No, you dopes – FIRST it’s Civil War, THEN Reconstruction

There’s something cracked about the new movie coming out this spring called simply Civil War. Supposedly Texas and California are on the same side among the rebelling states. So much for cinéma vérité.

But staying with the real world, the problem for Barack Obama, George Soros, Klaus Schwab and other such social arsonists is that the aftermath of the populist Ronald Reagan’s two-term presidency, and all the social upheaval re civil rights and war mongering which had preceded it, was an America where people of all stripes actually got along pretty darn well and more than that – liked each other!

You can simply go back to the major Hollywood movies produced in the ’80s and ’90s for compelling anecdotal evidence. Any Republican or Democrat, conservative or progressive, Southerner or big city urbanite could watch just about any show from that era and not fall into one camp or another at each other’s throats.

Take for example Independence Day, one of the biggest (and most fun!) movies of the 90s. We all pulled for America! And Earth! The melting pot was celebrated – there were heroes of all stripes in that movie. We laughed at our differences then. The villains were the ones who wore chips on their shoulders, the stiff-necked zealots for whom every dang thing was a provocation. In Independence Day, Jeff Goldblum played one of those guys who would be today’s progressive, constantly haranguing his coworkers to save the planet by recycling and riding bicycles and such, until he actually did have to save the planet.

Today, unfortunately, the people with chips on their shoulders are ascendant.

It is not the first time in the history of America. No period has ever come even close to the discord we have today as the South under Reconstruction. Abe Lincoln, of course, was one of the greatest human beings ever to serve as president. It can be argued persuasively, however, that the rampant death and destruction of the Civil War could have been avoided if he had not been so quick to pull the trigger, had focused on stronger negotiations with the South than his feckless predecessor, and had hastened the end of slavery through legislative means. But as a wartime leader, Lincoln like FDR later, was a genius, and he managed to reach his goal for the country – which, of course, was not ending slavery but preserving the Union.

However, the assassination of Lincoln at war’s end was a cruel fate. With Lincoln gone, lesser heads prevailed and America’s worst angels were released upon the beaten South. The following decade of Reconstruction was as un-American a period and an environment as counterproductive for the country as any time its history.

The evils of the real Reconstruction are far too involved to detail here, but do yourself a favor. If you have never read (not watched, read) Gone With the Wind, buy a copy and dig into it. It is not just about the Civil War and not just about Scarlet’s and Rhett’s personal struggles, but Reconstruction as well. Margaret Mitchell was a master of the art of painting human nature and personalities in all their wonderful (and vexing) diversity – with humor and pathos. And she was incomparably artful in depicting the details of class envy, race baiting, and exploitation of the vanquished by the conquerors in their hypocritical, self-serving zeal. (See Chapter XXXVII for a summary of Reconstruction.)

Reading about Reconstruction in GWTW is exactly like experiencing the tumult of our times today as our worst angels stoke flames of discord over race, sex, and ethnic differences; twist the law to punish their political opponents; rob property in the name of social justice; and go generally about, as the architect of today’s Reconstruction promised, “fundamentally transforming the United States of America.”

It’s an open question at the moment whether the new movie Civil War will be a fun, uplifting movie like Independence Day or a strident dud. But ironically, today’s conventional wisdom is that only a civil war will free us all from the Reconstruction we’re living through now.

For a two-page PDF statement of where Way Out Charlotte Pike is coming from, please CLICK HERE.

Author: John Arra

John Arra is the pen name of a determined individualist who tries to connect the dots of life by writing.

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