1952 Reds State

I was a little blue recently, about the color red. I was listening to some lame humorist on the radio doing what he thought was a funny tirade. During the course of his rant, he used the words "liberal commie pinko" to characterize folks on the left he disagreed with. Seemed a little inflammatory for the supposedly general audience the radio station's owners desired. The equivalent of someone on the left calling the humorist a conservative fascist nazi.
Then it occurred to me. Pink is a shade of red. That's why the pejorative "pinko" was originally coined. There was an old slogan back in the McCarthy days, when everyone's civil rights were trampled in the stampede of the Communist Scare. It was, "Better dead than red."
Back then the color red was the color of dread. Reds were commies. We were fighting the reds. So if you were leaning towards, say, socialism, then you weren't completely red, you were pink. You certainly weren't true blue.
Fast forward to now.
Heard a song on some country station and this guy sang that he likes things from the past. Country folks always seem to be hung up on the good old days. He sang that he wished he was like "a Civil War soldier, bang bang, like the good things that are never coming back."
Um... the Civil War was a bad thing. You know, brothers killing brothers, slavery, human bondage and destruction. Not a wistful time of universal goodness, Johnny Reb.
So, Red. Today if you're a redneck like that singer you're supposedly more patriotic. Especially if you come from a red state. My Ultra-conservative John Bircher Uncle is rolling over in his Texas grave, now that he's dead in a red state.
And because liberals live in true blue states.
America, ya gotta love it.