Lincoln utilized infographics during the Civil War, but today's GOP denies climate change realities facing US

D: Man! But what diverse realties are shaping our lives on Main Street that Hillary Clinton and Tim Kaine address in their book Stronger Together: A Blueprint for America’s Future?

M: Dude! In order to understand the diverse realities that are shaping our lives on Main Street as outlined by Clinton and Kaine, we must first read President Abraham Lincoln’s address to the United States Congress on December 3, 1861. It can be found in the online archives of the University of California at Santa Barbara’s The American Presidency Project under the collection heading Messages and Papers of the Presidents.  

D: Man! December 3, 1861 is a far way off from the present day realities facing all of US!

M: Dude! But President Lincoln addresses the same issues being faced by Americans then as in today. In fact, we still are dealing with the same currency levels of then today. Technically, big business and special interests have strangled the international economy by way of diminishing competition and creating a privileged class of a few hundred people and their descendants that we’re still dealing in the multimillions and billions and a trillion is still a big deal for government and business to get to in terms of gross domestic product and assets.

D: Man! Really? What currency denomination should we be dealing with right now if the privileged class of a few hundred people and their descendants did not have a stranglehold on the economy via diminishing competition in business and diminishing investments by government because of special interests representing big businesses?

M: Dude! We should be in the quadrillions and the quintillions, at least. Listen to what President Lincoln reported to Congress on December 3, 1861 regarding the States that were seceding from the United States of America during the Civil War,

One of the unavoidable consequences of the present insurrection is the entire suppression in many places of all the ordinary means of administering civil justice by the officers and in the forms of existing law. This is the case, in whole or in part, in all the insurgent States; and as our armies advance upon and take possession of parts of those States the practical evil becomes more apparent. There are no courts nor officers to whom the citizens of the other States may apply for the enforcement of their lawful claims against the citizens of the insurgent States, and there is a vast amount of debt constituting such claims. Some have estimated it as high as $200,000,000, due in large part from insurgents in open rebellion to loyal citizens who are even now making great sacrifices in the discharge of their patriotic duty to support the Government.

D: Man! So within the States that seceded or were thinking about seceding, the insurgents left the federal government with the responsibility of paying their debts? But the people who remained with the federal government headed by President Lincoln were relieved of the debts left by their insurgent neighbors?

M: Dude! Yes! Whether the federal government was to take on the debts left behind by the insurgents was a matter Lincoln deferred to Congress. But we’ve got a similar crisis playing out before our very eyes right now in 2016! Likewise, today we’ve got a situation where the federal government bailed out the financial sector after the 2008 crash, but the very same big business allies are wanting to return to the ways of the past and speculate, or downright rob, US of our own hard-earned assets like our retirement funds and mortgages. American voters need to come to the understanding that this election is a choice between their own best interests being brought forth by Hillary Clinton and Tim Kaine, or the best interests of the financial sector and its big business allies being set into play by the greedy and selfish and asinine Donald Trump.

D: Man! Have you read the Smithsonian Magazine article about how President Lincoln used early infographics to assist him in strategizing and winning the Civil War? It’s in the July/August 2016 issue, authored by a Clive Thompson, and reads as such,

When Southern states began to secede in 1860 and 1861, Union forces invaded Virginia to try to beat back the secessionists. But where should they concentrate their forces? In the midst of the fighting in June 1861, the federal government’s Coast Survey department produced a fascinating map of Virginia that suggested a strategy. Using data from the latest census, the map showed the concentration of slaves in each county of Virginia: The darker the county, the higher the percentage of the population enslaved.

One trend immediately jumped out: eastern Virginia was the hotspot of slavery. The western region was comparatively slave-free. This suggested that the west would care less about fighting to preserve slavery; indeed, it might even switch sides and join the Unionists. The map was a deeply political data visualization, points out Susan Schulten, a historian at the University of Denver and author of Mapping the Nation. It was trying to show that only a relative minority of Virginians supported—and benefited from—slavery. It suggested military strategy, too: Try to pit the west against the east.

“It was a breakthrough map,” Schulten notes. “It was an attempt to influence how the government saw the nation, and how the military understood it. It drove Lincoln’s attention to where slavery was weakest.”

Soon after, the U.S. Coast Survey produced yet another map charting slave density, except this one covered all the Southern states. President Lincoln was fascinated by this map, consulting it so frequently during the Civil War that it showed “the marks of much service,” as an official portraitist, Francis Bicknell Carpenter, later recalled. One day, Carpenter had borrowed the map to examine it, when Lincoln came into the room.

“You have appropriated my map, have you?” said Lincoln. “I have been looking all around for it.” The president put on his spectacles, “and sitting down upon a trunk began to pore over it very earnestly,” as Carpenter later wrote. Lincoln pointed to the position where Judson Kilpatrick’s cavalry division of the Army was now fighting Confederate troops. “It is just as I thought it was,” he said. “He is close upon ___County, where slaves are thickest. Now we ought to get a ‘heap’ of them, when he returns.” Much as with the Virginia map, Lincoln used the map to understand the country in a new way—to see where Southerners would be most, and least, eager to fight the North.

M: Dude! Republican Party donors deny climate change despite the sciences and mathematics proving otherwise and physical human tragedies unfolding across the United States and World map due to unmitigated preventative measures being overlooked at the local and state level for far too long. But, fortunately, Hillary Clinton and Tim Kaine are astute like Lincoln and unafraid to face these monster storms and epic destructive forces across the nation and globe once and for all humanity.

D: Man! Fortunately, all the Representatives inside the House of Representatives are up for reelection. That means we the people can change the course of history by replacing the Republican Party membership that constitutes the Majority in the House of Representatives with Democratic Party pragmatists who are willing to face these monstrosities and destructive forces full speed ahead. The solutions are there, but American Voters must register to vote and then cast their ballots for Clinton and Kaine and the Democratic Party on Election Day Tuesday, November 8, 2016.

(TO BE CONTINUED…)