Sometimes I read something that pulls together a number of thoughts I've had and makes everything so clear...this is one of those articles.

Still Think The North Won The Civil War? These 12 Maps Will Prove You Wrong (IMAGES)

Elisabeth Parker
August 31, 2016

Still think the North won the Civil War? Then how do you explain the slow-but-sure Southernization of America? While we were busy patting ourselves on the back for being the most wealthy and free nation in the world, the most extreme elements of the Old South took over the GOP and began rolling back all the progress we’ve made in the past two centuries and reasserting its will.

And of course, the Old South’s “values and beliefs” all exist to serve a slave economy that fattens the few while starving the many. In Harold Meyerson’s brilliant piece on the Southernization of America for the American Prospect, he explains why we’re still stuck fighting the Civil War.

Meanwhile, the GOP is slowly-but-surely rolling back all the gains made by women, people of color and workers during the 20th century.

"The South’s current drive to impose on the rest of the nation its opposition to worker and minority rights—through the vehicle of a Southernized Republican Party—resembles nothing so much as the efforts of antebellum Southern political leaders to blunt the North’s opposition to the slave labor system."

The Old South may not be able to bring back the days of unpaid slave labor, but the GOP’s doing the next best thing by shredding our safety net, slashing our wages, and taking aggressive measures to keep us from voting them out of power.

"Now as then, white Southern elites and their powerful allies among non-Southern business interests seek to expand to the rest of the nation the South’s subjugation of workers and its suppression of the voting rights of those who might oppose their policies."

And really, there’s nothing new about the unholy alliance between the old Southern elite and the Northern bankers, tycoons, and captains of industry. After all, they all profit from their slave labor-based economic development model. What is new — as Mayerson points out — is the current wave of non-Southern political leaders cloaking themselves in the mantle of Southern values.

"What’s new is the spread of historically white Southern values to Northern Republican politicians—the latest development in the 50-year Southernization (and nearly complete racial whitening) of the Republican Party."

Read more - view maps
http://elisabethparker.com/the-southernization-of-america-in-12-maps/