Sen. Josh Hawley became an insurrectionist because he comes from a small river town in Central Missouri that was settled by Southerners. This is what passes for a “hit piece” in The Washington Post.
“LEXINGTON, Mo. — Joshua Hawley was 13 years old, living comfortably as the son of a bank president, when his parents gave him a book about political conservatism for Christmas.
Hawley became enamored with the ideology. He began writing columns for the local newspaper that seethed with resentment against the political power structure. Even domestic terrorist Timothy McVeigh’s bombing of a federal building, killing 168 people, sparked him to speak up for groups that express anger toward the government.
“Many of the people who populate these movements are not radical right-wing pro-assault weapons freaks as they were stereotyped in the aftermath of the Oklahoma City bombing,” he wrote.
Twenty-six years later, those far-right rumblings reached a crescendo during another deadly attack on a federal building — this time with Hawley at the center of the action. …
On the other, he has expressed sympathy with some of the country’s most far-right, anti-government extremists, demonstrating a willingness to see the world through their grievance-infused prism even after horrific attacks — from Oklahoma City in 1995, when he was 15, to the Capitol attack in 2021. …
To combat criticism that he is an elitist, Hawley has urged people to examine the place where he grew up. “I come from a town called Lexington, Missouri,” he said in his maiden Senate speech. “It’s a place that reflects the dignity and quiet greatness of the working man and woman. These are the people who explored a continent, who built the railroads, who opened the West.”
That, however, is a simplistic description.
Lexington, a city of 4,700 by the Missouri River in a region still known as Little Dixie for its historical ties to the Confederacy, prides itself as a place rich in history.
But the history long told in Lexington, including during Hawley’s childhood, focused almost entirely on the story of Whites who backed the Confederacy, including a battle in which Union forces were defeated. Nowhere in town is there a commemoration of the fact that it was also here that thousands of Blacks were enslaved in the 19th century, the largest such concentration in Missouri, according to Gary Gene Fuenfhausen, president of Missouri’s Little Dixie Heritage Foundation.
“That’s not something we talked about,” said Mayor Joe Aull, who was superintendent of schools when Hawley was a student. “I just never really heard it mentioned.”
Lexington’s lack of recognition of its role in slavery has meant that the city did not have the kind of introspection about inequality that might have broadened Hawley’s outlook, according to his former classmates.
“It’s a small town. There’s a lot of ignorance and a lot of people that don’t leave the county and see the world,” said Patrick Keller, who went to school with Hawley. “He had an insular life in this small town.” …”
We know this.
I come from an “obviously racist, backwards” small river town too. It is true that these towns were the heartland of the Confederacy. Didn’t the Confederates obviously have a point about the United States becoming an “empire” and a “consolidated despotism” with a degenerate culture? The Confederates claimed that slavery was only the “incident” or “occasion” of the war that masked enduring sectional divisions which would persist long after the demise of slavery like over 150 years later.
“Take Hawley’s hometown of Lexington, Missouri. Lexington is a small town on the Missouri river of about 4,700 people. Like a lot of small towns in the South, it was once home to black slaves and white slaveowners.
It was also the site of two of the largest battles in the western theater of the Civil War, the First Battle of Lexington in 1861 and the Second Battle of Lexington in 1864, and a center of operations for Confederate guerilla forces under William Quantrill, including a young Jesse James, who was wounded by federal troops while riding into town to surrender after the war. …
It’s unclear if the person quoted even knew Hawley, let alone knew him well enough to know whether he had an insular life growing up in Lexington. The point is, according to Kranish, that if you come from an obviously racist, backwards place like this there’s a good chance you’re a racist, or at least racially insensitive. You know, like Hawley. …”
Really?
This is what they have got on Josh Hawley? He has always hated the feds? He has a deeply thought out ideology? He has gone rogue on the Republican establishment? George Will feels betrayed by him? He named Pelagius? He denounced Black Lives Matter as a Marxist organization? LMAO.
The fact that Josh Hawley comes from an “insular small town” like Lexington in Little Dixie that was used as a base in the War Between the States by Quantrill’s Raiders to attack the Jayhawkers is something that he should be running on down South. Every real Missourian who I have ever known who has deep roots in the state and isn’t a deracinated suburban faggot admires Jesse James and William Quantrill. Hating Kansas and the federal government runs deep in the DNA of every true Missourian.
This piece makes Josh Hawley look good. If I were him, I would be promoting it.
Note: Seriously though, Kansas has come around and is on our side now. The same is true of virtually all rural voters in this country. Progressives live in dense places.