Random Thought of the Day

Quote: terapined

I live in Tampa, got to go north to get the feeling of being in the deep south

Quote: Wizard

Do churches in the south-eastern states have the same affinity for the The Battle Hymn of the Republic as they do in the rest of the country?

Quote: beachbumbabs

If anything, more. Consider:

It's a hymn about war. The largest demographic of veterans and current service members are from the South, where it is a tradition to serve.

They adopted it as their own during the Civil War, which is still being fought here, even though the words seem to support the Northern more than the Southern POV in that conflict.

Elvis sang it as part of An American Trilogy. Huge late career hit for him. 'Nuff said.

Quote: Wizard

As I understand it, it is about how god was going to unleash his fury on the south, via the Union.

Quote:

This weekend, my colleague Kevin Williamson kicked up quite the hornet’s nest with his magazine piece that strikes directly at the idea that the white working-class (the heart of Trump’s support) is a victim class. Citizens of the world’s most prosperous nation, they face challenges — of course — but no true calamities. Here’s the passage that’s gaining the most attention:

Quote:

It is immoral because it perpetuates a lie: that the white working class that finds itself attracted to Trump has been victimized by outside forces. It hasn’t. The white middle class may like the idea of Trump as a giant pulsing humanoid middle finger held up in the face of the Cathedral, they may sing hymns to Trump the destroyer and whisper darkly about “globalists” and — odious, stupid term — “the Establishment,” but nobody did this to them. They failed themselves.

If you spend time in hardscrabble, white upstate New York, or eastern Kentucky, or my own native West Texas, and you take an honest look at the welfare dependency, the drug and alcohol addiction, the family anarchy — which is to say, the whelping of human children with all the respect and wisdom of a stray dog — you will come to an awful realization. It wasn’t Beijing. It wasn’t even Washington, as bad as Washington can be. It wasn’t immigrants from Mexico, excessive and problematic as our current immigration levels are. It wasn’t any of that.

Nothing happened to them. There wasn’t some awful disaster. There wasn’t a war or a famine or a plague or a foreign occupation. Even the economic changes of the past few decades do very little to explain the dysfunction and negligence — and the incomprehensible malice — of poor white America. So the gypsum business in Garbutt ain’t what it used to be. There is more to life in the 21st century than wallboard and cheap sentimentality about how the Man closed the factories down.

The truth about these dysfunctional, downscale communities is that they deserve to die. Economically, they are negative assets. Morally, they are indefensible. Forget all your cheap theatrical Bruce Springsteen crap. Forget your sanctimony about struggling Rust Belt factory towns and your conspiracy theories about the wily Orientals stealing our jobs. Forget your goddamned gypsum, and, if he has a problem with that, forget Ed Burke, too. The white American underclass is in thrall to a vicious, selfish culture whose main products are misery and used heroin needles. Donald Trump’s speeches make them feel good. So does OxyContin. What they need isn’t analgesics, literal or political. They need real opportunity, which means that they need real change, which means that they need U-Haul.

Quote: Wizard

I was sorry to see the buxom poker player on Survivor not get much camera time and then get voted out fairly early. The eye candy factor of the remaining players is pretty low.

Quote: rxwine

What they need isn't analgesics, literal or political. They need real opportunity, which means that they need real change, which means that they need U-Haul.