Donald Trump’s MAGA base (which includes many of the Southern people) is galvanized like never before after the attempt on Mr. Trump’s life. Two things in particular have annealed them to the former president as it regards this traumatic incident: the tough guy image of a man who ‘took a bullet for America’ and the vitriol of his opponents.
But faithful Southerners may well wonder at the double-standard that is applied when it comes to their own heroes and to their own people here in Dixie vis-à-vis those two things.
The South is full of heroic men who took bullets for both the American union and their own native country.
Jefferson Davis, for one. When he was serving as a colonel in the Mexican-American War, took a ball to the ankle during the battle at Buena Vista. Despite having fragments of his brass spur stuck in his ankle and bleeding profusely into his boot all day, he remained on his horse, in command, and helped the United States Army win a decisive victory (Jefferson Davis: Private Letters 1823-1889, H. Strode, edr., Da Capo Press, New York, 1995, pgs. 46-7).
General Stonewall Jackson is another. He had a rifle ball rip through his bridle hand during First Manassas, which broke one finger and wounded another. Yet he refused treatment after the battle was over until all the seriously wounded had been tended to by the doctors (Rev. R. L. Dabney, Life and Campaigns of Lieut.-Gen. Thomas J. Jackson, Blelock & Co., New York, 1866, p. 226).
Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest, finding himself surrounded by belligerent Yankees after a battle near Nashville, Tennessee, in 1862, received a rifle ball that entered above his hip and struck his spine. His right leg went limp as a result, but after surgery and several weeks of rest, he returned to active duty, fiery as ever (Andrew Lytle, Bedford Forrest and His Critter Company, J. S. Sanders & Co., Nashville, Tenn., 1984, pgs. 84, 86-7).
A full list would be too lengthy for an essay. Many were the Southerners who returned from the War with the invading Yankees who had lost limbs due to combat wounds. And yet Southerners are forbidden to honor these noble men. Why is it proper in MAGA world to lionize Mr. Trump for an ear-grazing by a bullet, but not any of these Southerners?
But let us move on.
The violent rhetoric against Donald Trump has also outraged folks, leading to denunciations from Republicans and Democrats:
‘Majority Leader Steve Scalise from Jefferson Parish, nearly died in a shooting in 2017 after he and other Congressmen were shot at a park said on Fox News the rhetoric charged the shooter.
‘“I mean everybody’s got to look at the rhetoric. But, you know, it’s one side that is going after Donald Trump in a way to demonize him personally. You know, when we talk about the policies of the Democrats and the progressives, it’s those policies that need to be front and center but the left seems to have targeted Donald Trump as a person. They don’t talk about how they don’t like his pet tax and border policies. They just go after him personally, they demonize him.”
‘ . . . “Violence has no place in political discourse, regardless of our vehement philosophical differences. We must stand united against such actions and uphold the principles of democracy and respect” Democratic New Orleans Congressman Troy Carter.’
Once again, we see the double-standard at work, however. The violent rhetoric against Southrons, whether in the past or in the present, is never denounced.
Professor Eric Foner speaks of those violent voices from the past:
‘ . . . with the Fugitive Slave Law, a number of abolitionists who were pacifists began to say: “Well, this is a law which justifies armed resistance. You can’t just let this be enforced.” People like Frederick Douglass said the way to prevent the rendition of fugitives is to make a few dead fugitive catchers. In other words, it [would] be justifiable to kill someone who was trying to apprehend fugitive slaves.
‘So the Fugitive Slave Law played an important role in this shift in the Abolitionist Movement toward a growing acceptance of violence as a legitimate means for attacking the institution of slavery. This would reach, you might say, its final point in 1859, with John Brown’s raid on Harpers Ferry. Most abolitionists had nothing to do with John Brown, but very few would condemn him. They would accept the fact that, okay, violence is a possible means for attacking the institution of slavery.’
Talk show host Steve Deace, in a discussion with (ironically) ex-Trump administration official Jenna Ellis, gives us some modern hatred directed at the South:
‘And ultimately we can’t rise above our own worldview, and we need to remember there are founding fathers who are in hell for all of eternity who did some great work but they didn’t bow the knee to Jesus either. They didn’t repent of owning slaves either. And they’re in hell now because of where — because of that, those decisions.’
