This work of art was written by Buckwheat Jones over at Rightnation.us


White Trash Around The World


Delbert Tarwater lived just outside of Arnold, Missouri in a double-wide trailer he rented from his step mother.Periodically employed and perpetually hung-over, Tarwater was a 45 year old ne'er-do-well who occasionally found work as a common laborer. From time to time in the warm months, he would drive his rust-encrusted Camaro into nearby St. Louis to look for work cutting grass or hanging sheetrock. At night he typically exhausted his compensation package on cans of Busch beer that he consumed in front of the television set while grazing at the trough of cable programming. Ashley, his common law wife of eight years, stayed out of his way, but made sure to have his Hungry Man Dinners on the table within 10 minutes of his arrival each evening. And since she never knew when he would be arriving home for vittles one night to the next, her management skills were seriously challenged. Knowing Delbert's tendency to grow violent if his "supper weren't ready on time," however, she coped as best she could. Her "best" was not without its shortcomings, though, for in their time together Ashley made three trips to the emergency room after "falling down the stairs." Now Delbert could never properly explain how this had happened in a single story mobile home, but since no one ever asked, his ability for quick thinking was never fully explored.A violent sort, Delbert was not simply a mindless neanderthal. He did have opinions on things and he did believe in God. He was a religious man, though he never attended services, saying that he heard the Lord speak to him everyday and not just on Sundays. ('Sides....Sundays were made for football.)And what the Lord told Delbert was that He, the Saviour, was the Light the Truth and the Way. And those who believed in Him during Mortal Life were guaranteed Eternal Paradise in the Afterlife. You could be free to enjoy yourself in any way imaginable, Tarwater believed, and so he told his friends that he'd like a big screen TV with 296 channels, limitless supplies of Busch beer, and a La-Z-Boy rocker with a chemical toilet built in so he'd never have to get up. No kidding.So strong were Delbert's religious convictions that he felt nothing but contempt for all others. In fact, he considered any beliefs besides his own to be downright heresy. But since he didn't really know how to spell "heresy," he simply thought those who didn't share his religion were going straight to hell. Labeling him intolerant was to be generous. Delbert hated Catholics, Presbyterians, and Lutherans. He hated Methodists, Baptists and Jews.Particularly Jews.This was to be his downfall and it eventually consumed his life. For a dozen years before, his sister had supposedly been raped by a Jew. What a poor white girl from Arnold had been doing with a rich Jewish lawyer from an affluent neighborhood in St. Louis was anybody's guess, and more than a few of Delbert's kinfolk had thought it just a cover story for something else. But in Delbert's view, the woman had disgraced the family with a bastard child. And her tale of being summarily dumped by a "Mr. Goldberg" from the city was a simple dollop of insult plopped atop a helping of injury.Perhaps there really had been a gentleman caller from St. Louis, or maybe Delbert's sister had just done the nasty with a member the local gentry. No one really knew, but some strongly suspected it was all a lie. Knowing of her older brother's temper and his intolerance of other religions, not to mention the Tarwater family's clannish nature, a few thought it likely that Tiffany had simply gotten herself knocked up and then blamed her pregnancy on a mystery man from the minority Delbert hated most. While she may have done this to divert the heat from her own activities, it seriously backfired on her. For in his zeal to recoup the dignity of the good family name, as well as " to square the house with the Lord," Delbert nearly killed her with a punitive beating that left her bleeding, broken and childless.And so that took care of family matters. And now Delbert's reserve of anger was tapped, and he decided to go after the real culprit, "Mr. Goldberg." With his sister's jaw wired shut from her trip down the stairs, it was difficult for Tarwater to glean enough information about the rapist to summarily track him down. So after several days of effort, he did the next best thing. He went after a synagogue.Now it had long been suspected that Delbert Tarwater belonged to the local Klavern, but since folks out in rural parts stick together, nothing was ever mentioned to the FBI about it in the subsequent investigation. Fact is, though, most everybody in the locality knew who belonged to the Klan and who didn't. And most folks also knew to keep such information to themselves. Some of that was borne out of loyalty. Some out of fear. Vengeance was sometimes the same thing as local justice.Regardless, Delbert's anger got the best of him and whether he did it with help or acted alone, he was later implicated, arrested and convicted in the 1992 pipe bombing of the Shalom Beth Synagogue in west St. Louis County.Fourteen died, most of them kids. A lot more were injured. For his part Tarwater showed no remorse and in fact, considered his act to have advanced the notion of God in the world. If you could get rid of some of the Jews, that left fewer of them to get in the way of the truly God-fearing people.And so for the past 10 years, Delbert Tarwater has occupied an 8'x8' cell in the Death House at the Missouri State Pennitentiary outside of Jefferson City where he has been scorned by all good and decent folk who know the case. For what he has done he is universally hated as an intolerant bigot that kills in the name of a polluted understanding of God; a wife-beater and a thug, as well as a man who will bring the pain to his own siblings for vilifying his good name.Red Neck or Low Life, Tarwater is despised by the Right as a corruption of good and decent family values. He is viewed by the Left as typical White Trash, an unrefined and dangerous product of a neo-conservatism that has slid off the table into the puddle of Fascism. They have no problem calling him a Nazi, and it elevates their own principles to look down their noses at his.On the other hand, the Conservative mind hates Tarwater simply because he is a