Comments on: Not to Worry

By: Breedlove

Breedlove — Mon, 01 Sep 2008 18:57:08 +0000

You were right Dr. Wilson concerning Hollywood's affections for Coke.

By: MAP

MAP — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 10:45:26 +0000

I have dial-up. Broadband is unavailable. A few of my neighbors have computers. Not many. We have one TV station that's mostly snow. We do have several radio stations. Of all so-called hi-tech gadgets, I have the least derision for computers. I don't think anything has been created that so undermines ignorance and propaganda. Most of my neighbors merely rely on commonsense (which works to an amazing degree). Most of my posts are done at the office, while I'm busy at work. There are only 7000 souls in the entire county in which I live. I think what Dr. Wilson was referring to is an obsession with gadgets, though. Here, that would be the tractor more than probably anything else.

By: H.F. Wolff

H.F. Wolff — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 01:20:53 +0000

MAP,

Just curious, is your internet connection at home "in the backwoods" or at the office "in the backwoods"?

Backwoods, with internet connection, is a relative expression, right?

Thanks,

H.F. Wolff

By: MAP

MAP — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 15:34:44 +0000

Here in the South Georgia backwoods where I live, people aren't into any of that. Almost every house has a satelite dish, but other than that dogs, guns, four-wheel-drives, and tractors is about as high-tech as it gets. I rarely see a cell phone. In the Southern cities, Yankee 'progressiveness' may exist. But not here in the woods, thank God. If I had a dollar for every confederate flag I see, I could retire.

By: Senor Doug

Senor Doug — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 14:09:39 +0000

Thank you for your reply Dr. Wilson. However, the typical Southerner:

lives in a gadget-filled exurban house that is mortgaged to the 2x4 framed hilt;

votes reflexively for whomever the Republican Party tells him to, even if it's a crazed old man who wants to jump-start Armageddon;

cheers insanely for the football exploits of his alma mater's affa-leets, 'scuse me, student-athletes;

attends a church that preaches a ludicrous and nihilistic eschatology, as the decades roll by and the Rapture stubbornly refuses to occur.

And I could go on.

In defense of the South, I guess Reconstruction and the civil rights juggernaut have finally done their work, but when I see all the discretionary income and energy spent so enthusiastically in the pursuits listed above, I do wonder about Southern cynicism.

By: Clyde Wilson

Clyde Wilson — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 22:03:01 +0000

Cynicism is perhaps the wrong word for what I was trying to describe. Perhaps pessimism (realism?). Have you ever heard the song "I'm a Good Ole Rebel"? In Henry James's "The Bostonians," the Mississippian hero Basil Ransom, surrounded by Yankee dogooders, remarks. "Progress? I don't believce in it. I never saw any." A genuine Southerner knows that you might have to fight a war but you are never going to save the world for democracy. There is a good scene to this effect in the film Blackhawk Down," of a conversation between a Southern soldier and an earnest, doing good regular American soldier. Of course, the film has a British director. American society has been moving heaven and earth for over a half century under the sad delusion that it can solve the racial problem. A Southerner knows that the problem can never be solved---it can only be ameliorated. In New England and its Deep North colonies people are always getting together to change the world and "doin' good ain't got no end."

By: Senor Doug

Senor Doug — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 15:58:05 +0000

Southern cynicism? Anybody? Bueller, Bueller?

By: Brendan

Brendan — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 18:51:28 +0000

When I was at a church conference at Calvin College in Michigan I tried to go to this site on one of the public computers but it was blocked by the Internet filter for being "extreme."

By: Senor Doug

Senor Doug — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 12:56:24 +0000

Cynicism about what? Neo-conservatism? The Republican Party? The latest Protestant huckster preaching nonsensical eschatology on the jumbotron at the local mega-church?

Where is this fabled Southern cynicism?

By: Allen Wilson

Allen Wilson — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 02:27:27 +0000

'Southern inertia and cynicism' - a whole article or even a book could be written on that subject, what caused it, and it's evil effects.