Anyway, I thought your points were very well made and much more elegant than my attempts. I live in the South, among people taught to believe this - and I live in a college town! It takes a crisis for people to realize the boundaries of economic growth will be delineated by how we approach poverty and education for all.

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Perhaps it comes from wanderlust and too much Patsy Cline, Old Crow Medicine Show, and blues, but I want to know if there are some interesting cultural bits still remaining. I hear there are...

I hear good things about Ashville, NC (and little Pittsboro), not sure where else is good.

Honestly, even if some of the crazy stereotypes are true, I just want to go South, because I bet it will feel different from where I am. (And if I don't like it, I'll just give in and embrace my Montana urges.)

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Rural areas also have much less diversity of food (and access to healthy food) so you tend to eat what grandma ate: fried food. The difference is that grandma probably had to walk and work with her hands much more, thereby getting lots of exercise whether it was too damn hot or not, while we sit by the AC or get in the car.

@Cole23: Yes, cornbread and fried okra are yummy in the extreme but try living on it every day! When I moved to the South I thought I had gone to food heaven but luckily I wised up and started eating just a bit more salad.

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Say you can't afford to go to college. You have never visited a city with population larger than 50,000. You don't have access to a large public library or social services. You may not have even finished high school.

Your parents, grandparents, cousins, etc all make a living in this rural area, where they've all been for decades (or even centuries.) If you even HAVE a computer, which you might not, you don't have high speed Internet access, because the only telecommunication lines are 80-year-old copper phone lines.

Where are you going to learn that there are better ways for treating your fellow human beings? Your family may be uneducated, but they probably have some pride in themselves. They may have started their own farming businesses, for instance, and believe strongly in social conservatism because they "pulled themselves up by their bootstraps."

Yes, people do have to make their own decisions to leave or stay in situations like that. And many people do leave very poor, rural areas and learn a lot about the world and come to view their fellow humans with compassion. It's possible, but it's not easy. The odds are stacked against you if you're from a rural area with little access to education or social services. If you were born into a rabidly Republican, ignorant environment, and you have pretty much no access, encouragement, or inclination to pursue other modes of thought, how are you going to start voting more progressively?? How are you going to start advocating social services and compassion?

I don't think the majority of people in these situations are intentionally "stupid". I think they're probably ignorant. It's been ingrained in them through their upbringing and socialization that liberal "fancy" whatever is to be avoided. Calling them "stupid" doesn't really help, and it's kind of reductive--it ignores the factors that are making them ignorant in the first place.

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Oddly enough, we don't all like being lumped under the same ignorant and deliberately obtuse rock.

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Also, do you own a home? If not, why the fuck aren't you buying one so YOU can pay property taxes, hmm?

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They may not have computers or reliable Internet connections. They have a deep distrust of liberal thought because their moms and dads and grandparents were the same way. I don't think this is a question of "OH hee hee look at the stupids THEY'RE TOO STUPID." I think there are a lot of people living in difficult situations, without access to information or education--and how are you going to implement those services for them if they're barely above the poverty line? Even if they wanted to pay for fiberoptic internet connections and fantastic libraries and the best schools, the money simply isn't there.

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Really, it is easy to be manipulated into thinking the government is just out to steal your money to give it to the undeserving poor, so by god, don't raise my taxes. It takes a few more steps to realize you use those tax dollars too. And a lot of people don't have the time, inclination, education or whatever to take those extra steps. Wasn't Thomas Frank's "What's the Matter with Kansas" all about people voting against their own economic self-interest because they were easily led by political interests?

In the South, too, issues of poverty and justice are linked to religion. And it is easy for those in public office to manipulate people that way. I think a lot of people down here read the Old Testament a whole lot more than they do the New. They tend to forget Jesus didn't hang out with the rich people, he hung with the criminals and poor and sick.

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I've looked at plenty of maps, not one of them said republican = stupid, obese = stupid or poor = stupid.

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