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US/UK elections;- Predicting by parallels? - DISRAELI - 05-25-2024
Since 2024 is now a confirmed as an election year in two countries, the United States and Britain, this is an appropriate time to revive my old speculation about election parallels between the two countries.
This was based on observing the way that British and American politics seem to have been running on parallel lines since the end of World War 2, switching from left to right and back again within a few years of each other.
The timing of the changes is partly governed by the fact that the U.S. operates on a fixed-term electoral cycle and the U.K. doesn’t. This flexibility means that a change in the political mood can sometimes be expressed first on the British side of the Atlantic (though it also means that an “old regime” might hang on for a while longer).
The pattern goes like this;
When Japan surrendered in 1945, both countries were under comparatively left-wing governments- a Democrat administration and a Labour government- which lasted beyond the end of the decade.
The Fifties were dominated by conservatism. There was the Eisenhower era (from 1952), and in Britain there was a time of Conservative government (from 1951), epitomised by Harold Macmillan’s observation that “Some of our people have never had it so good.”
The Sixties were ready for something a little more radical- the Democrats under Kennedy-Johnson (from 1960) and the Labour party under Harold Wilson (from 1964).
Nevertheless, at the end of the decade, they both gave way to more conservative individuals- Richard Nixon (from 1968) and Ted Heath (from 1970). (I swept to power myself in 1970 as the winning candidate in our school’s Mock Election).
Nixon and Heath were both forced out a few years later, but the change happened more quickly in Britain. Ted Heath was able to call an unnecessary election in early 1974 and get himself thrown out almost instantly. Whereas, even after Nixon resigned, the American Constitution kept the Republicans in power until 1976.
So, in the second half of the Seventies, there was, once more, a Democrat administration and a Labour government. Neither of them impressed people by the way they handled crises, and there was another conservative reaction in both countries. Once again, the change happened in Britain first. Maggie Thatcher was able to force an election in 1979 by winning a “No Confidence” vote in the Commons, while Ronald Reagan had to wait for the fixed election date in 1980.
The Reagan-Bush and Thatcher-Major years were a time of renewed conservative domination. The compatibility between Reagan and Thatcher was noted at the time. Leftists will fondly remember the famous film poster parody, with Reagan carrying Maggie in his arms;
“She promised to follow him to the end of the world.
He promised to arrange it”.
Finally, at the end of the century, conservatism gave way to Clinton and Blair. This time the American change happened first, partly because John Major won an election which nobody was expecting him to win.
Taken individually, all these changes can be explained by local factors, like the Vietnam issue on one side of the Atlantic, and strikes in the nationalised industries on the other. Nonetheless, when the pattern is taken as a whole, that’s a remarkable sequence of parallels.
I don’t know that the mechanism behind it need be anything more mysterious than having a similar culture with similar reactions to world affairs and economic issues. This would include being more resistant to Socialism than the European countries. Certainly British politics and European politics have not been running in parallel to anything like the same extent.
At first glance, the new century seems to have disrupted the pattern. The British equivalent of Clinton remained in power while America was moving from Left to Right and back again. Or did Tony Blair end up as the British equivalent of Bush Junior after all? Anyway, with the arrival of Gordon Brown and Obama, the two countries were apparently back on parallel tracks. At least, that was my impression in 2012 when this theory was first put forward.
Or were they? Gordon Brown had already been discarded in 2010 and replaced by David Cameron and the Coalition. From one viewpoint, this could be regarded as being six years in advance of the American shift to Trump.
An alternative theory, in retrospect, is that the comparatively liberal Cameron was just as much the British equivalent of Obama as Blair was the British equivalent of Bush.
This allows us to see Boris Johnson’s triumph in December 2019 as the British version of Trump’s triumph in 2016, and his dumping in 2022 as the British version of Trump’s defeat in 2020. This is an attractive theory because people see so many similarities, even in hairstyle.
We arrive in 2024 with both countries seeming to show an increasingly strong right-wing mood. However, that’s not going to translate into an election victory in Britain because the official right-wing party is falling apart.
