laws or secede in protest, President Andrew Jackson threatened force” - there are states arguing for just such a right now.
This one points out its own parallel, “However, two ideological factors caused most Southern whites, including those who were not slave-owners, to defend slavery. First, Americans are wondrous optimists, looking to the upper class and expecting to join it someday. In 1860, many subsistence farmers aspired to become large slave-owners. So poor white Southerners supported slavery then, just as many low-income people support the extension of George W. Bush's tax cuts for the wealthy now.”
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