When I lived in “blue” Washington State, I paid 8.6% sales tax (higher that most of the rest of the state because I lived in a metro area, and my property tax. The state’s constitution allowed a popular ballot intitative to pass, removing the car-tab tax. There was also the unnecessary “smog test” tax every two years.
Down here in “red” Georgia, I pay the same 8.6% sales tax (including on all food, which was exempted in Washington), a state income tax, car tab tax, and a yearly smog test tax.
And, from the federal income tax I paid in both states, more funds come back to the red states than to blue states, due perhaps to more red-state conservatives being sent to Washington DC where they can send the pork back home.
So why is “Southern Pride” so heavily played up, both for the natives who may not know any better and transplants who are supposed to be enchanted with the charm of the place? Because she’s a whore with one hand down the front of your pants and the other in your wallet.
(Yes, I know “Delta is ready when you are,” and I really wish my company was equally ready to transfer me back to Washington State, where I could enjoy Mt Rainier looking like a 14,000-foot dish of ice cream, instead of looking at an 800-foot rock with Lee, Jackson and Davis emerging from a scab)
Surely you aren’t seriously suggesting that none of these things ever would have reached the south but for the wonders of the destructive civil war and the corrupt Reconstruction. :rolleyes:
There is a need for southern pride in the face of such gross ignorance and arrogance.
While I take no pride in the horrors of slavery, I have a hard time not feeling a little superior when I look at all these northern transplants flooding our fair city. They are loud, crass, pushy. They manage somehow to be simultaneously cold yet inappropriately familiar with people they scarcely know. They can be seen careening down the interstate as the solo occupants of oversized luxury SUV’s, neck craned over a cellphone, in a frenzied rush to go nowhere. They mock the supposed racism of the locals while ensconcing themselves firmly in the most far-flung exurb where they are certain never to encounter anyone who is not lily-white. Their most common exclamation is “It wasn’t like this back in Boston…”
Compared to people like this, it’s hard not to feel a bit of pride.
If you abide living in a place you can’t stand because the economics are better for you, it sounds like you’re the whore in this situation. And if you can’t find the natural beauty in Georgia it’s because apparently you haven’t looked beyond the Atlanta suburbs. Take some night courses and improve yourself, maybe you can get back to Washington and it’ll be better for all of us.
I don’t have a personal vendetta against you Boyo Jim. It is just a couple of posts have ticked me off recently. The one in the current thread I saw as ignorant because it was just some random things thrown out against three specific states one of which I grew up in. There is no place here for a barrage of random historical transgressions to insult three states at once briefly.
My home state of Louisiana has a lot of things to be proud of some of which changed world history very quickly. About 1/3 of the population is black. Some Louisiana cities are majority black and they are well integrated into the culture for even the poorest of the poor. My new city of Boston also has a huge reputation as being racist but you don’t hear about it as much because there simply aren’t that many black people around . The same holds true for most Northern states.
I don’t have anything to pit because I don’t have much material. I am as straightforward as someone can be. I can’t tolerate someone offending Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama because they don’t go together very well and each has a lot going for it. Much of that came from the large, native black population and everyone freely acknoledges it.
This thread raises a good point. From my experience traveling around the country, I’d say that (much to the horror of my Northern peers), MOST of the United States talks with a Southern accent. The question is, then, why do we have newscasters and voice-over people learning the TV-standard Midwest accent? Why don’t we hear more Southern accents all over?
Because “northern pride” is never mentioned, yet “southern pride” is used to defend the use of the Confederate flag, for example.
I have never in my life had anyone around me talk about their “hillbilly pride” or their “Appalachian pride” or their “Ohio pride” or their “northern pride.” But I have often heard people talk about their “southern pride.”
Northern pride exists. But it exists as Northeastern pride - mostly centered around NYC, NJ, or New England, and mostly defensive in nature. When someone talks up another part of the country, Northeasterners’ hackles raise.
The reason was to create post-hoc rationalization for a cause that was immoral. barbaric and disgraceful. The “Lost Cause” concept is nothing more than a grand attempt to pretend that something shameful was not shameful.
Being proud of the Confederacy is no different from me being proud of the murder of the Beothuk Indians, or the internment of the Japanese-Canadians during WWII. I can understand being proud of one’s heritage, but at least be proud of the GOOD things. A war fomented by rich slaveowners and fought by traitors in the service of an evil cause is something to be ashamed of, not proud of, and things like naming stuff after Jefferson Davis, rather than having an image of him on the sidewalk every street corner people can spit on, labelled “Criminal and Traitor,” has been the product of 140 years of well-crafted lies and bullshit.
Well, I used to sing “The Battle Hymn Of The Republic” while brushing my teeth, but I got tired of toothpaste splattering all over the bathroom mirror.
As a side note - I once interviewed for a job in Tennessee (located not far from the birthplace of the Klan). The boss showed me an exhibit of Confederate memorabilia in his basement - flags, artifacts etc. It was sort of creepy, in part because the guy was originally from Connecticut. :dubious:
Be it ever so decadent
There’s no place like home!
I take it you’ve never interacted with anyone from West “By God!” Virginia, then.
Those folks (of whom I was one originally, but not for a lo-oo-ong time*), while the butts of a lot of prejudiced bullshit jokes about feudin’, cousin-marryin’, parent-fuckin’ and no-teeth-or-shoes-havin’ from all the ignorant bastards in the rest of the USA, are totally down with being hillbillies and Appalachians and with having a culture and a history that’s not quite like anywhere else’s in the country. Of course, West Virginia isn’t the South (except to Northerners) any more than it’s the North (except to people from south of Roanoke); it’s actually a melange of Border South and Industrial Northeast in a lot of ways, which adds up a whole that can sometimes look downright strange to an outlander
*They call it “West-by-God”, I usually call it “West-Gawd-Damn”. Nobody who’s not originally from there gets to, though.
You can extend this idea to anything though. Southerners usually have pride in lots of things. Being Southern is one but most take pride in their state and usually have strong U.S. patriotism which is counter-intuitive if you think about it.
People from all over take pride in their college or their chosen sports teams. The argument that people shouldn’t have pride in things are new to them or they don’t directly influence soon spirals out of control. I am proud of much of my immediate family, especially my mother who is a successful author and international speaker, but I didn’t create that at least not directly.
The logical conclusion to this is that you shouldn’t be proud of yourself either. Most of what you are was determined at birth especially when you consider that you could have been born as an impoverished child with a cleft palette in Ethiopia. The fact that you were born in a first world country with a certain set of family and genes isn’t your creation either.
Where the logic ends is that you shouldn’t have pride in anything and, although pride is one of the 7 Deadly Sins, it doesn’t seem to be admirable to dismiss everything that helps define you.
