Making Sense of the South and other Futile Pursuits

My wife Lisa and I just returned from a 13 day trip to the South.  We had a chance to see three of our five children and two of the grandchildren in three different cities.  It really was a terrific couple of weeks with lots of exploring and playing on the beaches.  The nonstop activities of pool, pickleball, dining, swimming, with a little bit of hiking kept my mind off the feeling I always get while in the South…that is, why is the South so solidly “red”? 

Except for Georgia in 2020, which Biden eked out, the margin of victory for trump across the South has been truly staggering.  I’m sure the political scientists will continue to analyze the data as we head into what looks like another nail-biter in 2024, but for us amateurs, it remains a genuine point of curiosity.  The easy answer, which is far too simple, is that trump is a racist and people in the South are racist, so there we have it.   But surely it’s far more complicated than that.  What is it about the South, which is home to the 12 poorest states in the Union, that makes an alleged billionaire conman so attractive to so many people?

trump’s margin of victory in the poorest states during 2020 (the election he lost) ranged from 12% in South Carolina all the way to 33% in Oklahoma.  Those are enormous margins of victory signaling that regardless of who wins the presidential election in 2024, the South will remain in trump’s camp. But why?

As he lies his way through another campaign, trump continually promises things that only the very rich can benefit from.  How have so many people been so badly fooled by what trump represents?

Right before our trip we finished a series on Prime called “Bad Faith”.  It ought to be required watching for anyone who worries about our country’s future.  The person who is arguably the least “Christian” leader since Julius Caesar has somehow captured the imagination and the unwavering dedication of those who think of themselves as Christian (spoiler alert: they’re not.) The billions of dollars flowing from the thin wallets of the southern poor into their “churches” and into trump’s coffers defies explanation.  The preachers and mega-wealthy entrepreneurs of the southern mega-churches will have a lot to answer for in the afterlife they claim to care so much about.  How they live their lives does not match up in any way with the way they want the rest of us to live ours.  Somehow they have convinced a whole lot of people to fund their excesses as a gesture of devotion to “Christian nationalism”…a concept that Christ himself would have cast from the temple in a heartbeat.  Yet the poor continue to sell their souls for the benefit of the wealthy preachers and wealthy conmen (or was that redundant?). 

These were the thoughts that wandered through my mind as we drove for hours across the South.  It wasn’t until we stopped in Franklin, Tennessee that the light came on.  Civil War buffs will know that one of the last battles of the war took place here and it was a devastating rout by the Union forces.  The South lost 15 generals that day and over one-third of their troops.  The South was never able to mount a serious offensive again and a couple of months later Lee surrendered to Grant at Appomattox Courthouse, Virginia.  

Unlike the famous battlefields at Gettysburg, Harpers Ferry, Bull Run, Antietam, etc., there is little at Franklin to commemorate the hallowed grounds that saw many agonizing deaths.  It was while touring what little there was to see that the light came on about why the South struggles so mightily to provide basic services for those who need them most and why poverty is the standard for so many southerners.  There’s a sign in the park that recounts the battle and as you can see from the picture below, it claims the South actually won the battle.  You won’t find a single reputable source that would come close to making that argument, but here it is in black and white for all to see.  

Like in so many other cases, the answer to our most confounding questions comes back to education.  If the young people of the South are being told that Franklin was a victory, what other lies are part of the curriculum?  I have written elsewhere about Texas social studies standards that teach young people in that fine state that Moses was a founding father and that enslaved people were actually “imported workers.”  In Louisiana creationism is taught on equal footing with evolution.  The South stays poor and uninformed, and seemingly happily sells their soul because those who should know better feed them a steady diet of lies and misinformation.  

Not convinced?  Here’s a list showing the most poorly educated states in the Union.  Weird, eh?  They are almost ALL in the South. (Nevada, California, and Arizona are also in the bottom 12)

38 Texas

39 Mississippi

41 Tennessee

42 Florida

43 North Carolina

44 Oklahoma

45 South Carolina

46 Alabama

49 Louisiana

In the end, poor education is directly related to poverty and inversely related to the amount of money and adoration the people of the South willingly give to the worst people our society produces.  As mega-entrepreneurs of mega-churces continue to prey on the poor in the name of their god, and as trump continues to prey on the poor for financial support, maybe it’s time for the poor to pray somewhere else.