more Abraham Lincoln
no, no, I promise! I will not make four books on Abraham Lincoln out of my appreciation! I won't. but one more. I have to deal with Abraham Lincoln, founder of the Republican Party. now I can imagine some of you out there gagging. I can imagine some of you out there denying. those were two of my responses. I mean, here I have Lincoln as some sort of ideal man despite having been both a lawyer and a politician. and here we have the Republican Party, dedicated to the suppression of voters who don't trend Republican, dedicated to the suppression of labor, dedicated to taking back everything we (as in we the people, we the workers, we the citizens who don't own corporations or states - yes, I said states, not estates) have been granted by the government since the 1930s. (yeah, the good life, the lucky life, we American citizens enjoy has pretty much been given us, piece by piece, by the government since 1930. and yeah, the Republicans pretty much want to stomp all that out of existence. that's what they mean when they talk about small government.) so how did Abraham Lincoln, ideal man except for being a lawyer and a politician, help found the party for oppression of us workers? well, he didn't. see, politics is a strange beast, and it sometimes turns itself inside out, and you and I never know whether we're living in one of those times, one of the inside-in times, or - more likely - one of the times of transition. let me take you back to the 1850s, a much, much, eversomuch different time. the two-party system, as all good citizens knew at the time, consisted of the Democrats and the Whigs. really, I know no one ever told you that, but it's true anyway. most good citizens at the time knew that God had just created the two-party system that way, but that wasn't true either. (those of us who don't spend much time in church have no evidence that God ever bothered Himself with the two-party system in the U.S. of A.) the Whigs had been created to oppose the "tyranny" of Andrew Jackson - no, no, I'm not going down that rabbit-hole, at least not today. so, as you can imagine, they had pretty much played themselves out. meanwhile, the Democrats, the party of a coalition of corporation owners and land owners, were becoming more and more anti-abolitionist. (abolition stood for getting rid of slavery.) hm, so as the Whigs unraveled, what was needed was a party for abolition, for working people, and secretly for all those huge chunks of land about to become states out in the west! voila! Mr. Lincoln and his cronies devised just such a party and began winning elections! gracious! the Democrats had tantrums and hissies and predicted the end of the world and the end of the United States and the end of Christianity! sound familiar? eventually (1860) Abraham Lincoln won the presidency, and South Carolina bombarded Fort Sumter and the Civil War was on. yea! but while they were at it, the Republicans gave us the Homestead Act, and the law that provided state universities to states, and they wooed the corporation owners by giving huge land grants to railroads. after the war they sorta protected and sorta supported former slaves, except they quickly found it was more expedient to pretend to do so than to actually do so. so they really weren't, even then, a party for you and me, but the Democrats were worse. the Democrats worshipped at the feet of the bankers and corporation owners. and the drift began. by the early 1900s, both parties competed for who would be more subservient to the plutocrats. (please understand: no angel from on high descended and gave me the Real True History of the U.S. of A. I had to read and figure out and choose the interpretations I like best. if you have recently read a Republican history of the U.S. of A., mine must seem like a different planet, perhaps Hieronymus Bosch's.) whoa! enter the Depression, the Dust Bowl, and FDR (allegedly a traitor to his class) and the New Deal and today's politics began, with the Democrats on our side, for heaven's sake, and the Republicans entrenched on their side. so there, Mr. Lincoln, I still get to appreciate you and be grateful for you and think you were a great President even though your party is pretty much anathema to me.
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