A brief intro, or, what’s up with the rebel flag et al …

There’s way too much religion in the South to be consistent with good mental health. — George Carlin

WTF’s up with the Southern Swastika, you may be asking? Well, either you get parody, or you don’t. Either you see the humor in the Stone Mountain Laser Show, or you don’t. I.e. you either get the joke, or you don’t!

The legacy of bigotry and intolerance in the South is no laughing matter, of course. If you’ve lived here all your life like me, and were raised on Jack Chick tracts (believing they were fact, not fiction), and were dragged to Southern Baptist church every Sunday til you were 18, you either laugh, or you cry. Or, you go completely batshit insane — like I did. I’ve tried to see therapists about it, and the last one I saw laughed at me. I told him about the PTSD I suffered from growing up believing that the Rapture and Armageddon were going to happen any day now, and that the Four Horsemen and the Antichrist were going to show up at any moment, and he cracked up and told me I should be a stand-up comedian. Sooo … there you have it. The Devil went down to Georgia and they called him Jesus.

My home state flew the Confederate battle flag on its state flag from 1956 to 2003. Now we have another, more innocuous Confederate flag flying high. The Olympics came here during the period when we were flying the Rebel Flag. The Olympics also visited Nazi Germany and, now, Beijing. (Makes me wonder … Are the Olympics evil?)

So, why haven’t I left yet??? I guess b/c, for better or worse, it’s my home. There is a special vein of insanity in the South that can’t be duplicated. The city I live in has a law on the books requiring everyone to own a handgun. And, for some reason, a great number of Southerners enjoy Civil War re-enactment — I guess so they can lose over and over and over again!

On the other hand, we have the best food, (many of) the best writers, and (many of) the best bands/musicians (such as R.E.M., the B-52’s, Ray Charles and James Brown … and the Allman Brothers, if that’s your thing).

This is a very friendly, hospitable place, yet it’s also an incredibly warped and haunted place. Love it or leave it, they say … if the right opportunity arose, I might go. (Though I’d probably come back eventually!) But in the meantime, it makes great copy, and maybe, just maybe, us thinkin’ folk who stay behind can keep fighting the good fight and help drag our homeland into the 21st century. Even if it’s as small a start as being able to buy a 6-pack at Kroger on Sunday.

WANNA READ MORE BY ME???

In case you are too impatient to wait for my new stuff, there’s nearly a year’s worth of old posts on the last incarnation of this blog, Demented Dispatches from the Deep South.