rev. primitive wants primitives to put primitive stereotypes to rest

[franksolich]

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x3707759

Oh my.

It's a long original post, but well worth reading, far surpassing anything driveled out by the Bostonian Drunkard or the American Nana primitive.

But alas for the rev. primitive, the primitives won't listen.

RedLetterRev  Donating Member  (215 posts) Thu Jul-31-08 09:18 AM
Original message

Can we lay some stereotypes to rest?   

I owe this post to AngryCarpenter, YardWork, a whole bunch of Texas posters, and the ghost of my granddad.

I've have seen a lot of stereotypes being thrown around on DU, and I'm not faulting anyone. What's been thrown around is a lot of what's been fed over time, just like what's been fed to the RW'ers over hate radio about what supposed "libruls" are and why "librul" are such boogeymen.

When you hear that spew, it gets your dander up, doesn't it! Well, it's intended to incite not only the morans who swallow it whole, but those of us who have more than two brain cells in the same orbit and know it's a complete sack of shyte.

A couple of weeks ago, there was a post about how utility rates in Texas have skyrocketed. There was a big pile-on of a lot of folks who weren't Texans, who never lived in Texas, didn't understand the Texas political system who were right there to chastise DU posters about how they should have cleaned up the Texas political system and how ignorant Texans were to keep voting Republican.

Things aren't always on the inside as they seem from the outside.

I've been privileged to live in Texas three separate times. What folks on the outside don't know -- and a dirty secret that the RW doesn't let get across state borders -- is that the Railroad Commission supposedly controls the oil industry in Texas. In actual fact, it's the other way around. Over time, the oil industry has bought and paid for the entire state government having gotten a first foothold in the regulating Railroad Commission. Texans are pretty much at their mercy and have been largely disenfranchised by gerrymandering, vote-rigging, payola, propaganda... all the usual GOP (Greed, Oil, Piracy) tactics. But you don't hear that outside the borders, nor do you hear of the political wars going on inside the state to take it back. But look at the parade of names that have trod through the Railroad Commission and you'll have an idea what the Oil Mafia looks like: Williams, Clements, McClellan, and Bush. Huh.

My last residence before returning home to NC after 25 years of seeing this great nation was Florida. Now, since leaving the Appalachian mountains of my childhood, I've lived in 10 of the Lower Forty-Eight, visited 38 of them, have lived in Dallas, Austin, Chicago, L. A., Baton Rouge, Fort Lauderdale, Charlotte, and just outside NY. I've been to and lived a while in Europe. I've visited Australia twice. That's extremely lucky for any American. Unthinkably lucky for a poor Appalachian hillbilly child.

It isn't as if I haven't been a lot of places and met with a great many people. I've been more places than Hank Snow. But once again, I digress. Let me get back to Florida.

Folks have piled on Floridians for being too stupid to figure out a butterfly ballot. Much was made in M$M of "hanging chads" and undervotes. That wasn't even the surface of the story. That was the story that M$M wanted you to hear, only as much as was necessary to color opinions in a certain (and negative direction). The story from inside the state, once again, was quite different.

At 7:30 the morning after the 2000 vote, my partner and I were walking our dogs. At the end of the street, we could see our precinct where, to our cold shock, there were trucks destroying the uncounted ballots from our precinct. A small provision in the state law mandated that all uncounted ballots should be destroyed. Now, this occurrance was going on in front of many, many heavily-Democratic precincts all over south Florida and it was shown all over the local news. It was also before the first call for a recount.

How f'ing convenient. Katherine Harris could make damnsure that the trucks were at the precincts to destroy uncounted ballots at daybreak but she couldn't get them there the night before to transport them to the tallying centers.

You put two and two together.

But you didn't see that on M$M news, did you? You only saw what the Republican minions wanted you to see and that's all you had from which to form an opinion.

Let the pile-ons begin.

I'm not faulting and DU'ers. I'm just saying that in both cases there is a lot more to it than you've been led to believe. Be careful.

