In 2016 my brave and insightful friend Ilana Mercer published a book The Trump Revolution. She praised the appearance of a leader independent of the entrenched Establishment and its phony ideas and policies. Trump, she wrote, presented the possibility of real reform, though not the certainty. Cautious hope has proved to be warranted because many of the hopes of his supporters have disappointingly failed of implementation. His statesmanlike inaugural address is far from becoming his reality in office.


Trump seems to have attacked the immense problem of illegal immigration. Without this enforcement of law the America future is doomed. It remains to be seen whether present efforts will be enough. And why Trump’s strange exemption of subcontinental ID people and Chinese students from immigration restriction, something certainly not of benefit to the American people?


Democratic leaders and Woke populations are determined that the immigration law not be enforced. They are creating violent obstruction of law enforcement that is sure to lead to sensational events that will create sympathy for the protestors. The media, as in the BLM burning of cities and battles with police, is reporting “peaceful protests.”


Minnesota, when it had a 2% black population, was in the forefront of “Civil Rights” enforcement in the South and had no problem sending paratroopers to the South - even to enforce not legitimate laws but dubious court orders. Now the vile attorney general of Minnesota is talking about the 10th Amendment, something that was discarded long ago. Would be ridiculous if not so stupid and dishonest. Forceful federal intervention in States has been a long, well-established practice.


Trump seems to have taken considerable measures to defund and delegitimanise entrenched institutions of the Deep State. We have no clear idea of how far this has reached. I suspect there are still tens or hundreds of thousands of Woke federal officials and contractors enjoying lush salaries and continuing to subvert sane government.


I wrote some time back that the greatest obstacle to Trumpian reforms is the Republican Party, the leadership of which is committed to the Deep State. Democrat Congresspersons often actually believe what they say, false and wicked as it is. Republican Congresspersons, with few exceptions, are intellectually and ethically shallow poster boys, interested in maintaining their comfortable status quo.


They are ignorant of history and of the world and their positions are slogans invented by party advertising men. How much the Republican party has changed in a Trumpian direction remains uncertain and doubtful. Trump’s attacks on the best of his earliest supporters like Massie and Greene is extremely discouraging to the base.


The most important Trump promise was to end the disastrous interference in foreign regimes that has been a permanent policy of the Deep State, of no relevance to the welfare of the American people. Here we have our greatest disappointment.

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In general, his cowboy diplomacy is not a good thing. He has violated his promise in extreme ways, difficult to understand. The Ukrainian war should have been ended long ago, as promised. Surely the Greenland matter could have been peacefully arranged.


I understand why the Israelis want the U.S. to go to war against Russia, Iran, and Venezuela. But why Greenland? It is suggested that Trump’s Greenland adventure will destroy NATO. In that case we can enjoy it. He has made some gestures to warn the Europeans about their decadence but it is not likely to do any good.


Trump has recreated the U.S. imperial policies of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, when we sent troops to take over and administer China, Haiti, Nicaragua, Cuba and other countries. And mostly for the benefit of U.S. corporations. Here’s something we did not expect. His subservience to Israel and promotion of the blatantly phony “peace” for Gaza has deteriorated the moral reputation of the U.S. severely and lastingly.



What shall we do with Trump? Who knows? At least he still invokes the hatred of all the right people. All we can do is wait and nourish a hope that grows weaker by the day. And hope to be spared those “interesting times” that good people are always wary of.

Historians have found as a useful periodisation “the New South,” beginning with the withdrawal of the last federal occupation troops and the end of Reconstruction and ending with World War I and the election as President Woodrow Wilson, Southern-born and bred, although not very Southern in most of his thinking.


Speaking broadly of this period we can lay out some important characteristics.


Southerners regained political power in their own States, though this in part involved limiting the black voting population that had been used by the carpetbaggers. Toward the end of the period, segregation became more and more legalised and prevalent as it had long been in the North. With the rise of new black and white generations that had not known the ties of slavery, Southerners the races became less familiar and cooperative and tensions more evident.


This was not pervasive, as peaceful and friendly ties remained for many. The Southern black leader Booker T. Washington (autobiography UP FROM SLAVERY) urged his people to cooperate with whites and devote themselves to work to better their economic condition. Much white leadership reciprocated, supporting schools and colleges despite their own impoverished condition.


Some black people achieved prosperity, but most did not accomplish Washington’s hope. (See THE AMERICAN NEGRO, 1901, by William Hannibal Thomas.) During this period radical protest came only from a few mixed race people in the North. While wealthy Northerners liked black servants from the South, most black people were still to be found below the Potomac and Ohio rivers.


By far the most important aspect of this period was the continued poverty of the South. The destruction of invasion and the looting of Reconstruction left the once prosperous South the most impoverished region of the country, and it remains so to this day. (See PUNISHED WITH POVERTY by Donald and Ronald Kennedy.)