As far as I can gather, not being in close touch with political events, the pro-Brexit side of the party are the ones who are pulling out and forming a new “Reform” party. Maggie Thatcher used to label the more liberal and pro-Europe side of her party as “wet”, so in the political language of the time the Thatcherites themselves were known as “dry”. On the whole, I think, “wet” has been in charge at least since the turn of the century, so that is the element that is now going down in flames.
If a right-wing surge is now bringing Trump back to power, that won’t be reflected in Britain until the right has had a chance to re-form itself and coalesce.
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In fact this could be an event in British political history with a significance like the collapse of the old Liberal party.
Victorian Liberalism had been a grand coalition against the power of the land-owners, formed of liberal-minded aristocrats (the old Whigs), business interests, radical theorists and the working-class. Once they came into power, they had difficulty in holding the coalition together. Gladstone began upsetting the business interests (e.g. restraints on drinking hours did not please the brewers). Then he shifted to a policy of offering Home Rule to Ireland, which cost him the Whigs and also Joseph Chamberlain, who was considered a radical at the time.
Those Liberals who broke away allied with the Conservatives, eventually getting absorbed. This group was the target of the political joke in “The Importance of Being Earnest”; “Politics? I don’t really have any. I am a Liberal Unionist.” “Oh, they count as Tories. They dine with us. Or come in the evening, at any rate.” By the time the film version was made, the Unionists had disappeared altogether, and the actor simply called himself “a Liberal”. So the social joke no longer applied, though arguably the “no politics” joke actually worked better on the Liberals of 1952 than when Oscar Wilde wrote it.
Joseph Chamberlain himself had an extraordinary career. Having split the Liberal party almost single-handed, on the issue of Irish Home Rule, he went on to split the Conservative Party almost single-handed on the question of re-introducing import tariffs. For example, that was when they temporarily lost Winston Churchill.
But then the Liberal Party got outflanked on the left by the rise of the Labour Party. In the long-term, this meant that they became a centre party and got pulled apart by the two parties on either side.
Before that, there was the First World War. The Liberals were obliged to allow the Conservatives to enter a wartime coalition. The manoeuvres of Lloyd George to make himself leader of that coalition had the effect of dividing his own Liberal party. As a result, the coalition ended the war and won the following election as a mainly Liberal cabinet supported by a mainly Conservative body of back-benchers (M.P.’s without a Cabinet post).
Then in 1922 the back-benchers rebelled. They threw off the old leadership and dissolved the coalition. This was the origin of “the 1922 Committee”, which still survives as the voice of the back bench. I was going to write a thread in the centenary year, but never got around to it. The pulling apart of the Liberals was consummated over the rest of the decade, as the working class and the intellectual radicals shifted to Labour, while Winston Churchill and anyone else who hated socialism went back to the Conservatives.
That may be happening to the Conservatives now, as the “wets” who are trying to hold the centre are being abandoned by the Brexiteers. Yet there is also, at the same time, a visible tension within the Labour party as the leadership tries to hold the centre against Islamists and others. Might we end up with a “National Emergency anti-extremist coalition” of Sunak and Starmer?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hrQQAa6AARc
RE: US/UK elections;- Predicting by parallels? - Ninurta - 05-26-2024
I've noticed that phenomena myself, although I didn't really notice it until the Reagan-Thatcher era. Before that, for the most part, I was politically uninterested. We'd just recently come out of the political turmoil of the 1960's, and that whole decade left a bad political taste in my mouth.
However, at the time of the 1980 elections, I felt a compulsion to work as hard as possible against the Carter regime in the US, having witnessed it's disastrous effects on America. I felt that if Carter got another term, then the US was finished - much the same way as the Americans who feel that another Biden term will finish us in this era. I don't see much difference between those two regimes.
Paying attention thereafter, I noticed the same pattern. If the political compass flipped in one of those countries, the other would soon follow.
