Thursday, August 21, 2014

If there's anything government haters can succeed at

It's bad, bad governing.
More than three times as many women have died here at the hands of current or former lovers than the number of Palmetto State soldiers killed in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars combined. ... The beat of killings has remained a constant in South Carolina, even as domestic violence rates have tumbled 64 percent nationwide over the past two decades, according to an analysis of crime statistics by the newspaper.
Maybe Lincoln should have just let 'em go? There is a lot more in the linked article that will make you sick...especially if you live in South Carolina. If nothing else, it's evidence that no policy and virtually no government serve the interest of one type of person most of all, a white male...or as that particular type of person too often calls it, "the good old days". Those days never ended in South Carolina, whose State Flag should perhaps replace the Palmetto Tree with a simple prehistoric club. [cross-posted at Firedoglake]

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Years ago writer Fox Butterfield was interviewed by Bill Moyer on Butterfield's book, All God’s Children, and I went right out and bought it.

Book is about Willie Bosket, born and raised in South Carolina, whose criminal career led to the passage of the first law in the nation allowing teenagers to be tried as adults (in NY State under Gov. Rockefeller). Every time I hear of some tragedy and a gung-ho DA declare they will try a juvenile as an adult, I think of this book.

Butterfield opens his book with a history of South Carolina, its Scots-Irish ancestry, and declares the history of South Carolina is the history of extreme, murderous violence. He mentions Edgefield, SC, a town so violent that confederate soldiers from Edgefield said they would rather be front line infantry in major civil war battles than home in Edgefield. A town so violent that it was nicknamed "Bloody Edgefield".

Notable "citizens" in Edgefield were Ben "Pitchfork" Tillman, and Strom Thurmond, but more Strom's father who shot a man to death in a hotel over some slight to his "honor" - for which he was never charged. A killing for "honor" was justifiable in S.C.

Nothing has changed in S.C.

Terrific book.

Athenawise said...

I read the entire series. Speaking as a journalist, this is Pulitzer-worthy, an example of what a free press should be doing.