Why would I be sensitive to this? Aside from the fact that I have traveled damnear everywhere, I am probably about the last person anyone would think would be a "liberal". Now, credit where credit is due, I'm going to thank AngryCarpenter again for getting this ball rolling. I am a southerner, at least 11 generations deep. I have ancestors who followed Peter Stuyvescent to New Amsterdam (I have cousins in NY state, still) who migrated to the NC coast in the late 1600's. The last ancestor who came across, whom I can track, arrived in 1751.

Nearly all my greats-granddads fought in the Revolutionary War. More g's-granddads, g's-uncles, cousins-x-removed fought on both sides of the Civil War. I am inextricably tied to this land.

The land and the Constitution were handed down to me as precious heirlooms, to be guarded, polished, held in stewardship, and to be handed down to following generations in better shape than they were handed down to me. This is called respect. This is called patriotism. This is called loving one's neighbor, because it's a community of neighbors pulling together that makes a nation.

Here's my background and why you wouldn't think I'm a liberal, and why I'm constantly thought of as a southern redneck.

I was raised in the hills of western NC, in what wasn't much more than a shack that grew out of a log cabin. It got electricity only 5 years before I was born. I grew up hearing how lucky I was not to have to bring water up from the springhouse in back or have to use the privy up the hill. Yes, I did consider myself lucky, all things in perspective. Still do.

I own a rifle and a shotgun. I still live way-out in the country. Though my place is a sanctuary, if something attacks my dogs or appears rabid, it's up to me to dispatch it as quickly and humanely as possible. The eldest dog is my partner's assistant, one in whom we've invested a great deal of love, devotion, training and attention. She is his freedom to move about in the world. Worse than losing a "child", he would lose his mobility assistant. I can't let that happen. Those who would remove all guns, please consider this. Just askin' to see if from this side.

I work hard, always have. My granddaddy, a strong Democrat if there ever was one, was the sickest man I ever knew who got up and went to work every day, with only one lung. Hard work and paying attention in school were the only way out of the holler. Granddaddy was right. I've seen most of America, a bit of Europe and Australia. Being the breadwinner of the family, I work a fulltime job, plus bringing up our farm, plus doing weddings to keep things moving. Thanks to neocon outsourcing, there'll be no retirement, so I'm having to hustle double-hard now because the clock's tickin'.

I'm white. Mostly. Being Appalachian, I have some mysterious Native and Melungeon roots. Some called us "black Irish", some called us "part Indian", some called us far less charitable names, and historically we were considered the lowest of the lowest of the low. I don't care what anyone calls me, except late for supper

My home is a modular, double-wide format. I was lucky enough to find a foreclosure on a big piece of land out in the country that I could actually afford to keep. I was doubly blessed in that I had the VA behind me to secure a 100% loan. I figured I'd earned that, having extended active duty once, then going back into active reserves voluntarily and extending again. From the shack of my childhood, to the rental crap I've put up with along the way, from the brief stint of homelessness, no castle could be finer to me than what I've got. I've seen the barrel from the bottom up and it's not pretty.

I've been the poor, lived among the poor, and have floated among some of the very richest of society. Give me the poor any day. They know everything they've got and however little it is, they're grateful for it. The rich generally don't give a damn unless they're helping themselves to more of it -- or someone else's.

But I believe Americans have so much to offer and we sure could do better by one another. This crap about "self-reliance" that the RW love to spew comes from a bunch of spoiled brats who never had to struggle for a thing. There's no such thing as a self-made man. We're each a product of what we've given and absorbed along the way. It's compassion and empathy, a willingness to prevent problems before they happen, to have felt that pain and wish up to Whatever It Is that nobody else ever has to feel it -- that makes us either lefties or liberals.

Or as granddaddy would've said, just plain "decent".