In America, we also have an analogue to Thather's "wet-dry" characterization. Here, too, it is among the nominal "conservatives" with the "wet" wing being referred to here as "RINOs" or "Neocons" (same thing) as exemplified by the Bush dynasty, and the likes of Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger. The other polarity, the "Dry", is exemplified by Trump and cohorts, who I would argue are much closer to what I considered "conservative" when I was growing up than the "wet", Left-leaning RINO wing.
Here, the Republican party is also in a bit of turmoil over the polarization that engenders. The Neocon "RINOs" performed a hostile takeover of the Republican party in the 1990's and held sway through the Bush regime, but during the Obama years, the RINOs or Neocons lost their grip on the party and left a power vacuum to be filled by the conservative wing. That happened in the Tea Party" era.
Now the two factions are battling for supremacy, for control of the party, and the "wet" faction seems to be losing ground. They did nothing of merit during their entire tenure in the driver's seat, and the backlash from that ineffectiveness is swinging the rank and file membership back towards the other end of the spectrum, lending more support from them to the "dry" wing of the party.
Only time will tell who wins, but then there will be the next "flip" to look forward to...
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RE: US/UK elections;- Predicting by parallels? - 727Sky - 05-26-2024
If Trump wins and tried to do 1/3 of the things that need to be done in D.C.'s turd barrel of a government he would be assassinated; I do hate to say that but I fear my 8 Ball fortune teller just might be right.. !
RE: US/UK elections;- Predicting by parallels? - DISRAELI - 07-07-2024
Let me re-iterate the end of the opening post, which was the actual predictive element.
Quote:This allows us to see Boris Johnson’s triumph in December 2019 as the British version of Trump’s triumph in 2016, and his dumping in 2022 as the British version of Trump’s defeat in 2020. This is an attractive theory because people see so many similarities, even in hairstyle.The actual result seems to vindicate the second half of the final sentence, so the first half might still be valid.
We arrive in 2024 with both countries seeming to show an increasingly strong right-wing mood. However, that’s not going to translate into an election victory in Britain because the official right-wing party is falling apart.
As far as I can gather, not being in close touch with political events, the pro-Brexit side of the party are the ones who are pulling out and forming a new “Reform” party. Maggie Thatcher used to label the more liberal and pro-Europe side of her party as “wet”, so in the political language of the time the Thatcherites themselves were known as “dry”. On the whole, I think, “wet” has been in charge at least since the turn of the century, so that is the element that is now going down in flames.
If a right-wing surge is now bringing Trump back to power, that won’t be reflected in Britain until the right has had a chance to re-form itself and coalesce.
RE: US/UK elections;- Predicting by parallels? - Ninurta - 07-08-2024
(07-07-2024, 08:45 PM)DISRAELI Wrote: Let me re-iterate the end of the opening post, which was the actual predictive element.
Quote:This allows us to see Boris Johnson’s triumph in December 2019 as the British version of Trump’s triumph in 2016, and his dumping in 2022 as the British version of Trump’s defeat in 2020. This is an attractive theory because people see so many similarities, even in hairstyle.The actual result seems to vindicate the second half of the final sentence, so the first half might still be valid.
We arrive in 2024 with both countries seeming to show an increasingly strong right-wing mood. However, that’s not going to translate into an election victory in Britain because the official right-wing party is falling apart.
As far as I can gather, not being in close touch with political events, the pro-Brexit side of the party are the ones who are pulling out and forming a new “Reform” party. Maggie Thatcher used to label the more liberal and pro-Europe side of her party as “wet”, so in the political language of the time the Thatcherites themselves were known as “dry”. On the whole, I think, “wet” has been in charge at least since the turn of the century, so that is the element that is now going down in flames.
If a right-wing surge is now bringing Trump back to power, that won’t be reflected in Britain until the right has had a chance to re-form itself and coalesce.
I don't understand British political labels very well. That's probably compounded by differing American usages of the same terms. For example, my grandfather was usually called "Whig" as a nickname, but I don't think the term means the same thing here as it does there. As another example, "Tory" was a pejorative term here after the Revolution, and most of our Tories were expatriated to the Bahamas to avoid grisly deaths for them, but there I think "Tory" just means what we would call "Conservative" over here - but I can't be sure.
