General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: "American by birth southern by the grace of God" [View all]JDPriestly
(57,936 posts)It's been a long time since I lived or visited there, but when I see the southern Tea-Baggers, it all comes back as it did when I read The Help. The memories of the backwardness, of the rigid social order. It's all there.
It isn't a matter of individuals. It is a matter of a culture that suffocates its local critics. They all have to leave or lose their friends. Jimmy Carter, I believe, left the Baptist Church, of which he was a loyal leader for many years. I have another southern friend who was a Baptist pastor and left that church. Yet the Baptist Church is the gold standard for Southern morality and religiosity.
It's very sad, but it is the culture. And the people who have to live in that culture but have good hearts have difficulty overcoming the evil of what is around them. It isn't about the individuals. It is about the culture that sculpts the niches into which the people have to fit the ideas they express. There are just certain thoughts that are unacceptable in the South except in private.
And yet the people are oh so sweet. It is a poisonous sweetness. It is not honest. And it isn't the way the people are inside. It is the culture that permits no straightforward expression and forces most people, nearly everyone into conformity.
Physical lynchings are a thing of the past, but I'm not so sure about spiritual and psychological ones.