I am starting this thread in the pit because it is just me shouting at a wall maybe:
I am scared as a pennsylvania voter. Scared of what i see outside my own door everyday. My caddy corner neighbor has a freshly painted LAWN JOCKEY in his front fucking yard! I’m not a time taveler from 1969 Alabama. I live 15 minutes away from Pittsburgh in the year 2024!!!
If you’re not from around here, you may see Pennsylvania’s shift from a Solid Blue state to Deep Purple as a blip on the chart.
I can explain:
These motherfuckers have always been racist, bigoted, ig’nant motherfuckers. They only voted blue because of the steel mills. Without the union jobs here, ironically, these people won’t vote blue.
I just don’t have any platform to articulate this, and im frustrated as hell
What the hell?
Has the South moved up there?
I haven’t seen those down here, I guess never. I just know about them.
I didn’t know you could buy something like that.
That is concerning for your area. Stay in the house on election day.
Good luck.
Keep in mind idiot jerks are everywhere usually they bark real loud but they usually are running scared.
I don’t know, could you report it to a community group, HOA, city government? Shame them on a neighborhood message board, (anonymously, please)?
You don’t see lawn jockeys?
We have a very big, very popular flea market in our area, located in Rogers Ohio.
There is a piece of shit there, who ONLY sells freshly painted lawn jockeys. O viously a social statement. He does brisk business. These are our “friends and neighbors” that im supposed to find “common ground” with.
I understand im raising no debate, nor offering a solution, but damn! We need to do better.
If i wear a sandwich board pleading for my neighbors to vote, I’m not sure it’d have a positive impact.
Just frustrating to see things in person that other people see as statistics, and not having power to do anything about it
I used to know a guy from Philadelphia. If I remember right, he used to say something about how the state had two normal cities, one on each side like bookends, trapping Angry Dumb Mississippi in the middle between them. His version was pithier and punchier but that was the gist.
I will not stay in my my house on election day.
Visit Hastings Racecourse in Vancouver sometime. A series of lawn jockeys in the infield, each representing a stakes race at Hastings, and painted in the owner’s silks of the last horse to win that stakes race.
Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, with Alabama in between. Pennsyltucky. Yep, fairly accurate.
I last saw these in the 60s… in Uber-Wealthy Italian neighborhoods in front of big houses that looked so much like Tony Sopranos house that you couldn’t tell the difference.
I had older sisters. One of their friends would throw a ‘pool party’ at one of these houses and my Mom would drop them off and then later pick them up after the party was over. Sitting in the back of the stationwagon, I would occasionally see a cadillac that would ‘follow us out’ of the neighborhood… and then turn around when we got to a main road.
Thinking back, I realize now that anyone who would have been upset at a lawn jockey wouldn’t have been welcome for very long in that neighborhood.
Mom, God Bless her, never even noticed the cadillacs.
Or never told you she noticed them.
I don’t know your Mom, but as a general rule Moms are often more perceptive than we kids gave them credit for at the time. Kids really don’t understand just how much they don’t yet know about the world.
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If I remember right, he used to say something about how the state had two normal cities, one on each side like bookends, trapping Angry Dumb Mississippi in the middle between them.
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I’d love to hear his pithier version, but we’re often called “Pennsyltucky.” (I live in the Tucky part.) I’ve often said that folks in this county would vote for Charles Manson over Jesus Christ if Manson had an R beside his name.
An old friend (a staunch Democrat) used to say that you could plunk our county down anywhere in Alabama or Mississippi and we would be considered the rednecks. He has since turned Republican and I have no idea what he thinks about that nowadays.
He probably thinks the same thing but is now proud of it rather than ruefully ashamed of it.
He might just be trying to get along/ fit in with his neighbors?
( This is just a guess; other people’s guesses may be better than mine. )
I mean, he bought there so he must enjoy the lifestyle there. I know that it is more open there in some parts… and it can be a comfort to have neighbors who are with you instead of against you. In “the sticks” you can’t just call a cop when things go wrong. If you lose power or you have a problem with a well or < insert issue here > it’s a comfort to have neighbors who can be a support system if need be ( you have to be there for them too ).
That and you want to feel welcome at the nearby man-cave on game night… having beers with “the boys” with a firepit burning… grilling food… maybe some fish someone caught… maybe some meat someone hunted, etc. I wouldn’t be surprised if he roots for the PA teams now too.
