Initial Impressions, Part V...
Stupidity has found it's way to North Carolina! We're not talking about your stereotypical, Hee-Haw redneck stupdity (which, btw, largely exists solely in trailer parks),  but the refined, elitist, snobbish, and supposedly-enlightened stupidity of the Yankee North. I heard something today that I never dreamed that I would hear in a million years: an IHOP (International House of Pancakes) restaurant, in trhe heart of tobacco country, has banned smoking. Now I know it wasn't anywhere in Charlotte, because I did not hear the staccato sounds of gunfire that could be expected to accompany such an announcement. Where, I asked my informant, did this take place? Why, in a suburb of Raleigh, she replied. You know Raleigh? The pimple on the ass of the south I told you about last week?

Now, I got a little more information on Raleigh and what it was like, say, 15 years ago. Back then, Raleigh was a sleepy little place where a redneck continued to run around the woods fighting the War of Northern Aggression  and attending Klan meetings whenever he/she wasn't out trying to reign in the runaway hogs. Well, maybe it wasn't that close to Dogpatch, but it wasn't that far removed from the rustic idyll. Then came the tech boom.

With the tech boom came the building boom as companies involved in the tech sector of the economy began building offices, which led to housing construction, which led to the building of shoping centers, hospitals, schools, etc, etc in a happy, little experiment in the joys of trickle down economics (and they said Reagan was dumb?). This had a wonderful effect on the people of Raleigh -- their property values went up, for example. People who had the training and education for a career in the techinical fields no longer had to tromp to Yankee-land or Silicon-Valley --- the Valley set up shop in their own backyards. They actually, secretly, began to think the Yankees were something of a godsend. It also had a major downside.

That downside was an influx of people from the North. While there were many qualified people here to take all them new jobs, there just was never enough, and so, the companies that moved in took some of their folks with them. Those folks wrote back home to their relatives to "come on down and enjoy country living", which they defined as a 4 bedroom mansion on an acre of land in a cul-de-sac surrounded by trees on the side of the interstate. Next thing ya know, there's more Yankees than roaches in Raleigh and this is where the trouble begins. Trust me, I've seen it happen in New York and I know what I'm talking about.

First, we have to define "Yankee". Historically, Yankees hail from New England. Long ago, when the Dutch controlled NewAmsterdam, which would later become NewYork, English sailors from the New England colonies would make port, and immediately buy up all the cheese in the city. The reason was that cheese was the only food that would keep on a long sea voyage. Anyway, the Dutch began calling the English sailors "John Cheese", which in Dutch is pronounced "Yawn-Kees", and thus a derogatory term was born. The English later applied the term to the people who had started a revolt against the Crown (Lexington and Concord, remember? Thems in Massachusetts --- Yankee Doodle, and all that). It was later applied to all Americans by the English, and even later, used by Southern Americans to describe their rabble-rousing neighbors to the North. You know, the New England abolitionists.

Anyway, Yankees are troublemakers and have been for over 200 years in this country.

Be that as it may, these Yankees come to North Carolina and immediately start trying to turn into Boston or Providence or whatever shithole it was they crawled out of. They do it here in Charlotte, too, which is a major banking center.  What this metamorphosis entails, however, usually revolves around the same four premises:

1. We know what best for everyone, especially since we're far more sophisticated, intellectually, socially, and educationally then anyone else.
2. Polite society can be created by getting government to enforce restrictions on liberty. Lenin and Mao were major proponents of this theory. Government does this by making laws that no one has a chance to debate or complain about when they get voted on in secret.
3. Freedom of choice, stupid, only refers to the right to have an abortion. If an establishment has a certain class of clientele or activities take place there that irk the Yankee, he does not remember that he has the option to take his business somewhere else, where folks might be more agreeable or a business may be happy to cater to his needs. He can't be bothered to make the effort, so he will do whatever is necessary to ruin everyone else's life in an effort to make everything JUSTTHE WAY HE WANTS IT. In other words: the fucking planet revolves around him and the rest of us exist as nothing more than background noise. Engendering hatred doesn't bother him as long as he can sip a Mozambiquan latte, and read his pretentious Northern Newspapers in a place reminiscent of a truckstop, in a smoke free-enviornment.
4. Whining is the Yankee's national past-time and if he doesn't have a reason that really requires it, he will be more than glad to make one up.

Banning smoking in a public place is par for the course for a Northerner. Banning it in a state where TOBACCO is a major industry is just asking to get your ass kicked, but that's aYankee for you. They're oblivious to anything that isn't DIRECTLY affecting them and their comfort.

I now know why there is such widespread resentment towards northerners here.  The folks here led a very simple, happy life, that looked like it was going to get much better until they realized that it was merely the prelude to an invasion of whining hypocrites with Napoleon complexes. These mental cases then run around screaming their heads off about how wonderful things were back home, and how you could get this and that at 3 in the morning, etc, etc, ad nauseum. They continually put southerners down as a backwards, inferior race who wouldn't know enough to not put their tongues in a wall socket if a Yankee wasn't there to tell them "this is how we did it back in Manchester". It is only a small step from suggestion to action, but it has a big impact on everyone else.

Smoking gets banned today to suit a Yankee. Tomorrow double-wides will be targeted as a "blight on the landscape" to suit a Yankee. Give these people an inch and they will take an acre.