===> That's the wonderment of it all ... where were the parents?

Earlier in my career I spent five years in North Texas and became familiar with how the people there thought. I also spent time in the coal country of Appalachia. It was a whole different universe then, and I don't think it's changed much since.

Southern Oregon boonies.

Ok, you got me at least a little.
If you read the text a little more carefully, you'd find that I wasn't attacking Christians as a religion, just the hypocrisy of some of the believers. And the unwillingness to accept or tolerate other viewpoints.
Yes, the justice system requires proof and conviction prior to someone being guilty. But I would ask you the question ... would you let your teenage daughter go out with Roy Moore? Inquiring minds want to know ...

It isn't often that I'm at a loss for words, but last Tuesday when the President answered a question I was speechless.
The question was: "Would you prefer a Democrat or a child molester elected to the Senate?" The answer was illuminating ... "we need the v**e in order to pass our priorities, and he said he didn't do it." This from the same president that believes the words of Vladimir Putin when he says that Russia didn't interfere in the p**********l e******n last year. "We report, you decide."
We have to remember some facts about this race for Senate in Alabama.
First, this is the heart of the old Confederacy. Outside of the metropolitan areas, the War of Northern Aggression was never won by the Union ... they just kindof called a ceasefire. This is 'bubba' country where the term 'redneck' is a badge of honor to be worn with p***e. Trying to take down a Confederate monument would come close to causing a modern day lynching. This is KKK country and the home of many w***e s*********t groups and m*****as.
Couple this with high percentage of evangelical Christians, and it becomes a volatile mix of 'relitics' which has become the basis of Roy Moores support. It's here that the Bible's 'law' becomes supreme and no "Washington liberal" is going to tell us what to do.
It's like a medieval castle that has deepened the moral moat and pulled up the intellectual drawbridge. It bristles with the 'slings and arrows of outraged fortune' and unleashes them whenever challenged. "My mind is made up, don't confuse me with the facts."
These are people who wear their morality on their sleeves. They proudly profess to be "God-fearing, church-going people" of high moral character. I have to wonder if they still sacrifice livestock at the altar, eat shellfish or pork, or work on the Sabbath ... all of which are required or prohibited if they are going to claim this moral high ground.
The last time I checked, having this temperment would preclude having anything to do with someone who had sexual proclivities for young children. But somehow, they are willing to overlook nine women and numerous Gadsden law enforcement retirees who had first-hand encounters with the judge, or were told to not let him anywhere close to teenage girls. They're willing to support someone that they wouldn't let within hollering distance of their own teenage daughters.
If I were to try to make this moral connection, I would have to tie my mental processes into a giant Gordian Knot. It would require such a disconnect of competing thought streams that I would probably be considered legally schizophrenic.
And yet it persists. And it isn't just rural Alabama. If you scratch the surface of the rural countryside anywhere from east Texas to Georgia and Mississippi to Appalachia and the Ozarks, you'll find varying degrees of the same sentiments. This is the countryside of 'Easy Rider' and 'Deliverance'. Time has warped or stopped for many of the communities.
Change isn't going to come easy to this area. Those moral precepts that they take from the Bible, even with all the contradictions and convolutions, will continue to reign supreme and conflict with tolerant liberal social views for the foreseeable future.
But some of those conflicts I just can't wrap my brain around. How can it be that there is a 'sacred' marriage, but the man (or woman) has an affair or long-term relationship outside that marriage and people just wink and grin and look the other way. But you talk about a same-sex marriage and it's as though the lightning was going to strike from a clear sky and the earth open up and swallow you to hell.
"Oh well, we just h**e the sin but love the sinner." This is the countryside of Jim Baaker, who defrauded his flock of millions of dollars, went to prison, and now still claims a televangelistic flock of thousands. This is the countryside of Jimmy Swaggert who was caught with prostitutes in Louisiana and still commands the loyalty of thousands through his own satellite television channel. This is the countryside of Huey Long, the 'Kingfish' of Louisiana, who ran one of the most corrupt state governments in the country for a generation. This is the countryside of George Wallace, who proclaimed from the steps of the University of Alabama: "Segregation then, segregation now, segregation forever", as federal troops accompanied the first black student to enroll at that school. This is the countryside of 'Bull' Connor, the sheriff who confronted the marchers at the Edmond Pettis bridge at Selma with dogs and firehoses.
Given the history of this part of the country, it logically follows that these sentiments still simmer below the surface of 'southern hospitality' and 'genteel appearance.' If you don't believe this, just look at the number of Confederate f**g decals on NASCAR race cars and highway vehicles on southern roads. Roy Moore is just the symbol of that sentiment and ideology that the president pulled the scab from and is scratching the underlying wound.

