I live in the deep South of the United States, Alabama to be exact. I recently finished “S-Town” (https://stownpodcast.org/), which is a podcast about Woodstock, Alabama, and its inhabitants, focusing in particular on a character worthy of Flannery O’Connor. This real person rails against all the same things we often rail against here about ills in the US, yet in an accent that forces us to examine our own prejudices.
Case in point:
“For a Northern, liberal NPR listener, hearing such things levelled against mostly conservative Southern whites, in a mellifluous spiel by a liberal Southern white man with a thick accent, is a mind-bender in itself—you feel implicated somehow, and voyeuristic.” (http://www.newyorker.com/culture/sarah-larson/s-town-investigates-the-human-mystery)
I’m a small, blue dot in a really red state, and I’ve personally experienced prejudice based on how I sound.
The type of liberal intolerance about which Zakaria is incensed is bogus. I offer one small example (one’s accent), but liberal intolerance does exist and it’s far more complicated than any of us would care to admit.
I’m proud of my intolerances as well. I don’t allow it in my home or in my life. When someone makes a statement that is racist/sexist/etc., I call them on it and consequences be damned. My son has a friend who is transgender and that certainly ain’t no easy road in Alabama.
The “banality of evil” is something against which those of us who live in really red states live fight daily. We work with these people, we have these people as neighbors. We know them as fully realized human beings with simultaneously horrible beliefs and vast kindnesses. When my neighbor shows up on my doorstep with a casserole after my husband had surgery, a neighbor who probably voted for Trump, am I supposed to throw that concoction of cream of mushroom and chicken in her face? I don’t know.
I choose to live here because a) it’s my home; and, b) I can make a difference by being here.
I guess I would say don’t abandon us that are trying to live here and fight the good fight.
