Yes to both, as well as Millions of Dead Children and Multi Death Corporation.

waltermalling wrote:does mdc stand for "millions of dead christians" or "milllions of dead cops". i've never heard them but work mate wears their shirts and talks about them a lot.

I know this whole thread started with a comment about Emmitt Till, but I think all this agonizing over the shittiness of the south is misguided. Yes, racism in the south is of a different breed than you find in the north. But for my money, the differences between Alabama and, say, Nebraska or South Dakota aren't all that huge. You know what's really bleak and depressing to me? Rural America. Most of my family is from South Dakota, and I spent a lot of time there growing up. There are many "good, honest" people there. A lot of these "good, honest" people are also unrepentant racists, and believe that an unquestioning, militant nationalism is not in any way at odds with their Christian faith.
I still care about these people, at least the ones in my family. At the same time, I wished they lived in another country.
And it's not just the south that is suckles at the federal teat. Most of the states where agriculture is the major aspect of the economy take in more federal money than they pay out. It takes a lot of federal largess so all those red-staters can be so proud and independent.

wiggins wrote:Yeah, but the people in my family are good, honest people. The look like good, honest people, they squawk like good honest people.

OK. I'm not going to get into a debate with you about the personality qualities of the people in your family, who I have never met and have no reason to criticize. I do, however, take issue with your definition of what a good person is, I suppose. In my mind, it's not really accurate to say "He's a good person, but he happens to be really racist. And he doesn't really give a shit about how future generations are impacted by the state of the environment. Or how big of a fiscal deficit we leave our kids....no, he's sorta selfish and only cares about getting tax cuts for himself. Oh, and he doesn't like gays."

Now, I'm not saying that anyone in your family does or does not hold those opinions. Obviously I have no idea. But I have a really hard time with the widespread use of the "They're good people, they're just ultraconservative" logic. To use an analogy that disregards scale, that's a little like talking about what a good guy Hitler was aside from the genocidal stuff.

People who buy into the neoconservative political package are not "good people". Jerry Falwell, James Dobson, and their slobbering dog followers are not good people. Sorry. Yes, that's a judgment call. But it also happens to be right, so I feel comfortable, albeit extremely cocky, in making it.

Genocide's figurehead is incomparable to some dumb ass hick with lame remarks, so I dunno if you can even disregard scale. Just use yr brain and come up with a less yucky analogy.

ginandtacos.com wrote:

wiggins wrote:Yeah, but the people in my family are good, honest people. The look like good, honest people, they squawk like good honest people.

OK. I'm not going to get into a debate with you about the personality qualities of the people in your family, who I have never met and have no reason to criticize. I do, however, take issue with your definition of what a good person is, I suppose. In my mind, it's not really accurate to say "He's a good person, but he happens to be really racist. And he doesn't really give a shit about how future generations are impacted by the state of the environment. Or how big of a fiscal deficit we leave our kids....no, he's sorta selfish and only cares about getting tax cuts for himself. Oh, and he doesn't like gays."

Now, I'm not saying that anyone in your family does or does not hold those opinions. Obviously I have no idea. But I have a really hard time with the widespread use of the "They're good people, they're just ultraconservative" logic. To use an analogy that disregards scale, that's a little like talking about what a good guy Hitler was aside from the genocidal stuff.

People who buy into the neoconservative political package are not "good people". Jerry Falwell, James Dobson, and their slobbering dog followers are not good people. Sorry. Yes, that's a judgment call. But it also happens to be right, so I feel comfortable, albeit extremely cocky, in making it.

To summarize:

Ignorance is not an excuse. Good people who buy in the the neocon package, if now outright stupid or evil, are ingnorant. They choose to be ignorant because it supports a worldview that they have grown up with or is held by their community at large.

Many American folks seek the community of a church not because they need spirituality in their life, they need order and discipline. They need the comfort of knowing that what they accept at face value is the same as what their neighbors accept as absolute and given. It is also appealing to many who see that world in terms of desparate animism (but will never acknowledge it) that better they are the exploiter than the exploited, and will defend the most selfish and hateful beliefs as being essential to their very survival.

It is this desire for order, absolutes, and enforced traditions and ritual that draws the ignorant to both Christianity and Neoconservative politics. It is also the same criteria that drew the Germans to National Socialism and the Italians to Fascism.

It is evil and dangerous. There is no excuse, none!

okaaaay...

The distaste for difference of the South of the 50s and 60s has become slightly more sophisticated in the subsequent years. It has also hooked up with similar bigotries in other parts of the country to create a fairly dispersed intolerance in our country. Once the 'Bull' Connors and lynch boys of the Old South were exposed and villified nationally, and once their legalized systems of overt segregation were made illegal, they fell onto a like plane with those purveyors of defacto Jim Crow in the North, Midwest, and West.

Backass is everywhere.

Tolerance and thoughtful investment in principles of forgiveness, humility, empathy, and the like have waned unfortunately in the wake of the Civil Rights Era. Hopefully the trend will not continue.

ginandtacos.com wrote:

jesse wrote:The boundary lines for your "succession" aren't as neatly defined as you might think.

No, it's "secession". Southern schools have failed you.

You're funny. I wasn't trying to correct anyone's spelling. I don't know why I used quotes.

