Oh, the irony… The Party Of Lincoln is now the official political party of The New Confederacy.

You think it’s a coincidence that the current Republican Party likes flying confederate flags? Flags are symbols. They compact lots of ideas into a simple, single image.

American flags concentrate “what it is to be American” into their fabric. Confederate flags? The opposite. They were and remain the banner of a hostile foreign government.

A Shadow Government

Just as ironic – Republicans have already allied with a hostile foreign government – as if they were a shadow government preparing for the future. Can we be real? That is how the Republican Party sees itself. Their acceptance of the confederate flag proves it.

Keep in mind, this crowd loves symbols and hand signaled signs to each other and racist cartoon characters and statues of Confederate soldiers. And – holy cow, it’s like I buried the lede – this crowd would bring back slavery today if they could.

The Confederacy may have officially ended at Appomattox Courthouse, but that does not mean it died that day. As history keeps demonstrating, the idea of the Confederate States Of America split into smaller bits – like a rancid amoeba.

The Confederacy Moved West

In her excellent “How The South Won The Civil War”, historian Heather Cox Richardson tells the story of how many defeated Confederates – not wanting to live in a Restoration South – headed west. They couldn’t know that people like President Andrew Johnson would kill Restoration dead before it could “horizontal-ize” the nearly vertical playing field slavery had created in the South.

By then, plenty of Confederates had moved West and made it their home. We now call those places “Idaho” and “Wyoming” and “Western Oregon and Washington”. We call them “North and South Dakota”. Of course, lots of Confederates, lacking the means or ambition, simply stayed home and settled back into Life – no different than when the Civil War began.

The same went for their dreams.

Dixiecrats

For a long time, America’s two political parties really were “big tent-like”. Democrats could include everyone from FDR to the Dixiecrats. Republicans could include progressives like Teddy Roosevelt and repressives like Richard Nixon. Nixon, perhaps, was the guy who pushed everything over the edge. His “southern strategy” brought the racist Dixiecrats into the fold.

The Dixiecrats had been theoretical Republicans for ages. But they would have died rather than join “The Party Of Lincoln”. Nixon convinced them that that was now the Democrats – who’d taken up the cause of civil rights (in theory, just like Lincoln).

When the Dixiecrats jumped ship, they took the Confederacy with them. It didn’t take the former Dixiecrats long not only to fit in to the GOP, but to assume leadership positions within it.

Hand, meet glove!

Royalists And Racists

The New Confederates had learned a bit of PR. Selling racism at a Klan rally is one thing. Selling it to the American Public’s another. The New Confederates recognized that job one was to reduce the size of “The American Public” – aka “The American Voter”.

A third of Americans didn’t want to be Americans at the start of America. They were perfectly happy being subjects of a king.

And keep in mind, American democracy wasn’t on offer to all Americans, only some. The white, male, Christian, land-owning ones in particular. Those were the “all men” who were “created equal”. No one else. That’s originalism for ya!

In that very same vein, the Southern states refused to join any union that outlawed slavery. So, if America wanted to be a “United States”, all the states would have to accept slavery as a “thing” or there’d be no “United States”. Rock, meet a hard place, I guess…

The defeated Confederates understood from the jump what it would mean if Black people voted. They genuinely feared what would happen if Black people not only voted, but saw the power in their vote and began to use it. And, so – with Restoration stopped dead in its tracks – the Confederacy, having lost the war, set about winning the peace that followed.

Brilliant-fucking-strategy!

Next thing ya know, confederates are running for office again. And winning. Nothing’s really changed. Though the formal Confederacy may be gone – slavery with it – in point of fact, both remained very much in place and in force!

The New Confederacy Spreads

Not only did most former slaves not get their 40 acres and a mule, whatever they did have – what they’d worked for – vanished. Now operating on the down low using names like “Ku Klux Klan”, the New Confederates gained confidence. They knew they had a lot of friends out there, spread out across the country.

Next thing ya know, Americans are teaching their kids – via textbooks – that the Confederacy fought the Civil War to protect states rights rather than slavery. Say what now?

And pockets of confederates – dreaming of an actual New Confederacy – grow into state governments.

