Hey, who would have guessed southerners are polite and tolerant, and don’t assault, verbally or otherwise, people who express views different than them. What kills me about stories like this, is the authors pretty clearly did not mean to drip cultural condescension, but it nonetheless comes through.
Does this guy really think people in the South never met an atheist before? I’ll be honest, some of the most provincial people I’ve met come from the urban Northeast, not the South.
As a general matter, and having grown up in the north and having lived throughout the Northeast, I find Northeasterns – by orders of magnitude – to be more racist, more condescending, more intolerant, more provincial, more hostile to others, and just more plain rude than anyone anywhere else in the country.
Suan is a world class asshole. And it sounds like he wears it on his sleeve. Of course folks ignored him. Their probably significantly better educated them him, almost surely have a stronger work ethic and higher income than him, and are generally smarter than him (seriously, who the hell spends all that time and money going to school studying religion simply to shit on it) and clearly have better things to do than engage some asshole yankee idiot.
Why would they waste their time??
It’s quite simple.
It simply wouldn’t be polite.
Roots deep in the south, but I’ve traveled some. A narrow world view is not unique to a region. I bet few realize that one of the strongest Aryan Nation regions is central Idaho.
Oh, I could go on. Look up the locations of the NASCAR tracks this season… Not all southern. Last I looked, the largest gay/lesbian community outside of San Francisco was…Atlanta (admittedly, haven’t looked in awhile). Etc. And I finally got tired of people sticking their fingers in their ears with that lalalalalalalala sound. I decided they were irrelevent to me, and moved on with life.
I think he does have the kernel of the idea down, in that polite discussion of opposing viewpoints is a healthy thing. He just wasn’t getting to it the right way. People here generally would not be so forward as to approach him for it.
Wow just wow, here is a fellow whose idea of substantive debate is [unironically] wearing a slogan on a T-shirt. Boldly flogging a 1956 Dead Horse, he’s like a parody of himself.
Real “provincials” came by it honestly: they lived by local custom, cut off by geography and economics from the rest of the world. We need a new definition of provincial now that my house trailer has a dish and Amazon ships parcel post. The trait appears to obtain more in university campuses than in mountain (still, properly pronounced (MANT-un) crossroads. Perfesser Insty keeps axin’, who’s the rube?
I studied Attic Greek under an unapologetic pothead and H-D mechanic, emphatically not on a tenure track. He’d spent quality time at both Oral Roberts (in the 70’s, best primary classical source library in North America) and Bob Jones. He reported being accepted at face value, as a scholar, at both “theocracies.”
Bay-Aryans are more provincial than a village Brahmin.
I’m down in the Outer Banks for the first time. The last time I was this far south was a few years ago in Richmond. On both occasions, I’ve been shown unbelievable hospitality by the locals, Better than anything I’ve gotten in NYC or Bah-ston.