On Dixie Cups

"Rusty Vandura - www.tinyurl.com/keepoppo" (rustyvandura)
06/27/2020 at 16:07 • Filed to: None

This is a letter written to Charlie Sykes of !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! . I like words and language a nd I found this very interesting. And for your time, here is a picture of one of my favorite automobiles. Nothing says Murica like the ‘76 Eldorado:

1976 Cadillac Eldorado

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

I was amused to see the Dixie Chicks changed their name, dropping the Dixie, and thought the video they made, “March March,” was rather good (even if my own opinion about marching is a little jaded).

I also heard there’s talk that Winn Dixie will be changing its name. Actually, I believe that talk preceded the current protests, arising after the SE supermarket chain was bought by another company that wanted to re-brand because the old Winn Dixie wasn’t doing all that well.

So I am clearly not the only one who from all this also wondered about Dixie Cups (a product name I think would be difficult to rebrand without affecting sales, and one that has now become pretty generic). As those investigating will have discovered, that name actually has little to do with the Old South; Dixie Cups was the name a company chose for their paper cups because its NY office was in the same building as that of another company, Dixie Dolls.

But the interesting thing about those Dixie Cups that you may not have heard: though the disposable paper cups were developed by a water fountain maker a few years before they got their new name, Dixie Cups’ big sales came as the first disposable “health cups” at the time of the last pandemic, the 1918 flu.

Also, there is the dixie of British English, a term for a kettle the British army used on the front in WWI etc. This term seems to be completely unrelated to Dixie Cups or the Old South; it comes from Hindi and was corrupted into English as dixie.

Etymologically yours,
Eileen Oshinsky, a new reader at The Bulwark

**
Charlie,

DISCUSSION (32)

CB > Rusty Vandura - www.tinyurl.com/keepoppo
06/27/2020 at 16:10

Didn’t you hear?

ranwhenparked > Rusty Vandura - www.tinyurl.com/keepoppo
06/27/2020 at 16:19

Isn’t “ Dixie” just a generic geographical nickname for everything south of the Mason-Dixon line that predates the Civil War and has nothing to do specifically with slavery, other than the fact that states in that region used to be slaveholding states, in which case “Southern” or “Southeastern” would be just as offensive, since they also refer to that region geographically.

And, also, all northern states used to be slaveholding as well, they just stopped a bit earlier than the south, so should businesses stop using “Mid Atlantic” and “New England” as well?

Rusty Vandura - www.tinyurl.com/keepoppo > ranwhenparked
06/27/2020 at 16:23

... they just stopped a bit earlier than the south...

But they stopped, I’d argue, and didn’t want to fight a war in order not to stop. To my thinking, that’s a significant distinction.

slipperysallylikespenguins > ranwhenparked
06/27/2020 at 16:24

Yes, everything must now be referred to as “ Marklar” .

ranwhenparked > Rusty Vandura - www.tinyurl.com/keepoppo
06/27/2020 at 16:34

It is, and it isn’t, there were border states that stayed loyal to the Union and kept slavery right up until it was banned under the Constitution in 1865, which are sometimes included in t he region, sometimes not. Besides, it was always wrong, so anyone involved in it is problematic, regardless of any “extenuating circumstances” you might try to apply. We have to remove Ulysses Grant monuments because he was briefly a slaveowner, a relative died and left him a slave, who he then freed, but he didn’t exactly do it right away.

Who is the Leader - 404 / Blog No Longer Available > Rusty Vandura - www.tinyurl.com/keepoppo
06/27/2020 at 16:58

They also promised border states could keep their slaves if they would help fight against the Confederacy. The war was on succession but was (fortunately) justified by targeting slavery so that they actually had something personal to fight for. I don’t think most peopl e understand that when talking about the war, it started off being about preserving the union. It was a stroke of genius for the north to find a better reason to fight.

