Rural America: Living Up To Stereotypes

This is the state of the state I live in. The state of Maryland theoretically ends at Frederick, which is located roughly at the black line. To the right of that line lies Baltimore and the D.C. suburbs. That's where all the people and wealth in the state are located. That part of the state is overwhelmingly Democratic, which is why Maryland is always a solidly blue state. The Eastern shore and the area to the left of the line are, well, not so Democratic. But because no one really lives there, the Southern sympathies of those areas are easily overriden (praise Jaysus).

Of course, being a denizen of that lovely place I affectionally call "Eastern West Virginia," I get to put up with racist and backwards shit that should have been settled decades ago. Just this year, at a vocational high school near my hometown, a controversy erupted over some white students displaying the Confederate Flag. Yes, the Confederate flag...in Maryland...a state that was a member of the Union, not the Confederacy. Now while most of us consider the Confederate flag to be a symbol of hate and division, others see it as a symbol of pride and unity. The furor from this shit even reached as far as The Washington Post, which painted my hometown as some shithole relic of the Old South (which it both is and isn't, since Maryland isn't the South!). As you can see, it was clearly just the honor students worried about their constitutional rights to free expression and not just idiot neo-Nazis. After all the dust was settled, it was ruled that the racist assholes were allowed to keep displaying their hate flag, for after all, it's their constitutional right.

Now, despite my personal opinions on the Confederate flag, I actually agree with the ruling. Because if I ever got caught burning a U.S. flag (which I've never actually done), I could just point to this event as precident that it's free speech. And then I'd inform all the haters to kiss my blue ass and move to West Virginia (which is a state that seceded from Virginia to be a part of the Union, though don't tell them that. There's plenty of Confederate flags in that state as well).

Fun times in Appalachia.