BOTTOM-UP, BERNIE?
Last night, Bernie Sanders said that true revolutions comes from the bottom up not the top down. While I understood his point, that Hilary and the Democratic National Committee are top-down and therefore inauthentic, when compared to his bottom-up, amazing comeuppance in the 2016 Democratic Presidential primaries.
This morning, though, upon further historical reflection of Vermont Senator, Bernie Sanders' "top-down" / "bottom-up" analogy and exultation from Wyoming, it seems that it may be in error, certainly as its premises pertain to American history .
Haiti on Hispaniola-island had a true bottom-up, black revolution, culminating in the proclamation its national existence from a former French colony,1791-1803. That heady revolution lasted until that disastrous, imposed, peace-time "loan" was made and reparations were paid to France by Haiti. These were forced upon Haiti as compensation for colonial France's loss of its sugar plantations and slave property, i.e. Haiti's people. This "gun-to-the-head" of Haiti was aided by an European and American boycott that strangled, that segregated Haiti from international commerce, leaving no market for its goods; that embargoed it from the intercourse with other nations as retribution for daring to revolt!
In the United States of America, by contrast, its two acclaimed, white social movements began at the top: the secessionist movement that led to Civil War, and the American Revolution!
These "revolutions" began among the wealthy white merchants and wealthy white slaveholders who resented "taxation without representation," in the North. Meanwhile, in the South, the Somerset case, of 1772, which outlawed black slavery in England, terrified the South, where slavery was its economic engine, and the "sine qua non" of its existence. Together, the Northern and Southern white upper classes' grievances were subtlely enlarged, democratized, transmogrified by persons, "patriots" like Thomas Paine and dupes like martyred Crispus Attucks to prompt our so-called "revolution" against the Mother Country, Great Britain.
Of course, the American black social revolutions were both bottom-up: that which ended slavery, and that which ended segregation & voting disparity. These two revolutions by the blacks were the springboards for the two women's rights revolutions--voting and equal rights--and for the gay rights and gay marriage campaigns. These latter two were also cited as justification by Bernie Sanders..
Both white American revolutions were top-down, not bottom-up! Only the two black revolutions have been truly bottom-up. So Bernie, I beg to differ in that historical respect with your view.
Wednesday, April 6, 2016
BOTTOM-UP, BERNIE?
BOTTOM-UP, BERNIE?
Last night, Bernie Sanders said that true revolutions comes from the bottom up not the top down. While I understood his point, that Hilary and the Democratic National Committee are top-down and therefore inauthentic, when compared to his bottom-up, amazing comeuppance in the 2016 Democratic Presidential primaries.
This morning, though, upon further historical reflection of Vermont Senator, Bernie Sanders' "top-down" / "bottom-up" analogy and exultation from Wyoming, it seems that it may be in error, certainly as its premises pertain to American history .
Haiti on Hispaniola-island had a true bottom-up, black revolution, culminating in the proclamation its national existence from a former French colony,1791-1803. That heady revolution lasted until that disastrous, imposed, peace-time "loan" was made and reparations were paid to France by Haiti. These were forced upon Haiti as compensation for colonial France's loss of its sugar plantations and slave property, i.e. Haiti's people. This "gun-to-the-head" of Haiti was aided by an European and American boycott that strangled, that segregated Haiti from international commerce, leaving no market for its goods; that embargoed it from the intercourse with other nations as retribution for daring to revolt!
In the United States of America, by contrast, its two acclaimed, white social movements began at the top: the secessionist movement that led to Civil War, and the American Revolution!
These "revolutions" began among the wealthy white merchants and wealthy white slaveholders who resented "taxation without representation," in the North. Meanwhile, in the South, the Somerset case, of 1772, which outlawed black slavery in England, terrified the South, where slavery was its economic engine, and the "sine qua non" of its existence. Together, the Northern and Southern white upper classes' grievances were subtlely enlarged, democratized, transmogrified by persons, "patriots" like Thomas Paine and dupes like martyred Crispus Attucks to prompt our so-called "revolution" against the Mother Country, Great Britain.
Of course, the American black social revolutions were both bottom-up: that which ended slavery, and that which ended segregation & voting disparity. These two revolutions by the blacks were the springboards for the two women's rights revolutions--voting and equal rights--and for the gay rights and gay marriage campaigns. These latter two were also cited as justification by Bernie Sanders..
Both white American revolutions were top-down, not bottom-up! Only the two black revolutions have been truly bottom-up. So Bernie, I beg to differ in that historical respect with your view.