Printed opprobrium grew over the Bush years, at least those quasi-literate, misspelled, cliche-ridden letters to the editor written in impotent rage at Mexican farm workers, people on food stamps, Liberals, immigrants, ethnic minorities, liberals, Muslims, atheists, Jews, Democrats -- did I mention Liberals? Yes, sure, I and a few others sometimes wrote ( brilliantly, I must admit) alternate opinons, much to the further wrath of the toothless unwashed, but it's a small town as I said, and word gets around and I really don't want to carry a gun in my bathing suit or they may think I'm happy to see them. Discretion, valor and all that.
Of course it's hardly new. I remember, back in the mid 60's, living in long hair and sandals in the tiny, rural, University town of Hamilton New York. I remember when the school had an open symposium on Communism, and the good, go-to-church and keep-Christ-in-Christmas locals flooded the opinion page with demands to bomb the bastards back to the stone age - now. Small town newspapers. I wish I could believe that they didn't represent America, that they weren't just some boil on the ass of an otherwise great nation.
Take the Lincoln Journal, of Lincoln County, West Virginia. Seems public sentiment supported the termination of a teacher for fear she would "turn her students gay." Faced with a reader's voice mail (I used reader loosely here) asserting that
“We were really glad to hear that School Board is getting rid of them queers, The next thing is we need to get rid of all the niggers, the spics, the kikes and the wops.”
they decided to print it. I don't fault them. Such people should be heard so we know what we're dealing with -- and where they are. Now my local paper would probably not have, and it doesn't have a voice-mail line for illiterates. Most of us here after all, come from elsewhere where literacy of a certain minimal level is fairly common, but those sentiments aren't exactly rare with the locals either.
“You know even them Catholics, they are wrong as baby eaters. We need to clear them people out and have good, white, God fearing Christians and everybody else needs to be put to death for their abominations. We’ll keep Lincoln County white and right. Thank you. "
You're welcome. White and Right indeed. I hope you do just that and perhaps building a wall will help the local economy for a while. In fact I hope everyone like you moves to Lincoln County. It would be nice to have all y'all in one place and I hope there's room. I'd hate to have to use up more than one of our precious nukes, but as for the stone age -- are you sure you're ready for that big an upgrade?
Capt. Fogg,
ReplyDeleteInteresting piece, indeed.
Seems to this lizard that if there's one thing we can count on, it's that humans find it difficult, if not impossible, to accept even the most obvious facts for more than a generation or so. Then they feel free to go back to some more comfortable way of perceiving and processing things. (This isn't necessarily to say mythic consciousness is inherently bad, only that it's dangerous when people abide in it naively, which, alas, they tend to do.)
If we just consider the publication of Darwin's Origin of Species in 1859 and then the arguments in subsequent years that settled any remaining rational controversy at least about the basic correctness of Darwin's hypothesis, and then reflect that last year, nearly an entire stage-full of Republican presidential hopefuls (some of them well-educated people) clearly felt compelled to insist that they didn't believe evolution was true, the accuracy of the above observation becomes apparent.
Ideas are very often, just as Nietzsche wrote, nothing but a thin cover for primal emotions and needs; whatever, as he himself asked, does truth have to do with any of it?
All of the above notwithstanding, there are times when it seems like relatively permanent improvement is possible: the "marriage equality" issue is a good example. The unthinking, widespread opposition to this basic requirement of a free society has gone into free-fall in an astonishingly brief period. I don't know if it's really all due to deep, high-minded reflection on the public's part. Maybe it's that sometimes group psychology isn't such a bad thing -- it's no longer considered cool, or even acceptable, to be viciously bigoted against LGBT people. That's of course due to things like the work of some of those very people, and the good example of some others -- Biden and Obama among them. At some point, the "this is just stupid" perspective attained critical mass, and since then it's been obvious that there's no going back. That, at least, is an uplifting example in favor of positive change.
the younger one is the less cool it is to be a bigot, although perhaps less so in the rural south, alas. Nice article in the New Yorker today about the inevitability of marriage equality, btw, the only excuses for opposing it being tradition and bigotry, neither of which have much legal basis.
DeleteIt is indeed surprising how quickly it's happening and perhaps accelerating as the mystery and secrecy fades and people come to know more gay people personally and more importantly on TV (the real world) as just normal folk. Much bigotry and prejudice doesn't withstand Glasnost.
Being older than the hills, I clearly remember a very much different world and a far less free one, despite what the Righties say. Yes, I miss the cars and Rock & Roll and all, but not the Segregation and the lynching and the poisonous morality.
Who knows? I may live to see Rupaul beat Ron Paul in 2020.
I find little town news both informative and gratifying: Grassroots opinion with grubs and fire ants for brains.
ReplyDeleteGrass roots,
Deleteleather boots
Look away, Dixie land.
Holy mackerel, Son of Cthulhu, and the Almighty Cod! A major crime spree: Bandits make off with bubblegum machine.
DeleteKatie bar the door!
ReplyDelete