Reply #31: That lady may have been and done all you say, and I certainly

[Joe Chi Minh]

don't doubt it, but according to the usage of the term I am familiar with in the UK, she is the exact opposite to a redneck.

Rednecks are what we sometimes call "council-house Tories". It is not that they live in a council house, it is the perversity, the wrong-headedness, the muddle-headedness of people who lick the boots that kick them.... they are the ones we understand by the term. The worst of them are outright finks, traitors, people who swallow all the right-wing propaganda whole, and prove an enemy not only of their own best interests, but of those of their workmates and neighbours. Like the idiot in that very insightful article we sometimes see on here, who prides himself on pulling himself up by his bootstraps; while he had progressives, good Democrats, to thank even for the clean air he breathed, at the same time as the Republicans have always fought tooth and nail to prevent every measure of significant progress made.

It's not about what we are pleased to call "intelligence", or about education or a lack of it; it's about having a black heart that makes people putty in the hands of the right wing, to their own detriment. My brother left school at fifteen without any qualifications, and there is nothing of value that I have ever learnt, the principle of which I didn't learn from him.