Rewriting history

We’ve reached the “slavery was not that bad” portion of the second Trump administration quicker than I thought we would.

There exists a substantial subset of the right wing that is so embittered, so laden with grievance that they spend inordinate amounts of time searching for ideological salves to soothe their perpetually chapped asses. They latch onto a bad faith argument and repeat it until they genuinely believe it’s true. The list is long and troubling. Over the last few years they’ve managed to gaslight themselves into believing the election was rigged, vaccines don’t work, public school teachers are grooming your children and now the aforementioned theory that “slavery wasn’t that bad”.

“If you think about it,” they might say, “slavery was really a good opportunity for those people to come to America, a country on the rise, and gain valuable experience in fields like agriculture, hospitality and textiles. Let’s change all the textbooks and museum exhibits to properly reflect this more optimistic view of human bondage!”

The argument is exactly as gross as it sounds. Chattle slavery was the commodification of human flesh for economic gain, not a community outreach jobs program.

On one hand you have cynical political operatives who know exactly what they’re doing and purposely feeding this unadulterated bullshit to the masses, but the real issue is the masses willing to write off 400 years of institutional slavery as a minor inconvenience just so they don’t have to feel guilty every February when Black History Month rolls around.