(From the diaries -- kos)
First, I must explain: in Tulsa, unlike most places, the "underground" tabloid-format newspaper, Urban Tulsa, has an editorial staff that is mostly libertarian/conservative in outlook. However, the content is otherwise similar to most underground newspapers. The result is an amusingly schizophrenic blend of finger-wagging moralizing and anti-tax bloviating at the front, good indie music and restaurant reviews in the middle, and many pages of ads for "massage" parlors, escort services, and gentlemen's clubs in back.
However, today's issue was different. A former Tulsan who moved to California two years ago wrote a thoughtful appraisal of the current state of political affairs, It isn't anything that would make waves on DK, but I thought it might provide a window into the thoughts of a blue person from a red state, the same thoughts I've been trying to put into intelligible words for weeks now. Bill Underwood beat me to it, darn him, but I love that he actually got it published in Urban Tulsa and I'm looking forward to the debate it may actually provoke here in my beloved but way red hometown.
Two years ago I took that long trek made famous by the fictional Joad family in John Steinbeck's Grapes of Wrath by relocating from Oklahoma to California.
Having moved from the reddest-of-red states to the bluest-of-blue I found the recent election illuminating--especially Oklahoma's senatorial race between Brad Carson and Tom Coburn.
In a post-election column for the Claremore Diarist, Carson wrote that America has descended into an all-out culture war--with politics the new battleground. Countless Bible Belt conservatives have been politically energized by wedge issues like gay marriage, abortion and that vaguest of terms: "family values."
As a liberal I agree with Carson's assertion that a culture war is ripping America apart. And as a born-again Christian I sympathize with my more conservative brethren on issues like abortion, although I find their entrenched positions insensitive to the realities of our world--especially when they condemn abortion, while decrying sex education for teenagers.
What I find truly bizarre about the red state conservatives is the selectiveness of their perception. They focus like a laser beam on "God, guns and gays" while ignoring more pressing issues like healthcare, regressive taxation and the out-sourcing of jobs to third world nations. These overlooked issues do far more to destroy American families than gays exchanging vows on the steps of San Franciso City Hall.
Read the rest here.