Also, kids are kids and you never want to stick out like a sore thumb when they’re out looking to pull pranks, do damage, or cause trouble when they’re bored.
( Again, this is just a guess; other people’s guesses may be better than mine. )
When I was growing up (in the south) I always understood the situation to be south=slavery=racist=bad, and north=not that. With age and experience I now see the flaws in that thinking. Of course there are truths in it, the south culturally and regionally is in many parts irredeemably racist. But now if you look at places like Pennsylvania and Ohio, clearly there are other parts to the story.
- Racism is a disease, white rural areas are fertile breeding ground, Appalachia is a ripe transmission vector. Pennsylvania and Ohio are partially Appalachian states.
- At the end of the day people are people and have to live together, so the south has been grappling openly with race for hundreds of years. Usually to ill effect, but it’s also provided avenues to approach the realities of it. Though the southern anti-racist immune system is weak and rudimentary, at least it exists. Northern regions and people have nothing in this regard.
- Southern racism is rooted in white supremacy, an ideology and system whose moral failings are manifest, and whose decline is obvious and inevitable. It’s a holdover from a backward barbaric time. Northern racism is more centered on simple bigotry and prejudice which are individually held and more pernicious. The systemic nature is less obvious so it’s easier to overlook and harder to confront.
- Attribution of all racism to the south gives northerners a margin of comfort for their own racism. “At least we’re not Mississippi” as one popular formulation goes. It’s someone else’s problem in someone else’s system, flawed uneducated hicks. Go lecture them first, that’s where the problem is.
- Extractive capitalism has always been the buttress of labor extraction which is the root of racism in the western hemisphere. The nexus of this is no longer Virginia tobacco or South Carolina cotton or Georgia peanuts. Now it’s Texas and South Carolina petroleum. This axis of extractive capitalism is the new disease transmission vector.
- Related to the above points it’s easy for some to suggest that the spread of racism outside the south was due to the attitudes brought by the southern exodus. But if you look a little more closely at where southern migrants went and the work they found, this tracks exactly with extractive capitalism where the labor-extractive racist attitudes already existed. it’s possible there was some synergy with anti-black racism, but a lot of these attitudes were simply the byproduct of the fact the windfall of “free” land requires a windfall of “free” labor which means finding every possible way to decide that certain people deserve to have their labor stolen. The concept of a white race is a very effective social technology to that end, because it implicitly says that everyone else’s lives and labor are up for grabs.
So yeah. It’s not just the south, and the problem is just going to keep getting worse as long as people believe the rest of the country doesn’t have any significant racial problems that need examining.
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I think that if anything the use of migrant labor in agriculture is a bigger source of/excuse for racism. → Points at Trumps ranting about Mexicans and immigrants
It’s a classic example of demonizing a minority so they can be exploited without guilt.
I mean sure, it’s still a huge factor and maybe I minimized it too much. The point is that bigotry follows the capitalist-extractive mindset, which is now causing it to metastasize beyond the south and beyond agriculture.
Though there’s not a lot of agriculture in South Dakota, people who make their money off extracting public resources have an obvious alignment with those who do it in agriculture, which does require labor exploitation. This how I’m trying to explain why it shouldn’t be suprising that non-southern states are often as bright-red and reactionary as Mississippi and Louisiana.
My wife’s family is from Pittsburgh. They are a bit more spread out now. TX, NC but many in PA. They are mostly Trump supporters. But some, have admitted to having second thoughts. I hope they will change their minds/votes.
I can’t change their minds. But honestly like them otherwise.
Maybe they are somewhat ashamed of ever supporting Trump. It maybe a “In for a penny, in for a pound” feeling. I donno. We just don’t talk about it with them.
Pointless really.
My wife (left leaning moderate that despises trump) is embarrassed about her Trump supporting family.
Speaking as a mom x3 and now a grandma x2, that’s TRUTH talking. Moms worth our salt know when to not sweat the small stuff or make a mountain out of a molehill.
Kenny Rogers has it right “
you’ve gotta know when to hold ‘em and know when to fold ‘em ”. I’ve known lots of dads, grandpas and uncles that are good at all of this too.
The North used to be quietly racist. Now everyone has an excuse to just say it out loud.
Those Aholes want to go ‘Tet Offensive’? Fine. Information is Power.