fuck the south
read fuckthesouth.com and come back when you finish. i'll give you a minute.
ok, what did you think? tell me if you get the chance, but here's my reaction. this guy really got me mad.
i'd ignore the site entirely if this wasn't exactly the kind of attitude i get from suburban chicago kids who pass blanket judgments on everyone south of I-80. george bush is aesthetically a texan, but his politics are northeastern old money. the faceless multinational nasties, war-mongering carpetbaggers, and blissfully unaware consumers who support them from the safety of their SUVs are mostly concentrated in the northeast (and chicago). (and california). my point is this: no, i don't think you can blame religious conservatives in the red states for "what's wrong with this country." the american animal is way more complex than that.
you know what i like about the america i see today? i like that it's becoming latin. and it's happening independently from and in some cases in spite of what's going on in the national consciousness. i like that we helped make mexicans so poor, and they're responding by showing up on our doorstep.
i'm self-conscious to post something that makes it obvious what i've been reading and who i've been speaking to, but here it is and it's honest.
posted by phillip @ 12:40 AM
3 Comments:
if language is the problem, i don't think we need to worry. it's frustrating when stubborn people refuse to speak the local language, but these aren't arrogant tourists. aside from a few stubborn old people, and the french, most people are willing to learn other languages to the extent that they must.
you're right that a lot of them have more babies than they can handle. catholicism plays a big part in that. but rather than worry about whether too many babies are born in my country or theirs, i'd rather root out the real source of the problem: destructive religious dogma. and i'll fight that anywhere i find it.
it's been said that american latinos are dangerous people because they're poor and without an identity. even though they have more money than before they came here, they find that they're no longer mexican and will never really be americans either.
there are something like 40,000 gun-related deaths each year in this country. i don't even know how bad AIDS is. do you? i'm just trying to change the tempo a little bit here, look at things in a different light. we midwesterners don't have to deal with a lot of these things, so we have to force ourselves to understand. otherwise we allow ourselves to play into the hands of nativists like Jim Oberweis. if you don't remember his 2004 US Senate campaign, please look it up. it was nasty, and he tried to use fear on us, our neighbors, our families, to get himself elected, ostensibly to protect us from the immigrant hordes.
using fear to turn us against foreigners...sound familiar? well, at least it didn't work in illinois.
it's hard to talk about what constitutes an american domestic issue versus a foreign one. collectively, american business is the biggest oligopoly in the history of the world. the only reason we have it so good is that you don't shit where you eat. that's how i see it. i don't see what it has to do with clearing up our issues at home before we allow our attention to focus outward.
you lost track of the point, so you get sarcastic and dismissive.
why be in such a rush to argue? i didn't say anything in favor of violent crime or burglary or against birth control. i just really like having spanish speaking people around and i'm interested in how we can live together and what kind of people we're going to be.
you should think about why that gets you mad.
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