Shitcatchers

Did you see the movie Songcatcher, with Janet McTeer and Aidan Quinn? It's true, that they found the most primitive, original and unspoiled versions of Scots-Irish songs anywhere in the isolated American mountains.

It applies to other things. We think that we're better than Europe--and better than everybody. We think that we avoided all the baggage of the conflicts culminating there in the horror of mechanized warfare and genocide. 

We didn't. We're just behind. The baggage, a nightmare of unreason and religious fanaticism and Calvinist extremism, has overtaken us. We're late bloomers. Witness the racists crawling out of their hiding places.

If anyone cares they can find the most primitive versions of Puritanism and doctrinal absolutism and sectarian resentment right here, transplanted and growing vigorously in the hills and hollers and everywhere else.