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Brando's avatar

The sad irony of LBJ appeasing the Jim Crow Democrats at the '64 Convention by not seating the Mississippi Freedom Democrats is that the Mississippi Dems kept him off the ballot throughout the state that year anyway, basically handing the state to Goldwater.

Appeasing evil does not work--you have to fight it in bold, open strokes. Another irony here is that sometimes by doing so you can even win over those who were opposed to you but respect that you showed guts. (Another anecdote--some pollsters in early '68 asked George Wallace fans who their second choice was--they chose RFK, because they thought RFK showed guts and stood for what he believed in. Lesson--projecting strength is a winner, projecting weakness never is).

The problem is we're so many generations removed from Hamer's time that you have a lot of younger people taking those sacrifices for granted, and guys like Tim Scott will always see keeping his career in the GOP as more important than anything his grandparents went through. And to that end, he can rationalize anything if it's to his benefit to do so.

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Old Man Shadow's avatar

Our neighbors are taken with a madness. It is the madness of folly. One they have given into willingly. Nevertheless, they are captured by it.

They cannot be appeased. Folly never can be. It insists that day is night, that wrong is right, that slavery is freedom, and demands that you not only agree, but praise them for their right thinking.

Folly cannot be reasoned with. You cannot find common ground by agreeing that there might be clouds in the sky so it could be night or day.

Folly can only be opposed. And it must be opposed and crushed utterly and irredeemably, or it will return again doubly determined to crush reason, compassion, and empathy and force people to agree with it on pains of death.

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