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It's rainy and damp, but warm (for now), so [insert witty and/or logical transition here] I give you Link Salad (tm):

1) As I said Friday, I am no fan of the new TSA screenings. However, anybody who tells you that TSA is exempting Muslim women from pat-downs is wrong. Muslim women, even in burkas, get a pat-down if the screening machine says so.

2) Back in the day, I wrote a couple of articles about how, if (as their governor threatened to do) Texas seceded from the union, they'd be a warmer, bi-lingual Canada. Well, via Strange Maps, I give you US States with equivalent foreign GDPs. Note please that Canada and Texas have about the same GDP, with California having twice the GDP of Texas.

3) An interesting diary from a Southerner who grew up during the tail end of Jim Crow. It's worth reading the whole thing, but what I took from it was this:

And suddenly it hit me: There is no difference between the poor whites and the poor blacks. They both are wretchedly poor. Both suffer from malnutrition. Both drop out of school to work fields that long ago played out from too much of the same crop. Both drag cotton sacks behind them in August, picking cotton until their fingers bleed, hoping they can get a bale an acre and pay what they owe the landowner for rent and furnish.

To this day -- I am now 66 -- I marvel at the ability of the white power structure to keep poor whites and poor blacks from joining forces against them.
chris_gerrib: (Default)
So, my Law of Totem Poles post continues to cause debate. [livejournal.com profile] timakers wonders why the subject of slavery in America brings up such passion. He also deplores the tendency of some "civilized" people to bash and belittle the South.

Let me be clear - bashing the South for the sins of the Confederacy was not my intention. I've lived in the South and have friends and family down there. Stereotyping, bashing and labeling Southerners as stupid is wrong. But wondering why the subject of antebellum slavery still creates heat is an interesting one. I think there are two interrelated factors.

The first factor is what I call the "high school football coach theory of history." One of the people who taught history in my high school was also the football coach. He taught an unquestioned "America was always right" version of history. Now, I do think the USA is the greatest country in the world (and I'll defend that to my Canadian readers ETA and other foreigners), but "greatest" is not "always right." In fact, admitting we're wrong and fixing it is part of what makes us great.

The second factor, and linked to the first, is that this "football theory" of history has gotten linked to the American political right. So, people who advocate for right-wing positions tend to use this version of history to support their views. It gets even more pernicious and frankly insulting when people who point out that America was not always right are branded by these same folks as "unpatriotic" or "un-American."

So, when I see a sitting Governor of the State of Texas idly talk about leaving the Union, and saying "we left once - we can do so again" - well, I see a bit of red.
chris_gerrib: (Default)
So, a recent poll says 48% of Republicans in the state of Texas think that they would be better off as an independent nation. I’m not sure I agree with that, but, since I’m a science fiction writer, let’s play with that concept for a minute.
cut to spare F-lists )
I think that if Texas were to secede, they would end up very much like a warmer Canada. That is, a small bilingual country with close economic and military ties to the USA. Mind you, Canada is a fine place.

But the hypothetical "Republic of Texas" would need more than a little luck to pull this off. If not, well, the Mexican Senate has room, and Mexico wouldn’t have to redesign its flag. I think there might be a story out of this.

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