Another Silly Cincinnatism

I get down on Cincinnati a lot. Like, a lot a lot. It's one of those places that I lived that I didn't realize I was so unhappy with until I left. As I've said before, I miss my friends and family, but I don't regret moving here to Chicago one little bit. And here's another reason why.

A pro-Atheism billboard is put up by an organization using that organization's own funds, and then subsequently taken down because some nutjobs go all ape shit about it and threaten the owner of the building the billboard was on with violence. They did not threaten the Organization that paid for the billboard, mind you, just the owner of the building that the billboard was on.

I didn't realize Atheism was such a threat to the conservative peoples of Cincinnati that certain members of the city would threaten violence because of it. Much less several viable threats. I clearly remember going to a New Age Spirituality conference in downtown one year, and even shopping at several New Age stores around town, none of which seemed to have issues. There weren't even protestors at the conference. Yet Atheism, which stresses the lack of a god rather than a wholly different godly structure, is a bigger threat to Cincinnatians than new age theology?

I truly feel sorry for Cincinnati anymore. Mark Twain was right about that town, it simply perpetually lives years behind the rest of the country. Why would Christians, Muslims, Scientologists, Whatevers be threatened by a billboard, so much so that they'd go out of their way to come up with conceivable threats? I just don't get that city anymore, and likely never will.

I had entertained the idea of moving back there later in life, but I don't think it'll ever be a town that I could be happy living in again. It's not just this billboard thing either, it's the non-stop Conservative mentality of the area. There's nothing progressive here, and every day they fight just a little bit harder to be actively regressive.