Post-Reconstruction was a trying time for the United States. The country had been torn apart, and it would take a miracle worker to put it bakc together. With Lincoln's assasination, that seemed all the more impossible. Johnson's problems with Congress just made it worse. Something similar is going on today. Aren't parrallels amazing?
After The Civil War, everyone was gun-ho about Lincoln's plan. It got essentially what everyone wanted. Unfortuneatly, it died with him. In his place, we have Johnson. He took power into his own hands and let the Southern states off scot free. This caused some serious issues with Congress.
Congress, in return for Johnson's abuse of power, took apart everything he did, and did it their way. From then on in, Johnson and Congress went out of their way to make each other's lives miserable. Any bill they proposed the other side struck down. Congress even tried to have Johnson impeached. It didn't work, but it show you just how much they hated each other.
Currently, we have a similar situation. It's essentially wartime, and Congress and the Preident pretty much hate each other, although for relatively different reasons. This time around, they hate each other because the majorit of Congress is Democrat, and Bush is Republican. This causes a lot of problems based on priciple, even more on actual issues.
The parrallels are running rampant here. We have two Congresses, and two Presidents. Both groups hate each other for real or imagined mistakes that the other made. Both have done stupid things, and both would do just about anything to trip the other up, although we haven't quite gotten to impeachment with Bush. (Who knows, it might be around the corner. Then how close would the parrallels be, hmmmm?)
Wednesday, October 22, 2008
Wednesday, October 1, 2008
A pox upon education restriction!
After the Civil War, the new, unified government tried to make things better in the South. They tried to give black people the right to vote, and civil rights, and all that good stuff. And for the most part, they did. Then they made one crucial mistake. They left. They picked up their military, and left the blacks and the whites in a tense racial relationship that was about to blow shy high.
With the lack of military occupation, things went downhill pretty fast. The whites were left in control, and they were pretty bitter about the recent turn of events. They took it upon themselves to make the lives of the black people around them Hell, by establishing a series of laws now call the Jim Crow laws. They made it pretty much impossible for black people to get a halfway decent education. Then they made all sorts of laws (coughvotingcough) that were pretty much based of how much education people recieved. This effectively crippled the black's newfound freedom.
Beyond the Jim Crow laws, new orginizations (coughKKKcough) sprung up, who took it upon themselves to "punish" those who'd took it upon themselves to make their lives better. They burnt crosses, beat people up, and hanged people for wanting nothing more than an education. It turned into something like homegrown terrorism for quite a while. People were so scared about retaliation from these groups that they decided for the time being, ignorance was okay. So segregation began.
Currently, there's something kinda similar going on overseas. In China, the government is very uptight about how much knowledge the public has. They have firewalls placed all over the Internet, keeping their people behind closed doors and in the dark. People could probably write proxy codes for a living over there. (They might already, who knows?)
They also don't like the spread of ideas very much. They put people like followers of Falun Gong, and others in "Re-education camps" (coughtorturecampscough). They also banished the Dalai Lama from Tibet, his native homeland for anti-Chinese sentiments. This is the same kind of thing they did post-reconstruction. A little different, but the same basic shtick.
With the lack of military occupation, things went downhill pretty fast. The whites were left in control, and they were pretty bitter about the recent turn of events. They took it upon themselves to make the lives of the black people around them Hell, by establishing a series of laws now call the Jim Crow laws. They made it pretty much impossible for black people to get a halfway decent education. Then they made all sorts of laws (coughvotingcough) that were pretty much based of how much education people recieved. This effectively crippled the black's newfound freedom.
Beyond the Jim Crow laws, new orginizations (coughKKKcough) sprung up, who took it upon themselves to "punish" those who'd took it upon themselves to make their lives better. They burnt crosses, beat people up, and hanged people for wanting nothing more than an education. It turned into something like homegrown terrorism for quite a while. People were so scared about retaliation from these groups that they decided for the time being, ignorance was okay. So segregation began.
Currently, there's something kinda similar going on overseas. In China, the government is very uptight about how much knowledge the public has. They have firewalls placed all over the Internet, keeping their people behind closed doors and in the dark. People could probably write proxy codes for a living over there. (They might already, who knows?)
They also don't like the spread of ideas very much. They put people like followers of Falun Gong, and others in "Re-education camps" (coughtorturecampscough). They also banished the Dalai Lama from Tibet, his native homeland for anti-Chinese sentiments. This is the same kind of thing they did post-reconstruction. A little different, but the same basic shtick.
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