Message to Llewlladdwr & all other Southerners: Perspective on the South bashing.

[Scootaloo]

4. I grew up in Alabama

Then years after escaping, made a foray into Atlanta.

I don't "bash the south." I fucking pity it and the people who live there. it's sort of like Alaska (where i have also spent plenty of time) in that there are strong political opinions on both sides... but the left seems to take the Carlin-eque "fuck it voting is for chumps" nihilistic approach in both locations, leaving the pathologically compulsive right-wing voters to dominate the entire area unchallenged.

And i'm not going to close ranks or admire anyone who does... there's still a lot of cultural sickness in the south, beyond any political divides. There are still plenty of segregationists still kicking around - you don't grow up and live in that world and then abandon it the moment a bill is signed by hte president, after all. There's still a very strong anti-poor sentiment going through the region, even to the point of self-hatred and defeatism among hte poor themselves, a relic of the "good ol' days" when the south was a feudal society. And there's still this bass-ackwards attitude that whatever the rest of the nation is doing is wrong and the south must do whatever the opposite of that is.

Maybe in a generation or two, when the hoary old Wallace voters are under the dirt and Texas is blue and science can be taught in the classrooms of Mississippi without warning labels?