idea on the south

[pbrower2a]

The South has alternated between reactionary phases in which the political life exists almost entirely to endorse the will of the dominant elites (slavemasters at one time, post-Civil War landowners another, sweatshop exploiters, and now corporatists of no regional or even national loyalty). Then you have Reconstruction, the Populist movement, the New Deal, and the Civil Rights struggle.  The reactionary phase in the South may have peaked.

The Reactionaries promise security and then give repression and the shaft. Security always comes with a strong dose of nostalgia for delights that the always-small middle class finds comforting for itself but that depend upon the exploitation and immiseration of the masses. Eventually the masses incorporate material increasingly subversive of the old order and nobody catches on.

This time the Reactionaries depend upon pie-in-the-sky religiosity as a salve for economic distress. It can't work forever.