[Today’s run: rest day]
I guess one more on politics today. Sorry about that.
[Reading over this again later, I don’t think I expressed myself very well…]
I’m on an internet discussion group about running. Someone posted a comparison of school policies now verses ‘the good old days” which included a mention of spanking. Another guy then said he lived in Louisiana during grade school and he didn’t appreciate being paddled, finishing the comment with a jab at “southern backwardness” or some such.
So of course there are some southerners who piped up about that, and then others said that no one should ever be spanked, and finally, a woman piped up and said that the “good old days” were filled with un-good things like Bull Connor going after civil rights protestors with dogs and fire hoses, etc.
So it was “pound on the south” day and I got a bit tired of that.
I’ve only lived in the south for a bit less then four years and my opinion has been maturing over time.
Since I can’t publish that on the running list without starting another round of complete hooey, I’ll put it here. If they can find me they can comment.
Every generation has good and evil. The same Germany that produced Hitler also produced Bonhoeffer and both Bull Connor and Martin Luther King Jr. came from the same south. (And if you assert that all the whites were evil and all the blacks were good you fall into the mirror-image of the racist attitudes you condemn.)
I reject the idea that “progress” is an inevitable path of improvement. Some things were better at times in the past and some things are better now. Like all generations, there is evil here now.
Given the trends of polling on “Is our country on the right track”, it looks like most people agree with me.
The “good old days” actually did have some parts that worked better then they do now, and some parts that didn’t. There was great evil and great good, those we still have. And the great mass of people will be more concerned with their own small problems and keep their head down and try to get through each day.
Picture today is of an old railroad swing bridge at Waverly Ferry where we were fishing this afternoon. Just to the right of this picture is a broken span which landed on what used to be the eastern shore of the Tombigbee River but now is an island.