Who is the Leader - 404 / Blog No Longer Available > ranwhenparked
06/27/2020 at 17:00

The simplistic view people seem to hold about the war is upended by the pro union slave states being exempted. The war wasn’t on slavery until people started getting tired of dying to preserve a union with people they didn’t like much anyways.

Who is the Leader - 404 / Blog No Longer Available > Rusty Vandura - www.tinyurl.com/keepoppo
06/27/2020 at 17:05

I suppose this isn’t a hill to die on, but I’m worried about the precedent this sets. It doesn’t matter to most people that Dixie just refers to the geographic region of the old south. It just seems like white people trying so incredibly hard to be not racist that they forget to ask if people actually take issue with it.

Kinja'd!!!

I suppose this sign is offensive.

Rusty Vandura - www.tinyurl.com/keepoppo > Who is the Leader - 404 / Blog No Longer Available
06/27/2020 at 17:05

Have you ever read Cold Mountain ?

Who is the Leader - 404 / Blog No Longer Available > Rusty Vandura - www.tinyurl.com/keepoppo
06/27/2020 at 17:15

No. I just looked into it and it looks interesting.

I really am wary of h olding any Civil War veterans at all as heros. Many people might cite Sherman or Grant, but both were terrible people. “Butcher” grant earned his nickname for a reason and Sherman ruined hundreds of thousands of lives and livelihoods while permitting his men to carry out atrocities against civilians. I’m not convinced we should really be glorifying any aspect of the war, much less promoting such a simplified version.

Rusty Vandura - www.tinyurl.com/keepoppo > Who is the Leader - 404 / Blog No Longer Available
06/27/2020 at 17:43

Context though. In the case of The Chicks, the reference was there and it was cultural and they owned it. In the case of The Cups, probably not. And in the case of the woman named Dixie, what then? Let the T urd P olishers claim the virus is a hoax and let the Progressives rant about defunding the police and meanwhile, hopefully, something in the middle will take place.

Statuary: a row of statues, IMO, is nothing but a museum in a public square. Every museum collection gets curated. Not a big deal. Doesn’t change history, just changes how people want to react to history. So many disingenuous things being put out there nowadays by people who just want to stir s**t.

Who is the Leader - 404 / Blog No Longer Available > Rusty Vandura - www.tinyurl.com/keepoppo
06/27/2020 at 17:52

It seems like the middle ground is rapidly eroding. You can’t be tolerant without agreeing and promoting what the other person says, apparently, which is not at all what the word is supposed to mean.

Yes, but, as you said, it changes how people react to history. If we decide that a statue of George Washington is unfit for public display, then that is a dangerous precedent. You can certainly change how people perceive history through such actions and bit always for the better.

ranwhenparked > Who is the Leader - 404 / Blog No Longer Available
06/27/2020 at 18:04

It was ultimately the core issue that politically divided the country, though. I mean, there would have been no succession if the southern states weren’t afraid Lincoln would make some move against slavery after taking office. Or, at least, it wouldn’t have happened right then, but probably still would have whenever an abolitionist president was elected.

For the most part, the slaveholding states that stayed loyal were not as overwhelmingly reliant on slavery for their economies. For example, Delaware had less than 1,800 slaves in 1861, against a free Black population of almost 20,000. It was legal, but the practice was pretty clearly dying out in the border states anyway, they might not have been all-in on abolishing it right then and there, but they weren’t really willing to fight to keep it, either.

Who is the Leader - 404 / Blog No Longer Available > ranwhenparked
06/27/2020 at 18:27

Exactly. Motives were complicated and fueled by conflicts dating back to since before the country was founded. Especially since the slave holding states felt that the government was making a move to lose the delicate balance of representation by adding new free states in the west. Bleeding Kansas sure didn’t make the situation more pleasant.