OK, gang … have I got your attention yet? Good.
That small explosion occurred last night when I was reading some of the threads that other people have posted.
Bobby invited me to post here because he thought some of my posts to my private email thread deserved wider exposure. I thank him for his support.
But I post these thingies for a couple of reasons.
First, because I give a damn about what direction the country is going, as many of you all do also. Second, I'm looking for answers that make sense that could even be viable and solve some of the problems that the country faces.
What I found, for many entries, was either parroting of existing dogma that is issued by one side or the other, or personal attacks on the person that posted the previous (or original) entry. I didn't come here for that. I'm looking for solutions to the questions and opinions that I post.
I can't either ask or force anyone posting to change their behavior. First, because I wouldn't want anyone to do that to me, and secondly, because there's no way to enforce it if I wanted to. Thirdly, in some cases, it only aggrevates the author of the entry to worse behavior.
" Never try to teach a pig to sing,
not only does it waste your time,
but it annoys the pig."
Robert Heinlein

All I can do is ask that on my original posts, you abide by the following guidelines:
1. Be civil and respect the opinions of others.
2. If you disagree with all or a part of the original post, say that and back it up with facts or reasons that you feel
are relevant.
3. Be willing to accept that there may be a smidgen (or more) of t***h to what the other person is saying.
4. Be willing to offer and (perhaps) accept a compromise so as to get to a viable solution to the question or
opinion that the post posed.
5. And, as Patrick Swazye said in the movie Roadhouse to his would-be bouncers, "Be nice."

Thass all. A simple request. The country is far too divided in many respects to find agreeable compromises to problems that affect all citizens, and we're paying the price for that loss of discussion and civility. Maybe here we can inject a little bit of that civility and stop the tennis match of insults and disparaging remarks in the post replies.
I realize that some of you have been doing this for years, don't take it personally, and enjoy the combat, and this may take the fun out of it. If that's your bag, fine. Just not in my backyard, please.
I can always take my marbles and go home if it gets bad. I reserve that option.

WOW!!! I can see that as a newcomer here, I'm gonna have to keep my head down to avoid the crossfire. Nothing like trench warfare to clarify the vision.
As usual, there's a grain of t***h to both sides. IMHO, the charges against Moore have to be investigated and proven. However, his track record of defying federal authority twice and being removed from the Alabama Supreme Court twice make me dubious about his ability to get anything done in Washington, due to his inability to compromise on virtually any issue. And being a backbencher and throwing bombs doesn't accomplish much in D.C.
For my personal opinion, Moore's overt extreme positions based on his religion are his own, and I resent his trying to make his moral code on non-criminal matters of social 'justice' the law of the land. I fully support 'freedom of religion' and just as strongly support 'freedom FROM religion.'
Oh, and by the way, heated rhetoric without backing it up with facts doesn't do much for me either.
Just my humble opinion.
Your mileage may vary.
No refunds, no returns.
All sales are final.

Ain't no such thing, Bobby ... HooRah!!!

I apologize if these will be too long, but I'm a firm believer is putting forth the 'why' of what I'm saying as well as the conclusion. Sometimes that takes a bit of verbiage ... for that I'm sorry, but it probably ain't gonna change. I'll try to keep 'em to 800 words or so, or break them up into sections. Bobby has seen this before.

P.S. My opinions are worth as much as you have paid for them. So there!!!! LOLOLOLOL!!!

Thanks to all for not giving me an out-and-out roast!
Bobby has been a friend for a long time and he's right ... we disagree on a lot, but we're still friends.

I've been perplexed for a long time as to why the 'white nationalist/s*********t' mindset has been perpetuated for the century-and-a-half since the Civil War. So I decided to do a little research on that whole subject and I was amazed at how little I knew about the origins of the movement and how it was perpetuated.

