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Okay. Strange title, I know, considering the South has almost always gone in the other direction. But anyways, in my 14 years of experience of living in the Southern United States, most of the people I have met have been kind, compassionante, generous and always always always very polite (in a good way...not the scary zombie way), all charectaristics of, guess what, liberals.
At church small youth group tonight, we talked about the tragedy in Darfur and I was amazed by the depth of concern for these people in Africa. One girl in particular, I observed. She appeared to be very disturbed when the youth pastor said that over 280,000 people have been killed and I saw her rack her brain all night trying to think of ways to help the people in Darfur. Most of the other kids followed suit, which was amazing. Needless to say, I was quite moved by all of this and thought to myself, "These kids are liberals and they don't even know it. They're doing what Christians are called to do. Help the least among us." And, here comes the ultimante irony: they probably call themselves Republicans.
Most likely because mommy and daddy are "Republicans", though I can tell that former hard-right people are slowly (and fastly-is that a word?) moving toward the center because of all this bullshit King George has pulled and are, quite frankly, ashamed to be associated with him or his nearly destroyed Republican Party. People's eyes down here are opening, slowly but surely. The Republican party can no longer play the Southern population as a bunch of 'yes-men' recneck hillbillies that vote straight Republican all the time. Mississippi, in particular, is opening itself up to new ideas. I see more LTTE's that are critical to the administration everyday (though there still some from the loud and proud nutso minority). I even read somewhere that Mississippi's approval rating of King George is less than 50%. Who would of dreamed of that just a few years ago. Mississippi, the haven of all things godly and Republican, would be slowly opening it's eyes and saying to itself "wow...what the hell have I been doing?"
Now don't get me wrong, we have tons more progress to make. People are still more scared of a few black teenagers than a sketchy old white man and whatnot, but hey, Rome wasn't built in a day. We need time. And maybe, sometime down the road, Mississippi will be a semi-bluish-purple spot in the bright red south.
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