tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13593902.post3960103772072989950..comments2024-02-11T09:55:50.468-08:00Comments on The Eastside View: The Southernization of AmericaCharles Sherehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10480432901356490235noreply@blogger.comBlogger4125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13593902.post-53722096135315269192014-08-28T04:42:39.794-07:002014-08-28T04:42:39.794-07:00Charles - May I suggest that what you call the Sou...Charles - May I suggest that what you call the Southernization of America could also be called the Fragmenting of America. What typified the mind of the South was a sense of being an embattled minority, and this is a frame of mind which the internet, in its splitting up of humanity, from whole populations down to individual families, is doing to the world in a way that's analogous to fundamentalist religious sects. As internet news groups tear themselves apart in internecine warfare, the fragmentation becomes ever more progressive. All of us now -- even Wall Street bankers! -- have the mind set and speak the language of the oppressed. <br /><br />What was supposed to be a global village has become a global battlefield. We celebrated electronic media's contribution to bringing down Middle Eastern dictators, only to see the vacuum filled by murderous hysteria. A terrible thought: have the new media merely given humanity the opportunity to express and to act upon our true nature?John Whitinghttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16170335248108710190noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13593902.post-89910603471515386482013-06-21T06:14:05.512-07:002013-06-21T06:14:05.512-07:00Also Charles if you will indulge one more comment ...Also Charles if you will indulge one more comment - You claim that we are so violent but based on census information from 2006 - http://www.census.gov/statab/ranks/rank21.html<br /><br />It looks like the South is just as Violent as the Eastern and Midwest. <br /><br />Quick 10 ten with rates and rank<br />(With region next to rank<br /><br />South Carolina 766 1 S*<br />Tennessee 760 2 S*<br />Nevada 742 3 W<br />Florida 712 4 S+N <br />Louisiana 698 5 S*<br />Alaska 688 6 W<br />Delaware 682 7 E<br />Maryland 679 8 E<br />New York 435 9 E<br />Michigan 562 10 MW<br />JonSchwartzhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10360304078030113163noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13593902.post-71445310051354929312013-06-21T06:02:44.142-07:002013-06-21T06:02:44.142-07:00Curtis Faville,
How long if at all did you live i...Curtis Faville,<br /><br />How long if at all did you live in the South and did you do so with having an open mind and open heart. I am going to make a silly assumption and based on your family living in Japan due to military employment or some type of diplomatic jobs. So if you or your relatives where in the military do you not understand the sacrifices southerns have made time and again to our armed forces.<br /><br />Point two about the South, again have you even live there sir? If not I would suggest holding back such inaccurate and vile commentary on a place you have never been. I am not cultural expert merely a historian and political scientist but I have moved around this county. <br /><br />I have lived in several states Arizona, Northern and Southern California, South Florida, North East Ohio, North Mississippi, Memphis, TN and Eastern Washington State, beyond living abroad in Argentine.<br /><br />So do you know what I saw in all these places, a struggle between progressive ideas of a younger generation against the older generation trying to keep their traditions alive. The "septuagenarian[s]" mentioned in the above blog post still run many small towns not just in the South but in New England and the Midwest, the individual citizens are aware of this but trapped by corporate consumerism and bank financed debt. <br />Secondly, I know several professors in both Mississippi, Tennessee and Texas versus Professors in Ohio and Pennsylvania and I have to say education levels of students entering community colleges and 4-year institutes in the South surpass their northern counterparts. So maybe Southerns did not ascribe to your political beliefs, but is that not their American right to choose their beliefs and speak their mind. Even the most evil people like West Boro Baptist church has the right to speak. We do not need to validate them through media coverage and counter protests. People need to understand that hate begets hate. So sir I ask you this? <br /><br />Why not come to the South. It is the major of the US, the fastest growing part of the economy, a higher level of book stores and music venues than the midwest above it and even now it is still true that more Pulitzer Prize winners for literature came from Mississippi than any other state.<br /><br />Sincerely,<br /><br />A Southern in Ohio, JDSJonSchwartzhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10360304078030113163noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13593902.post-29857842288200036252013-01-17T10:05:29.220-08:002013-01-17T10:05:29.220-08:00Charles: I'm familiar with the strange patrio...Charles: I'm familiar with the strange patriotic fervor that occasionally grips one when abroad. I often had that feeling during the year we lived in Japan. I think Gore Vidal maintained a paternal scorn and hope for his country in the years he lived on the Amalfi Coast of Italy. It gave him perspective, mixed with nostalgic longing. <br /><br />Anti-bellum South was a sharply stratified social hierarchy. We forget that "poor whites" were the largest single class, both before, and since the Civil War. And by "since" I mean right up to the present day. The South is poor, and its poorest citizens have traditionally been culturally isolated, and poorly educated. There's a creeping anxiety among southerners that masquerades as fake confidence. They feel challenged by the "elites" the radical right keeps harping about, and they're filled with resentment.<br /><br />An "elite" is anyone or -thing that purports to know more than they do--politically, aesthetically, culturally, etc. <br /><br />About 40 years ago--give or take a decade--the Republican Party set about breaking up the Democratic Party's hold on the South. The strategy was to demonize sophistication and intellectualism and free-thinking. I'm not talking about the rich olde classic Southern aristocracy, but the majority of ordinary poor whites. They've used all the push-button issues--abortion, gun-rights, racial hatred and suspicion, anti-unionism, suspicion of Federalism, States Rights--and it's worked. It worked not only in the South, but in the American Southwest, in the Plains States, and in the Prairie States as well. It's the new redneck, tinhorn constituency, resentful and stupid, gullible and gauche. <br /><br />These people vote AGAINST their own interests, supporting big extractive capital exploitation, and fighting "socialism" and enlightened self-interest. They've been duped. They're pawns in a grand bargain between capital and the great unwashed. They're capitalism's unconscious running-dogs. <br /><br />But try to mention any of this in a coffee shop in Helena, Montana, or Fort Worth, Texas or Chapel Hill, North Carolina, and you're likely to get your head blown off like the boys in Easy Rider. I'm not kidding, either.<br /><br />We are still a divided nation, and the Republicans are cultivating that schism with whole-hearted determination.Curtis Favillehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06213075853354387634noreply@blogger.com