To begin with, s***ery, primarily of peoples of African descent, was prevalent at the time of the writing of the Constitution. Even the state of New York, in 1789, allowed s***ery but abolished it prior to 1800. The Constitution even acknowledged the institution when it agreed to count s***es as 3/5 of a person for the purposes of the census and apportioning legislative seats.
The Jefferson administration in 1808 banned the importation of s***es, but the northern tier of s***e states sold/shipped their excess population of s***es south to work in the cotton fields.
The incorporation of the Louisiana Purchase created a rift between the Southern states, who depended on s***e labor for their agricultural needs, and the Northern states, who had ample labor pools for manufacturing. The southerners wanted to make any new states/territories equal in terms of whether they would be s***e-permitting or free entities. This was to preserve the balance of power in the Congress between s***e and free states.
By 1850 the animosity between the two factions had reached a level to where the cotton-growing states in the South were threatening to secede from the Union. When Lincoln won the presidency in 1860 on a platform of ending the expansion of s***ery, seven states in the south seceded (South Carolina, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas). Four others (Virginia, Arkansas, Tennessee, and North Carolina) joined the Confederacy once the Civil War began. The war actually started with the attack on Fort Sumpter in Charleston harbor. The rest is history.

The s***e culture in the South was always there from the first settling of the land. It was institutionalized in the early seventeenth century with the establishment of large plantations involved with the cotton trade. It was white-oriented and the black population was always considered to be property with no rights. There was only a five-generation spread between the start of the eighteenth century and the beginning of the civil war. There is an equal five generation spread between the Civil War and the present day.
Consider that the cultural norms of the south had one-hundred-sixty years to mature and be ingrained into the social structure before the Civil War. That social structure which took a century-and-a-half to build was torn apart in the space of five years.
In the TV film 'Gettysburg', the writers have the following explanation of secession between General George Pickett and the British envoy to the Confederacy:
"Suppose that we all joined a club, a gentlemen's club. After a time, several of the members began to intrude themselves into our private lives, our home lives. Began telling us what we could and couldn't do. Well, then, wouldn't any one of us have the right to resign? I mean, just resign. That's what we did. That's what I did and now these people are telling us that we don't havc that right to resign."
In addition, the only Civil War battle that was actually fought on Union territory was at Gettysburg - every other battle of the war was on Confederacy land. The soldiers of the Confederacy were theoretically then defending their home turf - which puts a more defensive and defiant attitude in place. I can only imagine how I would feel if my state were 'invaded' by the federal government and my way of life altered radically. The South considered the war to be 'The War of Northern Aggression.' Many still hold that opinion.
To amplify all these feelings, the Union armies were basically foraging, once they crossed the Mason-Dixon line. This meant that they were confiscating crops and livestock that most of the southerners were relying on to personally exist. Sherman, on his march to the sea, added insult to injury by burning most of the structures that he ran across, making it impossible for those affected to forgive and forget.

Once the war was over, Lincoln's primary objective was to make it relatively easy for the Confederate states to rejoin the Union. His assassination left his Vice-President, Andrew Johnson to carry out those policies. I quote extensively from Wikipedia for a while:

