OBAMA! FUCK YEAH!

[thesummerqueen]

Brian, I get what you're saying - I really do. I like taking people on an individual level for that reason. But having lived in North Carolina for long enough now to have seen what people are like in the populated and unpopulated parts of the South, I can tell you that Min also has a point. Even if there are some "good" rednecks, the vast majority still are some level of bigot. And if they're not "redneck" per se, they're still bigots. And they want to stay that way. They are purposefully, willfully ignorant. The men you speak of, they are few and far between. And maybe it is getting better - it certainly has gotten loads better in the major cities as college educated people move in for tech jobs and such and displace the natives with their liberal ideas - but the little towns in between those cities and the country areas, they are still filled with god-fearing gun-totin' assholes. I'm quite certain this isn't just a Southern thing, mind - these kinds of people exist in rural areas in pretty much every state, and some more than others, but the South has its own special fiery brand of it. There may be some "good'uns" down here, but if I leave Charlotte and step out of my car in Wilkes County, I'm going to first assume the person talking to me is a bigot, because that's what that area is mostly made up of. They don't want to learn, they encourage their children not to learn, and the only ones that make it through are the ones with the initiative, bless them, to use what resources are available to them to get the fuck out as soon as possible.

Education is what they all need, and unfortunately people in major population centers are the ones that make that decision. It's not about how many people are there, but the quality of the majority of them, as well as the quality of their loudest voices. The uproar of the Texas School Board textbook decisions should have clued you in there.