As we reported last month, CBS News’ Major Garrett has a new book to push and on his promotional tour said the United States is not only headed toward a civil war but is “85 percent there.” We’ve heard a lot about a “national divorce,” and back in December of 2020, Amy Siskind tweeted out a proposed map that would split the country into the United States of Canada and Jesusland.
Now we have David A. Graham writing in The Atlantic about the United States of Confederate America. You see, the South is more than just a region; it’s a shared identity.
"The South is no longer simply a region: A certain version of it has become an identity shared among white, rural, conservative Americans from coast to coast," @GrahamDavidA writes: https://t.co/hL40AHMLoJ
— The Atlantic (@TheAtlantic) October 6, 2022
Graham takes us back to the fight over Confederate monuments, writing:
This would surely come as a surprise to the men who professed fidelity to state and region above national identity when they sided with the Confederacy in 1861. But it’s the product of a dynamic in which white, rural Americans around the country have adopted the culture of white, rural southerners. This is only one piece of the region’s heritage, a rich, cosmopolitan, and multiracial mix that has shaped the entire country’s music, food, and culture, though it is also the one that has become the go-to stereotype of the region’s identity.
The journalist Will Wilkinson, who is from Iowa, wrote about this in his Substack newsletter last summer, recalling how during his childhood, driving from Minnesota to Missouri would produce a spectrum of cultural signifiers and regional drawls. No more: “Everywhere it’s the same cloying pop country, the same aggressively oversized Ford F-150s, the same tumbledown Wal-Marts and Dollar Generals, the same eagle-heavy fashion, the same confused, aggrieved air of relentless material decline. Even the accents are more and more the same, trending toward a generalized Larry the Cable Guy twang.”
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Cue people in the comments declaring that they live in blue bubbles in the South. Also, a lot of people declaring, “They’re racists. That’s their identity.”
Don’t y’all ever tire of the faux journalism masquerading as something of value? This is a garbage piece meant to divide and stir hatred towards a specific demographic. How about, I dunno, actually reporting on facts and things we need to know?
— Zelda A. Gabriel (@ZeldaAGabriel) October 6, 2022
🤡
— Just me (@baking4fun) October 6, 2022
Lots of mistakes are made with broad brushes.
— AW (@threadstoneGA) October 6, 2022
Some good propaganda you got here, nice work Atlantic.
— Miss Information (@perulbican) October 6, 2022
That was a really long article just to say you hate rural white people.
— Narrative Slayer (@death2freedom) October 6, 2022
You have to be joking
— Blind Squirrel (@bridgewat6) October 6, 2022
By the way I bet you went to an all white school and live in a all white community. Prove me wrong
— Easy (@olelucylou53) October 6, 2022
I always wonder what these authors look like who write these kinds of stories… pic.twitter.com/aQ6hG7vdUr
— R C Taylor (@littlenewsnetwk) October 6, 2022
The constant attacks on the people your article references create the subcultures you decry. Your hate animates them.
— WinstonSmith (@BackporchBobcat) October 6, 2022
Wow…someone flunked out of history class.
— Cryshalsing (@LoneVoiceorg) October 6, 2022
The Atlantic never disappoints when it comes to having the worst takes.
— Dave (@deeznuts123984) October 6, 2022
BS alert! What The Atlantic knows about the South would rattle around in a peanut shell (that’s a southernism for “doesn’t know s**t.) What they can’t grasp is that conservatism isn’t limited to rural whites.
— JoJo Maxwell (@JoJoMaxwell1) October 6, 2022
https://twitter.com/Foxall88/status/1578022150979481600
“The South is everywhere now, and so are its worst political pathologies,” concludes Graham, as though we didn’t just either take down or cover with tarps every Confederate statue in the nation … and pull reruns of “The Dukes of Hazzard” off TV because of the hurtful imagery. It’s over and done with.
Now let’s talk about New York City’s “brand” some more.
Related:
MSNBC’s Chris Hayes thanks his mom for not letting him watch ‘Dukes of Hazzard’ because of the Confederate flag on the car https://t.co/hqQtKIUCcV
— Twitchy Team (@TwitchyTeam) July 1, 2020
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