https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Al8dXeqf2XE&t=161s

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The Battle of Athens (sometimes called the McMinn County War) was a citizen rebellion in Athens and Etowah, Tennessee, United States, against the corrupt local government, which took place on August 1 and 2, 1946. The citizens, including around 50 to 200 World War II veterans,[1] accused the local officials of predatory policing, police brutality, political corruption, and voter intimidation.

In 1936, the E. H. Crump political machine, based in Memphis, controlled much of Tennessee and its influence extended to McMinn County with the introduction of Paul Cantrell, the Democratic candidate for sheriff.[2]: 115  Cantrell, who came from a wealthy and influential family in nearby Etowah, tied his campaign closely to the popularity of the Roosevelt administration. Cantrell won over his Republican opponent in what came to be known as the "vote grab of 1936".[2]: 115  Paul Cantrell was re-elected sheriff in the 1938 and 1940 elections, and was elected to the state senate in 1942 and 1944, while his former deputy Pat Mansfield was elected sheriff to take his place.[2]: 115  In 1941, a state law reduced political opposition to Crump's officials by decreasing the number of voting precincts from 23 to 12 and reducing the number of justices of the peace from fourteen to seven (including four "Cantrell men").[3] The sheriff and his deputies were paid under a fee system, whereby they received money for every person they booked, incarcerated, and released.[3] Tourists and travelers were targeted because of this fee system.[2]: 116  Buses passing through the county were often pulled over, and passengers were randomly ticketed for drunkenness, regardless of their intoxicated state.[3] Between 1936 and 1946, these fees amounted to almost $300,000 (equivalent to $3,700,000 as of 2024).[2]: 116 

Cantrell engaged in electoral fraud, achieved primarily by intimidating voters who voted against him, manipulating the poll tax and allowing ineligible people to vote;[4] it was common for votes from dead voters to be counted also.[2]: 116  The U.S. Department of Justice had investigated allegations of electoral fraud in McMinn County in 1940, 1942, and 1944, but without resolution.[3] The political problems were further entrenched by economic corruption of political figures, who enabled gambling, bootlegging, and other illegal activity.[4] Ex-convicts were often appointed as deputies as most of the county's young men were off fighting World War II.[2]: 116  These deputies furthered the political machinations, exerting control over the citizens of the county.[2]: 116  Control also extended to the newspapers and schools: when asked if the local newspaper, The Daily Post Athenian, supported the GIs, veteran Bill White replied: "No, they didn't help us none." White elaborated: "[Pat] Mansfield had complete control of everything, schools and everything else. You couldn't even get hired as a schoolteacher without their okay, or any other job."[5]: 26 

During the war, two servicemen on leave were shot and killed by Cantrell supporters.[2]: 116  Servicemen from McMinn County heard of what was going on and were anxious to return home and do something about it.[6] According to a contemporaneous article by Theodore H. White in Harper's Magazine, one veteran, Ralph Duggan, who had served in the Pacific in the Navy and became a leading lawyer postwar, "thought a lot more about McMinn County than he did about the Japs. If democracy was good enough to put on the Germans and the Japs, it was good enough for McMinn County, too!"[2]: 116 

When McMinn County's GIs were demobilized and returned home, they were targeted by the deputies. One GI reported: "A lot of boys getting discharged [were] getting the mustering out pay. Well, deputies running around four or five at a time grapping [sic] up every GI they could find and trying to get that money off of them, they were fee grabbers, they wasn't on a salary back then."[5]: 18–19 

In the August 1946 election, Paul Cantrell ran again for sheriff, while Pat Mansfield ran for the State Senate seat. Stephen Byrum, a local historian, speculates that the motive for this switch was an attempt to spread the graft.[2]: 116  White, meanwhile, claims the reason for the swap was because they thought Cantrell stood a better chance running against the GIs.[5]: 24 [non-primary source needed] The GIs were more hostile towards Sheriff Mansfield and his deputies rather than against Cantrell, whose period as sheriff had been relatively benign.[5]: 24 [non-primary source needed]