"Brexit" I sort of understand, but only sort of. It seems just a common-sense move to decouple from the EU and what it is becoming, so I don't quite fathom the differing opinions over it there... but then again, I don't live there, so the nuances are not a part of my day to day experience.
To compound my confusion, the Democrats here used to be known as "the working man's party", which I would equate with "Labour" I suppose, and the Republicans were known to cater to financial elites. In recent years, that has entirely flip-flopped, and now the Republicans are "the working man's party" while the Democrats have allied themselves with the elites... a complete 180 from what I grew up with.
The colors representing the parties has even flipped. When I was young, "blue" represented the Republicans and "red" (as in "the red menace" or the color of every communist flag around the world in those days) represented the Democrat Party. Around the year 2000, for reasons never explained, that color association flipped to what we have today, which took me years to get used to - if I ever did. Until 2000, "red", representing "danger", was associated with every Leftist movement world-wide, including the US Democrats... but now it's associated with the Right here.
So "Tory", "Labour":, etc. doesn't do much to explain to me just who is winning and who is losing in terms I can comprehend.
In light of that, can someone explain to me in terms I can understand - in other words, "dumb it down" - just what the results of the recent British visit to the polls were?
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RE: US/UK elections;- Predicting by parallels? - DISRAELI - 07-09-2024
(07-08-2024, 11:31 PM)Ninurta Wrote: I don't understand British political labels very well. That's probably compounded by differing American usages of the same terms. For example, my grandfather was usually called "Whig" as a nickname, but I don't think the term means the same thing here as it does there. As another example, "Tory" was a pejorative term here after the Revolution, and most of our Tories were expatriated to the Bahamas to avoid grisly deaths for them, but there I think "Tory" just means what we would call "Conservative" over here - but I can't be sure.I'll start with a rough guide to the history of British political labels. "Whigs" and "Tories" were originally both pejorative terms. The Whigs were based on a clique of anti-establishment, radical-minded aristocrats, in alliance with the metropolitan merchant class. The Tories were the old-fashioned country land-owners. The Hanoverian kings were brought in by the Whigs, who became the new establishment. But there was a new division later in the same century about the reaction to the American and French revolutions. Those Whigs who approved of the revolutions hi-jacked the proud name "Whig" as their own property and disparaged their government rivals as "Tories". That's why people like Edumnd Burke and William Pitt, who thought of themselves as Whigs, are now regarded as founding fathers of the Conservative party. Since "Whigs" had supported American independence and "Tories" had opposed it, that would account for the way those labels were used in America.
"Brexit" I sort of understand, but only sort of. It seems just a common-sense move to decouple from the EU and what it is becoming, so I don't quite fathom the differing opinions over it there... but then again, I don't live there, so the nuances are not a part of my day to day experience.
To compound my confusion, the Democrats here used to be known as "the working man's party", which I would equate with "Labour" I suppose, and the Republicans were known to cater to financial elites. In recent years, that has entirely flip-flopped, and now the Republicans are "the working man's party" while the Democrats have allied themselves with the elites... a complete 180 from what I grew up with.
The colors representing the parties has even flipped. When I was young, "blue" represented the Republicans and "red" (as in "the red menace" or the color of every communist flag around the world in those days) represented the Democrat Party. Around the year 2000, for reasons never explained, that color association flipped to what we have today, which took me years to get used to - if I ever did. Until 2000, "red", representing "danger", was associated with every Leftist movement world-wide, including the US Democrats... but now it's associated with the Right here.
So "Tory", "Labour":, etc. doesn't do much to explain to me just who is winning and who is losing in terms I can comprehend.
In light of that, can someone explain to me in terms I can understand - in other words, "dumb it down" - just what the results of the recent British visit to the polls were?.
