A northerner's view of the south.

[LWolf]

44. I live in the Pacific Northwest,

and we have plenty of teabaggers here.

I'm a middle school teacher. 8th grade studies the Civil War. I have students, every year, who get all excited, want to display Confederate flags and talk about how great the south is, even though they've never been there, and listen to a bunch of Lynyrd Skynyrd. They are clueless, but are sure that the south is a stronghold of...something. These are the children of rural teabaggers.

Ignorance is not limited to one area, and neither is wisdom. We've all got them both. A local friend IS a transplant from the south, having married a local; she shares a lot about growing up in the south. She's not ignorant, not bigoted, and, while she's still a Republican, she considers herself a "Rino," and is quite active in opposing the RW. Her kids, now in college, are Democrats.

My mom, whose been a staunch Democrat for most of my life, anyway, can still be heard spouting some of the conservative ideology she was raised on; the "taking advantage of the system" crap about people on welfare, etc.. She was raised by poor working people to whom "charity" was, and still is for her, anathema, even though she's volunteered for organizations that help people all of her life. One sign for me that the poor-people-are-leeches propaganda has been increasing is that I'm hearing more on the subject from her. I patiently and gently offer up examples of people in need; I don't have to look far, being a public school teacher. That quiets her down.

Nobody, and nowhere, is pure.