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Your humble WebMistress, The Diva, is a Texan. At least, as much a Texan as anything else. That is where I've spent most of my life. I've also spent the part of my life lived outside The Lone Star State explaining that not everyone in the South, or from the South, is a conservative, a redneck, or a racist.
And now we have Florida, and all the paid protestors bused in from places like Mississippi, Alabama, Texas, and Louisiana. We see a sea of white faces, and a curious absence of the African American supporters who took the stage at the GOP convention in Pennsylvania. We have images of these demonstrators engaged in violent behavior outside the Miami-Dade Canvassing Board counting room. I am forced to admit that, by their own statements, most of these people claim to be Southerners.
Then there are the complaints of widespread disenfranchisement of minority voters in Florida. I am certain that the GOP would characterize these problems as either nonexistent or coincidental, but since I am from "the South," I'm not so sure. I have no problem believing that minority Floridians may have been prevented from exercising their legal voting rights.
From my youngest years in Texas, I was aware of "unreconstructed confederates." These are the folks that proudly fly the confederate flag in the window of their pickup truck. The people that flaunt their racism like the nouveau riche flaunt their money. People who disagreed with every Supreme Court decision and every federal law that sought to extend full citizenship rights and legal protections to black Americans. People who would like to see the "races" separate and unequal. People who would like to see the South secede again.
The "unreconstructed confederates" of my Texas days had an anthem and a motto: "The South's Gonna Do It Again." And now, in Florida, it looks as though the South just might have.
A bloodless Civil War. And the casualties are justice, democracy, and one America, indivisible.
THE LONDON OBSERVER: FOLLOW THE MONEY
"There are so many more tales of the Bush family daisy chain of favours, friendship and campaign funding. None of it is illegal - which I find troubling. But I don't want to seem ungrateful. After all, the Bushes helped make America the best democracy money can buy."
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