It was Peel, at the beginning of the Victorian era. who formally re-named the Tories as Conservatives. But his government suffered a hiccup over the taxes on imported corn, which benefited the country landowners and annoyed everybody else. Circumstances obliged him to abolish them, and temporarily break up his own party in the process. The next decade saw the formation of the coalition which became the Liberal party; the Whigs, refugee Peelites like Gladstone, the business class, radical intellectuals, Irish radicals, the unions, the working-class in general. So the Conservatives and the Liberals became the two standard poltical rivals.
But the Liberal coalition gardually broke up, in turn. Gladstone lost the Whigs when he wanted to give autonomy to Ireland, and the Irish had already founded their own party anyway. Over the next decades the business class gradually transferred across to the Conservatives. The unions founded the Labour party to be their own political voice, and after the First World War this party was able to capture the radical intellectuals and much of the working-class, so everybody else fled to the Conservatives in fright, leaving the Liberals representing nobody. Having said that, the working-classes and the radical intellectuals frequently don't see eye-to-eye, so the tradition of "working-class Conservatism" has continued to be strong.
Now it seems to me, as an outsider with historical interests, that the Democrat and Republican labels have had a similar evolution, complictaed by sectionalism. At the time of the Civil War, the "establishment" was the slave-owning power, and the Republican party was formed to combine everybody else in opposition, including northern radicals and northern businessmen and the West, leaving the South to be the stronghold of the Democrats. After the Civil War, the business class became the new establishment, enabling the Democrats to rebuild as a coalition of everybody else, including radical intellectuals and the downtrodden masses in general, but still including the South. As late as the Sixties, it was still being taken for granted that the South was solid Democrat. It looks as though the rebellion of Governor George Wallace marked the break-up of that connection on the segregation issue, so that the South was turning into solid Republican from Reagan onwards.
I offer the following descrption of the post-war left-wing party which might apply in both countries. It is, essentially, a party of radical intellectuals trying to mobilise the vote of the downtrodden masses. At the same time, they have in effect become the establishment, working their way into the media, the civil service, the church, and thus controlling what is official public opinion. They have already satisfied most of the political needs of the working-class with earlier legislation (Attlee), with the accidental result that they now have little more to offer the working-class, and can attain power again only when the Conservative party falls down in some way (Wilson, Blair, Starmer; Carter, Clinton). The solution encouraged by the radical intellectuals is to extend the definition of "downtrodden masses", to include groups with whom the working-class might have little sympathy.
I think you might understand the Brexit isssue instantly if you appreciate that the English Channel has becone the exact equivalent of the Mexican border. The EU is what NAFTA could have become if Nafta had been given a supra-governmental body with the power to draft laws which member countries woud be obliged to adopt. In both countries, the left has adopted "open borders" as a standard of self-righteousness, which is why the left is against leaving the EU as well as against trying to restrain migrants. This is one of the areas in which they are losing contact with the working-class.
I might be able to explain the recent election by drawing on my theory of a current "time-lag" between Anerican and British political responses. Supposing it had been constitutionally possible, during the Trump presidency, for the Republicans to remove Trump themselves and continue in power for a few more years under an assortment of RINO's. One could equate this with the removal of Boris Johnson. Then, as the next election approached, a disgruntled faction of right-wing Republicans might have detached themselves and formed a new party, eventually persuading Trump himself to join them. This analogy works best on the recognition that Nigel Farage, the businessman, is actually a closer match to Trump than Boris was. To complete the analogy, we would have to assume that this new right-wing faction, labelled as neo-Fascists by their opponents, had officially named itself "The Progressive Party". Then these "Progressives" would have divided the Republican vote enough to help Jo Biden win control of Congress, which is roughly what "Reform" have achieved so far to the benefit of Starmer.
RE: US/UK elections;- Predicting by parallels? - Ninurta - 07-09-2024
(07-09-2024, 04:48 PM)DISRAELI Wrote: ...
