I recently came across what I think is an exceptional bit of inspiring propaganda. I mean that in the most positive way, as in promoting an idea and high cause that bypasses your rational mind and stirs the heart.
It’s from a media group encouraging tourism and pride for… Michigan.
I feel your interest plummeting but please, take the 75 seconds and check it out. We need this for Dixie.
It makes Michigan seem… cool. There are multiple scenes of unabashed smoking, a hatchet, fire, implied trespassing, young white people looking attractive and normal, flag waving, and a logo that feels just edgy enough that you wouldn’t feel dorky having it on a shirt or cap.
Don’t hold your breath waiting for any Southern State’s Department of Tourism to rise to the challenge. For too long Alabama has been milking “Sweet Home Alabama” beyond its ability to mean anything to anyone under 50.
What you do find is the promotion of mostly dining and bar scenes, pretty pictures of the land, endless museum options, and sports ball advertising all capped with vague and cliched slogans like “Take it All In” and “Let’s Wander!” We also have lots of diverse couples and families “enjoying” themselves in pictures that could just as easily be from an insurance company brochure. (In spite of Michigan having a population that is 40% minority, the Michigan Man video only shows young white people having fun.)
The poem being recited in the video is called “Over the Hill to the Poorhouse” published in 1871 by Michigan-born poet, Will Carleton. If there’s anything the South is abundantly rich in, it is Southern poets and authors. This part should be easy.
A good place to start is the long list from Abram Joseph Ryan (1838 – 1886) the “Poet Laureate of the Confederacy.” But also, Albert Pike, Thomas Nelson Page, Henry Timrod and some of the most important authors in the last 100 years. I’ve no doubt readers of Identity Dixie can suggest even more. I also know there are people today that could compose and get the job done on their own.
Now, I don’t want to attract any more people to the South who are not from here who, well-intentioned or not, will dilute the culture further. Michigan’s population is dropping fast, and the video is signaling to a demographic they want to attract as well as keep. But I do want to inspire the men and women of Dixie to feel pride and reclaim a true Southern identity with a desire to vigorously defend it. Media alone has the power to do this at scale.
Though the Michigan video was professionally and expensively produced, with the accessible and uncomfortably good development of AI generated video, there’s no reason we can’t make this happen.
‘Cause down in Alabama, you can run, but you sure can’t hide.
The poem being recited in the video has to the lamest turd I’ve ever heard.
Michigan is a basket case of a state. It’s weird that their tourism board is based. Their Governor was the one who colluded with the feds to stage a fake citizens-arrest impromptu-trial and lynching during COVID. They’ve definitely got plenty of “hicks in the sticks.” Of all the Soldiers I served with, the most common state of origin was Michigan. I’ve never visited this benighted state, and have nothing to base my sentiments off other than the interactions I’ve had with “Michiganders” who fall into the category of Yoopers (those who live in the non-contiguous part of Michigan that lives as Wisconsin’s hat) and Trolls (those who live “under the bridge” that connects the non-contiguous part of Michigan to the oven-mitt that is most of Michigan.
Hunting is apparently the most popular pass-time in Michigan for men aged 8 to “not dead yet.” Steven Rinella of Meateater fame was born and raised in Michigan. Bow season is very popular up there. Some of my Soldiers had compound bows that cost as much as any 2 of my rifles.
If the South wants to encourage tourism (you actually want MORE carpetbaggers?), they should play up the romantic antebellum angle. It’s like crack to white women. They can listen to the Wailing Jennies as they’re driving through the kudzu-infested swamps and spotting the plantation manors in between the various McMansion settlements that popped up near them. Nashville figured this out 40 years ago and made an entire racket out of it. You’ll see a double-decker bus with a couple dozen drunk white girls at a bachelorette party unceremoniously puking over the side and trying not to get any on their newly-purchased cowboy boots.
I don’t know why I’m so angry. I think I woke up on the wrong side of the bed.
Everybody wants to trade off of nostalgia but nobody wants to do what is required to rebuild it. It’s the same all over. Tourism is what you sell when you’ve sold out your own boys and they all left for a better life or OD’d because they didn’t leave. Give your boys a reason to stay. It’s not that complicated.
They need to appeal to the only demographic that still has disposable income so they can support the parasitic part of their population. When these Dem run States collapse economically due to liberal foolishness, the rest of us have no reason to bail them out. As far as poetry, I have no interest in it and consider most of it lame. But I suppose those who love it would find engineering boring.