Repeating History as Farce

by Norman Ravitch

Marx's comment on repeating history as farce is one of his more valid pronouncements.

Here in Georgia we are reliving Reconstruction, that is to say we are having the first Republican administration and legislature (half of it, anyway) since Reconstruction.

       

During Reconstruction as everyone not educated by NAACP propaganda in the public schools knows, white opportunists came South, disenfranchised ex-Confederates, and gave political power to ex-slaves. It was a disaster, and led only to the creation of the KKK, the beginning of Jim Crow, and the New South.  The Republican experiment in the South came to an end with the managed election of Hays over Tilden.

Well, here in Georgia we elected last fall a Republican governor (much to everyone's surprise including his own) and a Republican State Senate, after a little party-switching.  The current legislative session has come to an end with a disastrous display of disharmony and stupidity.

The new Governor Sonny Perdue (I shall remind those who have not learned any French – hell few have learned English! – that in French perdu(e) means "lost") wanted to replace the new state flag given to Georgia by his predecessor Roy Barnes with one more beloved of the Southern heritage people.  He proposed a referendum concerning possible flag choices – a non-binding referendum, lest people should really have a decisive say in anything – and one of the choices would have been the old St. Andrews Cross flag, which Confederates revere and the NAACP abominates as the Confederate battle flag. 

Well, the Republicans have handled this matter so skillfully that in an upcoming referendum, non-binding of course, the choice will be between the current Barnes flag, which everyone hates, and a version of the pre-1956 flag, which has some Confederate allusions but not enough to satisfy real Southerners.  Lost is the possibility of choosing the St. Andrews Cross flag. 

With such a pyrrhic victory several things become clear.  First, only the flag-making industry will benefit from any of this.  Secondly, the Republicans who were elected because of disgust at the Barnes flag have demonstrated that all they care about is repudiating Barnes and are not a bit interested in satisfying the Confederate lobby.  This will cause all sorts of upheaval next election time.  Probably the Republicans will experience another loss as they did in 1877.  Of course, the Democratic Party in Georgia no longer represents the majority, so its hold on power cannot but be precarious. 

Thus Georgia repeats its history, this time as farce.  Who will our new Nathan Bedford Forrest be? Atlanta business interests like to say that Georgia's elite is too busy to hate.  Evidently it is also too busy to think.