At the end of May 1865, President Andrew Johnson announced his plans for Reconstruction, which reflected both his staunch Unionism and his firm belief in states’ rights. In Johnson’s view, the southern states had never given up their right to govern themselves, and the federal government had no right to determine v****g requirements or other questions at the state level. Under Johnson’s P**********l Reconstruction, all land that had been confiscated by the Union Army and distributed to the freed s***es by the army or the Freedmen’s Bureau (established by Congress in 1865) reverted to its prewar owners. Apart from being required to uphold the abolition of s***ery (in compliance with the 13th Amendment to the Constitution), swear loyalty to the Union and pay off war debt, southern state governments were given free reign to rebuild themselves.
As a result of Johnson’s leniency, many southern states in 1865 and 1866 successfully enacted a series of laws known as the “black codes,” which were designed to restrict freed b****s’ activity and ensure their availability as a labor force. These repressive codes enraged many in the North, including numerous members of Congress, which refused to seat congressmen and senators elected from the southern states. In early 1866, Congress passed the Freedmen’s Bureau and Civil Rights Bills and sent them to Johnson for his signature. The first bill extended the life of the bureau, originally established as a temporary organization charged with assisting refugees and freed s***es, while the second defined all persons born in the United States as national citizens who were to enjoy e******y before the law. After Johnson vetoed the bills–causing a permanent rupture in his relationship with Congress that would culminate in his impeachment in 1868–the Civil Rights Act became the first major bill to become law over p**********l veto.
After northern v**ers rejected Johnson’s policies in the congressional e******ns in late 1866, Republicans in Congress took firm hold of Reconstruction in the South. The following March, again over Johnson’s veto, Congress passed the Reconstruction Act of 1867, which temporarily divided the South into five military districts and outlined how governments based on universal (male) suffrage were to be organized. The law also required southern states to ratify the 14th Amendment, which broadened the definition of citizenship, granting “equal protection” of the Constitution to former s***es, before they could rejoin the Union. In February 1869, Congress approved the 15th Amendment (adopted in 1870), which guaranteed that a citizen’s right to v**e would not be denied “on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.”
By 1870, all of the former Confederate states had been admitted to the Union, and the state constitutions during the years of Radical Reconstruction were the most progressive in the region’s history. African-American participation in southern public life after 1867 would be by far the most radical development of Reconstruction, which was essentially a large-scale experiment in interracial democracy unlike that of any other society following the abolition of s***ery. B****s won e******n to southern state governments and even to the U.S. Congress during this period. Among the other achievements of Reconstruction were the South’s first state-funded public school systems, more equitable taxation legislation, laws against racial discrimination in public t***sport and accommodations and ambitious economic development programs (including aid to railroads and other enterprises).
After 1867, an increasing number of southern w****s turned to violence in response to the revolutionary changes of Radical Reconstruction. The Ku Klux Klan and other w***e s*********t organizations targeted local Republican leaders, white and black, and other African Americans who challenged white authority. Though federal legislation passed during the administration of President Ulysses S. Grant in 1871 took aim at the Klan and others who attempted to interfere with black suffrage and other political rights, w***e s*******y gradually reasserted its hold on the South after the early 1870s as support for Reconstruction waned. R****m was still a potent force in both South and North, and Republicans became more conservative and less egalitarian as the decade continued. In 1874 – after an economic depression plunged much of the South into poverty – the Democratic Party won control of the House of Representatives for the first time since the Civil War.
When Democrats waged a campaign of violence to take control of Mississippi in 1875, Grant refused to send federal troops, marking the end of federal support for Reconstruction-era state governments in the South. By 1876, only Florida, Louisiana and South Carolina were still in Republican hands. In the contested p**********l e******n that year, Republican candidate Rutherford B. Hayes reached a compromise with Democrats in Congress: In exchange for certification of his e******n, he acknowledged Democratic control of the entire South. The Compromise of 1876 marked the end of Reconstruction as a distinct period, but the struggle to deal with the revolution ushered in by s***ery’s eradication would continue in the South and elsewhere long after that date. A century later, the legacy of Reconstruction would be revived during the civil rights movement of the 1960s, as African Americans fought for the political, economic and social e******y that had long been denied them.

Since the Second World War, these racial views left over from the Civil War have been merged and amplified by the Master-race theology of the Third Reich, and spawned a resurgance of the white-nationalist and white-s*********t movements.

With three-plus living generations within the family group, it's not difficult to see how attitudes and predjudices are passed down over the dinner table or informally in conversation. I can remember in my own family, getting the admonition from my mother: "I don't want you playing with" [fill in the blank]. That blank was many times 'that mexican kid' or some other group. It didn't matter that I got along fine but the subliminal social stigma of having the 'wrong associations' would win out every time.
This, of course, not only reinstituted segregation in the South, but reinforced it. This, then is the framework that has generated the distrust and anger at the federal government as well as the racial and ethnic hatreds that have emerged alongside it. And it's been within my lifetime that the civil rights movement and legislation has been passed and enforced. People that were brought up in the South pre-1960 are still with us and still possess those same r****t and sexist attitudes and predjudices. The residual resentment has been passed down from generation to generation, parent to child for the intervening one-hundred-fifty years. It will probably be two or three more generations before the more virulent aspects of the Civil War legacy are muted again.

I lived in Dallas, Texas, for a few years in the 1970's. Almost everywhere I turned, this same underlying current of antipathy was present. On the surface, it was southern hospitality and charm, but below the outward appearance, r****m and the culture wars were just a scratch away. I saw it first hand when three generations of a person I worked with all parroted the same racial views. The city (like most cities, and most not in the South) was still largely segregated and showed no signs of making major gains in integration of the schools or communities.
The current administration has given these groups an almost free hand to emerge from the shadows and proclaim their views. The 'bubbas' of the resentful South have combined with the m*****a movements and other racially-monolithic groups to form a toxic brew of formerly extreme views that are attempting to become mainstream.
To see these predjudices and ideaologies in action, I suggest watching the movie "A Time to K**l", starring Matthew McConeghey and Sandra Bullock. It encapsulates the way the South viewed racial stereotypes in the mid-twentieth century, and still retains much of that ideaology to this day. For some it will be a reminder, and for others an eye-opener. But for all, a potent insight in how far we have to go to eliminate or at least diminish the problem of race in this country.