Monday, October 29, 2012

Confederates in the Election?

Has everybody out there read Tony Horwitz's Confederates in the Attic? It's still a relevant study of Civil War reenactors (who tend to like impersonating Confederates because imitations of their gear are cheap'n'grungy), with some side glances at race relations (among non-reenactors, because Civil War reenacting tends to be a White thing) and an occasional glimpse of how present-time politics relates to the nineteenth-century politics of the Civil War.

Bottom line: any way you want to relate, when you go back that far into history, you can probably tie your current beliefs to the historical issues somehow. The goal of Confederates in the Attic was not to explain everything about the Southern States, then or now, but to explain the kind of thing you're likely to encounter if you get into Civil War reenacting. Which is quite a panorama. Horwitz finds most to say about a devoted method actor (whose photo adorns the book jacket) whose concern is primarily with getting every detail, from buttons to the precise position of fallen soldiers, as accurate as possible.

Along the way, of course, he meets Twilight-Zone-dwelling "Children of the Confederacy" who defy General Lee's and President Davis's orders and teach their children to hate Yankees. And present-time conservatives who like the Confederacy's historic focus on individual rights. And also present-time "liberals" who like the Confederacy's opposition to Big Business, which, in 1860, was mostly located in the North.

But check out Mytheos Holt's take on Andrew Sullivan's interpretation of the election:

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/andrew-sullivan-if-romney-wins-virginia-florida-the-confederacy-is-back/

This web site officially likes Ilikepeople's comment. Amidst the Southern-States-bashing trollery, there are actually several comments that make sense, but Ilikepeople's is the best.

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