Neocon Kathleen Parker has written an amazing piece of tediously conventional anti-Southern trash in the Washington Post. Parker blames the dereliction of the GOP — which has become a party with barely noticeable distinctions from its Democratic opponent — on ignorant, right-wing, Bible-thumping rednecks. Miss Parker, in her bigoted sketch making modern Southerners look like slaveholder wannabees, refers to a sense of a resurgent Old South and all the attendant pathologies of festering hate and fear.

Miss Parker hilariously hallucinates with politically correct fantasies that bring forth visuals of the glorious North still fighting the Civil War, still trying to end slavery in the South. Perhaps she is fantasizing about a contemporary version of Abraham Lincoln, a known racist, when she comments that the Republicans should collectively drive a stake through the heart of Old Dixie. According to Parker, her GOP — the GOP that gave us the Security State, the Patriot Act, myriad wars, a militarized police state, a corporatist Wall Street, and the worst budget snafus ever — is the good GOP. Yet it’s been co-opted by these roving bands of skeptical Southerners, fighting the mega-socialist state being put forth by Obama and his committed minions. How dare they! If only they could all just get along and play the partisan game, we could move forward swimmingly and enjoy our lives under tyranny in unity and peace.

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As one who has grown up — and lives — in the land of the glorious, triumphant Union, and as one who has traveled extensively throughout the South since the early 1980s, learning about its people and its culture up close and personal, I have witnessed no greater polarization and racism than right here in the North. In fact, I invite Miss Parker (born in Florida, living in South Carolina) to come up here to Detroit if she wants to see hate, fear, and racism — of both the black and white variety.

Or perhaps, to save time, she can take the time to breeze through U.S. census data. It is well known that the most segregated cities in the U.S. are northern, and in fact, most data shows that they are midwestern industrial cities. Whether or not you use the 1990 census data or the 2000 data, the cities on the list remain consistent: Detroit, Milwaukee, Cleveland, Chicago, Buffalo, Gary, Newark, Cincinnati, etc. Yet since a few scattered Southern Republicans oppose the merging of the minds for a Republicrat-Demopublican joint force to subdue liberty once and for all, it must be that hate-racist thing rearing its reptilian head again.

I once considered Parker, who has written some wickedly fantastic social commentary, to be a constructive ally in the war against stupidity and political correctness. However, something called 9/11 happened that united the Republican party around the neocon party line, drumming up support for total state, total war, and the suppression of individual liberty through the Bush-Cheney faction’s war on terrorism. The you’re-either-with-us-or-against-us religion that materialized post-9/11 caused even the tongue-in-cheek conservatives, like Parker, to go bonkers with plastic patriot disease.

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