menace to society. They don't care so much that he is some unsophisticated backwoods mullet-sporting hoosier. They want him locked up and/or exterminated because he is a danger to everybody else. His type of behavior is just as intolerable in Arnold, Missouri as it is in Baghad, Iraq. And it can be condoned neither here nor there. But only the Right will stand up and say so. This is where the Liberals get off the bus.See, Delbert Tarwater is just a metaphor. He doesn't really exist except to put a face on Radical Fundamentalist Islam. And although he epitomizes the worst in Redneck America, Delbert Tarwater is really the same guy as Musab al-Zarqawi, the terrorist beheading people over in Iraq. Both entities are intolerant bigots. Both are myopic in their religious views to the exclusion of others. Both consider it a right to use women as SpeedBags, and both feel justified employing violence to get what they want out of life. For these guys, the end Always justifies the means. And just like some of their Red Neck counterparts, Islamists have no problem killing the innocent either as a target or by accident. Collateral damage just isn't a consideration because as long as they're doing it for a good cause, they get to spend eternity satisfying their physical appetites by humping virgins or drinking beer. These are the rewards of those who are slaves to their baser urges.(Note to self: If in the afterlife the body is divorced from the soul, how do the Mullahs sell this one to the herd?)Now when guys like Delbert do what they do over here in the US, they draw fire from both ends of the political spectrum. For members of the Right, it as an assault on decency. Members of the Left may see it that way too, but I think they consider themselves so far above the level of common White Trash, they don't hesitate to draw the labels "Fascist" and "Nazi" out of the holster. So evidently being compared to those labels are bad things.And if they are bad things, why don't they condemn what goes on everday in Israel and Iraq? For surely there are no better examples of Fascism than the coercive tactics used by the White Trash of the Middle East, are there? And if this is so, then why do Liberals liken Bush to Hitler instead of likening al-Zarqawi to Hitler? Why don't they scream about the atrocities that terrorists commit from the same wellspring of outrage as Conservatives? Why do they fixate upon Abu Grahib while ignoring Jack Hensley, Eugene Armstrong and Nicholas Berg?Because they fear for their own skins, that's why. They are less concerned about Justice than they are about the impression they make upon all the other Liberals from Hollywood to Paris. They place a premium upon Political Correctness, because while everyone can get behind a condemnation of a Delbert Tarwater, they shut up when it comes to criticizing Musab al-Zarqawi and Islamofascism at large, simply because they don't want to be seen as criticizing Islam in general. Instead, the Left points the finger of blame at George Bush as if he had done the beheadings himself.Being a Muslim, even of an extremely radical flavor, means that their religion, their culture is different from ours. And simply being of a different culture means that the Good Liberal Mind cannot hold them accountable for their barbarism for fear of appearing judgmental, imperialistic, jingoistic, fascistic or above all, Intolerant.And so if the Good Liberal cannot criticize what needs to be criticized; if he cannot call Evil by its name, then in this fight against Terrorism he is useless. Targeting and executing innocent people because cotton shirts are more easily penetrated than Kevlar is justified neither by sanity nor morality, no matter the political cause. It's wrong no matter how you slice it, and so if the elevated minds of Hollywood and France must wait for consensus before taking action against this type of naked brutality, then they are simply a collection of followers.And that's OK. The world needs followers, too. But they should know their place as such, instead of calling Conservatives a bunch of Imperialistic Stormtroopers. (http://semiskimmed.net/bushhitler.html)This fight demands Leadership. It does not require a group affirmation of what evil is. It does not need committee approval before action is taken. And it does not need the approval of Liberalism to prosecute its goals. It simply needs a Leader. And for this reason, John Kerry is not the man for the job. He plainly wants, and daily calls for, Multilateralism. But his cry for it is an end rather than a means, for he wants America to fight a nice war. A good war. A friendly war. A war that gets the job done, but does so only with a nod of approval from Jacques Chirac and Tim Robbins.A short time ago two Americans were beheaded in Iraq. Following that, Islamists posted a message on a website in which they said,""The Muslim blood is not water and the honor of Muslim women won't go to waste...." (http://www.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/meast/09/22/iraq.beheading/index.html). Honor of Muslim women? Remember the Olympics? Recall Robina Muqimyar, the Afghani girl who ran in the 100 meters? She wore pants and came in dead last. And even though she covered her legs as a gesture of modesty, Radical Islam still called for her head. Back home in Kabul, some reporter stuck a microphone in Joe Muslim's face and asked him what he thought about that. And Joe Muslim did not dissappoint. He said, "If she were my sister, I'd kill her for bringing shame upon my family." Remember Delbert's sister in the story above? Sure, she's just a work of fiction. But that oafish mindset is still plenty real. And if this is the brand of Islam we are up against, then we certainly aren't duty-bound to tiptoe around that sort of ignorance. White Trash is White Trash whether it wears a turban or a mullet. And if Political Correctness is blind to that, then it's vote will be appropriately cast for Kerry and Edwards who want the country to be liked rather than secure.No. America should have a leader who will fight against intolerance, bigotry, oppression and evil. But she needs a man who can exercise the political will to hit terror right back without waiting on the rest of the world to get behind him. That's what a leader does. And that's how George W. Bush has behaved over the last four years. In the next four years, I expect to see more of the same.