Oh totally agreed, me too. Honestly it's one of the things I love most about being in the South. There's a genuine-ness and a heartfelt appreciation for your fellow man down here that's beautiful, and something I haven't seen anywhere else in the States. I swear I didn't mean anything I said as an attack on those folks or on you, just an observation about a fascinatingly anti-majority-rule segment of our population who tend to turn out in droves to vote. Edit much later in the day: for the sake of posterity, since this is on the internet and lives forever, I took OftenBen's words to mean "I know republicans who are better people than the people who use hubski". Reading other folks' responses, I can see that generally, people took it to mean "I am an expert in republicans." For context, that's not what I read. Yay written language!
The reason the rest of us hate the South is the transparent conditionality of the term "fellow man" appalls any thinking human.There's a genuine-ness and a heartfelt appreciation for your fellow man down here that's beautiful, and something I haven't seen anywhere else in the States.
It's a bizarre contradiction, isn't it? I never expected to like living here--I grew up overseas, and spent most of my life on military bases in other countries--and I always thought that the South was somewhere that I would feel like a Martian walking around Times Square. It turns out it's not, at least not by certain measures, but it is a remarkable exercise in doublethink. I've had conversations with people who will in one breath literally say that people who believe in the things I believe in should be shot, and then in another breath welcome me and my family into their arms and homes for a meal. I know people who are actual no-shit greencard-holding immigrants who are also anti-immigration. I know people who are married to minorities who are against "race-mixing." I know intelligent, highly-paid people who have been personally hurt by institutional racism who argue there's no such thing. The most fascinating part to me as an outsider-turned-Southerner isn't that those feelings of "Southern Hospitality" are truly conditional, but that people can hold two diametrically-opposed viewpoints simultaneously and unconditionally. A coworker of mine just the other day posted two times, back-to-back on Facebook. In one post, he was congratulating a friend of his who just graduated and extolling his virtues, and then in the next post, he was complaining about how "the blacks" (his words, not mine) should be arrested for supporting BLM. Thing is, the friend he was congratulating is African American. I'm no anthropologist, but there's some serious studies to be done down here on people's ability to hold vehemently contradictory views dear to their hearts without it shredding their psyche into coleslaw (unless it turns out it does, which is a very real possibility). That said, there are some shitbags down here--shitbags live anywhere you look for them--but on the whole, Southerners are good people who simply have a preternatural ability to doublethink on a daily basis.
I feel you, dawg. I've had maybe five subscriptions to Garden & Gun over the past seven years. It breaks my heart that Woodford Reserve and Mitch McConnell are from the same economy. Reza Aslan wrote a great book called How to Win a Cosmic War. His point, fundamentally, is that when Iranians chant "Death to America" they don't mean America the country, or America the people or even America the culture. They mean America the cartoon villain that deposed Mossadegh and propped up SAVAK that actual America shares many characteristics of? And displays many of the same tendencies as? But isn't the America they mean which is why Iranians tend to be largely friendly and fawning towards Americans in the concrete while also being vehemently antagonistic in the abstract: The difference, according to Aslan, is that Islam has the "near enemy" (paging Armenia/Azerbaijan), the "far enemy" (America or Israel as general proxies for agents that oppose islam) and the "cosmic enemy" (things that are fundamentally condemned by the faith - America's "war on drugs" would be a "cosmic war" as there is no corporeal opponent). And while Americans fully understand near enemies and far enemies, they don't understand cosmic enemies and they don't understand that the Islamic hatred of a far enemy is different than the Islamic hatred of a cosmic enemy. He further argues that Americans need to accept that the average resident of Saudi Arabia gives no fucks about America except in the abstract and further, that generally the Jihadis Americans need to worry about are the ones that go to school in Europe and rub up against enough Western Capitalist Dogs to turn the cosmic enemy into the near one. Sho'nuff, Sayyid Qutb ended up radicalized from his time in... Greeley, Colorado. Thing is, though? I've had plenty of Southerners tell me "I didn't expect to like you" because I AM their cosmic enemy. I'm their papier mache uncle sam to burn in the square. And we can all get along just fine so long as we don't talk politics, which reminds them that I am literally satan. THAT, more than anything is what makes the South work: the fact that they can have a near enemy (and my experience is that Southerners need some sort of vendetta against someone over something pointless to feel alive) whose beef is purely operational. They can have a far enemy that is the proximate cause of their woe. But fuckin' hell they need a cosmic enemy in order to define themselves and when you're in the South? You aren't it. But when you're not in the south? You know you're the bad guy. They tell ya. And they tell ya not to take it personally.Iranian president Mohamed Khatami and Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei condemned and denounced the attacks and the terrorists who carried them out. Iranians who gathered for a soccer match in Tehran two days after the 9/11 attacks observed a moment of silence. There was also a candlelight vigil. Huge crowds attended candlelit vigils in Iran, and 60,000 spectators observed a minute's silence at Tehran's soccer stadium.
