Some creepy pics of the younger Trumps because I have a headache

@D

This is my favorite anti-abolition piece:

http://utc.iath.virginia.edu/proslav/hentzhp.html

This is The Planter’s Northern Wife. It’s a romance published in 1854 in response to Uncle Tom’s Cabin, trying to rehabilitate the “peculiar institution” in the public perception. It’s fiction, but it’s a very authentic representation of contemporary attitudes towards slavery and black people, and contains everything, although you have to read between the lines sometimes. For instance, it acknowledges that many enslaved people had a lot of white in them, but doesn’t even ask the question as to how that might have happened. That’s left as an exercise for the reader, so to speak. It acknowledges cruel slaveholders, but addresses that problem with, “We don’t associate with people like that,” as if that makes everything OK. Out of sight, out of mind, I reckon?

If you read it, you’ll recognize a lot of today’s stereotypes and maybe realize that this shit goes back to before the founding of the country.

It should go without saying, but there is a shocking amount of racism in it. You’ll just have to power through that if you want to read it, which may be easier or harder for you depending on your relative level of privilege.

(As an aside to an aside, can I just say how annoying it is that the U.S. edutainment system basically ignores the first 200 years of our history? Like…if you’re looking for insight into our country’s Formative Years, don’t bother with friggin’ Hamilton, we’re already middle-aged by then, griping about taxes. Look at Last of the Mohicans. Look at The Crucible. Heck, I’m sure there’s a passable portrayal of The Scarlet Letter out there somewhere, though I haven’t found one yet.)

Interesting discussion of the history. It interacts with disableism too, I guess, probably further compounded by racism and black people being treated as economic resources? As Policy of Madness describes:

This stereotype goes all the way back to slavery – enslaved black people were seen as hard working and honest because they were enslaved, while free black people were lazy and criminally inclined.

Disabled slaves, who may have been injured while working or by intentional abuse, were seen as no longer being as useful. Any disabled/long–term sick person too is automatically seen as an economic burden and not of value, and are seen as possibly suspect, lazy, criminally inclined cheating the welfare system. Being disabled or sick is also seen as a failure of self-sufficiency.

I wonder if there’s a difference in US and UK attitudes? I’ve been stunned at the hate and prejudice I’ve seen and personally experienced in recent years here, especially for mental illness – I felt there was a defensive edge to it, while Republicans seemed maybe more confident in their dismissiveness. Here the constant repetition of the scroungers Vs. real disabled narrative is needed to justify what’s been done.

@D

You’re close on the ties to Britain and France. Conservatism in Upper and Lower Canada following the fall of New France was very much in the British Tory model: King, Country, Church (read: Anglicanism). Nowhere was this better personified than in Bishop John Strachan. A member of the Upper Canada elite known as the Family Compact, Strachan made it a priority to fund educational initiatives in the name of order and subordination to church and state. In fact, he founded the very King’s College that would eventually become the University of Toronto. In those circles, the small “r” republicanism of the United States was considered an obscenity and any upstarts who promoted it (like certain Toronto Mayors named William Lyon Mackenzie) were viewed with disdain. That push and pull most certainly carried on into Confederation, particularly in the fights between Sir John A. Macdonald and Sir Oliver Mowat over the rights of the provinces.

But what’s key is that conservatism in Canada (or at the very least Ontario) was centered on institutions. There was certainly anti-French sentiment to be sure, but that alone wouldn’t account for the Orange Order’s stranglehold on Toronto politics until the 1970s. That certainly made it more palatable for the Government to manage; institutional trust and a certain “noblesse oblige” was to be expected of the devout. But of course, the elitism remained; there’s a reason it took Tommy Douglas’ Saskatchewan experiment to get the ball rolling.

There really is a delicious irony in that conservatism in the United States has become so extreme that they’re willing to take a hatchet to the very institutions that their Canadian counterparts have rallied around for centuries. Now it’s the progressives that have to defend those institutions. Strange times we live in.

I think you may have a skewed idea of the important institutions in the U.S. The first and most fundamental one is to keep brown people down my any means available, and Yankee conservatives have been all over that one for longer than there’s been a U.S.

Certainly true, but that is but one of the institutions that buttressed the social fabric of the US. Not to minimize it, as white supremacy was certainly an overriding and fundamental pillar, but institutions such as a functioning system of jurisprudence, a free press able to speak truth to power, regulatory bodies with the authority to take action… these were hallmarks of American democracy at one point.

I’m also not going to sugarcoat Canada’s conservatives of old and pretend they were simply principled monarchists; Lord Durham himself, dispatched by Queen Victoria to assess the situation in the colonies following the failed Upper and Lower Canada Rebellions in 1837, described the Family Compact as “a petty corrupt insolent Tory clique”. Even their concern for the First Nations peoples was born out of white supremacy and racism; it was the same attitude that led to the destructive residential school system.

What I do credit the Tories of old for is having a sense of respect for the institutions they fostered, namely a strong central government that understood its role as servants and representatives of the governed. You didn’t see Bishop Strachan going on Randite rants from his pulpit about how “God helps those that help themselves! Pull yourself up by your shoebuckles!” For all their myriad faults, they at least understood this more than Ronnie Rayguns or any Republican since.

@Gussie Jives

but institutions such as a functioning system of jurisprudence, a free press able to speak truth to power, regulatory bodies with the authority to take action… these were hallmarks of American democracy at one point.

