One Mississippi...

Whatever happened to the old ways of a place like Mississippi, where structural violence, woven into the social fabric, resulted in a kind of peace? The structures and values--the idolatry of property and privilege--were successfully transplanted to Washington. 

Democrats are the new black underclass, technically enfranchised but effectively powerless. Even in electoral victory Democrats are prevented from having a a voice. The occasional, real success, like Obamacare, becomes a point of unhinged, primal antipathy.

Yes, we are living in the Confederacy. I never expected the actual transformation from racist shithole to responsible society to be easy but I thought the superego of the commonwealth, as displayed in the early days of civil rights, would guarantee eventual progress.

In some number of generations racial animus would be rare. Integration would be natural. But the southern states have always voted for a racist agenda, especially since the insult of desegregation. Yankees are naïve, self-absorbed and insufficiently motivated. 

As happened before in the South, this corrupt system will fail. Mississippian Haley Barbour has peddled influence in Washington with immense success and played the benign "massa" back home. Privilege is ensconced again everywhere. The plantations are back.

Our economy is based on exploitation, masked because of internationalism, overall wealth and new technologies. Risks move downwards, to average citizens. Rewards accrue upwards into the hands of an over-rewarded class contemptuous of everyone else.

The countdown to our reckoning begins: one Mississippi...