The Confederation of Dixie

by on June 30, 2021 at 12:01 am
Posted In: Diaries

One should not think of the corporate towns that rose up in and around Mobile during the Second Great Depression as bastions of law and order and peace. They had their own laws and their own order, as corporate towns have had wherever they have sprung up. They stamped on anything that hampered productivity, and that resulted in towns that most people would not wish to live in. Many of them had no residential districts at all, in fact. And most of them had their policies heavily curtailed after the Convention of States reformed the Federal Government. The reformed Supreme Court had some doubtful views on many of their practices. But in the midst of the rioting and looting endemic in Mobile at the time, they provided a valuable bastion of safety and productivity that helped Alabama survive and rebuild as a functional State.

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The Confederation of Dixie

by on June 29, 2021 at 12:01 am
Posted In: Diaries

The important thing to remember about the fall of Mobile during the Second Great Depression is that the city leaders were on the side of the looters and the rioters. They ordered the police to allow the looting and rioting to continue, and ordered the arrest of anyone caught defending their property. The Port of Mobile, the Aeroplex, and the other industrial centers literally broke with Mobile over those policies and declared their own autonomous zones where the Mobile police were not allowed. They did not want their own security teams arrested for defending their property after all. They officially formed their own small towns in time, with the corporations picking the town councils to make certain they supported corporate policies. Mobile tried to close them down of course, but the corporations defended their industrial centers with every option available to them.

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Compromise

by on June 28, 2021 at 12:01 am
Posted In: Diaries

This week, Biden and Congressional Republicans came to a compromise on an infrastructure bill they could all vote for. Were not necessarily happy with, but could agree to support. Which is often what compromise is. Then two hours later, Biden said that he would not sign that compromise bill, unless the Congress passed all the other stuff he was asking for in a separate bill. I hate to say it, but this isn’t really how compromise works. This isn’t how any of it works. And its exactly this kind of double-speak that makes most Americans distrust politicians in general.

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The Confederation of Dixie

by on June 27, 2021 at 12:01 am
Posted In: Diaries

Anyone who has studied Alabama history knows about the fall of Mobile during the Second Great Depression. The stand down of the police. The riots. The looting. The uncontrolled fires. Decades of corrupt government left the city ripe for the kind of chaos and death that occurred in many of America’s larger cities in that time. What saved Mobile in the end was also what had always made it great. The Port of Mobile. The Aeroplex. The various shipyards. Mobile was the center of trade and production for both the civilian and military industries, and the various yards and industrial parks in the region simply could not allow the riots and looting to destroy their infrastructure. They had been hiring retired veterans for their private security for decades, and when the looters and rioters came to burn it all down, the security teams saved one of the richest and most important concentrations of industrial and economic might in Alabama.

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The Confederation of Dixie

by on June 26, 2021 at 12:01 am
Posted In: Diaries

The port of Mobile, in Alabama, had been a rich and profitable port for centuries when the Second Great Depression began. It had a long history in the shipbuilding industry, and had been one of the major yards during World War II a century before. But it had only a minor and short history as a military port compared to others. Naval Station Mobile had been closed over half a century before, and there were no reserve naval forces in the area. In an America that had been cutting back on military spending for decades, Mobile had no effective history as a major naval military port. The Second Great Depression caught them woefully unprepared for the day when ships from other States would defend them from attacks. Not that there had been many attacks in the Gulf of Mexico they needed to prepare against, of course.

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