The Loving Afterlife of the Dixie Chicks

A few weeks ago I heard Ben Bullington for the First Time, heard "Country Music, I'm Talking to You."

Made him sick, it did, what Country Music did to the Dixie Chicks.

I just stopped listening after country fans turned on the Dixie Chicks. I cannot even listen to that clever lyricist Toby Keith after he tried to out Lee-Greenwood Lee Greenwood in Holy Patriotism, when the true patriots were the Dixie Chicks. I understand the holy self-righteous rage. I've been thinking about it in relation to the 18th century Scotch-Irish anger and looking for living people who know how to acknowledge the rage and leave it behind us.

Then just now reading Peter Heller's THE DOG STARS I got to "We loved the Dixie Chicks who wouldn't." Supply the punctuation: "We loved the Dixie Chicks. Who wouldn't?" This in a book published in 2012. I got up and came down to tell Peter Heller how much I love him, backwards, from The Painter to this one. And I find a slur against the Dixie Chicks.

Tyler Kee review 2014 of Peter Heller's THE DOG STARS evoked this snotty comment from Rlc2
rlc2 says:

August 24, 2014 at 23:27

Ok, update- first chapter done…
Just Wow. This guy can write- a dog guy, a gun guy, a blues guy, pilot- or so good a writer he is in the heads of them all…
Reminds me a little of the science fiction book “A Boy and His Dog” –
Only one tiny quibble- Dixie Chicks…really? …:)

Really, Rlc2, really. People I love love the Dixie Chicks. Brave Ben Bullington loved them. Peter Heller loves them, to drop those 7 words into his book. Tell you who would not love them: Kim Davis and her present husband Joe. Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio. Bobby Jindal. Jeb!Boy. All the "Christians" filled with hatred and self-righteousness. Oh, what has happened to us as a result of centuries of grievances and bitterness and rage! How can we turn away from the taxation of the Church of England and the greed of the landlords in Scotland and Ireland? from the devastation of the Civil War? From religiosity and chauvinism, hollow ignorant "patriotism" when Natalie, God help her, was the true patriot?