After all the back-and-forth about how things in real life are complicated (as opposed to simple, just the way we like 'em); and how there can be angels and assholes in the same community, sometimes w/ similar (perhaps identical)agendas; and big tents and exclusive tents, on and on -- we're still floundering in the ancient morass we crated as we grew. We are a nation of 300+ million people. Getting a consensus in a group of more than 5 of us is sometimes a challenge. There are no "blocks". What helps me sometimes hurts my neighbor and vice versa. Yet, there ARE viable methods of governing, all of which take the work of engaging ourselves in unfamiliar and sometimes uncomfortable dialogues. The time to be doctrinaire is way long gone. It's time to trust ourselves and demand of our leaders something better. Maybe we'll get it.

for the letters from the Appalachia-conversant in this thread. I've learned a lot; thanks, y'all.

there probably isn't a single hillbilly reading this!:)

Nick Rahall could only run on his "pork record" after getting elected. Many West Virginians can actually find Lebanon on a map, because there were Lebanese-Americans living in WV before Nick Rahall was elected. This is celebrated every year when Wheeling hosts the Lebanese-American Heritage Festival. Fact is that most people in the state don't care where you're from as long as you can legally hold office and don't care what color you are as long as they can see some reason why they should vote for you. If Nick Rahall can get elected in WV then Obama should be able to, as well, and it's not Muslim rumors stopping him. It's because Obama has weak policies and the state prefers a centrist over someone they see as liberal and inexperienced.

For the record, Lebanon also has the highest percentage of Christians in the Middle East, an estimated 40%. Just some fun trivia.

Where did I attack you for your sexual orientation? I observed that you described yourself as a "dyke" and that you said you had a bad experience in WV. That likely has more to do with you and your personal issues. And describing the state as a "backwards nest of snake handlers" shows you are a religious bigot as well.

You initiated this conversation with ME, so you don't tell me to "piss off." I responded to your immediate, unwarranted sarcasm directed toward me. I looked over your posts realizing that you yourself embody the things you disdain like vapidity or superficiality, and I pulled two quotes to illustrate that.

I once again made the case that you're a miserable person who chooses to project that onto everyone around you. You admitting that you're fat comes as no big surprise. You can't be content or comfortable in your own skin, so why would it matter whether you're in WV or anywhere else? You have misrepresented a group of people, because you were miserable growing up in WV. That's not the fault of the people who live there.

It took many years for my light bulb to go on -- the short form of this is that urban liberal types look JUST AS weird and exotic (and therefore viewed with a wariness) and the Appalachians and Suthreners do to us.

I remember my wife coming home from her job when we lived in Houston, where we'd recently arrived (we were both raised in Pennsylvania), and saying "I just realized we were TAUGHT to consider people with that accent ("Y'all... etc) as dumb.

Hell, Lenny Bruce talked about it in the 60's, that LBJ had a mind as keen as Schopenauer's, but as soon as he opened his mouth ("Mah fellow 'mericans...") us Yankees said "Hell, he don't know NOTHIN' He can't even talk good like us."

Nearly every white person in America has been taught since childhood to have some combination of fear and dislike for black men (Eunuchoid-looking Cutie-pies like Gary Coleman are ok, though.) So make that adult virile black men, teenage or older. And it seems to take every day of your life to shed it and KEEP shedding it. When I told this to a neighbor of mine, a black man from Jamaica, he said in surprise, "You're the first white man who ever admitted that." To which I could only say "Most white men don't actually know that."

We have been fortunate over the years in that my car's engine exploded while in Houston and it took every cent we had to fix it, meaning we were finding work to get back to San Francisco by which time I had met and become friends with some amazing and brilliant Texans. (Well, I don't know about "brilliant" because that's sort of self-aggrandizing. Let's just say a lot of them were a lot smarter than I am.) By the time we returned to the Bay Area, I could see the sophisticated prejudices my friends had against computers and suthreners.

We have also been fortunate to only afford a house in a relatively unknown neighborhood in Oakland -- thoroughly integrated -- about 50% black, 25-30% white and the rest "Other." Because this gets to the crux of it ... many people, regardless of locale or station, are what they used to call "Intellectually bigoted." These people (most of us) think "Oh those -----" (Fill in the blank of the appropriate otherness.)

But have no problem being friendly, even close with people of that category.

So it comes down to "when you know one of THEM as a person (white, black, hillbilly, metrosexual, gay, lesbian, French, Persian, WASP, Arab, etc) it turns out they're just like real people -- some delightful, most sort of OK, and some annoying nasty and unpleasant people you just want to kick."

What a shock.

A few years ago, I watched an interview on CSPAN with General Wesley Clark, a man who'd been there and done that and actually ended a war he didn't start, explaining why the best possible outcome in Iraq could be a grade of C-minus. The interviewer asked "Not even a C-plus? And General Clark said "C-minus is reaching, meaning if we changed course RIGHT NOW and did everything right we MIGHT get up to C-minus, but it's not likely." And the interviewer asked why. And Clark said something that caused the interviewer's jaw to drop as if someone had just explained Quantum Physics to him -- "Because people are pretty much the same everywhere -- if you bomb their houses and kill their friends and neighbors, they get angry."

To whatever degree, we as a society have devolved to the point where people don't seem to understand that THEY are MORE OR LESS like us and that if anyone is not LIKE us or doesn't AGREE with us, there must be some REASON (they're bigoted, they're too urban, too unsophisticated, too dumb, too smug and acting smart, etc).

It can't just be that their lives and points of view are different from ours. But every bit as valid. Even their prejudices, the ones we see, are just as valid as OUR prejudices (the ones we DON'T see),

It's a two-way street.