Great writeup, gonna have to read that one. I'm in Michigan, and I know of 1 town in
southern Mi that is infamous for being a KKK stronghold in the early 20th century, and is
still known as being very much in the KKK camp, at least partially. So I totally get
that it is not just a "Southern thing ".

To me, one of the "best" sales jobs in American history was the brainwashing the
Southern aristocrats and planters laid on the poor white sharecroppers and laborers, in the
leadup to the Civil War. To get them to go off and battle the Union forces in order to
"maintain their way of life", when their way of life totally sucked for them, is
astounding. I get that we can't look thru the lens of our 21st century viewpoint and judge
19th century behavior, but that was some sales job,lol. The movie " Free State of Jones"
was a depiction of how I think I would have felt had I been a Southerner back then. But
who knows, I probably would have been as uneducated and living on the edge of poverty as
the average working person in those days. A hungry stomach and the fear of not knowing where
or when your next meal is coming from can cloud your judgement.

I am watching with interest the southern MAGA reaction to the lack of FEMA response
to the most recent tornado's that have rolled thru there. These are real life examples
of what they can expect from Trump. And those people know better than me that the natural
disaster season hasn't even really started yet down there. Elections have consequences,
we'll see if the pathetic "response" from Trump and FEMA has an effect on their opinion
of MAGA. Based on the lessons of the Civil War, the odds are it won't, the majority of
them will take the metaphorical bullet for MAGA, even though Trump has as much in
common with them as the plantation owners of the Civil War era had in common with the sharecroppers.