The thing about the term "redneck" is that it contains the concept of "ingnorant" right in the definition, but some people still love to apply the term to themselves. It doesn't just mean "rural white person." It means "ignorant, bigotted, rural white person." Most of the people who proudly call themselves "rednecks" really do fit the definiton well, all the way down to being ignorant and bigotted. I have nothing against rural white people and have lived in small rural towns of mostly white people, but I can't stand people of any race or culture who are PROUDLY IGNORANT. There seem to be a lot of people in this world who take pride in being anti-intellectual, and that bugs me.

I think Bush was sort of that way. He graduated from Yale and Harvard, but he seems fairly anti-intellectual to me. And Sarah Palin seems that way to me too. Both of them seem like they try to make up for the lack of thoughtful curiosity and analysis by being overly decisive. Like they think that if they show resolve, it makes up for the fact that they don't really know what they are doing. It's really not enough.

And I also think that when politicians talk about "common sense solutions," they are usually grossly oversimplifying something complex. A lot of our issues are complicated and complex, and they require more than just "common sense." Of course, the government does often seem to lack common sense, but that doesn't change the fact that they often try to dumb down the complex issues for "the masses."