Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.
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Notes -
I find it somehow thrilling that somewhere in the American heartland there's an honor culture that's halfway between me and the Taliban.
I read an analysis once that did the political demographic split of the area I’m from and we’re almost ‘perfectly’ split between Republican and Democrat, something like 50.x% - 49.x%. But even so, red and blue mean different things in different places. In the Bay Area I’d be considered blood red if I openly expressed my views, even though I’m far from Republican. In the Midwest I’d be considered solid blue even though I’m far from them too. The kind of “right-wing” I am you’d find in a place like Russia or the People’s Action Party in Singapore. “Authoritarianism” and “collectivism” are not pejorative terms in my political vocabulary. It was core to the functioning culture we had growing up. You can have it in both good and bad ways. But they exist all over the place.
There are cultural pockets all across the country that develop unique subcultures of their own. The bonds are no longer as strong as they used to be due to technology and at the time I was growing up, lots of changes were taking place as well, but I was definitely raised with the old guard mentality and so were my peers. The way it was once put to me by someone was that that area is group of educated / cultured thugs. It made me smirk but in retrospect it was accurate. Our community produced a lot of very intelligent young kids who had to grow up in an area that was pretty difficult to live in; especially with the changes that were happening at that time. They weren’t just street smart, I met a lot of IQ smart people there who had this… "edge" about them.
The only thing I really know how to liken it to is someone like Bane from Dark Knight Rises. He wasn’t represented entirely accurately based on the comics, but Christopher Nolan nevertheless did a good job getting Tom Hardy to play the role. Bane was a gangster who was a genius. He wore lab coats, contributed to various scientific fields and moonlighted as a gangbanger. If you crossed a geek with a gangbanger, you’d get good collection of the kind of kids we had. They could talk physics with you, how to fix a car, British history, read books, etc., and they were affiliated with the gangs if they weren't gangbangers outright. They also got into fights, played rap music, wore the colors and icons of the gangs; were entrenched in the politics of the hood and they could code switch between the two.
It was normal to us, but I can see how people in the Bay Area would find it strange.
But your characterization is also quite accurate.
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