Header of article from Wall Street Journal, Dec. 20-21, p. C 3
Recall that 15 years ago multiple media stories emerged on how the Confederacy actually prevailed in seizing American culture. Chief among these, the article 'Dixie's Victory' in American Heritage magazine:
Dixie’s Victory (August/September 2002, Volume 53, Issue 4) n:60896
Noting:
"In the mid 20th century the arrival of Southern rural traditions in the urban marketplace created a new breed of Southern culture that exploded on the national scene. At the same time millions of white Southerners planted new roots in the North and introduced the rest of the country to their conservative religious and political culture. and to once regional pastimes like stock car racing and country music.
Country music was a highly lucrative industry as early as the 1930s, when advances i recording and radio helped institutionalize the 'hillbilly' sounds Southerners had invented. Small stations carried local country talent from the beginning, and in 1922, the Atlanta Journal’s radio station, WSB, became the first high-power outlet to feature what Americans soon called “hillbilly music,” and for the first time millions of listeners heard authentic country talent like “Fiddlin’ John” Carson.
Following the success of WSB, WBAP in Fort Worth invented the first-ever broadcast “barn dance,” a live country-music and talk program that proved immensely popular with Southern listeners. By the late 1920s, WLS (Chicago) and WMS (Nashville) had perfected the form with “National Barn Dance” and “Grand Ole Opry,” two mainstays of American radio culture: “Barn Dance” ran for a quarter-century,...
Already enjoying a national profile, country music continued to evolve in the 1950s and 1960s in much the same way it had originally ambled onto the airwaves and 78s in the 1920s: by melding tradition and commercialism. As home to the “Opry,” Nashville attracted considerable recording talent. In the 1950s, the city gave birth to what was termed the “Nashville sound” or the Chet Atkins Compromise, a highly electrified pop-country blend, made wildly popular by rising talents like Atkins, Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash, Jim Reeves, and Patsy Cline, the cowgirl sensation who always felt most comfortable with country music and never quite reconciled herself to performing pop hits like “Walking After Midnight,” “I Fall to Pieces,” and “Crazy.” Country music—now electrified and rhythmic and spread to the North and West—set out to conquer television." ...
Robbie Robertson’s wistful composition “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down” was also recorded by many others, including Bob Dylan and the Band. Its title is revealing enough, but the final verse, uttered by the former Confederate, Virgil Caine, is more poignant still: “Like my father before me, I will work the land/Like my brother above me who took a rebel stand/He was just 18, proud and brave, but a Yankee laid him in his grave/I swear by the mud below my feet, you can’t raise a Caine back up when he’s in defeat.”
In truth, the Virgil Caines of the world stopped working the land several decades ago. They moved to Nashville, Atlanta, Chicago, and Los Angeles. They went to work in factories and offices. They took their culture, their music, and their religion with them, and they have changed America.
And they have embedded it with Southern sympathies, embrace of its music and even dancing. Turned it into Dixie's Victory, especially since the election of a convicted felon, Confederacy lover and traitor Donald Trump.
Bolstering Zeitz’s take was Denver Post columnist Ed Quillen (How
the South Finally Won, April 18, 2011), which more or less takes off where Dixie's
Victory ends. Quillen writes:
"The sesquicentennial commemoration of the American Civil War began
last week with the 150th anniversary of the Confederate attack on Fort Sumter
in South Carolina, and the observations will continue for the next four years
through the defeat of the Confederacy as its generals surrendered to Union
commanders in 1865.
But one might make the argument that if you take the long view, the Confederacy
actually triumphed. In capturing the Republican Party, the political
descendants of the Confederates accomplished through politics what their
ideological ancestors failed to accomplish on the battlefield."
Quillen is also spot on in observing:
"To be sure, chattel slavery has long been abolished in this nation.
But you could consider slavery a form of cheap labor with no legal protections
for the laborers. Now consider the GOP current efforts to bust unions, cut
wages and benefits, and reduce workplace safety regulations.
