Free State of Jones: The First Honest Movie about Reconstruction

"Free State of Jones" is genuinely bold filmmaking in its refusal to romanticize a the violence and terrorism of war and its aftermath.

Free State of Jones is genuinely bold filmmaking that refuses to romanticize the violence and terrorism of war and its aftermath.

Americans really love their Civil War. In the popular imagination, the Civil War is the nation’s trial by fire; that utterly necessary event that determined if a house divided against itself could rise from the ashes and prove to the world that a nation “of the people, by the people, for the people” could survive.

Yet beneath the mythology of reconciliation is the reality of a war that endured long after the armies laid down their guns. Strip away the mythology and you’re left with what historian Eric Foner calls America’s “Unfinished Revolution,” a revolution defined by violence, terrorism, and a string of broken promises that stifled the march of equality for generations. This “Unfinished Revolution” was Reconstruction, and the film Free State of Jones depicts Reconstruction’s brutal reality better than any previous popular treatment.

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Oklahoma Confederates & President Obama: (Not so) Massive Resistance

A small group of Ohlahoma residents greet President Barack OBama by being obnoxious tools.

A small group of Oklahoma residents greet President Barack Obama by being obnoxious tools.

President Barack Obama — he of the funny-sounding Muslim name and clearly Leninist politics — recently visited what can be charitably described as unfriendly political territory by arriving in Oklahoma for a series of appearances that will include the first ever presidential visit to a federal prison. Obama failed to win a SINGLE county in the Sooner State during both the 2008 and 2012 presidential elections. Ya see, Oklahoma is the kind of place where right-wing nut-baggery flourishes so unencumbered that it elected climate-change denying homunculus James “Snowball” Inhofe to multiple terms in the U.S. senate and, in 2013, tried to ban the imposition of Sharia Law to protect good Christian folk from the hordes of crusading Jihadists that make up less-than 1 percent of the state’s population. Freedom!

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