Friday, July 22, 2016

Great minds think alike, so do small ones


If you thought we had political "issues" in the UK you need only look across the pond and you'll feel a whole lot better about things. Trump is the official Republican nominee (alarming enough) but has appointed Mike Pence the Governor of Indiana to be his running mate. Pence was in the news last year for signing a bill that effectively allowed religious people (Christians of course) to discriminate (legally) against LGBT people in that state, many business leaders announced boycotts of the state including some pretty big names like Eli Lilly and Salesforce.com; the bill was later revised but still stands. 

It turns out that Pence also has some rather anti-rational views on other things too; he is a creationist (or at least doesn't deny being one) and he is a climate change denier, both points of view quite popular among the red-necked, gas guzzling, gun toting people that unfortunately fill out that part of America, and both points of view that are totally wrong (and stupid). I have been to Indiana many times on business, and always remember once casually speaking with one of my "local" work colleagues about a TV program that I'd been watching. Now, this was a smart guy, degree educated with a fairly big job, he looked me straight in the eye and said "We don't watch TV, TV is evil", I laughed thinking this was some kind of clever parody of a Bible-bashing red-neck, or joke, it was neither, he was deadly serious.

When people call these places "flyover country" it's not an adjective, it's a useful suggestion.

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