Heartland rural white Americans are Bush's victims. They are the ones most of all having their jobs shipped overseas, their health care diminished, their energy prices jacked up, their communities turned into corporate-owned Bush crony mafias and the real roots of their blue collar struggles erased by bland conformity, closet racism and enforced ignorance.
In actuality, country-western music is rooted in the blues, the white man's blues and black man's blues. Johnny Cash, Waylon and Willie all picked cotton as kids. Hank Williams, Jimmie Rogers and Roy Acuff sang the raceless workingman's blues, but now the GOP has claimed Nashville and turned it into some kind of bloodless, whites-only American Idol nationalistic rightwing song.
A bunch of horseless clean-cut phony cowboys and ditzes with big hair have taken over for the real thing. Willie Nelson is 100 times the Texan GW Bush is, and so is Molly Ivins.
Time to go back to Luchenbach Texas and get the real roots back. Time to wake up the southern man and make him realize he's sided with the big boss men running the mines, factories and political fat cat machine, who have put his people out of work, slashed their health care and safety standards. Time to get that outlaw spirit back and tell Karl Rove to go stuff it. The south was much better off under Jimmy Carter and Bill CLinton. That was the New South, the best south, the strong and unified south. |
