I think it's actually gotten better really, it's just that it's always been far worse than anyone ever thought. Having a black man in the white house has brought to the surface all of the crazies that before were content to sit in their trailers in obscurity, that didn't even bother to vote because they might miss a rerun of Dukes of Hazzard on CMT. And republican politicians have realized that if they just pepper their speeches with the word "God" here and there and make a big show of "defying the big man nigger" in office, they'll have droves of fucking hillbilly morons turn out to vote for them. And these assholes influence everyone else, it's like some kind of idiot herd-mentality that brainwashes you by drowning you in it. You all saw me mired in it when I was still working in that piss-ant town my father's store is in from 1999-2004, when I was having what I can only describe as some sort of conservative fucking seizure. I've been a liberal and registered democrat since I was eighteen, I voted for Clinton both terms, and after a year or so of being thrown into the shallow end of the gene pool it even affected me. You can fucking benchmark the point that I went on disability, got away from all those jackasses, and started to think straight again. It makes me sick to my stomach.
But if you go into the larger cities, the urban areas of the small towns, it's not so bad. Queers aren't chased through the streets or even talked down to, really, but I still suspect that half of the locals only leave them alone because they're afraid of what the other half would think of them. But at least it keeps them in check so the appearances might make it the reality ten or twenty years down the line. Shit, I could have sworn I saw a woman in a burka headwrap a few weeks ago in the parking lot of Brookshire's. I wanted to get out of the truck and ask her if she was muslim, but I was afraid of making her afraid, which probably says a a lot of it right there.
Edit: It probably also doesn't help that I'm crazy as batshit. I was just telling some irc friends a couple nights ago (mostly yankees and canucks) while we were talking about Waffle House for some weird reason, that the first time I realized that I was crazy - like real crazy - was in a Waffle House at 2 AM in 1994, when me and one of my friends were eating cheap hamburgers anbd talking about existential shit, then she flashes me this grin and all of a sudden I'm absolutely convinced that he is Satan. Like, seriously. Scared out of my shit for a full minute until I came to my senses. I wasn't even high, I still don't know where the fuck it came from.
« Last Edit: July 11, 2012, 07:24:30 PM by Phaedrus »

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No one mourns the wicked.