The Heart of Dixie and the state where I was born and raised, Alabama is when it comes to looks and rural area can be paradise on earth, but when you count in poltics, education and fundamentalism you are looking at one of the most backwater places in the U.S.A and the developed western world.
Do you think I'm making this up. Look at this
http://http//www.timesdaily.com/article/20080714/NEWS/807140324?Title=State-dropout-rate-43rd-in-the-nation
One of the highest in the nation. I hear the oldest people in this state saying absolute stupid things everyday. They have no idea about the political, social or religious climate outside the American South. During the election I had to try to tell people that Obama was not a Muslim and that not all Arabs and Muslims are terrorists. A lot of them just want to live their lives like everyone else. They just rolled their eyes at me, Like I'm an idiot.
I'm I terrible speaker so I am bad at arguments and more often than not am to shy to speak, because of the pacifism my parents raised me with. When people come over I have to go into another room with just to not scream when she discusses politics. I feel like I'm trapped in a sea of ignorance
Alabama one of the poorest states in the Union supports complete free market and little social programs. If the Alabama people only truly understood the economic systems instead of blindly listening to politicans quoting the Bible and wearing patronism on their sleeves and actually looked at the political climate in Europe and Canada and get rid of that cold war propaganda memories would discover that the free market hurts them.
The complete free market keeps the working class ,the backbone of Alabama, losing jobs by giving them to India and China. It gives workers terrible benefits and does not provide the insurance most Alabamians need. It keeps the the poor and working class in lower positions with pure social Darwinism. Constantly keeping the children of the wealthy ahead of the poor by not giving them benefits for college or decent insurance.
Speaking of Health Insurance most Alabamians are against the 'commie system of universal health care' despite the fact every single developed western nation except the U.S.A has it and if you call the Universal health care systems 'commie' that means are military and road service are 'commie' as well, but I don't see the conservative trying to get rid of that.
But then again I guess the radical conservatives need that the military to rape Middle Eastern nations for oil instead of taking care of their own people. Alabamians have some of the worst private insurance in the country especially the poor, because the companies will drop you like a rock, because they know you're to poor to do anything to them.
I know it happened to my family. How is this democracy and a free country?
They watch faux news and believe the death panel crap. You would think a state in such bad shape would want more progressive policies, but know they scream 'commie' at it and half they time the don't know what communism and socialism is. I know they call me one all the time and when I quizzed them and what it means they can't explain it formally.
I'm personally I social democrat/Center-left by international political scale and disagree with the far left as much as I do with the far right.
On Religion, Alabama is a fundie state. You can not buy a sex toy in this state, but you can practically by a gun in a dollar store. The average Alabamian man is more likely to vote to protect his guns than the education of his children.
Here Christian means Good person. If you're not one to hell with you! I heard extremely cruel things said about an atheist women that had cancer I wanted to come out and scream my heathenism to the world, but kept my mouth shut. It was my parents saying these cruel things and we're the 'evil atheist' are the bad guys.
I wonder if they know that atheists make less than one percent of the prison population. I wonder if they knew that most secular nations that have a wiling atheist populations have lower crime and unemployment rates and higher marks in class.
Yes, I am angered by the red necked nature of my state and the ignorance of economics,religion and social problems. I know far more about the economy, poltics and history than most adults in this state. What's worse their seems to be a pride about this 'ignorance' like their somehow genuine and more american than all the others.
It's truly disgusting
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I understand your anger, sadness, and frustration. Believe me, I do. I now live in Eugene, Oregon, but I spent 37 of my 60 years in Brookhaven, Mississippi. I suspect that the best thing you can do is to someday move to a more secular and better educated part of the country. That is what I did. In the meantime, you might join humanistic, atheistic, and progressive groups on the Internet and try to find other members who live in your area. If you can find such people, you might very well feel as I did, that you have found allies in a war zone.
ReplyDeleteMy heart reaches out to you. I support you. I truly do.
P.S. This group might be able to provide you with a contact or two. The important thing is to not give up on looking for like-minded people.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.msatheists.org/
Thank you. Very much for your support! I didn't think I would get a replay so fast. How did you find me!
ReplyDeleteI'll look at this group. I go to a christian school where they teach creationism, but I'm secretly reading 'Richard Dawkins' books.
I would love to move to either Washington State or Oreagan when I'm older or maybe Canada! I hear it's great over their.
"How did you find me!"
