In the midst of our current heat wave, two stories that don't appear to be related, but are:
Cities that Wouldn't Exist Without Air Conditioning (from the Atlantic)
and
Conservative Southern Values Revived: How a Brutal Strain of American Aristocrats Have Come to Rule America (from Alternet).
Wow, the Conservative Southern Values article is an eye-opener!
ReplyDeleteIt made me think about Steven Pinker's analysis of the South, as a place dominated by people who had emigrated from sheep-herding cultures. And that herding cultures tend to be territorial and retribution-oriented.
ReplyDeleteA bit different from this analysis. I had never heard before that most/many Southern plantation owners had come from the Caribbean. It appears her source for that was Colin Woodard's American Nations: The Eleven Rival Regional Cultures of North America. Probably worth checking that out.