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November
10
2021

The New American Plantation
Charles R. Dickens

When someone mentions plantations, what comes to mind? And when you hear the words white privilege, white supremacy, or racism, do they conjure similar images?

The plantation analogy occurred to me after I received a White Privilege Card from a friend. Of course, it was a joke, and I had a good belly laugh, but it did cause me to wonder about the concept of white privilege and plantation life.

Historians and economists argue that the plantation system ended with FDR’s New Deal in the 1930s.

I’m not convinced. 

I think most of us still live on a plantation; we always have and always will because that’s what we choose.

It never occurs to us because that’s how our masters want it.

Being white, I have enjoyed immeasurable and innumerable advantages from birth, or so I’m told. I wish I’d been more aware because, for the life of me, I cannot name or lay claim to one advantage.

I began thinking about how we live, and the plantation analogy is an appropriate proposition for this commentary.

You see, slavery knows no color; even though we tend to see it racially in America, that’s a construct of the race-baiters and community organizers.

That’s precisely what our masters intend.

I love to read, especially history, but I always take it with a grain of salt. The problem with history is that you have to take someone’s word for what happened.

Churchill gets credit for the quote: “History is written by the victors.” I don’t much care, but I do wonder about the accuracy of historical narratives and perspectives.

Most of them resemble modern blogs more than factual accounts. It’s very much like archeology – pure speculation based solely on the perception of circumstantial evidence. Maybe even like advertisers selling a product or concept.

This commentary is not about America’s antebellum years, and while I find the pre-civil war America intriguing, post-Great Depression 1930s America attracts me more. I sincerely believe the era just after the 1929 Economic Collapse, marks the resurgence of the American Plantations and explains much about who we are and how we arrived here.

FDR’s New Deal in 1935 ushered in what we know as the Welfare System – Relief, Reform, Recovery. In his State of the Union Address, he declares that the national government must provide “security against the major hazards and vicissitudes of life.”

He also called for guaranteed benefits for “poor single mothers and their children and other dependent persons.”

Viola La – Welfare & The Entitlement Society. (Great name for a band!)
Of course, the journey to what we recognize as our modern welfare system was a bit more circuitous. Let’s just say that FDRs beneficent idea metastasized into our current entitlement society with a bit of care and prodding by the folks in the DC Swamp: a modicum of Marxism and a smattering of socialism.

Once these DC Swamp dwellers discovered the efficacy of ensnaring a segment of the population with entitlements, the initial battle was won. It’s celebrated repeated victories ever since.

And… who did these slithering slime-balls attract? The Black community.

Please note that I did not say target. Certain groups have proclivities toward particular ends, and the Black community is easily misled – by their own. That’s the power of misplaced stereotypic hatred and provoking racial angst by agitation. Ask Adolph Hitler who did it with the Jews.

The Black community leaders aroused and forged the victim mentality within these hardworking people reminding them that their lot in life is abject slavery and there is no escape from endemic white supremacy and racism. Although the organizer’s noble cause was possibly solidarity, the result was indentured servitude on the New American Plantation.

This is not an indictment against Blacks, rather an affirmation of their resignation to victimhood in general. It is what they are tied to by their race-baiting community leadership and advocates of socialism. Unfortunately, White ambivalence and apathy merely reinforce this outrageous lie.

A few sympathetic and dedicated equal rights advocates did speak out, but the enemy of my enemy is still an enemy – ask the Black Panthers.

It didn’t hurt that many community leaders, who were advocates of socialism, used the power of entitlements to control and segregate their constituents culturally and racially, arresting any progress of the Civil Rights Movement.

The result is the corroboration of the New American Plantation. The masters and the slaves now come in different colors but manage the planation using the same antebellum tactics and dogma.

Welfare is not dreadful; it simply reinforces this allegation and their concession as casualties to the plantation mentality. Welfare exists to help those in need, not to become a generational lifestyle in perpetuity.

I view the “loopholes” in the welfare system much like those in the current tax codes. If there are legal advantages available, one should use them. The morality, correctness, or appropriateness of their use is a topic for another post.

The loopholes in the welfare system must be plugged quickly, especially the “single mother” provisions that preclude payments to families with fathers in the home.

This particular provision encourages “breeder units” – One woman with a clutch of kids, each from different absentee fathers. This arrangement nullifies the nuclear family concept and consumes the system that enables it

Census Bureau data show that in 1960, only 22 percent of Black children lived with a single parent (compared with seven percent of white children); by 2019, 51 percent of Black children lived with only one parent (compared with 21 percent of white children).