And I still think that map invalidates the argument that the deep south is responsible for our national election woes.

wiggins wrote:You must understand, being in our position is frustrating. We are outnumbered, as you said in your post. I dont think I should have to be ashamed to admit that I believe in god, but because of these people, I am. I think Unarmed Man said what he said out of frustration, out of being pidgeonholed, or rather, thats what would have been my excuse.

Try as you might, there is no way to simultaneously embrace the term "christianity" without inviting reference to the horrendous evils done in its name. The ridiculous out-on-a-limb posturing done in its name currently. The abject evil rained down on the poor, the meek, the imprisoned and the weak -- precisely the people Jesus surrounded himself with and called his brothers.

The political use of christianity aside, the church has been cover and congress for evil men in the South for the better part of two centuries. The church is a fraternity and a power base that is exploited by its members for social engineering and is even wielded like a weapon.

Christianity as practiced and avowed in the United States is an ugly thing, and no christian should be surprised that it illicits feelings (up to and including incredulity and disgust) in those of us who don't use the term.

Jesus? Great guy. Big heart, the J. Big heart. Almost everything he said was righteous. His flock? They crush people in his name, they look the other way while the poor are systematically disenfranchised and made to suffer for being poor, they would use the government to stop the advancement of science -- or even the teaching of science, they are crazy (absolutely crazy) about punishing people, and they would make their current interpretation of scripture law -- but only the cherry-picked parts that would fit an anti-gay, pro-greed, anti-knowledge, pro-conformity, anti-liberty, women-as-chattel-and-breeding-stock worldview. They are the Taliban in seersucker.

If I am drawn to generalization (and you can see how I might be) I would say fuck the lot of them.

I am not so simple though, and I know there are good people who have read the book and taken it to heart. I like them, generally. Some of them I admire greatly.

But even they, pleading the case for their fellow faithful, would be hard pressed to convince us, the purely rational rest-of-the-world, that christianity shouldn't be viewed with suspicion. It has earned it with bloodshed, self-righteousness, sins of omission and collusion with the truly evil.

So, if it's about a personal relationship with Jesus, then keep it to yourself. That's where I keep personal stuff. That's the only way to put any distance between your personal faith and the way The Faith has been used like awrecking ball out here in the world. If it's about you and a bunch of other christians corralling people, money and power to make-over the rest of the world to your liking, then y'all can kindly go fuck yourselves.

holy shit.

firstly, feel free to heap as much shit as you desire upon me for being some foreign punk sticking my nose in where it ain't welcome. however, being australian does not excuse me from the concept of regional prejudice, nor the problems of racism or segregation.

america's attachment to division is deep-seated and multifarious. the american civil war, essentially a war between rich white (republican) bankers from the north, and rich white (democrat) land owners from the south, left a social chasm that can only be described as a textbook american divide and conquer method. honest abe didn't want to free the slaves until 1863, when he realised it would be a good way to economically cripple the south.

after the war, with hundreds of thousands of defeated confederate soldiers and millions of liberated slaves (both white and black), how was the free and mighty north to control and exploit such a situation so that the resentment of defeat, and subsequent anger did not boil over into a second war? the disenfranchised folks of the south would have to be divided into two sections, white and black, so that anger could be redirected between these two sections. resource, wage and labour controls did their work effectively in this regard.

meanwhile, the north took pride in distancing itself from the backwards backwoods to the south. popular culture stereotypes of southern white crackers, often ill-educated, poorly spoken, lacking in hygiene, sick, smelly and always impecunious became staples of popular entertainment. the picture of a violent and racist south was made more real through reportage of kkk activities, and segregation well into this century. the north always made a point of being so enlightened, and never failed to remind the idiotic southerners of this.

recently many educated northerners seem to bemoan the trend for southern states to vote for the repgunant, neo-conservative republicans whose draconian social welfare policies churn their liberal stomachs. the reasons given are many, but seem to contain to main strings of thought; that religious groups in the south who actively support these policies have large constituencies; and that the low level of education in the south has led to voters being grossly misinformed about key issues. would it not be better to address the issue of improving education in the southern states, rather than ridicule their idiotic superstitions or repeatedly berate them for their lack of social conscience?

how attached is america to the idea that the south is still teeming with klansmen hotheads on a nigger lynching spree? murder based upon race, such as emmett till's, is absolutely deplorable. but how often does this actually occur in the south? how many seemingly irrational and thoroughly disgusting white-on-white crimes happen every year? how many dutch-irish-on-slav-sex-worker murder cases get basically ignored by the media every year? it seems like focussing on white-on-black crime would be missing an enormous part of the picture. and it seems like insinuating an ongoing race problem in the south, branding everyone south of the mason-dixon a 'redneck racist' is potentially making the situation less manageable, and certainly more obfuscated.

it's not the ownership of personal opinion i have a problem with, it's flag-wavers i have problems with, and boy do yanks sure love a good ole-timey flag-waving. they've all got their own banner, or canon, or icon, or insignia, or ritual, or birdcall, or what the fuck ever, and they wave it so high and so proud. you'd think that all this obnoxious flag-waving might turn into a bit of sabre-rattling at some point. then, perhaps, some total carnage. especially if someone suggests they should be waving someone else's strange and unholy flag.

i'll go and have a bex and a lie down, now.