Over the past two days I read Confederates in the Attic, Tony Horwitz’s 1998 account of his trips through the Deep South. He was trying to understand why the Civil War still had such a hold on the region’s inhabitants.
He comes away bemused, particularly at the neo-Confederate mindset he encounters. It seemed to be strongest not among the war re-enactors he met but among the everyday citizens.
Eleven years later it seems to me that mindset has grown even stronger with the advent of a Democratic Congress and a Democrat in the White House. See the rise of the teabaggers as evidence.
It’s a fascinating book.