The majority of the black population and great numbers of the white population were reduced to farm tenantry and sharecropping - meaning they had to borrow from the landowners to get through the year till harvest, and often remained in permanent debt. For capital to get agriculture going, landowners were dependent on and in debt to Northern capital.


The capitalist lenders wanted cash crops like cotton. So the land was worked hard to produce cotton. This was no solution for the farmers because the more cotton that was produced the lower the price, the proceeds often not covering the debt. Only in a few years was the sale of cotton profitable and soil exhaustion became a problem.


On top of this was continual exploitation by the capitalists. The South was in fact a colony of the North - exploited for its abundant natural resources and cheap labour. There was some beginning of industry, but this was hampered by federal policy. There was the tariff. Railroad rates were rigged so that steel could be shipped more cheaply from Pittsburgh to Atlanta than from Birmingham.


At least some of the South regained prosperity in this period. The independent farmer and small businessman remained in considerable numbers. Oil and cattle brought some wealth to Texas and Oklahoma.


An important aspect of this period was a considerable reconciliation between North and South as Northerners began to realize the excesses of Reconstruction and to look for native allies in the light of the North being overrun by new ethnic immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe and labour unrest.


Southerners began to feel and act in good faith as Americans. Northerners accepted Southerners as Americans, although of a different kind and agreed to respect the Confederacy’s heroism and sincerity, a compromise that remained dominant until the 1980s. Southerners remained more conservative in religion, manners, and attitudes.


This reconciliation can be demonstrated in many ways. Joint reunion of Union and Confederate veterans at Gettysburg in 1903. Southerners volunteering for the Spanish-American War and World War I. The President attending the inauguration of the Confederate Monument at Arlington. Confederate battle flags returned the States. Personal friendships and family connections were restored. Theodore Roosevelt, after all, had a Confederate uncle.


Reconciliation on the cultural level was strong. Writers like Augusta Jane Evans Wilson, Joel Chandler Harris, Thomas Nelson Page, Grace King, and Mary Johnston, who portrayed the Southern experience favourably but in a spirit of sectional reconciliation, became popular with Northern readers. The Philadelphia aristocrat Owen Wister called his epic Western novel THE VIRGINIAN, and wrote an admiring book about old Charleston called LADY BALTIMORE. In 1914, D.W. Griffith, son of a Confederate soldier, produced the first great American film, BIRTH OF A NATION. It portrayed both a sympathetic view of Southerners and an admiring view of Lincoln. Jazz and ragtime began their popular movement from New Orleans north up the Mississippi river.


A common historical interpretation is that the leaders of the New South for their own profit collaborated with the corrupt corporate interests that controlled the country. There was some of that, but there remained a strong Jeffersonian undercurrent in Southern politics. Many leaders continued to be strongly against the tariff, favoured regulation of corporate power, and opposed U.S. imperialism. Populism is usually considered a Midwestern movement, but its membership in the South was strong and produced its greatest national leaders, like Tom Watson of GA and Leonidas Lafayette Polk of NC.


​The New South was a period of often uncomfortable change for the South, creating conditions that became the basis of continuing Southern history. There is still a lot to be learned about if it is to be researched by fair and talented historians.

I claim to be a historian, but I was fortunate early on to realise that understanding past times and people involved more than politics and economics, as important as they are. The great creative writers give us true insight into peoples and times. What would we know about Elizabethan England without Shakespeare? Of the great days (alas, gone) of Britain without Walter Scott, Dickens, Austen, and Kipling?


This is especially true about the South. Southern literature will be, in the long run, the most lasting achievement of American civilisation (such as it is). In our literature, Southerners speak for ourselves without the imposition of hostile outsiders. Southern constitutional thinking will also be an important legacy.


Here a few treasures of Southern fiction that might be worth your attention if you care about such things. They are intimate accounts of the real life of the Southern people. If you like an author, you can usually find other worthwhile works of theirs to continue with. And note the predominance of women writers.


William Gilmore Simms, Woodcraft: A Story of the South at the Close of the Revolution


George Washington Harris, Sut Lovingood: Yarns Spun By a Nat’ral Born Durn’d Fool


Mary Johnston, The Long Roll


Elizabeth Madox Roberts, The Time of Man


Andrew Lytle, The Long Night


Caroline Gordon, None Shall Look Back


Harriette Arnow, The Dollmaker


Walker Percy, The Thanatos Syndrome


Wendell Berry, The Memory of Old Jack


Mary Lee Settle, O Beulah Land


Fred Chappell, I Am One of You Forever


E.B. Penrose (penname of Electra Briggs), Athens


Faulkner. Many readers find Faulkner challenging. Start with The Unvanquished and Intruder in the Dust. After that, you might be ready for Go Down Moses, and then the Snopes trilogy.