Most people simply don't live like that anymore. Bowling Alone is more of the way we live now.
There are also plenty of groups that value industriousness, thrift, community solidarity but come from cultures that are not as hostile towards the government or government services. Jews, Hispanics, and Asians have all been given as recent examples in the wake of the 2012 election.
In short, the Scots-Irish attitude seems to me to be a relic of the past. Yes if you live in a rural area, you can always hunt for your own food and have your own garden. Most of us don't live this way and there are too many people in the United States for most of us to live in a self-sufficient yeoman kind of way. Most of the Republican Party propagandists are not self-sufficient yeoman either. Do Richard Lowry and Jonah Goldberg buy their own health insurance? I doubt it.
An honest and sincere question, how does the Democratic Party message sound to non-urban men?
I say this as someone who is 100 percent urban/suburban and my Judaism probably cancels out the part of me that is caucasian in terms of American voting demographics. Do political scientists even count Jews as being part of the Caucasian demographic? I've never been able to figure that out. On the one hand, I am in the minority of white men because I vote Democratic but still in the majority of Jewish voters, voters with advanced degrees, young urban voters, etc.
Honestly I have never gotten the constant Republican message of "personal responsibility" repeated ad naseum. When does the Republican party feel like the state or citizens have responsibility to each other? There has been a lot of Republican meltdown blamming the voters for picking Santa Claus (the Democratic Party) and wanting "free stuff" instead of a life of full personal responsibility and agency. As far as I can tell, the Republicans/conservatives mean this to say: No safety net, no public goods, no assistance. Just a full life of self-sufficient yeomanery.
Is it so incomprehensible to the Republican Party that their message sounds rather horrible to people living in the modern world? That we see that living in a globalized economy where most people are employees and require long educations means needing good roads, good schools, access to healthcare in case of ever increasing layoffs, that we want a safety net to prevent us from being too hurt by the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune? That we might be willing to pay higher taxes in order to have better schools and good government services?
I know you are not a Republican but to me just saying "personal responsibility" is a rouse, a trap. There are plenty of times in life when bad things happen to people and it is no fault of the people themselves. Plenty of people hurt in the recent financial crisis did not take out sub-prime mortgages and were not involved in the financial industry. Why should they take "personal responsibility" for being suddenly laid off?
The Bush County map is rather misleading as well. Yes it shows that most places are red and that there are just islands of blue. Someone looking at the map might think that the Democratic Party is the minority by a long shot.
Except....That those islands of blue tend to be the major metropolitan areas of the United States with a bulk of the population. Even in Texas, the little islands of blue tend to be cities like Austin and San Antonio. Dallas and Houston seem more mixed politically.
I'm more interested in the leaps of logic that are needed to get from Bike Lanes to Bike Lanes are part of a secret UN plot to take over the United States:
"I’d vote for your opponent Cory Booker (who’s attractive to Republicans anyways) just to remind other potential quislings that elephants never forget."
And this sums up the other major problem of the Republican party. Lockstep, lockstep, lockstep....
"Without making inroads in some of these now-Blue, fairly urban, states, the GOP’s margin for error in national elections is negligible."
I was basically making this argument. I'm as blue as they come. However in theory, given my professional and socio-economic status, I should make an ideal Rockefeller Republican. Liberal on social issues, a bit more moderate on economic ones, sensible in foreign policy.
The Republican Party has massacred the Rockefeller Republicans though.
I think in a sane world, the Republican Party would be able to compete for socially liberal and well-educated young professionals.
I am still convinced that looking at this issue state-wide is wrong.
Based on a not very deep study, I think that the big political division in the United States has always been urban-rural over anything else. Jefferson loathed cities. The early Federalists were essentially city politicians (as much as America had cities during the early Republic).
Today's GOP is the part of outerring suburbs, exurbs, and rural areas. The Democratic Party is the city of cities and inner-ring suburbs (the expensive ones filled with upper-middle class Clintonesque* professionals). I think the states that you mentioned as going from toss-up to safe blue are largely ones with big enough cities/inner-ring suburbs to control an election. Pittsburgh and Philadelphia keep Pennsylvania blue along with their suburbs (especially Philly suburbs). Colorado has the Denver-Boulder Metro area but also enough hippie towns like Durango and Telluride. Oregon's biggest growth in the past decade has been because Portland is now one of the coolest cities in America (with cheap living especially compared to other cities).
I admit that Maine and New Hampshire are outliers here. I am not sure how much Detroit helps Michigan stay blue considered the city is still retracting. It is the urban areas of Ohio that keep it blue for Presidential elections.
I have yet to read Paradise Lost but as I have heard you and others say: The Devil is the more compassionate, cooler, and sexier character.
I don't think this is the fault of the artist even if Milton intended otherwise. Rather it is a problem with humanity on a psychological and philosophical level. Most people want to think of themselves as being good, not cruel, etc. Maybe for the most part, most people do lead lives where they treat their fellow humans very decently. However, sometimes the "bad" people just seem like they are so much cooler and have so much fun that it is intoxicating.
We are all attracted to the outlaw somewhat. I don't think most people want to be sociopathic murderers but something more on the scale of a slightly to moderately amoral perpetual prom king or queen.
