Reply #29: I'm a southerner. Been one all my life. [View All]

[tedoll78]

Born in Louisiana, schooled at Ole Miss, working in Austin, and moving to New Orleans some day. I've seen the retardation up-close.

My first college roommate was a hillbilly from Mississippi's delta. When asked why he was voting for Dole over Clinton in '96, he told me, "because all the n*ggas n' fags are votin' for Clinton." And what's really sad is that he felt completely free to say this in front of a crowd of his hillbilly friends. Instead of derision, I saw a few nods of approval or just silence.

I saw this attitude repeated a good number of times in my 4.5 years spent in Mississippi. My inlaws are from Alabama; I've seen it there as well. I see it in my own cajun relatives in Louisiana. Whomever the African American community supports, the rednecks want to lose. It's a disgusting and more-widespread-than-I'd-thought attitude, and the people who hold this mindset get no respect from me. My root dislike is for these 55% of southerners who insist of demonstrating policy insanity and hatred to the rest of the world.

I look at the higher poverty rates, the higher divorce rates, the consistently crappiest school systems in the nation, the lower IQs, the trend towards more teenage pregnancies, the desire to eliminate evolution from science classes.. and then I see that they still vote the way they do, expecting things to get better magically. It's the definition of "insanity" right out in the open for the whole world to see.

There are tons of Red State Blue Voters out there. I'll probably be one for my lifetime, barring some seismic demographic shift or political realignment. They are my brothers and sisters in intelligent thought. They are archipelagos of hope in a sea of idiocy. And they are super-strong for what they fight for every day.