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Comment by Chermska1 | Hacker News Reader

The poster you responded to did not mention slavery, they mentioned the confederacy, which held a variety of views, many of which still inform the politics of many Americans today. Acknowledging this reality seems reasonable.

Your replies indicate your disdain for appeals to the history of American slavery in political discussions, yet you were the one who brought it into the conversation, diverting the thread by initially straw-manning the parents view.

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This is bad faith hair-splitting. You know perfectly well what tshrimple thinks "Nuremberg trials" were needed for, or why they think confederates were "evil fucks".

They were evil fucks. Slavery was one among many deplorable things conservatives supported and still mostly support to this day. They also opposed women's suffrage. They opposed civil rights and fought to maintain segregation. They fought against gay rights. They fight against trans rights. They literally fight against any minority who might land on an equal playing field. Hey... guess who has been stating lately that women shouldn't be allowed to vote?

They are always the first to cast someone as an "other" and scapegoat for all of their problems. You're the type of person to hear "Haitians are eating their cats and dogs!" or "Mexico is sending us rapists and murders" and say "That guy has a good point!". It's pretty fucking gross and you're a clown at best for defending them.

>They are always the first to cast someone as an "other" and scapegoat for all of their problems.

No kidding amigo.

That is revisionist history. Republicans are very proud of their opposition to slavery, and the Democrats were the ones opposing civil rights.

There have been some changes in alignment over the years, but every Republican I've every talked to remains proud of their historic roles above.

They did not say "Republicans". They said "conservatives".

1800s Republicans were a big business, religious, nationalist party. The Union side in the Civil War was motivated by religion (cc "Battle Hymn of the Republic") and nationalism. Rich men paid to have poor men serve in their stead.

There has been a lot more than "some changes in alignment over the years"—the parties of 160+ years ago are essentially unrecognizable today. Given the nature of how the modern Republican party established its base over the course of the 20th century, this idea of taking pride in a legacy of ending slavery is basically comical, a fiction that falls apart with even a basic knowledge of the history of American political ideology and party alignment.

I don't think it is much more comical than modern Democrats trying to take credit for the civil rights movement. The Democratic alignment has changed from "judge by content of character, not color of skin" to thinking that practice is highly problematic.

Are you actually 'both sidesing' slavery?

I'm pushing back on Chermska1's effort to say that "well actually, the confederacy wasn't really about slavery".

They didn't say the Confederacy wasn't really about slavery, they said it was much more than that. And it's those more abstract ideologies which have persisted through American politics, as traced in the history podcast episode I posted in a sibling.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_fallacy

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