It's something of a truism, Gentle Reader, that conservative types, and especially religious conservative types, tend to think that society should be returned to the state it was in during some supposed golden age. In Britain it's most often Victorian Values™ which get touted. That's the Victorian world of great engineers and inventors and the focus on loving families and espousal of sexual virtue, you understand. The Victorian era of slums, rampant prostitution, opium dens, sweat-shop labour and so on is conveniently forgotten.
In the U.S., on the other hand, it tends to be the nineteen-fifties which gets harkened back to. An era when prosperity was high, the only enemy (commie-nism) was external and almost laughably un-nuanced, authority was respected and "God-fearing Christian" was an unchallenged term of respect. Swept under the rug are the open and systemic racism, the organised crime, the blatant sexism, the almost completely unfounded McCarthy-driven paranoia and anything else which might sully the impression of a prosperous, white, Pat Boone paradise.
So you'd think, wouldn't you, that when seventeen-year-old Tiana Ramos opened her own business (entrepreneurialism, yay!), a nineteen-fifties, rockabilly themed doughnut shop, in Front Royal, Virginia, conservative Christians would have been cheering her on, right? (more…)
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The Dixie Flatline 