The Political Cesspool: 2026 Southern Cultural Center Conference

I had a great time at the 2026 Southern Cultural Center Conference.

It was good to see and reconnect with old friends, talk about old memories and create new ones at the center. I spent much of the weekend thinking about the choices that we made over the last 11 years which have been dominated by the MAGA movement which is coming to an end.

I’ve repeatedly compared MAGA to a fake plastic palm tree. Our people spent the last 11 years focused on pouring all of their water – their time, attention, money, votes and hope – onto this fake plastic tree in the vain hope that Donald Trump would “Make America Great Again.” We would have been better off watering our own gardens. Imagine where we would be today if all that time and energy had instead been spent on, say, creating a network of Southern Cultural Centers in the South or just investing in educational resources to help instill a positive sense of racial and cultural identity in younger generations.

The investment in mainstream conservative politics has yielded lower taxes for corporations, an expensive and unpopular war with Iran for Israel, AI data centers and a lower standard of living. It wasn’t any different this time around. The next fake astroturfed populist movement like the Tea Party and MAGA which will be rolled out to convince you to reform the Republican Party won’t be any different either.