As an immigrant growing up in America, often the only Asian kid in the whole school composed of mostly blacks with some whites and latinos, I've always been an extreme outsider. But I've always been intrigued by how these other social groups interact among themselves and with each other. Therefore, I consider myself an amateur anthropologist since elementary school. I'm extremely curious and often feel that I see truths everywhere that few others notice. One such truth is that rednecks are noble savages with primitive cultures worth preserving. Democrats hate me for sympathizing with them and Republicans hate me for viewing them as primitive. I find both sides hypocritical.
If there is an apocalypse tomorrow that sends technological progress back to the stone age, it's the hunter gatherer tribes that will survive. The liberal intellectuals will not survive. It's the hunter gatherer tribes of America, the rednecks, who might survive. By personality and upbringing, I'm a liberal intellectual, but I've always thought that many things were wrong with their mainstream narrative. People tend to assume that "primitive" is an insult, but it isn't. In fact, it means that you have a stronger foundation at the base of Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs. There's an opportunity cost of trade off: Do you want to climb the Tower of Babel towards self-actualization or do you want to strengthen the foundation to ensure the survival of your descendants?
Liberal intellectuals tend to have a bias towards abstraction. One such group, Secular Humanists, created their own religious culture in which they believe that rationality can transcend biological impulses. Ironically, despite mocking the rednecks for being ignorant of the theories of evolution, the way that Secular Humanists actually live out their lives reflect an urge to deny evolutionary biological success while striving towards transcendent intellectual success. It's better to live according to the laws of evolution without theoretical understanding than to have the theoretical understanding without practical application.
My fondness for rednecks is identical to my fondness for Native American tribes, psychedelic shamans in the Amazon rainforests, hunter gatherer tribes in African and Pacific Islands, and various ancient cultures. They all share something at the foundation and origin of humanity which we have lost in modern times. You can call this a romanticism of the noble savage if you like. White liberals love noble savages of other races, but condemn their own noble savages. They are embarrassed of the primitive tribes of their own culture, so they condemn them out of self-hatred and a desire to transcend biological and anthropological reality.
White liberals are curious of "the other", but hate to identify with their own origins. They want all whites to have an external image of sophistication — an idealistic, religious transcendence of the irrationality of human nature. Ironically, they call themselves "atheists", but this goal denies the mechanisms of biology and is nothing more than a rephrasing of the Christian doctrine of "God is Logos." To achieve this goal, they must wipe out the non-sophisticated whites in an act of self-imperialism via evangelism and manipulation. The rituals and traditions of Christianity have been replaced with an intensification of the underlying ideology.
White liberals love to act cultured by going to foreign restaurants and telling stories about their vacations in other countries. My behavior is mirrored. I visit middle of nowhere America, go to local American restaurants, and tell Asians what an authentic cultural experience I've had. It's fun to meet these tribal hunter-gatherers who have never met an Asian before and romanticize about their honor culture. So it's very sad that urban white liberals are trying to wipe out these indigenous peoples. No, white liberals, you do not get to be the only group who gets to experience the "exotic, primitive other" while wiping away your own embarrassing past. For non-white explorers like me, your embarrassing past is my "exotic, primitive other." Let the rednecks roam free.