Now it seems to me, as an outsider with historical interests, that the Democrat and Republican labels have had a similar evolution, complictaed by sectionalism. At the time of the Civil War, the "establishment" was the slave-owning power, and the Republican party was formed to combine everybody else in opposition, including northern radicals and northern businessmen and the West, leaving the South to be the stronghold of the Democrats. After the Civil War, the business class became the new establishment, enabling the Democrats to rebuild as a coalition of everybody else, including radical intellectuals and the downtrodden masses in general, but still including the South. As late as the Sixties, it was still being taken for granted that the South was solid Democrat. It looks as though the rebellion of Governor George Wallace marked the break-up of that connection on the segregation issue, so that the South was turning into solid Republican from Reagan onwards.
I offer the following descrption of the post-war left-wing party which might apply in both countries. It is, essentially, a party of radical intellectuals trying to mobilise the vote of the downtrodden masses. At the same time, they have in effect become the establishment, working their way into the media, the civil service, the church, and thus controlling what is official public opinion. They have already satisfied most of the political needs of the working-class with earlier legislation (Attlee), with the accidental result that they now have little more to offer the working-class, and can attain power again only when the Conservative party falls down in some way (Wilson, Blair, Starmer; Carter, Clinton). The solution encouraged by the radical intellectuals is to extend the definition of "downtrodden masses", to include groups with whom the working-class might have little sympathy.
...
Thank you for the explanation. It did help to set things in order in my mind.
Your assessment of American politics is pretty close, although I would submit that a large part of the US Civil War era politics hinged upon economic considerations - the North had a largely industrial-based economy while the South had a largely agrarian-based economy, which produced sectional and factional differences.
The Republican party was initially formed around a surface opposition to southern slavery, which was the basis for their agrarian economy, mostly cotton. The Southern Democrats saw that development as a direct threat to their own economy. Both tried to either seize or retain control of the national government in order to promote their own sectional interests and economy. For their part, the Northern faction instituted taxes and tariffs on the southern agrarian economy and cotton exports. That was solely for the benefit of Northern industrialization, bleeding off Southern money and "redistributing" it to benefit growing Norther industries. The South, in reaction, broke away and formed their own nation in order to protect their own financial interests.
The Northern interests saw the breakaway of the Southern states into their own nation as a direct threat to Northern economic interests and political power, and moved to prevent that dissolution. For the North, the issue of slavery was a ready-made wedge issue. It's not so much that those in power actually cared about the issue of slavery as it was that they saw it as a means of firing up their own base using that as an emotional issue, much like the modern-day liberals are using racial issues and sexual orientation issues as a means to fire up their own base. It's not that they actually care about those people so much as they see it as a means of firing up their political base and retaining or seizing power by using it as a wedge issue, and the people themselves as mere pawns.
On the part of the Southern factions, they saw the tariffs imposed as a power-seizure and a direct threat to their own economy, and in order to thwart that threat, broke away and formed their own nation. It was like a snake trying to swallow itself - each reaction fed into the resolve of the other faction until a point was reached that there was nothing to be done for it but throw a war.
So the North rallied around "slavery" as the issue while the South rallied around "states rights" as the issue, both of which notions were gross over-simplifications in order to hold the public mind, which has a notoriously short attention span and needs things simplified for it to be digestible. That is why we see the same justifications still being played out today among the various factions... but as has been observed, the victors write history, and that is what gives the most weight to the idea that the Civil War was all about slavery even into the modern day. That is the entrenched Northern view.
In the run-up to the American Civil War, the Republicans billed themselves as "Radicals" and called themselves "Radical Republicans", perhaps as a marketing ploy to promote their newly-formed party. When they took control of the national government in 1860, the South was painted into a corner and had no moves left other than to break away from the nation and form their own in order to maintain their economic viability.
During the Civil War, the simplified versions of issues were all the public mind could hold, and so the rally cries in the North were "slavery" and "preservation of the Union" to motivate fine young men to throw their lives away, and in the South the appeal was to "patriotism" and "defense of our way of life" to motivate young men to do the same.
The British government of the time was reluctant to formally recognize the Confederacy as an independent nation, but they were more than happy to sell the Confederacy arms and ammunition to support the war effort, which was seen here as a tacit, though not formal, recognition of Southern Independence. A lot of British weapons and ammunition crossed blockades and found it's way into the American South - Ely Brothers percussion caps, powder, "London Colt" revolvers, Kerr revolvers, 1853 Enfield Pattern Rifle Musket, etc. all found their way from Britain to U.S. Civil War battle fields.
