Someone had the audacity and the ignorance to suggest to me that Republicans lost the election due to redistricting.  That silly excuse is a distraction from the real problem. Here’s a short list detailing why I think that is complete bullshit, having watched Republicans turn the people against them in just two short years:

• They nominated a clown car of delusional, extremist candidates that couldn’t connect with the middle class, and in many cases insulted them outright. (ie, 47%) Mitt Romney, whom Bloomberg reported paid almost no taxes from 1997 to 2009, and cared more about hiding that fact than being vetted by the American people. (And he admitted he hates most Americans anyway.) Michelle Bachmann, who blamed vaccines for mental retardation. Rick Santorum, who thinks homosexuality should be criminal and women should be jailed for having miscarriages. Herman Cain, who we learned is a wee bit of a pervert and a misogynist. Newt ‘Moon Base’ Gingrich, who treats his wives like garbage. The only reasonably sane one, Huntsman, didn’t get any air time.
• They promised people jobs, and instead acted in a manner that was directly and intentionally harmful to the economy, giving us our first-ever drop in the national credit rating. And, they’re about to do it again despite the fact that they know it helped them lose elections.
• They regulate vaginas. (ie, ban birth control coverage.) They do not regulate guns, even though the publicly is overwhelmingly supportive of gun control after a year filled with mass shootings.
• The ‘Path to Prosperity’. (ie, make grandma pay for all of the money we took from Social Security to fund our adventures in Iraq.)
• They scapegoated public servants for the debt and the recession while rubber-stamping billions upon billions in corporate welfare. (Even voting down cuts to NASCAR and tax goodies for energy companies making hundreds of billions in profit.)
• They opposed the payroll tax holiday, in direct contradiction to their own platform.

Redistricting, my foot. Keep repeating that to yourself as John ‘Crybaby’ Boehner and Mitchy ‘Filibuster my own bill’ McConnell drive you guys even further into the ditch.

And if it’s not, what will it take?

To be clear, he’s not talking to Republicans.  He’s talking to his base here.

This man sucks.

I hope each of you schmucks that voted for him is calling and writing letters to your legislators about this. 

I’m not naive enough to think that the government isn’t already doing this, but the fact that Democrats are trying to make it explicitly legal makes my skin crawl.

Huzzah for electing the lesser of two evils, right?

sonic-hip-attack:

blogvader replied to your post: I was even taught in my undergrad classes that the Civil War “wasn’t really about slavery”
It’s far more often that slavery is cited as the primary motivation for the Civil War, which is a gross oversimplification.

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Interesting use of the word “gross.” I find diversionary and distracting language games about the Civil War that attempt to mask the clearly stated desires of the Confederates (i.e, to uphold an economic system based on the use and abuse of human beings) to be gross, personally.

I don’t understand why you think this point matters. At best, it shows both educational approaches are incorrect (partially or wholly) in their scope, which… Okay? At worst, it’s more of the same old distractions from the issue at hand.

Well, to put it simply, it annoys me to see people ignore aspects of historical events that contradict (or in this case, distract) from their preferred narrative. (A recent infamous example being Texans who want to rewrite the history books to exclude Thomas Jefferson due to his liberal leanings.) It’s incumbent upon the teacher to ensure their students understand the full significance of historical events, or else you’re just a glorified propagandist.

I’m not denying that slavery was an important aspect of the Civil War and southern culture, I’m specifying that there were several other factors that were of equal importance in the runup to the war.  A few examples would be representation in Congress, the fundamental differences between northern and southern culture, and taxes. 

Furthermore, I don’t think pointing out the fact that there were multiple factors contributing to the war in any way downplays the horrors of slavery, it just breeds more ignorance, only this time on the side of liberals.