That whole Southern Thing
“The surest way to tell the people who had arrived there for an anachronistic weekend versus those who came every year was to look around and see who could hold their booze. Because everyone was drinking like they needed to forget some horrible thing they’d done.” – Wright Thompson, Pappyland
“The Ole Miss band used to play a slow version of “Dixie” before the game, and even as I winced at the Confederate nostalgia, I also teared up because the song reminded me of my father. That’s what Patterson Hood called the ‘Duality of the Southern Thing’.” – Wright Thompson, Pappyland
I think Wright also wrote that NOSTALGIA is “home pain” from the (I guess) Greek. Whereas, the modern dictionaries leave out the painful connotations: “a sentimental longing or wistful affection for the past, typically for a period or place with happy personal associations.”
It took a bit of artful Googling to find this: “The word ‘nostalgia’ is a compound of nostos and the Greek word algos, which means pain’. It literally means the suffering caused by the desire to return to one’s place of origin.”
Which is not to kick The South. But, it is to acknowledge that the American ethos toward individuals allows people to forgive, and even support again, a person who publicly acknowledges (and does not deny) their offenses against others and swears to do better (viz: Robert Downey, Jr.). Hell, some Americans will go out of their way to root him on, despite the things he has done in the past to hurt other people.
I do not know if anybody can lay claim to that belief. I do believe it is American as a whole.