[tpaine]

According to the author, red folks are tolerant, blues aren't.

In the magazine, he claims:

" You won't find much crusader zeal in Franklin County.
For one thing, people in small towns don't want to offend people whom they'll be encountering on the streets for the next fifty years. Potentialy controversial subjects are often played down. ---- snip ------ It would be simply uncivil to thrust raw disagreement in peoples faces."

I've seen this meself, as I grew up in a small town.

So maybe FR's uncivility is just due to its anonomous nature?

[RLK]

I was raised in a midwestern community in Iowa when it was a predominently farm state. A man running a machine shop or a farm has other things to worry about than what is the concern of artsy craftsy fops in New York or California. So do his neighbors. This generates a degree of homogeniety of interest and opinion in such red areas. Their interests are determined by day to day responsibility and duties rather than social fashion.

Gloria Steinem, Woody Allen, Geralso Rivera, and many others wouldn't survive in red America. Blue America has an extensive parasitic fop subculture that supports them in ease and stupidity. That's where they congregate and vote. Capacity to produce outrage is a major industry in such places that has been taken up by the social structure. A fool can survive in the red area by virtue of attention and entertainment value. On a farm, it will get you broke and hungry within a short time.

As far as civility, I call them as I see them. I grew up in a German Pennsylvania dutch community in which euphemis was looked upon as a dangerous and insulting form of lie.