Calling all the South essentially unworthy of habitation is as dumb as saying [choose your US city] is a nest of left-wing anarchy and too dangerous even to enter.

I've heard that from seemingly intelligent people these days.

You can live in lots of the South and have plenty of land there and never encounter people you don't want to see, if that's your desire. If you have enough money to live on the Pacific Coast, you can set yourself up pretty well in the South, with all the modcons.

I lived in a place that was 70 percent Bush/Trump/Morgan Griffith and right next to East TN, which except for Dolly Parton and ETSU and some of Knoxville is pretty ignorant. I told Mark Warner back in 2020 that I wouldn't move a mile across the state line because of the crazy senators Tennessee has, and I'd take him and Kaine anytime.

As things got weirder, personally and nationally, I learned that to enjoy my own life and let others enjoy theirs, I had to get along with people. It's become a lot easier. I don't doubt it was messed up, but whatever made people Trumpers, they are still human. Except for maybe Trump.

In a grocery store parking lot couple weeks ago (Wegman's, so a pricey store for this area), I saw a young country white guy proudly displaying his truck and his flag and his Trump stickers, and my more peaceful 2008 Prius with a Buddhist bumper sticker was sitting next to his. I went up to unload my groceries, and he had his hackles up, expecting some guff. I smiled at him, waved, asked how he's doing, and he honestly returned the exchange.

Beats hate. Or dragging it around with you. Even for hours behind a keyboard.

PS, Eb: I'm not sure what you're getting at that it's a fact that I (mostly) agree with Speaks' policy positions, as much as I can determine them.

Everyone has their own way of presenting themselves. If I agree with someone, it doesn't mean I'd say it the same way.

But whatever your takeaway, that's fine. There are crazed rightwingers here I read with some delight, and one of my two plonks is someone whom I'd probably enjoy in person.

You can choose a place that is always humid and bug infested and gets occasional hurricanes and tornados, and I'll choose a place that has the best climate in the country and gets occasional wildfires.
At least CA has people in charge who want to address climate change, whereas NC is full of morons who call climate change a hoax and literally cosplay as confederate soldiers on the weekend.

#27 | Posted by SpeakSoftly

You're ignoring economics and structural poverty and a thousand other things you're usually here railing about, correctly.

People in Western NC, poor white generally (or in more well-to-do enclaves or compounds), don't have the option to "choose a place" like Pacific Palisades, or California in general, where housing prices continue to drive teachers out of cities.

Educate yourself, California:

>> Ironically, it was the NC mountains that were recently wiped away in a hurricane, not the CA coast.

I'd take what happened to people I know in Spruce Pine, NC, any day over what happened to people I know in the Pacific Palisades, and which events are forecast to continue there, along with wildfires, earthquakes, etc.

I grew up in New York City, went South in 1977, never returned, and New York would have been the logical course for my line of work. To each their own. No regrets.

==

And yes, Eberly, by reliable, I mean that I usually agree with Speaks' content and enjoy their perspective.

12 trumped your 11, loser.

Marx Brothers play bridge:

18. A usually reliable poster being irrational.

Have you ever lived in the South?

Do you think friends and contacts anywhere make it easier to live somewhere, especially when they are among the wealthiest people on earth who can afford every luxury?

And have it all wiped away in a mudslide overnight? No thanks.

And sure, I'd love to move to Uruguay. Or Amsterdam. Or maybe even back near the NC mountains.

But choice in life sometimes is limited by circumstances way beyond one's control.

That's how they got to be leaders, I'd guess.

Are the Democrats looking for some populist to rise up from the ranks?

Americans don't want democratic socialist populists. And white won't cover it.

There's probably enough marks for a class-action suit.

"private equity in youth sports"

Paging BellRinger for non-sequitur comment about locker rooms.

Less of you is a lot more better.

#29 | Posted by donnerboy

In 30 years as an editor, I've exactly once returned a manuscript with this comment:

"This book would have benefited from less of the author's original thinking."

And left it at that.

Get her the f----- piano. Ten-minute film. To hell with feminism.

Holly Hunter was a doll, though.

The Piano represents two grueling hours of my life I cannot reclaim.

What a horrid film.

RIP.

Is he demanding they compete against boys in sports and share locker rooms with boys?

#3 | Posted by BellRinger

You've lost it. This is the first thing that came to mind for you? Are you that starved for attention?

Yes to everything about progressives and the coast.

In the quarter century of my life in Central Appalachia, and particularly pre-COVID when they were open 24 hours, I'd say that if you took just about any American from within fifty miles of an ocean and dropped them in a southwestern Virginia Walmart at 2am, they'd think "zombie apocalypse."

No, just pockmarked white folks, toting their entire families around (babies to grandmas), eyes wide like FBI chief Patel, looking a bit tense.

Good time for grocery shopping, though.

"Carville acts like he's some sort of a Seer."

Yup. Always. Exactly. A Bill Maher with an Arkansas portfolio. Hoo boy.

Let's not forget Clinton's roots. A well-meaning and brilliant ego whore from a dirt-poor red state who had a JFK fixation. Who teamed up with a brilliant also flawed woman to ride to the top of government, personal foibles aside.

The Clintons didn't own a private residence until they left the White House.

Who's running Arkansas now? A succession of Huckabees?

Allahu a'lam.

5. That's where my 30-somethings are, which is a lot further along than I was at that age.

Sodium morphate.

"Big Oil's Capture of Government Now Complete"

Helps to have a plan in mind. And execute it.

"America: Second-Rate Power That Few Now Take Seriously"

America is bleeding from the head and has decided to tie a tourniquet around its own neck (using an Abbie Hoffman image) to stop the flow. No great majority appears to be waking up to do much of anything about this. I don't know what's to be done, other than wait for the deaths of those most involved -- who will be replaced. I'm sure the path of succession is already lined up, and hopefully doesn't involve Uday or Qusay. What need have they for government anymore?

Everything turned when Obama was elected. The country was split by Bush/Gore, and now we have generations that have been brought up living in the racist aftermath of the Obama and Biden elections. I had mamaws from the hollows calling me out for being a n------lover when working the polls in 2008.

There's no strong counternarrative like the civil rights movement now, unless one wants to package together everyone's microaggressions in the name of human rights. Also out of favor.

Of all that lame TV character's flathead looks, Fake Pious is perhaps his worst. He's probably gritting his teeth.

I wonder if White House HazMat comes in after such a meeting . . . and if any of God's soldiers are dared asked to discard [listening] devices before entering the Holy of Holies.

Down a flight of stairs, no doubt.

Chickens are coming home to roost.

#105 | Poor BillJohnson

Is trying very hard to make this thread about anything other than Lindsay Graham.

The whole notion of a lone gunman, chapter and verse in US history, is J. Edgar Hoover's wet dream imagined as reality.

Between him and his boy toy Roy Cohn, who would have guessed we'd be living with their legacy into the mid 21st century?

Surveillance state? Good grief.

Clinton in 1996 crawled into bed drunkenly with Newt Gingrich and tolerated the Contract on America.

Want to discuss the prison industrial complex and how Black and brown youth fed it for decades?

Thanks, Clinton, and I presume that was a winning strategy for Carville. I certainly voted for Clinton then, as I did for Obama in his time. But history will show both to be conservative placeholders.

James Carville. I mean, I'd still listen to Henry Kissinger, but only for yuks.

lfthndthrds:

"You are part of the problem because you're a f-king idiot!"

Carville? That lizard? Has his wife returned to the Republican Party?