>Today, poverty and underclass have become cultural identities that are the
>opium for the downwardly mobile and the countercultural commodity for those
>who can afford it, especially bleeding-heart intellectuals. And this
>debased identity politics passes for progressive discourse nowadays.
What ever are you talking about? You let fly some reckless caricature of (white) people in the South, as if they were terminally violent cretins best left to do each other in, then you defend yourself by imitating Hilton Kramer. All kinds of people live in the South; it's a complicated place with a complicated history. Why do you feel confident about slurring it and them? People have said nasty things about Poland, just to take a random example - would you object to those?
Doug