{"id":71812,"date":"2021-09-07T10:51:02","date_gmt":"2021-09-07T15:51:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/?p=71812"},"modified":"2021-09-07T11:10:31","modified_gmt":"2021-09-07T16:10:31","slug":"71812","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/?p=71812","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"

Why Southerners Don’t Care About New York Times Op-Eds<\/a><\/p>\n

I was born and raised in the Deep South. I have a deep affinity for the place of my birth, one that I wouldn\u2019t have imagined I\u2019d have in my teenage years.<\/p>\n

Down here, we have our issues, to be sure, but one thing we\u2019ve never been really big on are people from the North trying to tell us how to live our lives. Call it a holdover from Reconstruction or just plain stubbornness, but when the New York Times tries to tell Southerners how to live, it usually doesn\u2019t work out well.<\/p>\n

Yet, that\u2019s pretty much what the Times decided to do with an op-ed titled, \u201cSouthern Republicans Cannot Be Trusted With Public Health.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

For those of you keeping score at home, here is where things stand in the 2021 National Calamities Sweeps, Southern Division:<\/p>\n

In the ever-expanding Climate-Augmented Natural Disasters event, results cannot yet be tallied. Tennessee and North Carolina are both\u00a0digging out from catastrophic flooding<\/a>, while parts of Louisiana were flattened by Hurricane Ida, and most of New Orleans\u00a0remains without electricity<\/a>. Ida\u2019s remnants also\u00a0brought even more rain<\/a>\u00a0to areas of the South and beyond that were already dangerously waterlogged.<\/p>\n

In the Utter Failure to Understand What \u201cPro-Life\u201d Really Means tournament, normally a very close battle in the red states, Texas is currently uncontested: Its leaders just made it easier to carry a gun and harder to end an unwanted pregnancy\u00a0in the same week<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n

Instead of taking concrete measures to limit climate change, they\u00a0send up prayers for rescue workers<\/a>. Instead of making it possible for poor women to get quality medical care, they limit reproductive options for everyone \u2014 though the poorest, of course, will suffer most. Instead of espousing common-sense gun laws that keep citizens safe, they ally themselves with the gun lobby. (Tennessee\u2019s governor, Bill Lee, actually signed this state\u2019s new permitless-carry bill\u00a0in a ceremonial event<\/a>\u00a0at a gun factory.) Instead of trying to keep people safe during this pandemic, our leaders offer ludicrous platitudes on the subject of freedom.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Obviously, I\u2019m going to focus on the gun issue because, well, this is Bearing Arms. It\u2019s kind of what we do.<\/p>\n

Basically, the author\u2019s entire premise is that Republicans in the South can\u2019t be trusted with public health matters because they won\u2019t do precisely what she thinks they should do.<\/p>\n

We won\u2019t drink the gun control Kool-Aid, so we can\u2019t be trusted to make decisions for ourselves.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, she says stuff like this [emphasis added]:<\/p>\n

And yet, despite these indisputable indicators of failed public policy, Mr. Lee has\u00a0no intention of reversing course<\/a>. Most Southern Republicans don\u2019t, either, and that\u2019s why Southerners will continue to die unnecessary deaths \u2014 if not from Covid, then from natural disasters, or self-administered abortions, or\u00a0gun violence, or any number of other preventable tragedies.<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

So, tell me, how\u2019s that gun control working in New York, Chicago, and Baltimore? How many people are dying unnecessary deaths from \u201cgun violence\u201d in our major urban cities, most of which are liberal run and many of the worst have strict gun control in place?<\/p>\n

And let\u2019s be honest here. While something like COVID may be a public health issue, so-called gun violence isn\u2019t. It\u2019s an act one human chooses to do to another human. It\u2019s a problem, but it\u2019s not a disease. It\u2019s a conscious decision.<\/p>\n

But that doesn\u2019t matter to some people. For them, what matters is that we do precisely what we\u2019re told.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not about trying to convince us they\u2019re right. The author seeks to scold us for being wrong, and in the pages of the New York Times.<\/p>\n

If there\u2019s one thing the average Southerner doesn\u2019t care about, it\u2019s what much of anyone writing for the Times thinks of what we do down here. We never have and probably never will. What Karen here doesn\u2019t get, though, is that her attempt at meddling not only won\u2019t yield the results she intends, but it\u2019ll likely push a lot of us to defend laws we might not otherwise.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s especially true when it\u2019s coming from a publication in a city with the strictest gun laws in the nation and a skyrocketing violent crime rate. Honestly, the writer may well be from the South. I doubt any of us would consider her Southern, though.<\/p>\n

Let me make it plain: Our guns aren\u2019t going anywhere, so stop trying to pretend you\u2019re trying to do this for our own good. We\u2019re not buying it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Why Southerners Don’t Care About New York Times Op-Eds I was born and raised in the Deep South. I have a deep affinity for the place of my birth, one that I wouldn\u2019t have imagined I\u2019d have in my teenage years. Down here, we have our issues, to be sure, but one thing we\u2019ve never … Continue reading “”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[75,24,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-71812","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-media","category-rights","category-rkba"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71812","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=71812"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71812\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":71813,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71812\/revisions\/71813"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=71812"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=71812"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=71812"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}