I spent my fall break at home, in one of the counties listed among the top twenty "Most Polluted" counties in America in a 2002 American Lung Association report.
Named for a hero of Reconstruction-era segregationists, Douglas County, Georgia, with its county seat at Douglasville, was incorporated by some Southern gentlemen who wanted to honor the memory of Steven Douglas, the Illinois senator who may not have been a racist but lived in the hearts of some Southerners as the man who debated Lincoln when the Great Emancipator stated that the republic could not endure "half-slave and half-free." Douglasville's Southern heritage includes "fergit, hell" types who once waved rebel flags at the now-defunct Robert E. Lee's Chuck-Wagon Diner. In more recent months, people of that persuasion have lobbied to keep the Confederate battle flag as part of the state flag. They insist that the flag involves a noble "heritage," but sadly that heritage includes the fact that the battle emblem was added to the flag after the Brown v. Board of Education decision as a show of defiance against federal pressure for school integration.
Recently former Georgia governor Lestor Maddox passed away. Local pundits back home who consider themselves bleeding-heart liberals bemoaned the fact that no one seemed to want to claim Maddox's papers. Why those pundits saw fit to pay tribute to a man who denounced integration as a "communist plot" and never recanted his reactionary views escapes me, but I think such attitudes are a part of the paradox of the South that my hometown represents in many ways.
I do not feel particularly shocked or ashamed at coming home, though, despite my misgivings about my home region's shameful past and the dissatisfying state of its body politic today. I might cough a bit when I pass by the long-closed but still baking-in-the-sun Young Refinery (across the street from where Robert E. Lee's Chuck-Wagon Diner used to be), but I usually can swallow my cough and my pride enough to settle in as someone who deals with the place in the best way he knows how: with a not-too bitter but nevertheless sardonic sense of humor. It may seem troubling that when an acquaintance brags about going to a KKK rally all I can do is laugh, but at least I have a few friends I can share the laugh with. And, hey, if the Democratic candidate for my Congressional District seat spends no money on campaigning because he is in the race "for fun," it's really more humorous than sad.
Despite the dark humor, though, some aspects of the home-front trouble me. Down the road in Lilburn, a Boy Scout Troop recently held a fundraiser with the theme "Rally for America." Speakers included Ann Coulter, who not surprisingly brought her hateful rhetoric with her to her soapbox. All people who opposed Gulf War II are traitors, she said. I guess if any of the Scouts in attendance had parents who were among the many Americans with doubts about the war, the boys must now be obligated to turn mommy's name in to John Ashcroft.
What bothers me most about the fundraiser/GOP rally, though, as an Eagle Scout, is that the other keynote speaker was Oliver North. Mr. North may seem too laughable to take seriously now, but he was convicted of deceiving Congress about illegal American funding of terrorist activities with regards to the Iran-Contra scandal (before winning an appeal based on an immunity pledge North had given, not by any refutation of the charges against him).
Last I checked, the Scout Law said, "A Scout is trustworthy." Years ago I listened to angry Scout leaders complain about President Clinton, the convicted liar, being the ex officio President of the Boy Scouts of America. Evidently some Scout leaders back home feel that lying is okay, as long as you're a Fox News correspondent. Perhaps I should not be so surprised that the organization is getting back to its paramilitary roots, but to me, Scouts was always about camping and goofing around with a fun bunch of lovable misfits. Scouts never was about sectarian rallies, least of all rallies that featured hatemongering speakers that make the whole movement look more like the Hitler Youth than the organization I spent some of my formative years in.
There is a lot of talk lately about the importance of the South to the political culture of the nation as a whole. The region is growing, and past electoral "Southern Strategies" may only intensify in the future.
I fear that America could be engulfed in the tide of ignorance and hate that defines what I loathe about the South. In 2000, Mr. Bush of New Haven, Connecticut became the man from Texas, and Mr. Gore of Washington, D.C. reminded us with a Southern twang that "I'm from Tennessee."
Will it be much longer before Presidential candidates wrap themselves in the Confederate battle flag instead of Old Glory? This kid from D-ville, Georgia hopes the day will never come.
Derek Gantt is a Trinity junior. His column usually appears every third Monday.
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