"In racial politics, the issues are never just black and white. The Herald sent two reporters — a white man raised in Jacksonville and an African American from Los Angeles — in a journey through the South."
Tag: Shining City on a Hill
June 18, 2020 — The Cult to the Shining City on a Hill, by Virginia Heffernan and Jared Yates Sexton
"Conspiracy theories are simplified explanations of larger, more complex problems... So instead, you give them a story. And when you actually look at the New World Order or Deep State or QAnon, it is basically the idea of globalism and de-industrialisation that has hurt middle America. But it involves supernatural evil and it involves heroes and villains as opposed to bottom lines and profits. And when you actually look at it through that, your natural sort of prejudices start to come in. And the more that you’re hurt and the more that you do not have opportunities, the more that you might be drawn into it. So, again, it’s an illusion that is used to create this base and this anger. And when you actually look throughout history, you see that authoritarian states are always based on those groups of people who either had power, or perceived that they had power, feeling like they’re losing power. And then the conspiracy theory fills in the holes. And then also you have a person who comes in and directs the anger, which is what Trump has been doing. And what the Republican Party has done now for decades."
July, 1863 — Why the South Lost the Civil War, by Richard E. Beringer, Herman Hattaway, Archer Jones, and William N. Still Jr.
"The will of God prevails to act in accordance with the will of God. Both may be and one must be wrong. God can not be for, and against the same thing at the same time. In the present civil war it is quite possible that God's purpose is something different from the purpose of either party — and yet the human instrumentalities, working just as they do, are of the best adaptation to effect His purpose. I am almost ready to say this is probably true — that God wills this contest, and wills that it shall not end yet. By his mere quiet power, on the minds of the now contestants, He could have either saved or destroyed the Union without a human contest. Yet the contest began. And having begun He could give the final victory to either side any day. Yet the contest proceeds. -Abraham Lincoln"
