When I arrived in Texas two years ago, I was having a conversation with someone who had been here for about five years at the time.  I was coming from Florida where I had been for three years and prior to that I had been in South Carolina for 16 years.  So for me, it at the time, I had lived nearly twenty years in “the South” after having lived for thirty five or so years in “the North”, mostly in New England.

Our conversation was about living in “the South”.  The person I was talking with was newer to “the South” than I was, but had spent more time in Texas.  They made the comment that “the South” was a “culture of cruelty”.

At first, I was a bit put off by that comment.  I had a lot of friends from “the South” who I did not feel were participating in a “culture of cruelty”.  For me, the comment was personal.  But as our conversation went along, it became clear that what this person was talking about was not an individual ethic of cruelty, but rather a larger environment of cruelty.

These environments can be tricky, because like the old story about a fish not knowing it was in water or the frog slowly being boiled to death, it can be hard to see things that have become so normal, so pervasive that they are hardly questioned any more.

As our nation nears the end-game of its forty-odd year trajectory of consolidating power in the hands of fewer and fewer, wealthier and wealthier people, it is becoming more and more difficult for the architects of that trajectory to cloak the changes necessary to attaining their goal – it has also become less necessary to bother with any cloaking.

The “culture of cruelty” that until this point has been basted in just enough plausible deniability and allowed to walk amongst us by – quite honestly – most of us, is now plainly visible.  Imagine Red Riding Hood’s wolf (wolves and snakes always get bad raps in literature) no longer bothering to put on grandma’s clothes and jump into bed.

The “culture of cruelty” no longer needs to be hidden by its architects because so many of us have either embraced it or still can’t see how we ourselves are complicit or are stuck thinking that someone else will eventually fix it.

Its time for us to consider that this is no longer just about “the South”.