Paul,

I watched SNL from the first episodes. I guess I missed that one.

***

the Southern feeling of injured pride and neglect cannot possibly be assuaged by anything real. It simply isn't reality-based, and that list serves as a reminder.

I'm guessing that you mean the injured pride and neglect from the Democratic Party as it relates to politics? I don't disagree with that. But those Democrats weren't allowed onto the ticket as an act of pure kindness by the DNC. They fought tooth and nail to get there. They also share one trait in common that the DNC seems to have lost along the way, and that is the understanding that the Democratic party is supposed to represent lower and middle-class America and NOT corporate America. Thanks a lot, Terry McAuliffe. Besides, the guys you mention are mostly populists. Like Bush. The populist almost always wins, even when he's the opposite of a populist and the poor voters just think he's a populist.

If, on the other hand, you mean the injured pride and neglect resulting from the raping and pillaging of the South's economic resources by Northern economic systems in pretty much the same ways the U.S. (and its proxies in the IMF and World Bank) currently treats its third-world "trading partners," I'm afraid that I do disagree. But the world is different now. It's virtual and you can put a business anywhere. The Southern economies are actually growing quite nicely now for the most part.

As I said, I have no injured pride where the confederate south is concerned. My mother's side of the family is Scots-Irish and my Father's is Hispanic. The last thing in the world I'm going to identify with is a confederate flag. I'm a big boy now, but I grew up on the receiving end of every racist slur and insult that you can imagine as a result of being brown. I try not to have a chip on my shoulder, but I do have my ears and mind open to arguments that contain anything condescending or logically fallacious. On the other hand, satire and general-purpose dissidence and smartassedness I love.

I will also note that I do not think of anyone as a "Northerner" any more than I think of them as a "Westerner."

***

It's the anti-Christian nature of the religious right that makes them so hostile to liberal Democrats. They've never gotten over being exposed as being morally wrong over segregation. And they never will.

I agree completely. But people need to understand that the religious right is not Christian except in name. Republicans use the term Christian in the same way that they use terms like Death Tax and Pro-Life. It suits a purpose that has little or nothing to do with Christianity as it is described in the New Testament.

Religions can be fundamentalist, but so can any other social institution. Fundamentalists are ideologues who are incapable of changing their minds, even when reality in the form of gravity or other fundamental forces of nature beat them over the head. The Christian Right is an electoral minority who has made a deal (i.e, formed a coalition much like a parliamentary coalition) with the devil to have their way in politics. If the Rapture doesn't occur sometime in the next 100 years, they will probably move on to something else.

It is a bait and switch tactic (not something I'm accusing you of) to take what is worst in the radical wing of Christian politics and use it as a placeholder for the concept of spirtuality. Spirituality is something of great human value. Art, culture, religion and the spiritual go hand in hand and always have. I would ask any reader to note that entire civilizations rise, fall and disappear, but their art remains. Why is that?

Also, why is it nobody gets their underwear in a wad over Buddhists?

Secular humanists do not have a monopoly on separation of church and state doctrine. "Render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's; and unto God the things that are God's." That's the message, correct?

***

None of this is to excuse the Gilded Age industrialists. But to think that they were predominantly focused on exploiting the South, and/or that their exploitation was the key dynamic, is to seriously misread American history.

I don't think that corporations and the the individuals who most profit from them are really interested in exploiting people just for the sake of exploiting them. I do think that industrial and financial economics that is not balanced by social economics will almost always lead in a race to the bottom where costs in the form of labor and materials are concerned. I am very familiar with the ways in which tariffs, taxes and regulations and other forms of law are used to transfer wealth from weaker nations and states to stronger nations and states. We are living in a global economy and things are changing. The future may be very different in the future. But up to this point, the spoils have gone to the victor.

You're awesome.

Have you ever been to New Orleans, Shooter? It is one of the most unique cities in the world. The only other city in America that bears comparison to it is San Francisco.

There you are as always - dependable, intractable, untouched by reality, to add your "The End" to every thread.

Your statement reminds me of a book by Richard Brautigan which ended with "endings going faster and faster, more and more endings, faster and faster until this book is having 186,000 endings per second"

Sort of like what happened to New Orleans.