According to Mr. Thomas Sowell, the problem is not poverty but the New American Plantation. He eloquently writes: “Non-judgmental subsidies of counterproductive lifestyles are treating people as if they were livestock, to be fed and tended by others in a welfare state – and yet expecting them to develop as human beings have developed when facing the challenges of life themselves. One key fact that keeps getting ignored is that the poverty rate among black married couples has been in single digits every year since 1994.”

Costs on The New American Plantation – Welfare for 2020 exceeded $9.88 trillion. Estimates for 2021 exceed $8.3 trillion, not including the $5 to $7 trillion Infrastructure and Reconciliation bills currently worming through congress to ensure our enslavement to bigger government and those juicy entitlements.

By comparison, in 2020, the government spent $2.4 Trillion on Social Security and Medicare programs – both of these programs require individual contributions from the recipient, whereas Welfare does not.

Let’s just say that Bungles the Clown’s Build Back Better spending bill is one Sweet Teat costing us Trillions of Bungles-Bucks to increase government involvement in even more facets of our lives. Its promise of free stuff is an irresistible bushwhack for the publicly and poorly educated, unsuspecting plantation worker.

Knowing of a trap helps some avoid the pitfall. Still, it’s often too seductive and tempting for others, especially when those others are sitting ducks for a slick-tongued snake-oil charlatan or passionate race-baiting community activist.

We’re constantly bombarded by flowery political rhetoric wrapped up with a bow sounding too pretty to resist.

We forget that if it seems too good to be true, it usually is. As the Romans say, there is nothing wrong with a healthy dose of skepticism: Caveat Emptor – Buyer Beware.

These con artists represent a lucrative industry of highly paid lobbyists with well-positioned affluent accomplices. Paid political ads, The Lame Stream Media, and Big Tech financial sponsorships support and promote these deceitful people and their messages.
It is, after all, about money and power.

But… It’s just business…

America is still a meritocracy where hard work and effort have rewards. So far, the only thing keeping people in their appropriate place is believing that they belong there. Society embraces this lie because they trust the liar, so they stay on the plantation, right where they are.

Escaping the plantation requires breaking away from the old doctrines that keep us in our place and realizing that we can prosper, which does, however, require the proper leadership.

We still have the power to select leaders of our choosing, but sadly we fail miserably almost every time for some reason. Society embraces their lies because they trust the liar, so they keep us on the plantation, right where we are.

In 1788 the United States ratified our Constitution, which guarantees equality and freedom under the law, but we trade our liberty to scoundrels who promised more safety and security in exchange.

Benjamin Franklin said, “Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.”

Look around you and see the results of our folly.

We are nearly bankrupt by our entitlement society. We are $29 TRILLION in debt because we don’t say no or bother to examine the ramifications. NOTHING is free! If the estimated price of Bungels Build Back Better Bill and Infrastructure Programs are $7 Trillion, that is the price – they are not FREE – the cost is NOT ZERO. It is always higher than the estimate, but absolutely, NOT FREE!

We sell ourselves into servitude for promises that no one can nor intends to keep.
We welcome their word and commitment; we sign the contract and slip into the shackles.

Welcome to the New American Plantation.

 

 

Charles R. Dickens was born in 1951, is a veteran of the Vietnam, for which he volunteered, and the great-great grandson of the noted author, whose name he shares.

He is a fiercely proud American, who still believes this is the greatest country on the planet, with which we’ve lost control and certainly our direction. He grew up in moderate financial surrounding; were not rich by any stretch, but didn’t go hungry – his incredibly hard working father saw to that. As most from that era, he learned about life from his father, whose story would take too long to tell, other than to say that, he is also a fiercely proud American; a WWII and Korean war, veteran Marine.

Charlie was educated in the parochial system which, demanded that you actually learn something, and have capability to retain it before you advance. He attended several universities in pursuit of a bachelor’s degree, and chased the goose further to a master’s, and has retained some very definite ideas about education in this country.

In addition, Charlie is a professional (struggling) blues guitar and vocalist – a musician. This is his therapy career. Nothing brings him as much joy as playing music, and he wishes that he could make a living at it… maybe some day!

That’s Charlie… a proud, opinionated, and passionate American.

 

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