As someone born and raised in the south with two perplexingly republican parents (despite the fact that one keeps their old green card locked away in a safe), I frequently feel this way. I managed to leave for a time, and after returning a few years ago, I am still constantly frustrated by how often the loudest southerners live up to the stereotypes... ...but the entire south is not that. There are plenty of blue pockets in this part of the US that don't deserve that level of contempt - they need support. Gerrymandering is a real problem here - If districts were drawn fairly, you would find the south is more blue than the current political leadership would like you to think. Saying "fuck the south" altogether is also saying "fuck all the people who are constantly stifled and made invisible by the dirty, racist, plague-ridden, parasite-infested, cousin-raping idiots in power"...because that invisible half of the south is pretty big. And the answer shouldn't always be "just go live somewhere else."
... who haven't cared enough to change things... like people did in Oregon, or Colorado, or Texas, or anywhere else where people have risen up against The Stupid and made it known that they reject and do not support The Assholes, and have changed things for the better of everyone. For example, I, as a Seattleite, can only give so much to the campaign to unseat Mitch McConnell. But people who live there can actually VOTE him out. You, the "blue South", have ALWAYS had this ability, and chosen not to use it. In this election, the median age of an American is 37. For possibly the first time in living memory, there are more people under 40 than there are over. If even 1/4 of them showed up on November 7th, everything would change. But they don't. And they won't. So yes... gerrymandering is one hurdle amongst many. But, honestly, "fuck the blue south" for not getting off their asses and doing something about it, and passively accepting the status quo and allowing themselves to be utterly dominated by the conservative minority, when they have ALWAYS had the power to change everything, just by showing up on one day (Nov 4th) out of 1460 days in a 4-year term. "Saying "fuck the south" altogether is also saying "fuck all the people who are constantly stifled and made invisible by the dirty, racist, plague-ridden, parasite-infested, cousin-raping idiots in power"...
I can appreciate your feelings on the matter, but it's genuinely not that simple. What you're saying is the classic Liberal (in the polisci sense, not the way our news networks use it) argument of "everything comes down to personal responsibility." You need to look at things as a series of systems, not just as a bunch of individuals you can blame. Sometimes, no amount of personal responsibility can fix the system in one fell swoop. The problems that exist, and are baked into politics all over the US, aren't as simple as a single vote, or even a decade of votes, they're problems that have to be solved generationally by fundamentally altering systems.
I absolutely agree with you. AND, there is a "be the change you want to see in the world" part to tall of those systems, the way they are built, run, and managed, that allows the "little man" to have an impact on the system as a whole. One bigoted fuckwit decided she wasn't going to do her sworn duty, and refused to issue a marriage license to a gay couple. That blew up and went viral. She was fired. Big high-powered right-wing lawyers took up her case "for God's sake" and took it all the way to the Supreme Court. (Who refused to hear the case, but that's not germane to my point: She stood her ground, stood for what she saw as "right", and took it all the way. Liberals don't do that. They are too "nice" and try to play nice.) And yes, I agree, those systems need to be fundamentally altered. But that literally cannot happen without making little changes over time. It's tens of thousands of City Council meetings, and small district legislative campaigns, and regulation (or deregulation) that are pushed through, that change the perception of what is possible and "normal", that shift these ossified systems into a new way of operating. Lasting change can only happen over time, with concerted effort. Liberals suck at that. They run off and chase shiny things too often, while shitty religious conservatives quietly beaver away in the background eroding the policies and principles that make our society civil.
I think we’re all, who are in this discussion, fundamentally on the same page. But that’s why you shouldn’t shit all over the “blue South” as you put it. You’d be genuinely surprised by how hard those of us down here work to keep the pendulum from swinging too far right. If there weren’t tens of thousands of people trying to keep the worst of the worst in check, our politicians would be lynching people on street corners by next Tuesday. The South continues to be a battleground, and it’s one where the forces of evil and bigotry have a huge leg up in legacy, institutional systems, and money. But the whole reason that the South doesn’t have town square hangin’s is exactly the kind of small action you’re talking about.
And that, right there, is why I give money to local campaigns in the South. I KNOW there are good people there who are trying to do the right thing and beat back the assholes... but it's tiring work. And not enough people do it. There are plenty of people to turn the tides... they just gotta show up.
True words--Tennessee is a great example. Demographically, Tennessee is a blue state. But no one left of "we should still be allowed to own slaves" gets the slightest form of representation here. The damage done to the South through the engines of political machination is extraordinary.
Hah! Man, those almost sound like lyrics to a good punk song, or maybe some death metal. I can see a band with a name written in a font you can't read having a song titled that.