It can be very hard to write characters who are good but also interesting.
I think Birth of a Nation is a better example of immoral art than the Protocols of the Elder of Zion.
D.W. Griffith produced many innovations in that movie. The use of existing music, long-form epic films, close-ups, etc. But it is a highly racist work. Of course it is our modern sensibility that renders it immoral. The original audience probably largely agreed with the racist sentiments.
For moral art? Night by Elie Wiesel? Christ Stopped at Eboli? Native Son? Invisible Man? To Kill a Mockingbird? Angels in America? Johnny Got His Gun? Slaughter House Five? Beethoven's 9th Symphony?
There are many pieces of art that I consider moral. Interestingly they have also been frequently banned.
I don't consider The Protocols of the Elder of Zion to be art. I consider it to be propaganda issued by the government of Czar Nicholas II.
The same goes for things like The Turner Diaries.
Maybe this is a bit self-serving but whatever. Now Will Eisener's graphic novel on the Protocols and how they helped spur modern anti-Semitism and the Holocaust is art.
I question the whole idea about whether art can be immoral. Or whether we should be concerned with immorality in art.
Art is a manifestation of how an artist or collection of artists view the world or a particular theme of the world. The theme can be emotional, physical, sexual, religious/spiritual, etc.
All people are capable of both moral and immoral thoughts and actions. Hence all artists should be capable of producing art that is moral, immoral, and possibly both at the same time. Some artists because of their biographies might have a world view that most people would consider a bit to very warped and damaged. Harvey Darger comes to mind here.
To say that a piece of art is immoral is to imply that it should not have been produced or needs some kind of correction for it to be good. I am not sure that this is the case and I find it interesting that you pick out high art/older art for your examples. How about something like a Black Sabbath album or art that is purposefully meant to shock and challenge. For example, Robert Mapplethorpe photographs, the plays of Sarah Kane, Brecht, etc.
"Perhaps their insistence on writing the Left out of the American tradition will finally cease."
If someone believes this (and I am not saying that you do), I have a bridge in Brooklyn that I would like to sell them.
The tradition of wirting the Left out of the American tradition goes back way before Fox News, way before Goldwater, and Hofstadter's Paranoid Style/Anti-Intellectualism.
It seems to me that the right-wing has always dismissed the American Left as being part of the other even though we have been around since the Colonial Era. I consider Roger Williams, William Penn, and Anne Hathaway to the originators of the American Left in their own ways. Same with many of the Founders.
As I said to Brandon, I don't care that he is raising prices on pizza. A lot of restaurants in San Francisco charge a small surcharge (besides the normal sales tax) because they are required to provide health insurance for their employees. I don't mind paying this. It often comes out to about 50 cents to a dollar or so extra. This is a pittance.
I think the Papa John's guy is a jerk because he was trying to turn people against Obamacare by suggesting pizza prices would go up a pittance. He thought that people would hate the idea of paying just a small bit more for pizza that they would turn against the legislation. That is what pissed me off. He is being an absolute jerk.
Also cutting hours in order to be outside the range covered is also jerky. The dude lives in a huge mansion in Kentucky, Obamacare is not going to reduce him to a one bedroom apartment.
The issue is not the increase on the price of his pizza.
The issue is that he was very cynically trying to turn people against Obama care by saying that pizza prices would go up by a pittance. 50 cents really is a pittance. He thought that this would make people revolt against Obamacare.
The jerk part is reducing hours so to avoid giving employees healthcare.
My biggest problem with Kate Bolick's piece was not that she has no intention of getting married. It was largely being very dense around the issue of her class privilege. There was one section where she talked about borrowing a house in the Hamptons. I think the friend was another single lady who spent most of her time in London. My immediate thought upon reading this sentence or hearing about it was:
"Really? How many people have the time for all that?"
My inner socialist kicks a lot at trend pieces about the 1 percent or close to 1 percent. There is a big difference between being a single woman who can borrow a house in the Hamptons and a single woman struggling via low-wage jobs!
I would welcome the end to at least one stupid aspect of the Culture Wars though.
I am still economically on the left and believe in the welfare state, unions, single payer-healthcare, and end to our draconian prison system, and many other issues. The entire economic message of the Republican Party seems rooted in a protestantism that is alien to me.
All this being said, I never understood why 24/7 news is a viable market. It is true that only a small handful of people watch each station but they seem to do so constantly. All three repeat stories numerous times a day and this makes it kind of dull.
CNN is absolutely worthless as far as I am concerned. They are the feather-weights of Cable News.
MSNBC is left-leaning but there is a big difference in the books that Rachel Maddow and Chris Hayes writes and the books written by Hannity and company. Maddow and Hayes write about actual serious issues and put forward policy changes like restoring Congress in their war-making powers. Hannity writes a book long elementary-school bully taunt that roughly translates as "Look at those dumb libruls"
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.
On “Fifty Shades of Purple – Blue States Are American, Too”
Okay. Never mind. Apologies if I sounded accusatory.
"
Kim,
Most people simply don't live like that anymore. Bowling Alone is more of the way we live now.
