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...sitting here in one of the most gothic towns of the Deep South. I even agree with his points of affinity and dislike concerning the region of his birth.
I also noticed these Southern responses to Lind's article:
ghettosavant
Another way of framing it is the traditionally agrarian mindset against the industrial way of life. In an agrarian, feudalistic mindset, each man should have a plot of land and survive by the sweat of their brow and the bounty of the earth - with the aid of, you know, serfs or slaves who are not men and women but essentially livestock. Today maybe the bounty of the earth is replaced by the bounty of the free market, but the risks are similar.
In the industrial mindset, each man should have the opportunity to contribute to productivity and share in the bounty of collective effort. Sure you gotta pay more taxes and there's a greater chance you'll stay in your gig for the rest of your life as a worker-bee, but at least you'll have honey when you need it.
It's a zeitgeist thing in my opinion. People who like the idea of their independence from Machine and those who find their purpose in it.
Also, being from Virginia and having gone to school in Richmond where the visages of Confederate generals still line Monument Avenue, good 'ole boys fly the Dixie colors proudly on the back of their Ford trucks and re-enact lost battles on the weekends - linking the past to contemporary issues isn't that big a stretch for me.
nlacey
You are spot on!
Hint: My Congressman is Bobby Bright. You have the Southern political philosophy down pat. You need only add the utter corruption of local media in the region -- Birmingham News, Mobile Press Register, etc. in Alabama as examples.
Frankel1205
Mr. Lind, you have read my mind. I am also from the South and have witnessed the implacable, bull-headed, wrong-headed
ways of the Republican/Blue Dog (Bush Dog) coalition. These people will cut off their noses to spite their faces--and love every minute of it. They will tell you the economic hole we are in is Bill Clinton's fault. When Clinton was President, they gave all the credit for his tenure's peace and prosperity to Ronald Reagan. The Southern Republican/Bush Dogs are like the undertow in a river. They are a current that wants the river to run backwards. I doubt it will ever change. The rest of the nation will have to work doubly hard and fight them like hell in order to bring the South into the 21st Century. Even though they will benefit from the progress when it comes, the Republican/BushDog Dems will kick and scratch like hell to stay on the bottom because they like it that way.
Lotto1
Mr Lind is correct. EVERYTHING IN THE SOUTH IS ABOUT RACE, EVERYTHING! I live in the "New South" and the only thing new about the south is air-conditioning. The worst part of the South is their racial hatred which they have raised to an art is being accepted by other parts of the country under the cloak of "conservative" If the Republican party were smart they would divorce themselves from the Southern Strategy(aka the Racists Strategy).
willbk
I agree, and I'm a sixth-generation Alabamian who notes to irony. Because int he 1930s and 40s, our congressional delegation sponsored much of the New Deal and post-war development legislation: bank regulation, highway construction, public housing, public hospitals and much, much more. Think about it: Reps. Carl Elliott, Albert Rains, Henry Steagall, Bob Jones, among others, and Sens. Lister Hill, John Sparkman, and Hugo Black. Statesmen all.
roger37
Altlic: The region you refer to from the Times is known as The Zone of Irrelevance, also as the Red Gash. It starts in WVa and goes east thru TN, ARK,LA, MO, TX, and OK plus a couple of western states where nobody lives.
In live in LA and I have lived in TN, and I can tell you--these people aren't going to change, and they'll become the base for another attempt at regaining the White House.
I would rejoice in that because they'll lose, but it's my opinion that the low-information voter will go with them when it's convenient and doesn't require much thinking. So we have to keep the pressure on.
I agree with one letter writer who stated that there are indeed Southern progressives who would like to change things, but the problem is that they are so marginalized and outnumbered, they are driven out of the region after a while or condemned to decades of frustration. Southern society and culture works very well against change. It's possible, but just not very likely.
There have been documented cases of fish falling from the sky, but that doesn't mean I'm going outside with a net the next time a shower starts.
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