On 'Corn-Pone Nazis' and Gambling

AUTHOR: James Howard Kunstler of Clusterfuck Nation

LENGTH: 980 words

THESIS: Nashville's Tea Party convention captures everything toxic about Sunbelt culture

SUCH AS: "A weird contradictory mish-mash of Confederate nostalgia, hyper-individualism that really owes allegiance to nothing, racial enmity, religious paranoia, and potemkin patriotism"

THUS: "The Tea Party people are the corn-pone Nazis I have been warning you about"

WHILE WE'RE AT IT: Legalized gambling is "indecent, shameful, and not healthy"

HOW THIS RELATES TO NASHVILLE: Casinos encourage the belief "that it is possible to get something for nothing," which Kunstler finds widely espoused among Tea Party malcontents

WHERE GAMBLING OUGHT TO BE SENT: "To the margins, to the alleys, to the berm between the WalMart and the Target Store, to the basement boiler rooms, to the public bathrooms"

IMPLICIT RATIONALE UNDERLYING NASHVILLE'S OPRYLAND USA THEME PARK: "The cute idea that Tennessee rubes were too dumb to spell the word opera"

THE FINAL WORD:

You should be entitled to collect social security even while you inveigh against the intrusion of big government into your life and the horrible prospect that it will get its mitts on your Medicare! And when Jeezus comes to take you home, that place will be just like Opryland USA was in its heyday, with Dolly Parton in every suite and all the pulled pork sandwiches under heaven's dome...