Ronald Reagan was conservatism’s high water mark. That tide rolled in… and then began rolling out. The problem was, when a new tied came rolling back in? It wasn’t going to be conservative or Republican.

Or white.

Voila le probleme!

Right Wing Money

The Right Wing Money machine saw diversity coming. It saw what diversity would do to American politics – shift it away from white people having all the power and all the money. They began to act. The Kochs, the Mercers – everyone like them – began to put their money toward keeping power in wealthy, white hands.

Now – I’ll admit – I am condensing a whole lot of events into their headlines here, but, history seems to demonstrate that I could well be on to something. The Kochs focused on seizing the judiciary. They made Senator Mitch McConnell their point man. History says Mitch succeeded handsomely.

Merrick Garland should be sitting on the Supreme Court today. Neil Gorsuch and Amy Barrett should not. That 6-3 conservative super majority should be a 5-4 progressive edge. Instead, that very SCOTUS threatens our very democracy because of The New Confederacy.

The New Confederacy & Russia

And then, there’s the New Confederacy’s very odd relationship with Russia. That rot starts at the head with Trump – and his… well, his relationship with Vladimir Putin isn’t “odd”. It’s flat out TREASONOUS.

Slowly – ever-so-slowly – the American news media is coming around to a fact they reported back before Trump even won his party’s nomination in 2016. The Republican Party – The New Confederacy – already had a weird relationship with Russian leader Putin. They accepted that Putin had already corrupted one of them – California Representative Dana Rohrbacher.

Every single Republican – in 2016 – knew that Rohrbacher happily sat in Putin’s pocket. If you told them “Putin pays Rohrbacher,” they’d have told you, “Yeah – and the sun rises in the east – what of it?” But, on June 25, 2016, the entire Republican Party leadership agreed that Donald Trump also sat in Putin’s pocket.

And they were just as fine with that!

“Putin Pays Rohrbacher And Trump…”

On June 25, 2016, former Speaker Of The House Kevin McCarthy left a meeting where our intelligence community briefed members of Congress like McCarthy. Putin, the IC reported, was actively trying to undermine Ukraine’s fragile, young democracy. McCarthy immediately entered another meeting – this one of GOP leaders.

Upon entering that second meeting, McCarthy said out loud (someone recorded the meeting and, almost a year later, Washington Post reporter Adam Entous heard it): “There’s two people I think Putin pays – Rohrbacher and Trump – swear to God!”

As I said – everyone there agreed that, yes – Putin paid Rohrbacher. But Trump? Their about-to-be presidential nominee?

That should have caused instant alarm. Ironically (we sure are swimming in it, aren’t we?) it did: just the wrong kind. Then Speaker Of The House Paul Ryan stepped forward. He should have had his cell phone in his hand and the FBI already on the other end. He didn’t. Instead, Ryan behaved like A New Confederate.

He demanded all the other New Confederates present keep this terrible secret a secret. “No leaks. . . . This is how we know we’re a real family here.”

A family of New Confederates.

And – it is what it is: TRAITORS.

What Do The New Confederates Want?

What do the New Confederates want? Not the present United States of America or its democracy. They do not want America to be a place where women or minorities have rights. Or even feel safe.

As they keep telling us (and we should listen to them!), they want America to be like Putin’s Russia – not so much a government as a crime syndicate.

And they’ve gone so far as to ally with him – like a crime family allying with a crime syndicate. This stopped being “politics” eons ago. What Republicans are doing isn’t “politics”.

Allying with a hostile foreign government and its leader in order to win an election? It cannot be normal – or normalized (as it is presently). Nothing about that is legal – regardless of whether we charge it or not. For the record, the rule of law cannot enforce itself. It relies on us and our courage to do the right thing even if it seems outrageous and unprecedented.

Nothing about now is normal. Our democracy is really and truly under threat from one of its two political parties. The Republicans have stepped into the open. Just like Trump, they are telling us clearly and explicitly who and what they are. It’s incumbent on us to listen to them.

We must treat The New Confederacy and every New Confederate like what they are: stone cold traitors.

End of story.