hey dipshits: the Civil War was fought over slavery. stop the gaslighting

ask a Republican why we fought a Civil War. you'll get gobbledygook in response.

hey, have you heard about this “Civil War” thing? check this out: apparently, about a hundred seventy something years ago, there was some kind of big misunderstanding between northern and southern states that led to a metric fuckload of people getting slaughtered to death, and no one can really figure out why it happened.

because reasons, is the best guess anyone can come up with.

maybe the north was just in a bad mood that day and the south looked at them funny. who knows? anyway, historians have been scratching their heads about this for over a century now.

it’s crazy, right?

if only there had been someone around at the time who could have written down the exact reason why we had this big Civil War, then maybe we could settle this for once and all.

wait, what’s that you say? we do have an actual written record? somebody wrote that shit down?

oh man, that is good news. who was it? what did they say?

The vice president of the Confederacy, Alexander Stephens of Georgia, was quite clear about the cause of the Civil War. Stephens explicitly rejected the idea embraced by U.S. politicians from the revolutionary period onward that human enslavement was “wrong in principle, socially, morally, and politically.” Instead, he declared: “Our new government is founded upon…the great truth, that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery—subordination to the superior race—is his natural and normal condition.” 

what, what?

are you telling me that the vice president of the Confederacy believed that black people were inferior to whites, and that whites had the right to enslave black people, to buy and sell and own them, to mistreat and rape and kill them, and to grow wealthy from their forced and unpaid labor? and that the South went to war in order to preserve slavery?

and he actually came out and admitted that?

oh wow, that’s some truly fucked up bullshit right there.

we should definitely tell the GOP about this, because they seem completely unaware of it. in fact, if you ask a Republican why we fought a Civil War, you just get gobbledygook in response.

here’s Nikki Haley, famously whiffing this question last week.

“I think the cause of the Civil War was basically how government was gonna run. the freedoms, and what people could and couldn’t do.”

gee thanks, Nikki. the freedom of what people could and couldn’t do. that really explains it.

and what are these vague “freedoms” that Nikki is talking about?

the freedom to own black people and treat them as property.

the freedom to fuck this guy’s back all to shit, because he wasn’t picking cotton fast enough to please you.

Nikki Haley now claims that she was asked a trick question that was intended to embarrass her. fuck you, Nikki. it’s not a trick question unless you’re on the wrong side of the answer.

but here’s the thing: of course Nikki Haley knows why we fought a Civil War. Nikki is not an idiot. in fact, when Haley was Governor of South Carolina, she removed the Confederate flag that had been flying on the grounds of the State House since forever. Nikki knows how to be on the right side of the answer.

but right now, Nikki Haley has to pretend to be an idiot, because if she came right out and told the truth, racist Republican voters would go completely fucking ape-shit.

this is what Republicanism has become. you can’t speak out for what’s right, because your own bloodthirsty base will slap you down.

you’ll recall in the days after January 6th, Lindsey Graham did what was for him a very brave thing. he stood up and announced from the floor of the House that he was “done” with Donald Trump.

and we all know what happened next: a bunch of MAGA morons swarmed Graham at an airport, called him a traitor and screamed obscenities at him.

Lindsey learned his lesson on the spot, and went right back to wedging his nose firmly between Donald Trump’s ass cheeks.

in fact, every Republican learned a lesson that day. so now they have to hold (or pretend to hold) a lot of fucked up positions, because nobody wants to get lindseygrahamed.

but guess what:

if you can’t denounce slavery, because doing so would anger your base, you’re on the wrong side.

if you can’t denounce Nazis chanting “Jews will not replace us,” because doing so would anger your base, you’re on the wrong side.

if you can’t denounce razor wire death traps in the Rio Grande, because doing so would anger your base, you’re on the wrong side.

if you can’t denounce a bunch of elderly white men deciding which women get to have healthcare, because doing so would anger your base, you’re on the wrong side.

and if you can’t denounce a certain 91-criminal-count fluorescent tangerine fuckface for stealing classified war plans and trying to overthrow his own government, because doing so would anger your base, you are definitely on the wrong fucking side.

folks, a word on a different subject before I let you go: we’re doing some quarterly fundraising at my other venture, The Smirking Chimp. I’m leery of even mentioning it because if you’re one of the people paying to support my own writing here, you’re already doing god’s work and you’re already doing more than enough to help out. but if you’ve got five dollars that you absolutely wouldn’t miss and you do feel like supporting the Chimp, well, that just makes you twice the hero. the donation link is here, or you can go straight to paypal if you need no further convincing. and if you don’t care to donate, that’s totally cool, too, and we will not speak of this again. in fact, we never had this conversation. thanks for listening and that’s it from me for now.