What I am about to write has the possibility of so many misunderstandings. Sometimes I feel that it is only safe to be a "redneck" if you turn yourself into some kind of cardboard stereotype complete with nascar hotrod, shotgun, "gimme cap" and can of beer!

People are more accepting of things if they can laugh at them. Problem is that laughter is all too often derisive. "Poor white Southerners," otherwise known as "rednecks," "crackers," or simply "poor white trash" seem to be the last group that it is socially acceptable to laugh at. Here and there, but not very often, I read where someone asks "Doesn't it bother them?" The conclusion is generally that it must not because there is no outcry.

Well, obviously I cannot speak for every redneck that is or ever was; but I do think that it does bother most of us; and, most of us try to deal with it by either ignoring it and hoping that maybe it will go away or by laughing along too. "If you can't beat 'em, join 'em."
and that kind of thing.

I don't guess that they can figure out what else to do other than making a big "fuss" and the South has been through so much of that sort of thing through the years; perhaps many are just too weary.

But, I do feel like making a bit of a fuss!

I don't wear caps. I don't drink. As far as I am concerned, a car is just something to get me from one place to another; and, I am sick and tired of these guys who confuse their guns with their penises!

I am not particularly patriotic. I see no reason to be. That doesn't mean that I hate and want to harm the United States. What it does mean is that my heart doesn't go "pitty pat" when I see the American flag because I know that it is nothing more than a piece of cloth and that the ideals for which it supposedly stands have never been anymore than words. We are not the worse place on earth by a long shot; but, we do a lot of talk with no reality behind it; and, I am a big one on reality.

I believe in allowing yourself a fantasy or two; but, I also believe in knowing reality when you see it and being able to stare it right in the face! Nowadays, that isn't very fashionable. We're supposed to believe in angels and spirits and things! Well I can't say that they don't exist! I can't say that "God" doesn't exist. It is impossible to know a negative with any absolute certainty; but, I have never seen any evidence of these things. In the end, I can only know what I personally experience; and, to me, that seems like a very redneck thing even though the steretype would say that any "self-respecting redneck" is supposed to love "God and country." My personal experience, on the other hand, has taught me that most rednecks are neither particulary religious or patriotic.

Don't like to fish either!
But, I do like country music and I have been known to eat grits!

Then what makes me a redneck?

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