ReplyDeleteI found you by going to the "profile view" on my blog and clicking on the word atheism. You can do this with anything that you list in your profile, and related blogs will come up in the order of who posted last. It has been my experience that you will get few readers if you just sit back and wait for them to show up, whereas you will get a great many if you visit other people's blogs, esp blogs by people with similar interests. That said, I still enjoy hitting the "next blog" button because you find a lot of neat blogs that way that hardly anyone knows about.
"I would love to move to either Washington State or Oreagan when I'm older or maybe Canada! I hear it's great over their."
The Northwest and the Northeast are the least religious states, and they are also places of great natural beauty. The downside is that the Northwest, especially, is a long, long way from Alabama and all the things you love there. You might think you don't love a hell of a lot, but you will still miss things that you now take for granted--or at least I do. I miss the native plants, the interesting history, and such miscellany as thunder showers, anoles, box turtles, armadillos, locusts, red wasps, garden spiders, and cardinals; but, of course, I don't miss the poverty, ignorance, racial tension, and obesity.
Here's another link. I see that they don't post much, but I'll share it anyway.
http://doubtingfaith.blogspot.com/
P.S. Other things I miss--or not.
ReplyDeleteI miss lightning bugs, but I don't miss red bugs (maybe you call them chiggers).
I miss warm water. There are few farm ponds here, and the ocean, rivers, and lakes are all cold. Also, the rivers here flow fast, and I miss the slow Mississippi streams with gravel bars that I used to canoe.
The ocean here in a real treat. The waves literally look like they're over your head as they approach the beach, and the surf is so powerful that you have to be careful that a "sneaker wave" doesn't wash you off the shore and carry you out to sea.
I don't miss fireants.
I miss Mississippi's long daylight hours in winter, but I like Oregon's long daylight hours in summer. You would be amazed at the difference that living halfway between the equator and the North Pole makes.
I even miss copperheads. Oregon has rattlesnakes, but I've never seen even one the whole time I've lived here.
I miss whip-poor-wills, but I don't miss tornados. However, Oregon is overdue for a massive earthquake, so that could be even worse than a tornado.
By the way, I have many relatives buried on Sand Mountain near Bridgeport, and a well-known Alabama senator (Heflin) was related to me, but I never knew him.
Hi,
ReplyDeleteSnowbrush sent me over here to give my support to a fellow atheist. I am now a senior citizen, but like you, as a teenaged girl I became an atheist in a highly-religious family. My good friends knew, but it took many years for me to come out to my extended family and only after my parents had both died.
I recommend you check out the Freedom From Religion Foundation (FFRF.org). They have a student essay contest every year. Even if you are not interested in submitting an entry, you might like to read the thoughts of others in your age group. They also have a weekly hour-long radio program (you can listen to a podcast through the FFRF website --- both recent and archived broadcasts.)
I'm glad to hear your are reading Dawkins. Keep reading. There are so many good books about atheism and non-belief. Many are newer books but there are also many older ones. Mark Twain was a religious skeptic and some of his social commentary reflected that. My blog has lots of quotations from writers, historians, philosophers, and others throughout history ---from George Carlin to Abraham Lincoln, from Thomas Paine to Thomas Edison, from Voltaire to Sarah Vowell, from Christopher Hitchens to Dave Barry.
Check out my blog "My Thoughts Are Free" at http://tirelesswing.blogspot.com ---scroll down to find links on the right sidebar to lots of other atheist, freethought, and humanist blogs. Several of my favorites (besides "Snowbrush") are "Dwindling in Unbelief," the "Brick Testament," "Atheist Media Blog" ---but there are many others.
Good Luck!
As a newbie to blogging, one option you might consider is to monitor your comments. All of us atheists occasionally receive hateful comments. I put a disclaimer on my blog that I usually reject comments from Anonymous and those who are abusive or preachy. I also reject comments that have nothing to do with my blog or the post on which someone is commenting. I don't mind respectful differences of opinion, but some people ---mostly those who consider themselves to be "good Christians" ---can get very nasty. Some bloggers are good at sparring with those who leave that kind of message. But true believers are unlikely to change their opinions. I am unlikely to change mine. So I consider it a waste of time.
ReplyDeleteLately, I have received numerous spam messages (several each day) that are not related to the content of my blog, so those can be rejected before they are posted. (Those normally don't happen if you have a word verification set up ---which you do.)
Monitoring also serves one other function. When I sign in, I see that there are comments waiting to be monitored. If someone leaves a comment on a post I wrote 6 months ago, I would never know it was there otherwise. (You can set your blog to send you emails to let you know when comments have been left, but I already receive way too many emails, so I didn't choose that options.)
You can, of course, do as you wish, This is just a suggestion. You might want to see how it goes, and then decide.