OBAMA! FUCK YEAH!

[Whateverist]

Aren't republicans basically the confederacy with an alternate name?

Not originally anyway, but the confederacy did hijack the GOP.

That seems to happen to the GOP a lot with the tea party being the latest.

[thesummerqueen]

I wanted to discuss this with the BF last night but never got around to it - it seems to me when you start a movement you should pick a small number - SMALL - of things you want to work on. If it's economic, let it be economic. If it's social, let it be social. Don't try to do both. Because guaranteed some fucknuts will infiltrate you and try to twist your shit up, and the less you started with originally the easier it will be to get back on track.

Go back to your economic policies, GOP, and fuck those people who want to be socially conservative.

[Anomalocaris]

If Romney was running for President of the Confederacy, he wins.

Aren't republicans basically the confederacy with an alternate name?

Not really. It's more like a few northern billionaires who either inherited their money or made their money in dubious service industries like casinos throwing a bunch of dog biscuits to uneducated, bitter, resentful ex-confederate thugs so they can get enough votes for their ultimate goal, which is to maximize their ability to commit any abuse they want with their money while returning absolutely nothing to the society.

Sometimes the boss has to pay lip service to hired goons, but that's life.

[Minimalist]

The problem there is that it is a marriage of convenience between the wealthy business interests who have traditionally run the GOP and the religious right which provides the foot soldiers and the votes.

When republicans gather to discuss the issues it is a bunch of old jesus-loving white bastards who think fucking god talks to them. What are the odds that they are suddenly going to embrace a bunch of catholic hispanics?

[Whateverist]

Well if the republicans want to paint themselves into a corner relevancy-wise, I won't complain. Perhaps what we need isn't a third party so much as a second sane one.

[Brian37]

So be careful with the word "redneck" because I can personally tell you they do not fit that stereotype.

Look at the map. Is every person who lives in Alabama a redneck asshole? No. But they are still the majority in those states.

If Romney was running for President of the Confederacy, he wins.

Look, I really am not a sensor Nazi and hardly pollically correct. What is really going on is that you take hurting people who mostly do not have higher education and live mostly within a confined bubble with no exposure to the outside world and that combo with the feeling of hoplessness transends labels.

Yes Romney would win a Presidency if the South did seperate. But again, just like we should not scrap brave progressives like 14 year old Malala who is a Muslim in Pakistan wanting better for girls and women. My "redneck" friend is a stereotyp broken in the fact that he is a liberal and an atheist.

Time really is on the side of progressives regardless of what state they may live in. Texas voted 40% for Obama and in 2016 it will get more purple and may even turn blue by 2020.

I drove through Allabama taking my mother to a weding a few years back. It is as much a geographical issue because it is an island so it is much more easy for the poor and middle class to get sucked into theocratic thinking.

The good thing is that media is making it harder for bubbles to exist. And I can tell you I am damned glad to know there are "rednecks" like Woody Guthrie who supporte liberal ideas like workers rights. I am damned glad that Billy Ray Sirus endorced Obama.

The way to break that grip is to grow a bigger tent. We did it with women, gays and blacks and we can do it with "rednecks" too.

Even that guy who wrote "Mammas don't let your babies grow up to be cowboys", Willie Nelson. But he even wrote and produced a song about equality for gays. Google Willie Nelson's "Gay cowboy song".

It is ok to be mad about the right wing monopoly about the south, but they are victims too, and my friend Hillbilly Atheist is an example of escaping that dogmatic mind trap. Lets grow to include, not exclude.

In fact, the next time I talk to him I am going to tell him I stuck up for him and I damned sure know he will cry just like he did when I wrote the poem about Woodie Guthrie "Dusty Banjo".

My point is to treat individuals as such and that will and can be the attraction to break the "rednecks" away from the vultures who have sold them a bill of goods.

They can be educated like HB IS they can love sports like baseball and NFL like we do. They can be liberals and progressives like we are.

I even told HB and I damned well mean it. If he ever starts a bluegrass band that has atheist themes, I damned well will support it, and would go backstage and support it, maybe with earplugs on but, he is that crack in his world that their bubble needs.

While we cannot ignor or should not ignore bigotry, at the same time when we see compassion in others like my friend and like Billy Ray Sirus and Willie Nelson, we cant let where they came from be a litmus test.

We still utimately are the same species and we can find frienship and common ground outside our own labels. I am proud to have Hillbilly Atheist as my friend. I am proud of Willie Nelson not hiding out of fear of the culture he made money off of. I am proud of Woodie Guthrie even though I wasn't born then.

They understood human suffering and the struggle for equality and fair treatment. Their labels do not matter to me and have no doubt that while bigotry dominated Martin Luther King's time, the black movement in the south could not have happened without the help of whites and I am sure plenty of unknown whites although the minority existed in the south that helped them.

