GREAT movie. I'm a fairly well read student of history and I learned quite a lot of things from this movie.
Like....the first woman to become a millionaire in the world was a freed black woman who set up a cosmetic company around the turn of the 19th century.
Or that freed blacks owned other slaves in the deep south and supported the Confederacy (I did know that many blacks fought for the Confederacy and so some of their descendents are bona fide members of the 'sons of the confederacy' etc. but that just stunned me.
The movie made me want to re-read Frederick Douglas and the early Lincoln papers and speeches.
A lifetime of being made to feel guilty of being American, of always needing to temper any pride with the "yeah but what about....X shameful episode" has always stuck in my throat. First we're made to feel shame and then we're recruited into the barbarian army to destroy the greatest country the world has ever known.
It reminds me of Yeat's poem about how the evil are full of intensity while the good are without conviction...and being reminded by this pisses me off (to be frank). Thing is, being outraged (simultaneously with declaring oneself a victim) is the new coin of our social realm....every 'victim' group comes out swinging with aggressive moves all because of real or fake grievances....so every little or large minority has a chip on their shoulder waiting for someone to offend them so they can demand justice.
And most of us are descent enough to pay up. to be shaken down. to cower and beg the man to go away. To just be left alone. We'd settle for just being left the hell alone.
So we cede to these bastards the high ground, the power in business, in government, in civil and social society. We give them the keys to the kingdom and merely ask them to treat us kindly. But they won't treat us kindly because they're socialist bastards. It's not about live and let live but to game the system so as to rule.
But if we think this country deserves to die, we'll meekly lay down and let it die or we'll join with the executioners.
But she doesn't deserve this. we don't deserve this.