What Happened to My Home?

My visit to my native South Carolina has been disheartening to me, to phrase it mildly. The advance of suburbia that I mentioned in an earlier post is more profound than I first surmised in my initial survey. It seems that everywhere I go I see massive changes in the landscape. Everyone seems to be in the business of selling the family farm to make way for some new profane subdivision.

When I look at a field or patch of woods that I hunted as a child/young man and see now houses for 100 or more families I am bewildered. Something like that occurring here or there is significant but when it occurs over and over it is bound to fundamentally change the very nature of the culture. Country roads that were once quiet and peaceful are now torrents of traffic as silly commuters make their way to silly jobs each day. This is simply an unsustainable way of life - folks will realize this someday when they no longer have the option of paying $70 to fill up their glorified mini-vans (I guess they call them SUV's but I just see boxes on wheels with very little sport or utility involved).

I have been most disturbed with conversations I have had with otherwise good people about Pat Robertson. Around here most folks are evangelicals and they are the sort that generally believe a man if he simply says he is a good Christian. It is because if this that I know of several good people that over the years sent money to the likes of Oral Roberts, Jim Baker and now Pat Robertson. A lot of these same folks believe that Bob Jones is square in his biblical teachings. I have found it impossible to point out that Robertson is obviously a fake, a man deluded by the power he has come to wield. How on Earth could any moral man, much less a Christian support a man that endorses someone like Giuliani? I just don't know.

More disturbing is that most of the people that should be squarely behind Ron Paul have never heard of him. I have to blame this on the generational differences in how folks acquire information.

I visited a Wal-Mart today - because I found that the two hardware stores I patronized in the past are now out of business. It is not an exaggeration to state that 30% of the customer base in the store when I was there was Mexican. This is in a small (historically rural) town in South Carolina. I cannot get over the change two years has wrought.

I am seriously considering cutting my vacation short and leaving within the next two days for my next duty assignment. I know at least that weird things are to be expected where I am going. I do not have the heart to see the changes in my own home firsthand.