November 11, 2004
Fuck the South?
By Byron LaMasters
Obviously meant as a parody, but take out the "fucks", "dickheads", "dickwads", "assholes", and this guy makes some good points.
Posted by Byron LaMasters at November 11, 2004 12:19 AM
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Can I squeeze a word in here?
All this talk about the "liberal elite" is about two things. First, the fallout of the civil rights era. And secondly, class warfare.
The first is pretty obvious, so let's skip on down to the second. Class warfare. One of the oldest traditions in Southern politics has been blaming every injustice on the northeast, instead of the local elite who might actually be able to do something about it.
Democrats have painted ourselves into a trap by being the smart person's party. Why? Because it's been smart people that have hassled people all their lives: The bankers? Smart people. The lawyers? Smart people. The bureaucrats? The media? Not all of them smart people, but close. Smart people run the government and the government gets more obnoxious every year. Smart people got us into Vietnam.
Iraq was not brought to us by smart people, but by dumb people, and that is why it is a just war.
Every time we come across like we actually know stuff, there is going to be resentment because of it. Asking people to think is a kind of oppression, you see.
Yes and no. There have been some great posts on why the South is so full of itself as the "real America' and why they hate the North so much. Digby was able to take it all the way back to the founding of the country and I have my own thoughts about much of the positions of the GOP, which dominates Southern politics and culture.
I also have my own electoral strategy, which I have dubbed "fuck the south" because it totally ignores going after Republicans in the red south, and working to GOTV in Hispanic communities in the new southwest.
This F* the South thing may be a 'joke' with grains of truth, but way too many people aren't taking it that way. And it's feeding into their frustration & anger, and fueling their PERCEIVED superiority to Southerners. In short, I believe it's doing more harm than good. I realize it's a reaction to a lot of bragging and chest-swelling on the other side, but you all would be better off to ignore them.
This is no way to heal and it's going to mess things up WITHIN the party. After all, one of the major things Repubs have over the Dems is that they STICK TOGETHER in spite of their differences.
Do you REALLY want to lose the support of the Southerners who are on your side? You're starting to remind me that the original slide to Republican down here started when all the Yankees started moving South, and I don't think you want to start that train of thought. It will get us nowhere.
Please, please,please read Lakoff's MORAL POLITICS. This is much more to the point about why the red states voted the way they did. It has way more to do with the way people conceptualize their families than anything to do with the Civil War.
WE have to define OUR moral core, our values statement, as it were. We don't have one and they do, and this is one of the things that is working against us. Once the cons figured out their target audience, they created and honed their message until it was like pressing a button. So the people responded exactly the way they (the cons) wanted. And the Dems had no idea what hit them.
I strongly urge you to read MORAL POLITICS or go to http://www.rockridgeinstitute.org/ and check that out. Start with Family Values/The Nation As Family. We must learn so we can start acting. They're 40 years ahead of us.