In other words, one essence of the antebellum South's economic system is
becoming part of the national economic system."
Adding:
"One might also ponder
income distribution in pre-war Dixie. It was extremely skewed with a few rich
folks, mostly planters, sitting on most of the wealth, and outside of their
slaves, lots of "poor white trash" scrounging for a meager livelihood
at the bottom. It was close to feudal, There you have the origin of this vapid craze, seizing the nation's remaining mental faculties since Trump's election (according to the WSJ Review article by Will Groff). How did it conquer dancing and entertainment via the emergence of the current honky tonk craze noted in the Dec. 20-21, Wall Street Journal piece, 'American Nightlife has gone Honky Tonk.' ? (See caption and image of line dancers in LA at top).
How can this be? How could the rebel, traitor South so convincingly have snatched this nation from right under our noses? Well, because we let it - by stupid, ignorant choices, pathetic voting against our interests and repeatedly making onerous category errors by taking Confederate-rural-rebel culture to be superior to any other and "real American". Want to understand how the deleterious political-economic changes now under way (like letting Obamacare premiums spike) were gestated? Go back to the origins described in Zeitz's and Quillen's pieces. For those lacking a historical bearing here, “Southern style”
governance" - as noted by Quillen- means a basic formula including:
- No church-state separation and bibles mandated in schools as well as teaching creationism taught instead of
evolution (Already being done in OK)
- No unions at all, period, in no manner, shape or form
-
All Confederate statues restored to “places of honor”
- Minimal government spending on social services, and repeal of Social
Security, Medicare
- Massive government spending on anything military, including building as many
bombers, fighters and new missiles as possible.
-
The lowest (slave) wages, would predominate
throughout the land. No benefits, no health care.
- Total outlawing of abortion as well as contraception and also rendering
illegal a host of sexual acts, including masturbation, oral sex.
- Imprisoning all pregnant women who are deemed to be risking the life of their
unborn by any “reckless” acts – such as motorcycling, skiing or drinking alcohol.
- - Corporal punishment (e.g. paddling using monster
paddles 2' long) mandated nationwide at
all high schools for both sexes, as is the case today. (e.g. in MS, AL, GA,
NC),
- Keeping all females barefoot and pregnant, by outlawing abortion in the
interest of “biblical mores and family values”
The WSJ piece, after several paragraphs with sickening huzzahs on
the spread of Southern honky tonk even to blue cities, concedes:
“Some see the trend as part of a broader,
conservative shift that accompanied Trump’s re-election.”
And why not? Given in his 1st term
Trump often had words of adulation for Confederate traitors like Robert E. Lee
and even advocated renaming military bases for these traitors and restoring
statues. See e.g.
Trump defends 2017 'very fine people' comments, calls Robert E. Lee 'a great general' - ABC News
So when I read comments in the WSJ piece from delirious blue state bozos like this:
"It just seems now we all like country music and we all like the Southern vibe".
It translates to: "We all ache for the down home Southern sympathies and rule that Trump offers." And a successful cultural meme has burrowed into your brains, converting you into unconscious Johnny Rebs. Let's hope it's just a mild vibe and not full on white supremacism like Trump embraces.
See Also:
Brane Space: Did the South Finally Win The Civil War? Maybe!
And:
And:
by Lawrence Wittner | December 30, 2025 - 5:46am | permalink
Although President Donald Trump’s Department of Labor announced in April 2025 that “Trump’s Golden Age puts American workers first,” that contention is contradicted by the facts.
Indeed, Trump has taken the lead in reducing workers’ incomes. One of his key actions along these lines occurred on March 14, 2025, when he issued an executive order that scrapped a Biden-era regulation raising the minimum wage for employees of private companies with federal contracts. Some 327,300 workers had benefited from former President Joe Biden’s measure, which produced an average wage increase of $5,228 per year. With Trump’s reversal of policy, they became ripe for pay cuts of up to 25%.
» article continues...
