Talking low expectations

I think if the south  voted to secede from the union today, most Americans would probably say don't let the doorknob hit you on the way out.  The vote at Volkswagen's Tennessee auto plant is another case of southerners' voting against their own interest.  Their were threats and intimidation involved, but beyond that was the specter of people who are so ideologically opposed to unionism they voted to remain unrepresented, despite the encouragement of Volkswagen's management to organize.   When you think of the union movement in this country, you picture ordinary people making extraordinary sacrifices to advance the good of all.  In this case, the workers are effectively turning their backs on their peers in the name of what?  Rugged individualism?  The right to work for nothing?  It boggles the mind.   I have to believe there is a fundamental difference between the average southerner and most of the rest of us.   How else to explain the willingness of poor whites to go to the slaughterhouse of the Civil War to defend the rights of richer men  to own other human beings.  Or the relentless persecution of blacks by their economic peers since Reconstruction.  If you can't realize and defend your own interests, how can you participate effectively in a democracy?