Both political blocs were terrified of the other gaining more prominence. The whole business was so deeply personal that it was always going to be ugly. It is still ugly, but it doesn't help that current political affiliations are drawn on similar lines and any callback becomes simultaneously personal and political.

ranwhenparked > Who is the Leader - 404 / Blog No Longer Available
06/27/2020 at 18:47

I kind of do wonder what would have happened if Lincoln didn't have the war to deal with - would he have still done something major to move against it, or would he have followed his campaign pledge to tolerate it where it existed and just try to limit expansion to new territories? He probably needed to say that to get elected, but maybe in his second term could have done something big?

Who is the Leader - 404 / Blog No Longer Available > ranwhenparked
06/27/2020 at 19:18

Lincoln was an unprecedented radical with far more morals than is good for a politician. I feel he would have put his foot down on new territories regardless , but that alone might have started a war. The South was convinced that the legislature did not represent them, and so they had the same right to succeed as the colonies did before . Preventing the westward spread of slavery was part of what started the war in the first place so I don’t really see an alternate timeline where Lincoln was elected and the South didn’t revolt. His election was like a slap in the face to most slaveholders. They took the man’s presence in the White House personally. And what the slaveholding elite said, the common man, white and black, had to make a conscious effort to disagree with. After all, it was their desire to create perceived differences between the condition of poor white farmers and enslaved blacks that invented the American idea of racism.

ranwhenparked > Who is the Leader - 404 / Blog No Longer Available
06/27/2020 at 19:24

They were trouble no matter what country they belonged to. The United States gaining independence was what finally tipped the political balance toward abolition in the British Empire, once they no longer had a major slaveholding economic bloc to placate. The mistake was not dealing with them more harshly after the war, General Grant had the KKK completely smashed and liquidated, if we kept the military occupation up for longer, we could have really transformed society in a more lasting way.

Who is the Leader - 404 / Blog No Longer Available > ranwhenparked
06/27/2020 at 19:32

The occupation and reconstruction was and still is a hugely divisive subject. Many people both then and now felt Lincoln dealt far too leniently with the South and the people actually living there were of the opinion that the torture had gone on long enough already. A problem greater than slight changes in penalties for former soldiers and office holders was the irregular and lax enforcement. He couldn’t occupy the South forever and Congress and the North in general was of the opinion that the sooner things got back to normal the better. No one had the willpower left to do much about it. What attention there was was mostly directed towards regaining fresh water supply than economic and social restructuring. The emerging west and what to do with it was of more practical importance at the time than cracking down on voter discrimination.

I’m not saying it wasn’t handled poorly but I do think it could have been much much worse. With our current knowledge, at the very least keeping up the northerner controlled temporary government and retaining some of the systems for national oversight in the new government (plus booting out more former office holders) would have worked wonders but the federal government wasn’t nearly as large or as strong as it is today and resources and energy was already depleted.

ranwhenparked > Who is the Leader - 404 / Blog No Longer Available
06/27/2020 at 19:38

Yes, yes, pragmatism and all, combined with some really dreadful Supreme Court decisions. It's just sad that we put in all that sacrifice just to tolerate the existence of an obviously unconstitutional and immoral system for another 100 years. We'd be a different country today if it had been dealt with then and there. But, short term thinking is one of the chronic drawbacks of a democratic republic.

Who is the Leader - 404 / Blog No Longer Available > ranwhenparked
06/27/2020 at 19:49

Yes. Our foresight and attention span is only getting shorter even as we have more and more history to draw from.

Rusty Vandura - www.tinyurl.com/keepoppo > Who is the Leader - 404 / Blog No Longer Available
06/27/2020 at 20:54

Nostalgia grinds perverse lenses.

Rusty Vandura - www.tinyurl.com/keepoppo > ranwhenparked
06/27/2020 at 20:57

I confess that I am somewhat ignorant on that issue. Still, my ignorance does not keep me from seeing that we need to put that ugly part of our history behind us and quit morally wounding and crippling people over it. If the sight of a slave owning general who fought against emancipation is immortalized by a statue in a public square and that triggers people whose direct ancestors were victimized by that person, then why keep glorifying that character? It doesn’t change history, nor pretend to do so. It’s just a matter of curating a museum exhibit, isn’t it?

