Let's calm down with all the hating on the South. The Southern states are chock full of people mired in terrible hardship and suffering, not least from the misinformation campaigns and economic policies that Republicans are exporting to other parts of the country. Unless these trends are resisted successfully, we won't be able to look very smugly at the South, because we'll all be experiencing the same types of conditions they're experiencing today - reduced opportunity, less fulsome labor protections, poor access to education, deeper social stratification, concentration of wealth and income, and so on.
So instead of deriding or writing off our brothers and sisters in the South, but with no illusions about the society there, let's confront directly the racial strife that underlies our problems (both here and there) and that makes it possible for basic protections such as health care to be undermined and caricatured as deprivations imposed for the benefit of some "other" (take your pick) rather than enhancements that will help us all.
Only by exposing the "divide and conquer" strategy implemented so successfully since the 1970s by the right, and making clear to everyone (both here and in the South) the need to stand together, can we put in the basic reforms we need to come up to the standards of other industrialized nations.
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