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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsThe Rude Pundit - In Brief: Note to Red State America: It Gets Better
In an article so darkly hilarious that it seems like it belongs at The Onion, Eli Saslow at the Washington Post chronicles the fin de siecle thinking of the poor souls in "Red America" who are facing the crossroads between nihilistic despair and smiley Jesus love when it comes to the reelection of Barack Obama.
Beth Cox of the Hendersonville, Tennessee (motto: "Where the Racists from Nashville Sleep Peacefully White" Romney campaign headquarters headed to the office on Wednesday. Writes Saslow, "Her calendar read 'Victory Day!!' and she had planned to celebrate in the office by hosting a dance party and selling Romney souvenirs. But instead she was packing those souvenirs into boxes, which would be donated to a charity that sent clothes to South America. Instead a moving company was en route to close down the office in the next 48 hours, and her friends were calling every few minutes to see how she was doing." Let's not even talk about her campaign credit card.
Sounding like the orphan who missed dinner gruel, Cox is unsure of what is happening to America: "She had devoted her life to causes she believed were at the heart of her faith and at the core of her Republican Party. She counseled young married families at church, spoke about right to life in area schools and became a stay-at-home mom with two daughters.
"Now, in a single election night, parts of her country had legalized marijuana, approved gay marriage and resoundingly reelected a president who she worried would 'accelerate our decline.'"
To her credit, Cox doesn't have blinders to the problems the GOP has, with women and non-whites. But it cuts more deeply: "There was the America of increased secularism that legalized marijuana. And there was her America, where her two teenage daughters are not allowed to read Harry Potter or Twilight, and where one of them wrote in a school paper: 'God is the center and the main foundation of my family.'" And don't get them started on the gays.
Oh, sweet Ms. Cox with your sweet Cox-man husband and Cox-ette daughers, whatever will you and, indeed, all of Red America do if we do not become filthy Sodom and devilish Gomorrah over the next four years? What then? What if those states that passed gay marriage do not become AIDS-filled cesspools of degradation? What if they thrive, along with those that legalized marijuana use, which is a plant created, as you should believe, by God?
Yes, yes, what if uninsured men and women in Hendersonville are able to get covered under the Affordable Care Act? Will they tear the "Obamanation" bumper sticker off their pick-ups when they realize that they don't have to wait until the broken finger is gangrene to see a doctor? And what will you do, sensitive, intelligent Beth Cox, if things do get better, if the unemployment rate goes down, if freedom isn't taken away, if you and Mr. Cox get to keep your guns, if higher tax rates for the rich don't wreck your middle class life, if Muslims aren't allowed to force your daughters into veils, if a sane immigration policy doesn't fill the streets of your so very white town with dirty Mexican drug thugs? What if you're just wrong, Beth Cox and all of the Red State Americans staring into an abyss that you created with your own rhetoric, with your own hopes that the abyss would be there so you can say, as we plunge in, see? See? What if you're plain wrong?
Will you say it got better? Will you acknowledge it? Or will you merely come up with excuses and cling to your fading America, the red that is bleeding out now?
http://rudepundit.blogspot.com/
BeHereNow
(17,162 posts)SO well said...
Thoroughly enjoyed reading that!
BHN
riderinthestorm
(23,272 posts)MissMarple
(9,656 posts)She does have two Cox-ette daughters.
XemaSab
(60,212 posts)Is she using abortifacient birth control?
And why is she working outside the home instead of raising her children in the fear and admonition of the Lord?
If I were her, I would be questioning whether or not I was truly saved.
Hamlette
(15,412 posts)MountainLaurel
(10,271 posts)And I know tons like her, who were, in their own words, "devastated" by last Tuesday's results.
kalli007
(683 posts)THIS is what bothers me - I know it's just the wording in the article, but I think it is their mentality. HER country, THEIR country. That's the root of the problem - these fuckers fail to realize that this country does not "belong" to any one group of people anymore.
Bernardo de La Paz
(49,002 posts)Cha
(297,255 posts)byeya
(2,842 posts)JoeyT
(6,785 posts)They're not unsure, they just don't want to hear it. They're vile fucking people whose primary sources of joy and empowerment comes of hurting others. What happened is enough people figured that out and they lost.
They're deeply upset and hurt, and they *still* haven't managed to grasp basic empathy. Their only hope for the future is that they can shovel out enough obfuscating bullshit that they can regain power and do more damage to people they don't like.
That's why they aren't going to acknowledge shit. They'll claim a video of a Muslim marriage is proof of Sharia law (Which they're bang alongside of, when they're allowed to control it.), that a guy that owned a small business lost everything because of Obamacare, (Name? Uh, I don't think you know him...), and that Obama not taking their guns and bibles is just proof that he's going to take them in his third term after he declares martial law and abolishes elections. I deal with plenty of them on a daily basis, and if I had to choose two words to describe these people it'd be "delusional" and "mean".
PNW_Dem
(119 posts).
Paka
(2,760 posts)Thank you rudepundit.
leanforward
(1,076 posts)This person is very strict in her beliefs. An attitude that is demonstrated by the Imams of the muslim faith. I honestly believe that strict religion would have us living in a Theocracy.
I hope I've not offended anyone.
JEB
(4,748 posts)malaise
(269,015 posts)They've been effin' wrong about everything else.