If You Ever Heard of the Bacon Rebellion, You Might Fully Support the Infrastructure Bill Rather than Republican Billionaires

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Wait a minute, I’m a person of low, middle or upper middle class means, and I don't support the infrastructure because I don’t know what the Bacon Rebellion is. Well, that’s admittedly a stretch. But a little knowledge would might get you to reconsider things. You certainly know the rich will do anything to hold onto every last sliver of wealth and privilege. So why do you believe their party line - rising their boats will do the same for yours. Thus, the infrastructure bill must go. Ok, let the history lesson begin.

The Bacon Rebellion was more than a family squabble between William Berkeley and Nathaniel Bacon. Cousins in late 17th Century Virginia, the Governor and wealthy land owner differed over how nearby Native American tribes should be dealt with.

For his part, Bacon essentially wanted to remove the natives so landowners could expand and increase their wealth and holdings. Conversely, Berkeley feared that provoking the tribes would lead to costly and destructive warfare.

So Bacon began his own militia of white and black indentured servants and enslaved blacks and promised freedom for their service. Thus, the gauntlet was thrown down, and Bacon took on Berkeley, the Virginia House of Burgesses, and the rest of the colony’s elite.

Months of conflict followed, and in September 1676, Bacon’s militia captured Jamestown and burned the capital down. Fortunes quickly changed, though. Bacon suddenly died, and the rebellion fell apart.

However, the wealthy elite where left with one unavoidable conclusion. A rebel militia that united white and black servants and slaves had razed Jamestown to the ground.

This could not be left unaddressed, according to Author and Historian Michelle Alexander. “The events in Jamestown were alarming to the planter elite, who were deeply fearful of the multiracial alliance of [indentured servants] and slaves. Word of Bacon’s Rebellion spread far and wide, and several more uprisings of a similar type followed. In an effort to protect their superior status and economic position, the planters shifted their strategy for maintaining dominance. They abandoned their heavy reliance on indentured servants in favor of the importation of more black slaves,” she wrote.

In turn, according to Facing History and Ourselves, Virginia’s lawmakers began to make legal distinctions between “white” and “black” inhabitants. By permanently enslaving Virginians of African descent and giving poor white indentured servants and farmers some new rights and status, they hoped to separate the two groups and make it less likely that they would unite again in rebellion.

Does this sound familiar? Probably not so let me help you. You got your Fox News on and how many minutes tick by without someone terrorizing you over the oncoming train that is American socialism.

In other words, Democrats want to usher Venezuela right onto your doorstep. Yeah that would suck but that’s not the socialism the Democratic constituency has an interest in. Europe, Canada and Australia all operate under the system of Democratic Socialism. The difference from the totalitarian failures should be obvious : The people of our key allies can tweak or remove the systems in place by the ballot box - just like here.

Now, you might not like the way those countries are set up and that is a completely valid position. But you are being played by dismissing these systems out of hand and likening them to Stalinism.

So any meaningful debate about how best to conduct our already mixed economy is removed. In short, you are being Bacon Rebellioned by the same people who put our original divide and conquer paradigm in place.

Does that mean you should just switch sides, go full on infrastructure and become a Democrat. Absolutely not, and it also doesn't mean I'm ready to be Canada or accept the bill without question. I just want you to know that the people who are pulling the strings have a stake in spreading this propaganda. You know, they would do anything to keep from losing any sliver of their wealth and privilige. And that includes killing a bill that should be nothing more than a pittance to them.

Of course, this bogey man is not the area where the puppet strings are being pulled, and understanding would make America a better place for all.