It's Not Even Past

Remember the old old South with brave hearts and fair ladies, with grateful, dutiful slaves and Jeanie with the Light, Brown Hair?  No, neither do I. Well then, remember the old South, with sharecropping and lynching where pellagra makes you scrawny? 

Remember how hard it was to throw that all away:

[S]elf-satisfied, complacent. They will not be diverted from their smugness, their unwillingness to look critically at what they are, with the result that throughout their history anyone who has attempted to point out to them the extent to which they are being used and manipulated for the benefit of those in power has been unable to get anywhere. Conversely, those who have flattered their self-esteem and confirmed them in their prejudices have been able to manipulate them to vote and act contrary to their own economic and political interests. ... [T]he average Southern white refused to recognize the divergence between his interests and those of the very wealthy, complacently preferring things as they were to a fairer share of the benefits of government, and allowing himself to be easily beguiled into voting his prejudices instead of his economic welfare.

 No?  Well then, remember the new South that put all the old stuff behind us?  Where blacks would gain from the new industry and industry would gain from desegregation and new-age carpetbaggers like Newt Gingrich didn't care about the burden of history because they weren't there and didn't want to look back?

Remember--Oh hell. Check:  Poverty.  Obesity.  Divorce. Disconnected youth.  Death of the American Dream.

Remember what Faulkner said about the past in the South: It's not even past.