The truth is that the South is a different country altogether. That is the elephant in America’s room.
A cordial invitation for them to secede is the best for all concerned.

funny thing. with the attitude you’ve got, i can’t tell you from every red neck i’ve ever met. didn’t yo momma teach you no manners? y’all oughta be ashamed!

The truth is that the South is a different country altogether. That is the elephant in America’s room.
A cordial invitation for them to secede is the best for all concerned.

Agreed, with the additive that non-southerners would be glad to help all southerners identifying with the tendencies of the non-south to repatriate to the north, mid-west, or west, and leave “bubba” to rot on the vine.
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Fuck the idiot gun nuts. They deserve bad government and all the dead people in their community as a result of guns.

Would that it were so easy. You’re not dealing with ‘gun nuts’, but with the NRA, a self-serving lobbying organisation which feeds lies wrapped up in conspiratorial terms. If the Dems conceded every point of the NRA’s political agenda, would that organisation stop lobbying and turn its attention to running local gun classes? Would it hell. There’s no money in that business. It’s the flipside to NARAL, in some ways: so entrenched as an organisation that it needs to sustain conflict to retain its purpose and fill its coffers.

A friend from South Carolina, very well-educated but from a very rural background, showed me the mountain of paper from the NRA about how Kerry had a secret agenda to take away his guns. Of course, it’s hard to refute that kind of bullshit.

These people aren’t idiots. They just drink from polluted streams.

Who lost the Civil War? The South? Last time I checked, 9 in 10 of the black people in the once-and-future U.S. were enslaved in the South when the Union and Confederate armies went to war, and they didn’t lose. So maybe we should aim for more specificity and say that the Confederacy lost. In the same way, let’s be clear on whom we’re whistling past. The conservative base? Amen, and about time. But if whistling past the South means not showing up to campaign, ignoring the black majority districts, averting our eyes from the mess that white conservative rule has made of the rural and urban South, or failing to enlist the support of white liberals in the South (who, in my experience, work harder than any other white voters because they take nothing for granted), we’re not much better than the rednecks we claim to revile. Could we be that dumb? I like to think not. But who among the Democrats actually made Katrina a campaign issue in the miderm elections? What’s the Democrats’ plan to rebuild New Orleans? The Republicans don’t have one, either.

Amen!

When George Bush cranks up that Texas crap, he comes across as being as phony as a three dollar bill. Come on down here George, and work a couple of weeks with us in the cotton fields in late fall and the winter wheat fields in early spring. I can’t stand the President. Not for what he is, but for what he pretends to be. Bush is a ‘designer populist’.

designer populist GREAT
Laura didn’t break out the eight thousand dollar gown until after the 2006 election

Fuck the idiot gun nuts. They deserve bad government and all the dead people in their community as a result of guns. Ditto the morons who want all the hick, unwanted meth babies the “freedom” to live. It’s a proven fact that the South has the most unwed parents, most stupid kids, most inprisoned adults and children who need the most social services. They suck up the most taxpayer dollars in trying to “get the family together” on the Continent.

We don’t need their shitty “family” values. Decent people run away from these freaks in droves.

Depersonalizing Southerners is a bit like depersonalizing African-Americans, or Arabs, or Jews. If we’ve learned anything in the South, it’s about the dangers of doing that and how long it persists. The South is like Israel and Palestine, except we’re way down the road in the aftermath of a lasting peace. It’s been less than half a century, and it’s not the place I grew up in. Germany is not the place the last generation grew up in either.

I rarely defend the South. Many of the criticisms are still valid. But there are a lot of us who always vote “Blue,” who were the ones down here marching in the streets for change, and who know that it’s not gun control, or abortion, or other simplistic things that still have a grip on the rural South. It’s poverty, lack of education, wounded pride, and the kind of disdain that a few of the comments here express that keeps the South outside the loop.

Prejudice is in the nature of man, as is contempt. Prejudice and contempt against our lingering prejudices and history might be a tempting way to respond to the Republicanization of the South, but it sure isn’t going to change it. You’re right, a big factor in rural Southern politics is prejudice – ours and yours.

I expect a Katrina in Boston would’ve been a different story…

VickiS @
203

To reach these voters:

(1) give up on gun control.

(2) acknowledge partial birth abortion as a legitimate concern.

(3) stop ridiculing Christians.

Fuck the idiot gun nuts. They deserve bad government and all the dead people in their community as a result of guns. Ditto the morons who want all the hick, unwanted meth babies the “freedom” to live. It’s a proven fact that the South has the most unwed parents, most stupid kids, most inprisoned adults and children who need the most social services. They suck up the most taxpayer dollars in trying to “get the family together” on the Continent.

We don’t need their shitty “family” values. Decent people run away from these freaks in droves.

so, Vicki, your whole tirade just doesn’t impress me and it is really counter-productive. political change at the cultural level is extraordinarily difficult to accomplish. it takes patience, focus and living by example. yelling and ridicule and a holier-than-thou attitude never works.

(1) give up on gun control.

(2) acknowledge partial birth abortion as a legitimate concern.

(3) stop ridiculing Christians.

Fuck the idiot gun nuts. They deserve bad government and all the dead people in their community as a result of guns. Ditto the morons who want all the hick, unwanted meth babies the “freedom” to live. It’s a proven fact that the South has the most unwed parents, most stupid kids, most inprisoned adults and children who need the most social services. They suck up the most taxpayer dollars in trying to “get the family together” on the Continent.

We don’t need their shitty “family” values. Decent people run away from these freaks in droves.