The South's Battered Psyche: 8 Trends of Bad Health, Gun Violence, Religious Fervor, and Poverty

By Steven Rosenfeld

March 8, 2014  |  Across red-state America, especially in the Deep South, recent statistics—such as these Huffington Post graphics [3]—show that the cycle of poverty, in its many manifestations, is unchanged and holding firm. Why is this?

It’s easy to say this is how Republicans like to run states—cutting budgets, not raising the minimum wage, opposing labor unions. They let the poor and working class stew in their hardscrabble juices. Meanwhile, they distract voters by accusing liberals of waging war on the few sources of personal power in Southerners' difficult lives: their religious beliefs and owning guns. But go back several decades when segregationist Democrats ruled; for the most part, they weren’t very different from today’s Republicans.