Rusty Vandura - www.tinyurl.com/keepoppo > Who is the Leader - 404 / Blog No Longer Available
06/27/2020 at 21:01

Your comments here are insightful, thoughtful, well considered and well informed. I am greatly impressed. One point of pedantry: I think you want secede , and not succeed .

ranwhenparked > Rusty Vandura - www.tinyurl.com/keepoppo
06/27/2020 at 21:12

I’m not defending Confederate statues, they never should have been built in the first place. Memorials in cemeteries, I guess, are OK, but that would be it.

But, I think a line needs to be drawn somewhere. The Lincoln Memorial was tagged and vandalized during the protests in Washington , the 54th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry (an all-Black Union Army regiment) memorial in Boston got really badly tagged, and, as I said, the Ulysses Grant statue in San Francisco was pulled down. I cannot get on board with any of that.

Grant did briefly own one slave, but he was left to him by a relative in a will, and he did free him after a short period of time. If he really supported slavery, he would have kept the slave or sold him to someone else for money, rather than emancipate. And he commanded the Union forces in the Civil War, AND led the military intervention into the south after the war that completely smashed the KKK and eradicated them to the point where they completely ceased to exist for several decades.

We need to put the brakes on here, we have a situation where mobs feel emboldened to destroy any piece of public property they think they might dislike, in many cases without even knowing anything about what they are actually attacking.

Who is the Leader - 404 / Blog No Longer Available > Rusty Vandura - www.tinyurl.com/keepoppo
06/27/2020 at 21:19

**quickly looks over what I have written**

Dang it I take grammar seriously and I should have known better.

Thank you though.

Rusty Vandura - www.tinyurl.com/keepoppo > ranwhenparked
06/27/2020 at 22:04

I don’t disagree with anything you’ve said and the last thing I want to do is try and put you on the defensive. There are important discussions to be had and some of the reprehensible acts that you enumerate above are, at some level, attempts at discussion, albeit severely misguided attempts.

I practice a religion that has acts and places and behaviors that are explicitly sacred to us. I am saddened when I encounter an act that is counter to the things we hold sacred, yet that does not make them less sacred to me .

ranwhenparked > Rusty Vandura - www.tinyurl.com/keepoppo
06/27/2020 at 22:13

Attempts at discussion would be showing up at a city council meeting, or taking out a permit and organizing a demonstration in a public square, not vandalizing a memorial to African-American Civil War veterans. At this point, no city is going to try to defend anything that’s genuinely racist, if something needs to go, its going to go, just make your case in a reasoned way.

Rusty Vandura - www.tinyurl.com/keepoppo > ranwhenparked
06/27/2020 at 22:21

Now would be a great time for a municipality to put up a fence around a memorial they wanted to protect and schedule a town hall meeting to discuss. In the case of Abraham Lincoln and the kneeling Black man, if I were mayor of Washington DC, I’d have the statue removed and placed in a safe place until cooler heads prevailed.

ranwhenparked > Rusty Vandura - www.tinyurl.com/keepoppo
06/27/2020 at 22:23

They pretty much did that with Lord Baden-Powell’s statue in the UK, though I’ll bet that doesn’t come back, unless on private property. Which is maybe appropriate anyway, he’s mostly significant to the Scouting movement, put it on a Scouts facility.

Rusty Vandura - www.tinyurl.com/keepoppo > Who is the Leader - 404 / Blog No Longer Available
06/27/2020 at 22:25

Gotta help a brother out. I am impressed, though. I have been more than once since we began corresponding here.

Rusty Vandura - www.tinyurl.com/keepoppo > ranwhenparked
06/27/2020 at 22:34

I don’t know anything about that. I’ll have to look it up.

Who is the Leader - 404 / Blog No Longer Available > Rusty Vandura - www.tinyurl.com/keepoppo
06/27/2020 at 23:39

Aww thank you. I try to think from both sides of an issue.