Am I too cynical and blackpilled on New South conservatism?
“It’s as if the ancestral spirits of the men and women whose names were called out into the thick, muggy air cupped their protective hands over Brown’s Island on Wednesday morning, just long enough to shield from the steady rain Richmond’s newest symbol of freedom.
Nearly a decade in the works, the Virginia Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Commission unveiled its Emancipation and Freedom Monument to an enthusiastic, if not soggy, poncho-wearing crowd Wednesday morning.
Created by Oregon-based artist Thomas Jay Warren, the monument features two 12-foot bronze figures: one of a newly freed man, his chains broken from his wrists; the other a woman holding an infant in one arm and her other hand holding a page that reads “January 1” and the Roman numerals for 1863, when Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation took effect, freeing slaves in the South.
The base displays the names of five African American Virginians who fought against slavery — Gabriel, Nat Turner, Dred Scott, William Harvey Carney and Mary Jane Richards Bowser — and five who fought for equality: the Rev. Wyatt Tee Walker, John Mercer Langston, Lucy Simms, John Mitchell Jr. and Rosa Dixon Bowser. …”
As far as I can tell, the fruits of New South conservatism – an unquenchable thirst for defense spending, corporate boosterism and an obsession with economic growth, the policies that accompany this mindset like low taxes and deregulation which poach out of state businesses and lure in transplants, an overall laissez-faire attitude toward culture and government and the acceptance of a “good” colorblind antiracism – have been demographic replacement, cultural erasure, political marginalization, dishonor and disgrace, the effective loss of our civil liberties and a hellscape that is a glorified shopping mall.
Note: What about the grocery tax though?