MAGA folks don’t seem to mind these insults when aimed at Southerners, but woe betide should anyone direct such language at Donald Trump.
We certainly do not want any harm to come to Mr. Trump, and we’re glad he lived over the murder attempt against him. But it would be much for the better for Southerners and all the other folks in the US to be realistic. There have been friendly ‘come together’ moments in US history in the past: after the War of 1812, after WWII, after 9-11. Perhaps the aftermath of the Trump attack will be another one. Melania Trump and others are pushing the idea of reconciliation.
But these moments of unity always pass rather quickly, and reality re-establishes itself. What reality? The reality that the United States are not one monolithic, indivisible nation with one attendant culture. Politically, there are 50 nations (which by long tradition we call States) in this (supposedly) voluntary union. Culturally, there are several large kin-groups: Dixie, New England, the Great Plains, the Spanish Southwest, Alaska, etc., as well as sub-regions (Appalachia, Acadiana, and so on). When the eras of good feelings, the ebullient emotions following the end of some trauma, fade away, the cultural differences re-assert themselves, and old divisions and animosities with them. Were such an era to follow the Trump rally shooting (and that is unlikely with groups like Antifa around), it would hit the shoals as soon as a State legislature or a federal court acted to restrict LGBT ‘rights’, or abortion, or pornography, and so on. Each of these cultures and nations should be free to develop according to its own inner logos, but this will not happen so long as they are forced to conform to the false notion of a single American culture as though it were Procrustes’s blook-soaked bed. Should, therefore, a political re-organization or some separations need to occur for peaceful cultural development to take place, so be it.
If the MAGA crowd wants to honor Trump as some kind of martyr for the imaginary idea-land of America, that is fine. But Southerners have our own venerable dead to honor, who suffered and died for the sake of an actual place and people, and not for an abstract idea.
Even more than that, the greater number of Southrons still understand that union with Christ is the highest goal for mankind. Thus, we can and should make the martyrs of Christ (rather than martyrs for idols like the American nation-myth) the guidestones for our people, as they have been for the Church since her earliest days. And how familiar some of them will seem to us, like the martyr St. Romulus (recalling ancient Rome) and St. Aboudimos, martyred on the island of Tenedos directly across from the famous ancient Greek city of Troy.
And so, when all is said and done, the Christian South, rather than wearying herself in a vain attempt to attain the Trumpian American Dream of never-ending material progress through technological-industrial advances, may rest content with the more agrarian society she has always loved, and which is glimpsed at times in its wondrous beauty in the Holy Scriptures:
‘ . . . thou makest the outgoings of the morning and the evening to shout for joy. Thou visitest the earth and waterest it, thou greatly enrichest it; the river of God is full of water; thou providest their grain, for so thou hast prepared it. Thou waterest its furrows abundantly, settling its ridges, softening it with showers, and blessing its growth. Thou crownest the year with thy bounty; the tracks of thy chariot drip with fatness. The pastures of the wilderness drip, the hills gird themselves with joy, the meadows clothe themselves with flocks, the valleys deck themselves with grain, they shout and sing together for joy’ (Psalm 65:8-13).
The views expressed at the Abbeville Institute are not necessarily the views of the organization.
Secession is the only solution to the current problem.
Hear, hear! God bless the South!
Secession is the only solution to the current problem.
im not sure the anti-technology route is always helpful. i like and utilize modern tech. desire for centralized power, lincoln and the school in Ripon, WI and the odd re-imagining of the 14th amendment…perhaps spurred on by immigration from some in Europe, is what messed things up.
While some of what Donald Trump does and sayes may benifit the south in some ways, we must never forget that maga or anyone else would not hesitate
to though us southrons under the bus.
I like Steve Deace, but he has a blind spot here, having been steeped in the Straussian-Jaffa-esque Approved Narrative.
Well said. I am a Trump supporter in hopes his administration will scale back some of the federal overreach. However, I have no delusions of him being Pro South. The RNC continues to deify Abraham Lincoln ad nauseum. This mental block does not allow them to see that it was Lincolns war that created the Federal monstrosity that we now face and Republicans by and large continue to prop up.
Deo Vindice