GregsOpinion.com

Understanding the South (revised & long)

Pretty interesting read on the subject from a Kos Diarist. I think there's a good deal to quibble with in it, but I'll grant some faint applause for thoroughness and lack of too many false stereotypes. Where I think it falls apart the most is in the use of extrapolation to a degree that only Peggy Noonan would appreciate and a bit too narrow focus on the writer's North Carolina political understanding.

Some of the advice is pretty straightforward - focus on grassroots organizing, for instance. But another point of contention is one I have to occassionally remind myself to avoid - don't assume a single cookie cutter solution will fix everything. Naturally, the calls for banishing liberalized trade agreements such as NAFTA also are met with the usual frown from this corner.

If nothing else, I give the author points for not recommending a write-off of the south. As it is, once contestable states have slipped more predominantly red (KY, WV, GA & LA highest on the list and the biggie - FL - following right behind). The problem with that approach would be that the party increasingly would fail to speak to constituencies that we presently have on our side. Still, there are those who look at the sea of red down south and sense nothing but hypocritically racist Bible-thumpers. I think that stereotype has long since passed from whatever amount of reality it once may have been.

Ed Kilgore has his own view of the south he knows, from his Georgia roots to his central Virginia present. In it, I think he gives a better image of the current state of how "culture" permeates in the south:

Amherst County is a poor, nonindustrial, and in many ways feudal community, where most po' white folks vote Republican. And the big conflicts here are not between rich and poor, or black or white, but between "been heres" and "come heres." There's a local guy we've hired to do some odd jobs that my wife and I are not around to do; he likes us, and is happy for the work, and he and I share a beer now and then and talk about most everything. But he knows we are Democrats, and made a big point of telling us that he and his wife had gotten up with the roosters to go vote for George Bush and cancel our votes. That theirs was a "cultural" vote, in part in friendly but proud opposition to "come heres" like us, is pretty clear.

This is hardly a unusual situation. Back in Georgia twenty years ago, I used to do community development work up in the mountains of North Georgia, and just about everything revolved around conflicts between the locals and the "Florida People," the term for second-stage retirees who had moved there in pursuit of high vistas and low taxes.

And as I often remind those "economic populists" who are horrified at cultural conservatism as representing some sort of repressed class conflict that leads to the "false consciousness" of Republican voting behavior: culture, region, ethnicity, religion, and group reaction to big traumatic events like the Civil War have always had a bigger impact on partisan identification in this country than economic class. It didn't first appear in 2000, and whether or not it increased or decreased in 2004, it's there, and it cannot be wished away.

I'm reasonably sure there's some similarities in Texas as well. More on this throughout the week. I'll forewarn the loyal readership I garner that this will likely be a pretty big focus for the week. Well, that and finding gifts for my neices and nephews. No time like the present, eh?