The birthplace of trade unionism in the west this weekend smothers history in her crib as the last surviving Labor Day parade in Nevada becomes The Civil War Days Parade.

The entire Virginia City weekend is devoted to Civil War glorification. Read it and weep:
http://www.visitvirginiacitynv.com/events/civil-war-days.html

The title photo at the above website shows gray geeks in full Confederate drag shooting at them goddamned yankees. Labor Day has been reduced to a time and date reference.

The whole freakin' weekend is now "Civil War Days." Charlottesvile, Virginia, has appropriately commemorative statuary available. VC has launched an extensive TV campaign showing Civil War re-enactors in various garb marching in a parade with an American flag, an additional insult to men and women who gave their lives for a just workplace.

The VC event website carries a hotlink to the Comstock Civil War Reenactors site which displays a Confederate Battle Flag on its front page. The U.S. taxpayer-subsidized organization's Confederate Brigade page repeats the standard despicable revision of history.

These guys rate slavery as a weak number four and thus out of medal contention. It was "not the primary focus as many seem to believe" today, so them there hippie freaks have no reason to impinge upon the First Amendment rights of historically correct freedom-loving racists, right? The neo-Nazis, white supremacists and card-carrying KKK kooks in Charlottesville have simply been misunderstood.

The Confederate Brigade posting is a particularly egregious rewrite of reality thru shameless sin of omission, worse than "Mussolini made the trains run on time so he wasn't all that bad."

Lincoln included only slave states in the Emancipation Proclamation as a way to pressure the south into surrender and perhaps save a few thousand lives. That's why he held it back until a more strategic moment. He of course knew that it would have no effect in areas controlled by Confederate forces. This cynical revision is a typical reflection of The New Jim Crow all the way down to the Trumpian knockdown of the standard straw man of "political correctness."

Upon first reading this claptrap, I was as angry as a desensitized old man can be in an era when every day's news brings fresh humiliation to tarnish our once-shining city on a hill, the erstwhile beacon of freedom in the world — pick your favorite clickbait clichés and boring bromides.

Then, on a sweaty afternoon last week, a refreshing wave of regret washed over me, a visceral feeling that my reaction has been all wrong. Upon reflection, Virginia City Civil War Days and Labor Day appear to be a perfect weekend match, complementary conundrums.

Participating unions can celebrate organized labor while Civil War re-enactors can pay homage to the ultimate in deregulated non-union labor —  SLAVE LABOR.

All on one big happy, gay and oppressively hot Labor...er, Civil War Day on the Comstock. Freedom-loving racists welcome.

And with the local sheriff's affinity for old-fashioned law enforcement, the ambience will be worthy of both the old south and the new south, especially Joe Arpaio's southern Arizona.

Tesla County Sheriff Gerald Cook-Antinoro is cut from the Arpaio mold. Like Jim Crow Joe, he has made a career of unpardonable, unspeakable acts while making the boardwalks of Virginia City safe for electric cars.

Cook-Antinoro and Douglas County, Nevada, Republican Assemblymember Jim Wheeler have long enjoyed a budding bro-mance, endorsing each other for re-election among other skulduggerous pursuits.

Wheeler believes in constituent service to a fault, once stating that if his district wanted to re-institute slavery, he'd vote for it. (I've heard unconfirmed rumors that Wheeler will sponsor a bill in the next legislative session requiring that all beds in Douglas County must use only white sheets.)

It was exactly Wheeler's brand of states' rights/local option euphemistic dunderthinking that sparked the Civil War in the first place. The great fortunes of America were and are, with rare exception, built with shameless tapping of the taxpayer till.

Mississippi West Nevada has always been a victim of that affliction and new outbreaks of the disease remain a recurring herpes upon the body politick.

The idea that poor people have too much money and rich people too little is so hard-wired into the American caste system that its apologists are running out of ways to justify the rape and pillage.

Last July 22, the Reno Gannett-Journal gave the U.S. Chamber of Commerce 500 words of free ink to publicize the preposterous libel that Nevada unions have been using legal tricks to force workers into sub-minimum wage servitude.

Par for the course in the post-facts epoch of Tsar Donaldov.

The only thing left to proselytize is the concept that slavery is the ultimate right to work. There are few enterprises as profitable as paying workers nothing for their labor.

As to Monday's parade on the Comstock, I have suggested that unions lead their always-large delegation with a big banner announcing THIS IS LABOR DAY, NOT CIVIL WAR DAY

Probably won't help. Americans love play-acting in comfortable rewrites of history.

Remember the Alamo? The legendary Texas "patriots" actually went to war because Mexico had outlawed slavery.

I guess it was just too much to expect Walt Disney, Charlton Heston or John Wayne to tell the truth.

I played cowboys and Indians with other children, blissfully unaware that I was re-enacting genocide, something we still perpetrate today in places like Yemen.

We simply have never cared much for brown people, as the late George Carlin often noted.

In today's America, it's OK to hate again.

Undocumented dark-skinned flood victims will now be denied humanitarian aid in Houston and environs.

As Columbia University history Prof. Barbara Fields said in Ken Burns' sanitized, Emmy-winning 1990 Civil War documentary, “I think what we need to remember, most of all, is that the Civil War is not over until we, today, have done our part in fighting it, as well as understanding what happened when the Civil War generation fought it...If some citizens live in houses and others live on the street, the Civil War is still going on. It’s still to be fought and regrettably, it can still be lost.”

If the retro Nevada outback feels compelled to celebrate the Confederacy, I suggest moving Civil War Days to July 4 to commemorate the Battle of Gettysburg. Accurate history and American workers are both besieged in the corporate-controlled America of today. They should not have to fight a two-front war and compete with each other on the same co-opted weekend.

The South has risen again in Virginia City, Tesla County, Mississippi West. History, workers and the future are all losers if this continues unchallenged.

AWAKE FOR JAKE TODAY. Appreciation and adios for late UNR journalism legend and Tribune columnist Jake Highton will appropriately happen on Labor Day weekend; 3:00 p.m. Saturday, September 2 in the UNR library rotunda.

Bureaucrats call it a "knowledge center." Remember the great George Carlin's warning about adding syllables and subtracting meaning?

Better there than that firetrap theater atop the student union. (Barbwire 12 Dec. 2013)

Jake Highton died of a heart attack on August 7.

I recently placed Jake in the Barbwire Molly Ivins Memorial Columniator Hall of Flames, an exclusive club with just two entry requirements. Your writing must have serious impact. And you gotta be dead.

"Only six Nevadans stand immoralized therein," I wrote last April 4. "It's time to waive the rules for a lucky seventh, my longtime Sparks Tribune colleague in columny Jake Highton.

"His widely published and prolific writings pale in comparison to his impact on generations of UNR journalism students. Every one I've met or labored alongside remarked upon Jake's awesome influence.

"So welcome aboard, old son. You're Lucky No. 7 while still around to enjoy it. We'll work on the Nevada Press Association HOF right after Don Dondero gets voted in."

Jake now rides eternally with the Magnificent 7. Long may he run.

YOUR DON THANKS YOU. My sincere gratitude goes to readers who called or wrote the Nevada Press Association Board of Directors ahead of the Aug. 4 hall of fame vote. It's my sincere hope that erstwhile Tribune and world-famed photographer Dondero (1920-2003) finally receives long overdue respect. We'll know soon if there will be a larger than usual delegation to the NPA state convention next month in Carson City, Dondero's home town.

I hope so because we have to work for Jake's installation next year. He will nonetheless be honored at the event.

You will find remembrances, selected Highton columns and articles from other publications at the NevadaLabor.com Highton Archive.

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