corrente

I came to this by way of John and his excellent blog.

Barry Crimmins:

So Hillary is no better than a dope who walks in a hick bar on a Friday night and says-- See that guy over there who looks different than us? He says we's all ignorant! Let's get 'em!

I'd say she should be ashamed of herself but it's way too late to believe the woman is capable of feeling embarrassment. Her last hope are those the village never bothered to raise.

Read that whole post. See: Hoods in the 'hood

Crimmins is talking about the northern tier of PA - the borderlands - where northern PA meets New York's southern tier. The area here is Tioga county and as Crimmins mentions, including Lawrenceville just to the north of Tioga, at the junction of 15 (running north south) and 49 (running east west). Look at the map. One thing here to note is that several years ago an adrift faction of the Aryan Nations (after they were run out of Hayden Lake Idaho) made an attempt to set up a new HQ in this area... near Ulysses PA (which is on Rte 49) as I recall.

I can tell you that what Crimmins is describing isn't necessarily unusual. Right down to the idiots grooving to the back porch swing-twang of what amounts to the likes of Karl Klang - which gives hillbilly music a bad name.

I know where to find these idiots myself if I want to find some idiots (which i don't) although in more recent years the more vocal elements of the species I'm familiar with seem to have retreated back into their hidey holes (the so called "militias" in the area have disbanded any attempts at organization - including one which was connected to the Michigan Militia some years ago - when their fearless leader hot-footed it back to whatever other outpost of lunacy he had escaped from). All this retreat following the heyday of right wing paramilitary and Christian Identity white supremacy evangelism in the mid and late 90s. But, nevertheless, these pockets of wrath and rage and racist socio-political retardation still carry on. And although they seem to have been run up on the rocks of their own foul shores their sullen backlash sailors still tend to remote harbors tucked away in the tangled weeds and woodlots and waystations of a forsaken - and all too often dangerously - bitter - American rust belt wasteland. Biding their time like so many smugglers crouched and waiting in the mangroves for the next new moon to beckon.

And if you have ever ventured down these rural highways you might even come to understand why the more extreme elements of this lost and left behind remnant people - sectioned out as so much carion on the cheap labor-con menu - have come to resent the so called wonders of the so-called new economy (or whatever the fuck they call it now). And why their resentment can be (although far too often misdirected) none the less infectious.

Send us David Brooks... we need something nervous to shoot at!

Uh yes. Anyway...

It would do people like Hillary Clinton good to not mock -- with cheap tricks of feint and subterfuge -- chased with toasts of imported Crown Royal (becuzz you'd think that at least she would have the common fucking sense to get shitfaced on some sweaty corn mash and squished earthwom blend of cheap Bardstown American Ohio River water whiskey!) - But Noooooo!

It would do people like Hillary Clinton good to not mock the reality of the ecomomic 'black blizzard" that was NAFTA and related deregulation - the howling whore-squall of think tank noise and treachery tearing the prairie grasses from its traditional anti-erosion anchor - and the other assorted Neo-Liberal pie in the sky fantasies which came to bury the land under the cleverly sifted silt of so much disaster capitalism - and not to mock the anger and bitter harvest that it ultimately produced - for which both she and her greasy bombastic bullshit plow-back husband helped sow.

Well, ya might think that. And it would probably git ya labled an "elitist" and "out of touch". So be it. Makes me want to gas up a HD Softail Cross Bones and ride the hollows and highway 49s flying a black flag that reads "I’m in touch. I know exactly what’s going on."

Ride a dark horse!

N N N N

"I'd like to make it clear to the people who run the Democratic Party that I will not support Hillary Clinton for president. Enough. Enough triangulation, calculation and equivocation. [...] Do not sit there cowering and pretending the only way to win is as Republican-lite. If the Washington-based party can't get up and fight, we'll find someone who can. ~ the late great Molly Ivins, Jan 20, 2006.

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