Around 8:30ish in the Garden of Good and Evil
How one typical Southerner feels about his culture, heritage and his nation.
One of the many metaphors, I believe John Brendt was going for in his novel ‘Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil’, is the propensity for Southerners to abruptly go from one extreme to another, or so it would seem to non-Southrons. We can seem conceited, eccentric and even neurotic in our ways to the rest of America, with our strict sense of dignity and justice, it baffles them how such a polite and friendly people can suddenly turn on them in an instant; a real Jekyll and Hyde act.
As graceful as we are raised to be, there is, indeed, a point of no return within our psyche to where we will not tolerate any more deception or any other hypocritical and manipulative shenanigans. When our opponent stubbornly sticks to the same specious arguments filled with half-truths and exaggerations, and arrogantly ignores any valid counter-point we make, and then starts in with insults and blame and threats, we finally decide that the time for reason has ended.
It takes a lot to bring us there, too, and we feel that our inner-strength that makes us so tolerant is severely under-appreciated by the rest of the country. Once that impasse is reached with whomever we are dealing with, where others would walk away or ask for help, we are ready to fight it out.
What’s even more irritating is that what makes perfect sense to us seems to take our adversaries by surprise. They act as if they don’t understand why we wouldn’t put up with them indefinitely, or just wait for them to stop their abuse when it no longer suits them. The elitist mentality of the haughty is gonna get them punched in the mouth every time when they try to bring that attitude down south.
In Brendt’s novel, the reference to it being Midnight alludes to the breaking point where good becomes evil out of frustration, and fatigue. Where the friendliest people on Earth become your worst enemy. While the label of ‘evil’ is a gross exaggeration placed upon us by cowards, we are used to it. The blatant sedition against the sovereign Southern states that began as early as 1830 warranted such an extreme reaction as secession. We become incorrigible and utterly furious that we have been pushed that far when it was the last thing we wanted.
President Davis lamented that he worked day and night for 12 years to avoid bloodshed, but that the North was mad and blind, and so the war came. We can still empathize with our President. We still think the same way.
And so, confederated together against any attempts to subjugate us, we declare Dixieland independent, and make all who oppose her smell Southern powder and feel Southern steel. Even if we are hopelessly outnumbered and outgunned, our collective instinct tells us to fight it out anyway; to do as much damage as possible to our enemies so they will know, in the end, that it just wasn’t worth it; you can ask three hundred thousand Yankees, stiff in Southern dust.
Yes, when that enigmatic clock of the Southern heart strikes Midnight, a strong and extreme reaction to protect ourselves is imminent.
Thankfully, it’s only happened on a national scale once before, but I can see one or two times in History from the 20th century where the sun started to set on the United States, and right now it’s looking pretty dark out.
The same seditious libel and slander against the Southern states and the Southern people, which was a major cause of the rift in the first place, has re-surfaced in the past 20 years or so. No good at all can come from the ruthless demagoguery of revisionist history that would still arrogantly accuse Southern American patriots of treason and racism, so we must take our stand once again and defend our land and our honor, in order to buy the entire nation some more time; to turn that clock back to where we are one nation of sovereign States, united.