Having been bullied myself as a kid living under two authoritarian parents, even then, at a young age, I never understood bigotry. So I refuse to employ it with "rednecks". You are first a human being to me. If you are an asshole then you are an asshole, but that is a persooal thing not a label thing.

Poverty, lack of diversity and no major populations create that island the south suffers from. Instead of condeming all rednecks even if a majority are bigots, lets use those from within who are not to help us help them free them from their mind shackels.

[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.

[Brian37]

The problem there is that it is a marriage of convenience between the wealthy business interests who have traditionally run the GOP and the religious right which provides the foot soldiers and the votes.

When republicans gather to discuss the issues it is a bunch of old jesus-loving white bastards who think fucking god talks to them. What are the odds that they are suddenly going to embrace a bunch of catholic hispanics?

Sure, they are for equality if it gets rid of the minum wage and creates the sweat shop climate China has, how else is Karl Rove and Rush Limbaugh going to earn a living?

For that to work in any real way they would have to understand why hispanics left worse conditions, but worse conditions are what Republicans want because that pleases their cooporate sponsers and they will con anyone to get that.

But it did work when they spent the last 30 years driving a wedge between the working class republicans and democrats with the issue of God. So yea, they'' try to expand that tent because it is the only thing vulture capitalists like Mitt Romeny can do.

[Whateverist]

I think Brian is over-reacting just a tad. Min lives in Arizona, Summerqueen is in North Carolina and Tarajoe is in Texas. If they can't bash the morons they are surrounded by, who can? No one is suggesting, by characterizing the south as the confederacy, that every man woman and child in it is an ignorant racist. I doubt if either Tara or Summer thinks the other is a redneck asshole. I'm sure the same applies to your friend.

Neither are we who live where progressives are dominant special by association. Just the opposite really. I mean, finding and keeping your center where all around you people talk shit about matters they know nothing about .. that is more praiseworthy than someone who is progressive almost by default.

Brian if you really don't want to be seen as a censor nazi, maybe you should just question people on their meaning when you have a strong reaction rather than condemning the manner in which they express themselves. That will be 2 cents please.

[Brian37]

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,

Would you care to guess where I have been living since 05? North Carolina, and prior to that Lynchburg Va, so I DO KNOW what people can be like and what the majority climate is down here.

But where I live we also have tons of elderly retireees from up north. My mom plays cards with one woman from up north who licks the cunt of Ann Coulter and she is originally from up north. And most of the WHITE people that live in her retirement community ARE bigots from up north. Not all of them, but most of them.

If we are to defeat bigotry it has to be about the climate of the location and not lump every person who happens to live in it for what the majority in it thinks.

I am the only atheist I where I work, but I do not rail against my co-workers foaming at the mouth even if I find ALL god claims absurd. I live by example and when they see that, it dispells those myths they have of atheists.

Even in Lynchburg I worked at a fast food joint and the black manager female was deeply religious, when she found out I was an atheist, initially she tried everything she could to make my life so misserable to get me to quit. But one day she accedently locked the day's proceeds in the office and could not get in, and knew that the store manager who was a bully to everyone including her would have fired her. I told her "Don't call him, if I am correct about the cealing tile I should be able to climb over the wall and unlock the office". Sure enough, that is what I did, and believe me her attitude changes that minute.

You dont beat hate with hate. You can hate behavior and you can and should ridicule hatemongers. But you stil have to pick your battles and know who can be an allie and who you should fight. She ended up quitting for the same reason I did, because we both hated being bullied. I saw her weeks after that before she quit and she had a smile on her face when we talked about me getting fired when I called him a bully.

I love my co-workers even if I hate what they believe. I love my mother who is Catholic who unfortunately voted for Romney. But we cant throw everyone who is a victim of a climate out if we can potentially make them allies.

The saving grace about Lynchburg that I enjoyed was that Liberty was not the only college in town 2 other liberal colleges are a constant thorn in the Falwell family's side. Richard Dawkins did a speech at Randolf Macon Women's college which is in the sticks just outside the city. The college I graduated from also hates the Falwell Family and I have even met students whom I worked with from his college who hated lots of his embarassing crap.

One of those students was a guy named Brandon, a 22 year old who was my boss for a time. He saw how hard I worked and one day the Franchise owner's son came in and bullied me so bad I asked my boss if I could go home. I found out the next day that Branded had stood up to him and told him he may own the franchise but he does not run the store and that I was Brandon's employee not his. I was so proud of him, not because he was Christian, but because of his human compassion that dispite that I was an atheist he still saw my ethics and goodness.

So while you do see my fangs from time to time here, I never lose my compassion. A fight is one thing, but our human condition as a species has never been differnt.

It is ok to hate bigotry. It is a moral mandate to fight it. But it is not ok to assume that a label will automatically mean that by proxy of label someone is bad. We don't like it when beleivers do it to us and I refuse to do it to others. So when I pull my fangs out, it is at claims. It is at bullies. It is at individuals, because that is all we really are in reality.