Thank you for another excellent article on the Republican destruction of the New Deal, tying it into the Southern Strategy. I have a theory. Did you see the movie Songcatcher, with Janet McTeer and Aidan Quinn? It's true, that they found more primitive versions of the old songs in the American mountains than existed where they had originated. I think the same thing is true of the hideous doctrines of Calvinism (the Five Points) which seem to deny human freedom and reassure scum like Roy Moore that their salvation can't be compromised by misdeeds once they accept Jesus into their hearts, God help us.
Anyway, if people are predestined for salvation or not, why not an entire race or gender or nationality? So, the extreme Calvinist doctrines got all enmeshed with the racism and exceptionalism of the Old South and were even more insidiously passed on as unconscious elements of the great lie of the Lost Cause. The Calvinist model for a society is a prison or plantation, people having existed in perfection and unity with God before birth and heading back there, if they're lucky, together with Roy at the end-times. Calvinists hate creation, believing God to have perversely imprisoned people in the shithole of earthly existence. Life isn't to be celebrated, respected or enjoyed it's to be endured.
They are dualists of the spirit and the flesh. Women are unconsciously perceived as being closer to nature, as are black people, so they are despised and feared. It is very sick stuff. In spite of it all, I hope you have a wonderful Christmas.
JamesMFlanagan
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