How a Liar Lies ... Yet Again

Current post at Simpson's XRoads flog:

Quote of the Week: October 26-November 1,2014

It’s just astonishing what some people say and think:

One could actually argue that slavery increased the quality of life for the blacks who were brought over here. In many cases, they had it a lot better off than poor whites.

And yet somehow the poor whites didn’t see it that way.
And what does our friend from Florida say about that?

That’s a reality that infuriates White-Southern-hating flogger-types, when mentioned.

Ah, yes. The “slavery wasn’t so bad” position … offered by a white person. Nothing new here.

As for how our Confederate heritage advocate from Pensacola feels about the American people:

We live in a nation of dumbed down ignoramuses. Nice to see how she holds her readership in high esteem.

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Can you spot the lie? Silly question, huh? You can't not spot it. Unless you're a flogger or floggerette. So as a courtesy to them, here's the lie:

Ah, yes. The “slavery wasn’t so bad” position ...

That's not what Logan or I said, is it? Saying that some white folks who were poor had it worse off -- as in, say,  housing, food, clothing, and not having sufficient money to procure these things -- is not saying "slavery wasn't so bad." And it's totally illogical to think so. You would think someone who is, or claims to be, as intelligent and edumucated as Brooks Simpson would recognize this.

Of course, I don't think for a minute the doesn't understand Logan's observation; he understands it perfectly, and he knows it's true. But he has to take the flogger default position, which is to trumpet slave misery in order to trumpet white Southern evil, because the two circumstances exist, in the flogger viewpoint, in exact inverse proportion.

Not all blacks brought here had it better than poor white people -- which is why Logan qualified it with "in many cases." I'm sure Simpson noticed that, too, and chose to ignore it, because the lie is so much more powerful without it.

Then there's the obvious -- nay, the extremely conspicuous -- fact that being worse off physically than some slaves didn't make slavery suddenly look attractive to people just because they were poor and in need. Ridiculous for Simpson and his sycophants to even bring that up, as it wasn't Logan's point, and usually isn't the point of anyone who mentions it.

Nevertheless, that's the leftist/flogger default position, the emotion-not-cognition response, to such observation.  Moreover, that reaction from floggers and floggerettes has nothing to do with historical slavery, anyway -- it has to do with demonizing contemporary folks who don't toe the current-history-dogma line.

Now, I can't speak for everyone, and I don't try. I speak for myself, and what I do elicits from leftist ideologues like floggers and floggerettes accusations that I'm defending slavery, that I'm a slavery apologist, that I'm saying slavery "wasn't all that bad." They're smart enough to know their accusations are not true; they're just not honest enough to admit it, not strong enough to buck their ideological devotion.

Many times -- in fact, most of the time -- my discussions of slavery aren't about slavery itself, at all, but about the leftist caricature of slavery, the hyperbole, the (I believe deliberate) portrayal of the worst of slavery as the whole of it.  In other words, the presentation that slavery was totally  (1) violence and physical abuse, (2) breaking up families and (3) rape -- and nothing else.  (I've had a critic tell me, apparently in all sincerity, that a slave could not tell the difference between being raped and not being raped. No doubt Ed Baptist's new book is right up his alley.) 

Fact is, most slaves were not subject to violent physical abuse; most slave families were not broken up, most slave women were not raped.  But it has to be presented as if they were because it is exceedingly useful in demonizing white Southern men.

It is this exaggeration, this caricature, that I reject. I know and acknowledge that terrible abuses** occurred; but to say they were not the totality of slavery is not to minimize them, as dishonest critics would have us believe.  It is not a minimization of domestic violence to say that most people do not beat their spouse or children...

But back to Simpson's XRoads post.  Numerous posts from him certainly confirms that it’s just astonishing what some people say and think, iddinit?  How does he know how poor whites saw it? Does he channel them?

 In agriculture, the black and white worker were conditioned by the economic relations of the slave economy. For the black, this meant he never faced the direct competition inherent in a free, unprotected market economy since the slave was an asset owned and cared for by the slave master. Thus, the economic position of many slaves was better than that of the poor white who operated in a totally free, unprotected market. While the poor white envied the greater economic security of the slave, the black envied the greater freedom of the white.

Political Economy of the Urban Ghetto

by Professor Daniel R Fusfeld PhD (Author)

Professor Timothy Bates PhD (Author)

The late Professor Fusfeld was a slavery apologist, don't you know. Professor Bates (still living, as far as I can determine online, apparently is black) is a slavery apologist, don't you know, and these men have said and thought (and written) some just astonishing things!

(Cue outraged and/or snide observations about not knowing how to "interpret" "historical" material in 3...2...1...)

Oh, and my comment was not an indication of my level of esteem for the American people or my readers. Generally speaking, I hold the American people in far, far higher esteem than I hold our freakishly deformed monstrosity of a government.

And that phrase "dumbed down ignoramuses"? It was an indirect reference to who and what made them that way -- the destructive cultural mutant known as the educational establishment. People in that establishment, making their living from it, are quick to label criticism of it as "anti-intellectual" and "aversion to education."

You can find those phrases now and then at Simpson's flog. But it's not so, floggers; it's anti-indoctrination and aversion to  "education" being used for control -- the result of the left's hijacking education to promote its ideology, a transformation that has occurred largely within my lifetime.

Simpson's gratuitous attack on Logan is just more evidence -- in the growing mountain of it -- that Simpson in particular, and floggers in general, don't give a rat's rear end about history except as ideological indoctrination and a tool of control. What they're really all about personally is the craving to insult and hurt people ... the unquenchable thirst to denigrate others ... an insatiable hunger for the put-down, in their quest to evilize white Southerners.

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** In one of the WPA slave narrative interviews, the former slave relates to the interviewer a horrific beating he witnessed on a fellow slave who had run away and been caught. It's been a while since I read this, and I've not been able to track it down again, so my memory of the narrative may be slightly in error. Nevertheless, I believe you can't read it and not be horrified, deeply saddened and outraged if you have any humanity at all; and you can't help but feel for the witness who had carried the memory of the experience with him into advanced age. After relating the memory to the interviewer, he said, "Where was the Lawd, Missus? Where was the Lawd?" I'd like to know that myself....