Jesse Helms wins! What? Are you kidding? How can it be
true? Uncle Jess, as he is known in these parts, won his
fifth trip to the Senate by defeating Democrat Harvey
Gannt. It was a very close and viscous race where hatred and
defamatory accusations abounded. Neither candidate ran an
ethical campaign and Jesse Helms went so far as to refuse to
debate Harvey Gantt. This was perhaps Jesse's key to
victory. The ignorant are not interested in learning
anything new, and why should Jesse put his foot in his mouth
when he knows he will lock the bigot vote, anyway. Jesse put
it all on the line, relying on the ignorant vote to pull him
though once again. They came out in droves, wielding guns,
troches and nooses to lunch the black liberal in a frenzy of
hate.
If you have never visited North Carolina or the South in
general, you may not understand this ignorance
phenomenon. You see, in North Carolina change is considered
a sin. It represents immorality, and, if you try to reach a
higher level of intelligence or go against traditional
values, it is most certainly blasphemous. By changing
tradition the white male loses power and, in the South, the
white male is still superior to all sexes and races. Jesse
Helms is the champion of ignorant white males and all women
and minorities are inferior.
These ignorant white males are rarely seen in the more urban
areas of North Carolina, choosing to live in the woods or on
a farm, but mostly in trailer parks. Your typical Jesse
supporter is, of course, white, has little education,
smokes, drinks, owns a gun, drives a beat-up-American-made
pickup truck, cheats on his wife, has almost half his teeth
and goes to church every Sunday. Their hearts are filled
with hate for anybody who succeeds and they especially
loathe people who are different from them.
Not all people who voted for Jesse Helms are ignorant scum
bags, some are just plain ignorant. I am referring to those
crazy militant Christian Right wackos. These people did not
vote for Jesse because of his bigotry (although it helped),
but mostly because of his 19th century Christian values. His
support for the sanctity of life, his censorship issues and
his hatred of homosexuality made him the ideal candidate for
the intolerant right.
So what does this all mean? It means the South is still
resisting the temptation to enter the 20th century. Forget
about that bridge to the 21st century: they are still using
horse and buggy to crawl into this one. Jesse Helms
represents us abroad as our Minister of Foreign Affairs so
you can imagine what the rest of the world must think of
us. Have you ever watched British television when they
parody Americans? They portray us as toothless, ignorant
fools, square-dancing and spitting into a spittoon. I hope
this is not the real America, but it may be. I have to stop
now. I feel sick!