A careful reading of the 1863 Emancipation Proclamation will show that it did not actually "free" a single slave. It applied ONLY to areas of the Confederacy under actual Confederate control - which is similar to the notion of Argentina passing a law and trying to make it binding in a foreign nation - Canada, for instance. Now we know Argentina cannot make it's own law binding on Canadians, but that was the net legal effect of the Emancipation Proclamation. Carefully crafted and specific exceptions were written into it that allowed slavery to persist in every single Southern area under Northern control and occupation. From that fact, I can only presume that it was not out of concern for the slaves themselves that it was written, but as a political and psychological ploy, a brilliant piece of propaganda - it was an assertion of Union authority and control over Confederate areas - effectively a foreign nation at that time - rather than an actual decree of the end of slavery.
In the aftermath of that war, we had what was called "Reconstruction". On the face of it, that was a good idea - the North would "reconstruct" the Southern areas that it had destroyed physically, but would refrain from reconstructing the Southern economy, in order to maintain the economic and political superiority of the Northern faction. To that end, they occupied the South with Union troops as a visible reminder of subjugation , and flooded the South with Northern "carpetbaggers" to re-form and transform the South into a clone of the North. Those carpetbaggers worked in conjunction with native-born Southern "Sacalawags" who were also radicals after the northern Republican faction template. Reconstruction, I think, is where the current political divisions started.
The southern populace continued to rebel, but under cover of darkness, with organizations such as "The Red Shirts" and the Ku Klux Klans" Initially, those organizations were aimed against white Union influencers in the South, rather than the recently freed Blacks. In the immediate aftermath, it was far more dangerous to be a white Carpetbagger or Scalawag in the South than it was to be a Freedman. Laws were passed to disenfranchise white Southern males in order to re-order the political structure of the South. The only people allowed to vote were then those most likely to support a Northern-style "restructuring" of political entities in the South, and Southern white males took exception to that re-structuring and disenfranchisement. the result was night rides and attacks on the forces compelling that restructuring.
Flash forward 100 years to the 1960's, and we see that "Conservative" Democrats had become entrenched in the South, but "radical" Democrats after the former Republican mold were in control of the national government, leading to what I think of as "Reconstruction V 2.0" and the entire Civil Rights movement, which I submit merely used Southern Blacks in the same way that the pre-war slaves were used as a political tool to force compliance in a still rebellious South. It was not out of any actual concern for minorities so much as it was a means of seizing and extending political power and influence. We see that even into today, where minorities and sexual issues are being used as pawns to promote political aims.
It was some time between 1960 and 1980 that Republicans gained a majority foothold in the South by reforming themselves as "Conservatives" in counterpoint the the Democrats, who had become the "Radicals" on the national level. The roles of the two had completely flip-flopped. The landslide election of Ronald Reagan in 1980 marked not the beginning of that transformation, but rather a confirmation that it had arrived.
Now we are seeing the near complete reversal of their former (pre-Civil War) alignments.
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RE: US/UK elections;- Predicting by parallels? - DISRAELI - 07-09-2024
(07-09-2024, 07:36 PM)Ninurta Wrote: The British government of the time was reluctant to formally recognize the Confederacy as an independent nation, but they were more than happy to sell the Confederacy arms and ammunition to support the war effort, which was seen here as a tacit, though not formal, recognition of Southern Independence. A lot of British weapons and ammunition crossed blockades and found it's way into the American South - Ely Brothers percussion caps, powder, "London Colt" revolvers, Kerr revolvers, 1853 Enfield Pattern Rifle Musket, etc. all found their way from Britain to U.S. Civil War battle fields.
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You were kind enough not to mention the embarassment of the "Alabama". I think the twentieth-century Anglo-American relationship has its roots in Gladstone's willingness to settle the Alabama claims. A good investment.