Economic Opportunity Is Lowest In the Republican Bible Belt, Major Study Finds

From AlterNet:

In other words: virtually all of this nation’s class-rigidity still remains in the U.S. South, even after the Civil War. New Dixie has replaced the aristocracy’s black slaves of Old Dixie, by the local (white) aristocracy’s institutionalized bigotry against poor people, now of all ethnic groups. What used to be their purely racist bigotry has, it seems, devolved into a crushing, pervasive, classist, bigotry in the South.

And

It might also be worth noting that, even today, the purely racist tendency of the aristocracy is so great that it often is strong enough to outweigh their greed—discrimination is practiced even when it's unprofitable. So: the traditional leftist "explanation" for conservatism (that it's purely based on greed) is false. The understanding that leftists have of rightists is basically the mirror-image of the way Fox News characterizes leftists.

More here.

To me, of course, this comes as absolutely no surprise.  Conservative economics do nothing but run the economy into the ground.  Consequently, in states where conservatives have total control, the economy has been run into the ground.  And nowhere do they have more control than the South, America's third world nation within a nation.  Needless to say, this bolsters the connection I've been trying to make for many months now between modern conservatism and old fashioned racism.  While not directly connected in any sort of conscious ideological sense, they are, in the US, two sides of the same coin: there are masters, who do as they please, which is their God given right, and there are servants, who are to shut up, get in line, and do as they're told.  In some of the most important ways, the new aristocracy isn't too terribly different from the old one.

The South has risen again.  And it's coming to your town soon, if you're not living there already.  It seems to be our inevitable fate: neo-feudalism.

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