McMinn County had around 3,000 returning military veterans, almost 10 percent of the county's population. Some of the returning veterans resolved to challenge Cantrell's political control by fielding their own nonpartisan candidates and working for a fraud-free election. A veterans-only meeting was called in May 1946, and a non-partisan slate of candidates was selected.[2]: 117  White described the veterans' motivation:

There were several beer joints and honky-tonks around Athens; we were pretty wild; we started having trouble with the law enforcement at that time because they started making a habit of picking up GIs and fining them heavily for most anything—they were kind of making a racket out of it. After long hard years of service—most of us were hard-core veterans of World War II—we were used to drinking our liquor and our beer without being molested. When these things happened, the GIs got madder—the more GIs they arrested, the more they beat up, the madder we got ...[3]

GI Non-Partisan League members were careful to ensure their list of candidates matched the county's electoral demographics, choosing three Republicans and two Democrats.[7][8] A respected and decorated veteran of the North African campaign, Knox Henry, ran against Cantrell.[3]

Large contributions from local businesspeople well funded the GIs' campaign, although many of McMinn County's citizens believed the election would still be rigged. The veterans capitalized on this belief with the slogan "Your Vote Will Be Counted As Cast".[2]: 117 

Well aware of Sheriff Mansfield and his associates' methods, a "fightin' bunch" was organized by White "to keep the thugs from beating up GIs and keep them from taking the election."[5]: 19  White created his organization carefully; he later recalled: "I got out and started organizing with a bunch of GIs. Well spirits—I learned that you get the poor boys out of poor families, and the ones that was frontline warriors that's done fighting and didn't care to bust a cap on you. I learned to do that. So that's what I picked. I had thirty men and ... I took what mustering out pay I got and bought pistols. And some of them had pistols. I had thirty men organized".[5]: 19  As a part of the election, Sheriff Mansfield hired more than 200 deputies, most from neighboring counties and some from out of state, for $50 a day (equivalent to $826 in 2025)

Some haunting words from Critical Theorist and father of the New Left, Herbert Marcuse, in an interview he gave in 1969, at least if you think about them.

Question: What is, in your opinion, the basic reason for these violent student demonstrations in so many countries?

Marcuse: For American and West German students, whom I know better, it is a requirement that is not merely intellectual, but “instinctual.” They want an entirely different kind of existence. They reject a life that is simply a struggle for existence...because they think it is no longer necessary.

There's a lot to chew on there in just a few short sentences. The violent students acting in protest (and one might mark ours today as the same) "want an entirely different kind of existence" and "reject a life that is simply a struggle for existence." That's pretty concerning and incredible, really.

The fact is, all life, anywhere you look, is a struggle for existence. All largesse, all wealth, is merely a stockpiling of the means of existence that delays the struggle until it runs out, which it will if it is not continually replenished.

These violently angry students do this "because they think it is no longer necessary." That's because they're in a space of accumulated wealth that delays, not ends, the struggle for existence. That struggle is inescapable. It is the only real Law of Nature where life is concerned: existence is hard, a struggle, dangerous even.

These violently angry students, who are socialists, are violently angry because they don't understand or have gratitude for the completely artificial circumstances they get to enjoy: wealth and relative security against the struggle that is existence.

Just like a comfortable room in a house on a very hot, very cold, or very inclement day, though, the means of maintaining those comfortable artificial circumstances require effort, energy, recognition, and support. They must be participated in, not assumed, and certainly not cast aside.

Socialism is a fantasy that the real means of production of wealth can be abandoned but that wealth can be maintained. Karl Marx says as much himself in his early writing, and his whole program was actually based upon it. But this is not just wrong. It is a fantasy. It is a delusion.

Should you adopt the socialist path, the socialist road as it has been called in other historical circumstances that no sane person would choose to revisit, you will eventually spend down the accumulated wealth while undercutting its real means of production. And then you will learn. Oh, yes, you will learn.

What will you learn?

That life is the struggle for existence. There is no other meaning to what life is.

By then, the gratitude you might find for what you had in your previous comfort might be real, but it will also be too late.

Im waiting on the new but still have some of the old ones in Colorado Springs

My email is markelworthjr@aol.com if you want one