What's Wrong with the South?

It’s depressing to live in the South. Sure, there are pockets of economic and societal vibrancy, such as parts of Tulsa, such as Ft. Worth or Houston or Atlanta. But for the most part the South is a quagmire of stagnant depression. The only outlet for this depression is occasional anger, which they recently exhibited by pushing Donald Trump into the White House. He preached a Gospel of Anger, and the south whooped and hollered and passed around the beer. The only other time I have seen southerners inspired to excitement was when they drive around with huge Confederate flags flying from the beds of expensive trucks, before parking them beside their shacks.

For many of them, driving around in big trucks even without flags is a source of excitement, especially if the truck payments are more expensive than their rent. The trucks give them a feeling of power many of them have in no other way.

The South used to have a sense of purpose. The Confederacy was inspired mainly by one idea:

the right of states to have slavery. When Southerners lost the Civil War, they never got anything to replace their passion for slavery.

It is not just poverty, although much of the poverty comes from the inability of southerners to care about working reliably. It is depression.

I saw examples of depression as I walked across town yesterday.

First, I saw garbage piled up in their yards. Not everybody’s, but approximately every third or fourth house in Durant, Oklahoma, where I live. There is nothing about being poor that requires all this garbage. The garbage is a message to the rest of the public that they hate other people almost as much as they hate themselves.

(Image from City of Durant website)

Second, they let their dogs run loose and attack other people. One man sat on his porch and watched his dogs run an entire block to attack me. Fortunately, the dog repellant spray worked. There is nothing about being poor that requires people to let their dogs run loose and attack people. It is just a message to the rest of us that they hate us almost as much as they hate themselves.

Third, what do they do with the little bit of money that they get, either from poorly-paid and irregular work, or from public assistance? A woman sat out on her front porch and talked loudly into her cell phone, not caring who would hear. She said they would have lots of money saved up if her husband didn’t go out to bars all the time. He could just get drunk at home and save some money. So not only do white trash men hate themselves, they foist this hatred on their wives too. (Maybe if I’d listened longer I would have heard her talking about their lousy sex life. But I figured I’d better keep walking.)

They have nothing to live for but God and the Confederacy. But to them God is not the source of love but the idol around which they rally, a war god they believe will vanquish all the white liberals and descendants of ex-slaves whom they do not like.

How can this ever change? The inertia is too great.

This is the Bible belt where most people are creationists. I saw an advertisement for a movie, “The Truth about Dinosaurs,” in Bristow as I drove through on Sunday. It is, I can only assume, a darkumentary about how evolutionary scientists are all liars and are damning our souls by making us believe dinosaurs lived more than 4000 years ago. Whom are they trying to convince? Most people in the South already believe the Earth is only 6000 years old, and dinosaur fossils resulted from a flood 4000 years ago. The creationists already rule everything in Oklahoma. What are they trying to accomplish? They just want to proclaim that they are God’s truly chosen people who are the only ones who know the truth. They want to hate the non-creationists, most of whom live outside of the South.

Dogs that bite other people, trucks that run over other people: this is the only glimmer of enjoyment that many southerners have.

Oh, and having lots of kids. Not taking care of them, spending time with them to show them how to care about their neighbors. The mothers may do this, but the fathers are too busy driving their trucks around. One man parked his truck in my yard, so I had it towed away. He threatened me with violence, and said he needed his truck because he had five kids. His kids were not an expression of love but an excuse for aggression.

Bogged down in depression, acutely aware that slavery will never come back, and told by their preachers that they are God’s chosen people, Southerners will never change. Red state confederates sit around and live off of welfare provided by blue state tax dollars. And they are just fine with it.