One more thing: bad shit does happen to good people. Been there, done that. No matter who you are, it's almost impossible to get help. A leg-up is not at all the same thing as a hand-out, I don't care how the RW try to paint and spin it. Nobody in a bad situation wants a hand-out (unless they're bone-sorry to start with); only a chance to do for themselves. Even people in desperate situations still have dignity and pride. I know. Been there. There's an old saying that if you give a man a fish, you'll feed him for a day. If you teach him how to fish, you'll feed him for life.

A decent human being (a liberal) will start with the first, then do the second. Then show the feller how to pay that favor forward. There's the difference. The RW'er always has his hand out for something back. The liberal says, "Go carry this on. I can't be everywhere at once." A certain carpenter a-way-back-when did the same thing.

See how it works? Spread the good stuff. Don't have to beat anyone. Just show 'em how it works and move on.

The RW often seeks to dehumanize first, stripping dignity and pride, rather than looking at a situation first to see how to fix the problem now and immediately thereafter to prevent the problem from happening again. There are no quick-fixes to anything when the messes are as big as they've made them.

I know something about being made to feel something less than human. I'm often accepted easily because I'm often taken for your average country guy, slow talking, easygoing, with an often funny, smartass lip. But when people find out, oops! I'm also gay, then you can watch the light leave their eyes and suddenly I'm not so fun or funny any more. Just somehow "funny" and not in the happy-to-be-around sort of way. Prejudice hurts.

It hurts more when people lead with it. So I'm asking my fellow DU'ers, when things blow up in a neighboring state and the residents are trying to explain what the situation is, please don't just pile on about how dumbass they are to let the repugs win. Things aren't always just how they look from the outside. There's always a lot more to the story.

As for me, I refuse the wear the shame that belongs to the neocons. Let them wear their own damn shame home. They made their own shame and they're not going to put it on me, or you, or anyone else here.

Hold your heads up, my new friends. We might not can change the world, but we can paint our corners of it any color we want to. Mine's bright blue, and I suspect yours might be, too.

There's a few primitive responses, but no Obamaite primitives have showed up at the bonfire yet to assure the rev. primitive that yes, the Obamaite primitives will drop their racist Hate-mongering.

[BlueStateSaint]

Waaaay too long for me to read here at work.  Hafta get it when I get home.

[Lord Undies]

Waaaay too long for me to read here at work.  Hafta get it when I get home.

It is too long and I don't have the energy to dissect it, but here's a kicker:

One more thing: bad shit does happen to good people. Been there, done that. No matter who you are, it's almost impossible to get help. A leg-up is not at all the same thing as a hand-out, I don't care how the RW try to paint and spin it. Nobody in a bad situation wants a hand-out (unless they're bone-sorry to start with); only a chance to do for themselves. Even people in desperate situations still have dignity and pride. I know. Been there. There's an old saying that if you give a man a fish, you'll feed him for a day. If you teach him how to fish, you'll feed him for life.

A decent human being (a liberal) will start with the first, then do the second. Then show the feller how to pay that favor forward. There's the difference. The RW'er always has his hand out for something back. The liberal says, "Go carry this on. I can't be everywhere at once." A certain carpenter a-way-back-when did the same thing.

If this was trues, why don't statistics support this tripe?  Statistics prove that liberals hardly give to charities at all.  They hardly do anything for anyone except thrown scorn at the government for not having cradle-to-grave programs so the liberal inclined can sit on their fat asses.  This DUmbass is spread what he professes to want to stop: Stereotyping.

It stands to reason everything else he has to say is a bogus load of bullshit too.  I KNOW what he has to say about Texas is a load of crap.  Texas was dominated by democrats for decades and decades.  It has been since the Republican gained a foothold that the state has become one of the most dynamic in the USA.

And as for the "certain carpenter", well, I guess he can't bring himself to utter the name of Jesus Christ.  Jesus, by the way, was (is) not one to promote benevolence using other people's resources.  The Jesus I know is more likely to smite today's liberals.  In fact, it may be in the works.

That is all.  Over.