(Thread) The Plantation System, Cowboys, and MAGA

I finished @HC_Richardson's book ⤵️ and I'm ready with a Twitter Book Report.

Spoiler: Our current struggle between democracy (equality) and oligarchy (MAGA) reaches all the way back to the founding of the nation.
1/ This book is for anyone who says, "OMG what's happening right now in the US is completely new and never happened before!"

"History doesn't repeat, but it rhymes" (attributed to Mark Twain).

What's happening now differs in particulars, but it's the same story.
2/ That’s not to minimize this moment. We’re at a crisis point, tipping toward oligarchy (a hierarchy with a few people at the top controlling all the nation’s wealth.)

But this isn’t the first time we’ve been here, which means we have a blueprint for getting out.
3/ We start with a question: How could Jefferson, a slaveowner, write the words: "All men are created equal”?

This is what Richardson calls the central paradox of our nation: Slaveholders created a “democracy" while justifying slavery. The paradox has plagued us ever since.
4/ Jefferson and others believed that some people (women, Blacks, etc.) weren’t capable of responsible self-determination.

Removing them from the body politic meant everyone else could be equal.

If you let them vote, they’ll vote to dominate and take from those who are capable.
5/ Thus allowing them to participate in politics would lead to chaos, anarchy, and a breakdown of self-governance.

The Plantation System was built on the idea that capable men enslaved (or exerted control over) those who were incapable of responsible self-governance.
6/ Here’s the problem: When you create a hierarchy (some people higher than others) those at the very top consolidate their power and become oligarchs.

Thus a democracy built on a hierarchy is always in danger of tipping into oligarchy.

Oligarchy harms all but a few at the top.
7/ Before the Civil War, a few plantation owners consolidated power until they controlled all three branches of the federal government.

These plantation oligarchs kept poor whites in line by advancing the following myth:

🔹America was built by the yeoman, a self-reliant farmer.
8/

🔹Allowing for universal equality—allowing those supposedly incapable of self-governance to vote—would reduce self-reliant white farmers to subservience because, if given power, the incapable would pass laws allowing them to seize the property of those who can produce.
9/ Slaveowners thus argued that any attack on slavery was an attack on liberty and democracy.

Lincoln put forward another view of democracy: All men were created equal mean ALL men, and the function of government is to create equal opportunity for all people.
10/ For a few years after the Civil War it appeared Lincoln’s view would prevail—but the former Confederates fought back hard. They lost the war but didn’t give up the fight.

They argued that a government creating opportunity for Blacks really just meant giving handouts.
11/ And handouts required robbing the “capable” of their property and giving it to those incapable.

The former Confederates, by means of domestic terrorism (KKK) rolled back the Civil War advances until they had re-established Jim Crow and a hierarchy.
12/ After the Civil War, the Confederate ideology found a new foothold on the frontier.

The frontier was based on the cowboy myth: A [white] man worked hard, was self-reliant, “tamed” the “savage” land, and didn’t need government help.
13/ This was as untrue as the yeoman myth. In fact, “taming” meant plundering, killing, and enslaving. Moreover, federal regulations made westward expansion possible.

The frontier—like the Old South—was based on a hierarchical ordering of people.

See this sampling of laws:
14/ The industry of the west was labor intensive. Chinese immigrants worked on the railroads, then were denied equal rights. The Mexicans who were originally on the land did the picking. White men dominated them.

Thus a new hierarchy / oligarchy was created in the west.
15/ (Richardson touches more on the oligarchy of business tycoons in her last book.)

The New Deal wiped out the existing oligarchies and created a middle class.
However, Blacks and minority communities were excluded.

This started to change in the 1950s and 1960.
16/ The pushback started right away.

What Richardson calls the Movement Conservatives took root in the 1950s, and took over the Republican Party by the 1980s.

Her insight is that Goldwater and Reagan used the same arguments as the plantation owners and western oligarchs.
17/ The argument: There are makers and takers. Takers just want handouts. Giving handouts means taking from those who are self-reliant, thus taking their liberty and destroying democracy.

The result of empowering the takers would be chaos and anarchy.
18/ This what Trump means when he calls BLM protesters dangerous enemies of America.

By 2015, the United States was tipping dangerously back toward oligarchy, with wealth and power once more becoming dangerously concentrated in the hands of relatively few people.
19/ The thing to remember is this: The New Deal got us out of oligarchy and moved us toward a fairness government. What allowed the New Deal was that FDR had a majority of voters behind him.

And back then, voter suppression wasn't just rampant. It was legal.

So we can do it.
20/ Great insight⤵️ and I'm sure @HC_Richardson would agree: Myth and what she calls "narrative" is more powerful than guns.

That's why the South won: They were outgunned, but their narrative triumphed.

(I took a screenshot to include both @standorn tweets)
I didn't even mention women in this Book Report. Or the fact that most cowboys weren't white.

Needless to say a 20 tweet Book Report cannot do justice to the book.

(BTW, I discovered Richardson's work while researching my series, the Making of America.) https://twitter.com/vavetisedu/status/1299045498620440577
h/t @mcadooandrewd

If this thread makes you want to read more from @HC_Richardson about the myth of cowboys, and how that myth helped get us here, see:
https://twitter.com/HC_Richardson/status/1046440936392331269

Also read her newsletter.
You can follow @Teri_Kanefield.
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