Just a good ole boy

Together, we rise.

What people miss is that the South isn't deep red. Sure, we remain dominated by plantation culture and the aristocratic lordship that colonized these lands hundreds of years ago. But, if you look at the numbers, you'll find a nearly 50/50 split with more than a few left-leaning ideas finding majority support. Only, we're heavily gerrymandered. Our votes don't count. Our people have been cowed by an ocean of religious institutions.... a plague of churches, "educational" facilities, and a public events monopoly dominating and destroying any neutral or communal social network. Hell, even my son's soccer team was named God Speed 2.0... as if that made any fucking sense.

We're the home of the anti-authoritarian coal wars. Down south and mid-west hip-hop, rap, rockabilly, fascist-damning folk, and rock are some of the best on the goddamned planet. We are the people with dirt and grease under our nails. The men and women who used to have the spine to tell the preacher, the cop, and the politician to mind their own fucking business. Our minds have been long twisted by racist propaganda keeping our working class at each other's throats while the parasite class rains their evil upon us. This is the very same propaganda that sent us to war against our brothers so the wealthiest 4% could own their slaves. Such a misguided endeavor fought to protect an economy that maintained an extreme separation of wealth destroying the very soul of the poor "white"... even though the definition of white has changed since our early days when we were taught to hate the Irish and Italians as well.

Many here desperately resist the rising tsunami of theocratic nationalism while remaining somehow ignorant of the reality that theocratic, white nationalism is little more than a protective cloak blanketing the gnarled figure of neo-liberal corporatism.

We all want it to end. We all know that the world is wrong and a majority of our "leaders" are broken, soulless husks enabling the fleecing of our wealth and our land for short-term profits. Many of us have been pointed the wrong way - at our peers with less power than we have. What's worse, I think they know they're wrong. So very many of them. They're scared. They're frightened. They've been taught since childhood that there are both metaphysical and human demons hiding around every corner while forcing their children around the very predators they hoped to escape.

I have so many rambly thoughts tonight and need to stop. I don't even know if I'm making sense right now. But things seem bleak and humanity seems so desperate to cling to fear and hatred that they're rebranding it as compassion and freedom. It's grotesque. And some of the loudest mouthpieces for this lunacy come from the South. But so do so very many of our loudest resistance voices. Humanity has more love and compassion in it than any tiny ideology could ever destroy. I have hope for my children's future that the light within us all will reach out. Connect. Abandon the thousands of false prophecies and Anti-Christs swirling around us demanding the "righteous" defend the money changers in the temple from the angry Messiah.

We're down here. We may be the first to fall when the Talibangelicals unleash their master plan. They already control most of our state and local governments. They're breaking the will of resistance on the National level. Once they do that, toward Gideon we'll march.

But we're here.

Do you hear us?