No, they weren’t. The U.S. has never had those things in a meaningful sense. American jurisprudence serves principally as a means to enforce white supremacy ( by killing, enslaving, and otherwise abusing black folks under colour of law) and to a lesser extent the capitalist class system (union busting, attacking leftists protesters, etc.). The press has traditionally only spoken white truths to power, and then only sometimes; as often as not it’s served as a willing mouthpiece for the powers that be. As far as functioning regulatory bodies, it is to laugh. We have the absolute bare minimum necessary to keep a mid-20th century industrial economy from just collapsing. Which is why our early 21st century industrial economy is doing just that.

I’m also not going to sugarcoat Canada’s conservatives of old and pretend they were simply principled monarchists;

…how the hell is that a defence? If monarchism is one of someone’s principles, their principles are shit from the get go.

Lord Durham himself, dispatched by Queen Victoria to assess the situation in the colonies following the failed Upper and Lower Canada Rebellions in 1837, described the Family Compact as “a petty corrupt insolent Tory clique”

Lord Durham can go to fuckery too, colonialist shithead that he was.

.

Even their concern for the First Nations peoples was born out of white supremacy and racism; it was the same attitude that led to the destructive residential school system.

Um… yeah. All of Canada’s interactions with the First Nations are born out white supremacy and racism, from day fucking one. (Hell, even y’all’s healthcare system is riddled with holes, that oddly enough seem to cluster in reserves. Funny how that works out.)

@Dali

principally

I can’t object to the thrust of what you’re saying, but I will take issue with this weasel word here. Like I said, white supremacy overrides everything and sits at the very top of the legal pillar, but my point was that things like Glass-Steagall, a functioning State Department, an EPA with fangs and a Supreme Court that could interpret the Second Amendment properly were actual things at one point. Walter Cronkite could tell the truth about Vietnam on the air without getting fired.

…how the hell is that a defence? If monarchism is one of someone’s principles, their principles are shit from the get go.

Through the lens of institutional preservation, the monarchy was the key institution. If the reigning monarch put his or her blessing on a particular body, idea or policy the sense of duty to the God-chosen sovereign would have people like Strachan going to the mat for it, be it slavery or health care.

Through the lens of governance, that’s a different matter altogether. You’re right, the Tories hated democracy and resisted responsible government to their last breath, so they’re squarely on the wrong side of history. The key is that I think that legacy of institutional and hierarchical protection goes a long way to explaining why Canada’s conservatives were much more amenable to changes in healthcare throughout the 1950s and 60s.

All of Canada’s interactions with the First Nations are born out white supremacy and racism, from day fucking one.

True, but my point was that more to say that even those who thought themselves of doing something benevolent for the aboriginal population were doing it out of white supremacy and racism. Egerton Ryerson was vehemently opposed to the Family Compact (although the fact that the Anglican Strachan demonized Ryerson’s Methodism probably had a lot to do with that) and was considered an education pioneer in his day, yet his benevolent racism ended up causing more harm than good.

@Gussie Jives

I can’t object to the thrust of what you’re saying, but I will take issue with this weasel word here.

That wasn’t a weasel word, it was precision of language. The principal purpose of the U.S. judicial system is controlling black bodies. The secondary purpose is maintaining the capitalist class system.

” Like I said, white supremacy overrides everything and sits at the very top of the legal pillar, but my point was that things like Glass-Steagall, a functioning State Department, an EPA with fangs and a Supreme Court that could interpret the Second Amendment properly were actual things at one point.”
Those things existed, but they were not institutions in the sense you are using the term. The Electoral College (designed to keep government in the hands of rich white men), that’s an institution. Voting discrimination is an institution. Godawfully disproportionate representation is an institution. The EPA isn’t, nor Glass-Stegall (which was never close to sufficient).

hrough the lens of institutional preservation, the monarchy was the key institution. If the reigning monarch put his or her blessing on a particular body, idea or policy the sense of duty to the God-chosen sovereign would have people like Strachan going to the mat for it, be it slavery or health care.

That’s rather the problem, yes.

The key is that I think that legacy of institutional and hierarchical protection goes a long way to explaining why Canada’s conservatives were much more amenable to changes in healthcare throughout the 1950s and 60s.

No, I’m pretty sure it’s racism; they were more confident than US conservatives that pretty much only white people would benefit from it. (once again, look into First Nations health outcomes. It’s not a pretty picture).

True, but my point was that more to say that even those who thought themselves of doing something benevolent for the aboriginal population were doing it out of white supremacy and racism.

Yeah, that was my point too.

No, I’m pretty sure it’s racism; they were more confident than US conservatives that pretty much only white people would benefit from it. (once again, look into First Nations health outcomes. It’s not a pretty picture).

It’s damnably grim, that’s for sure. However I couldn’t say with confidence that that was their own rationale for support. I mean, I’m only speculating myself; I could be way off base for what was going through their heads 20 years before I was born. But I doubt that as the Orangemen of Toronto were wrestling with support for a socialist plan that was implemented in Saskatchewan, their main thought was “we’re sure this isn’t helping the [insert racial slur against aboriginal peoples here], right?” At least not consciously.

Again, you’re absolutely right about the outcomes, though, and that’s where we need to improve (amongst many other places).