An Appreciation
When we have a moment to reflect in the coming days on this week's election, we might pause to consider and appreciate what the people living among the farms and cornfields of Indiana, in the old textile towns of North Carolina, and in the hollows of West Virginia said when they stood and voted this week. What they said, whatever else they have have thought or felt, was that we have overcome.
If this is true, such a statement comes closer than anything else can to fulfilling the ancient hopes of our nation's founders, when they sought, in establishing our republic, to form a more perfect union.
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Not sure what you are talking about from the West Virginia perspective.
Some of us around here are trying to figure out why most voters in our state, especially from the hollers, continued for the third time in a row (2000, 2004, 2008) to vote against their economic and true social interests.
We have concluded that it really was not about race. It is primarily from ignorance. Keep in mind that the ignorance of our mountain folk is not synonomous with level of intelligence and it has often been a shield against the pyschological effect of having little control over our destinies (see any competent history of the development, control and robbery of our natual resources by outside financial interests back to the early 1800's).
The red state status is directly related to the lack of neutral media outlets and utter paucity of cleft of center views. The notable exception to this paucity of information is the Charleston Gazette.
The rest of the news to our citizens is via (1) the rest of the newspapers around the state that get their news article from the AP and have strong right wing red state views (way past traditional conservative);
(2) TV and radio outlets, most of which are under consolidated ownership control of West Virginia Media Holdings and spew forth either the Fox News propaganda (TV) or Rush and Sean on the radio -keep in mind that we West Virginians spend lots of time in the vehicle getting to the few good jobs around the state; and
combined at election time with (3) the preachers and priests that jump on the abortion issue bandwagon just before the elections and the NRA that once again pushed the "Dems will take away your guns" meme.
No, it is not racial (deep southern coal mining Boone County with hardly any blacks was one of seven of 55 WV counties that went Obama). It is the propaganda and brain washing that WV has endured. We will be a little behind the rest of the country in catching up.
November 8, 2008 10:32 AM | Reply | Permalink