There are also plenty of groups that value industriousness, thrift, community solidarity but come from cultures that are not as hostile towards the government or government services. Jews, Hispanics, and Asians have all been given as recent examples in the wake of the 2012 election.
In short, the Scots-Irish attitude seems to me to be a relic of the past. Yes if you live in a rural area, you can always hunt for your own food and have your own garden. Most of us don't live this way and there are too many people in the United States for most of us to live in a self-sufficient yeoman kind of way. Most of the Republican Party propagandists are not self-sufficient yeoman either. Do Richard Lowry and Jonah Goldberg buy their own health insurance? I doubt it.
On “Sailing Away to Irrelevance, Part III: Obama and the United Nations are Coming to Take Away Your Guns”
I wonder if tVD minded being accused of being on the left?
On “Fifty Shades of Purple – Blue States Are American, Too”
James,
An honest and sincere question, how does the Democratic Party message sound to non-urban men?
I say this as someone who is 100 percent urban/suburban and my Judaism probably cancels out the part of me that is caucasian in terms of American voting demographics. Do political scientists even count Jews as being part of the Caucasian demographic? I've never been able to figure that out. On the one hand, I am in the minority of white men because I vote Democratic but still in the majority of Jewish voters, voters with advanced degrees, young urban voters, etc.
Honestly I have never gotten the constant Republican message of "personal responsibility" repeated ad naseum. When does the Republican party feel like the state or citizens have responsibility to each other? There has been a lot of Republican meltdown blamming the voters for picking Santa Claus (the Democratic Party) and wanting "free stuff" instead of a life of full personal responsibility and agency. As far as I can tell, the Republicans/conservatives mean this to say: No safety net, no public goods, no assistance. Just a full life of self-sufficient yeomanery.
Is it so incomprehensible to the Republican Party that their message sounds rather horrible to people living in the modern world? That we see that living in a globalized economy where most people are employees and require long educations means needing good roads, good schools, access to healthcare in case of ever increasing layoffs, that we want a safety net to prevent us from being too hurt by the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune? That we might be willing to pay higher taxes in order to have better schools and good government services?
I know you are not a Republican but to me just saying "personal responsibility" is a rouse, a trap. There are plenty of times in life when bad things happen to people and it is no fault of the people themselves. Plenty of people hurt in the recent financial crisis did not take out sub-prime mortgages and were not involved in the financial industry. Why should they take "personal responsibility" for being suddenly laid off?
"
The Bush County map is rather misleading as well. Yes it shows that most places are red and that there are just islands of blue. Someone looking at the map might think that the Democratic Party is the minority by a long shot.
Except....That those islands of blue tend to be the major metropolitan areas of the United States with a bulk of the population. Even in Texas, the little islands of blue tend to be cities like Austin and San Antonio. Dallas and Houston seem more mixed politically.
On “Sailing Away to Irrelevance, Part III: Obama and the United Nations are Coming to Take Away Your Guns”
My comment was meant to be a general reply to the article. Not to you specifically but I enjoyed the Baffler read/
"
I'm more interested in the leaps of logic that are needed to get from Bike Lanes to Bike Lanes are part of a secret UN plot to take over the United States:
http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2012/02/is-the-un-using-bike-paths-to-achieve-world-domination/252572/
On “Fifty Shades of Purple – Blue States Are American, Too”
"I’d vote for your opponent Cory Booker (who’s attractive to Republicans anyways) just to remind other potential quislings that elephants never forget."
And this sums up the other major problem of the Republican party. Lockstep, lockstep, lockstep....
"
Thanks for the link. That pretty much sums up the problems.
"
I fully agree with everything you wrote above.
Instead of competing for people like me, the GOP seems to be doing everything in their power to repulse me and my cohort.
"
"Without making inroads in some of these now-Blue, fairly urban, states, the GOP’s margin for error in national elections is negligible."
I was basically making this argument. I'm as blue as they come. However in theory, given my professional and socio-economic status, I should make an ideal Rockefeller Republican. Liberal on social issues, a bit more moderate on economic ones, sensible in foreign policy.
The Republican Party has massacred the Rockefeller Republicans though.
I think in a sane world, the Republican Party would be able to compete for socially liberal and well-educated young professionals.
"
I am still convinced that looking at this issue state-wide is wrong.
Based on a not very deep study, I think that the big political division in the United States has always been urban-rural over anything else. Jefferson loathed cities. The early Federalists were essentially city politicians (as much as America had cities during the early Republic).
Today's GOP is the part of outerring suburbs, exurbs, and rural areas. The Democratic Party is the city of cities and inner-ring suburbs (the expensive ones filled with upper-middle class Clintonesque* professionals). I think the states that you mentioned as going from toss-up to safe blue are largely ones with big enough cities/inner-ring suburbs to control an election. Pittsburgh and Philadelphia keep Pennsylvania blue along with their suburbs (especially Philly suburbs). Colorado has the Denver-Boulder Metro area but also enough hippie towns like Durango and Telluride. Oregon's biggest growth in the past decade has been because Portland is now one of the coolest cities in America (with cheap living especially compared to other cities).
I admit that Maine and New Hampshire are outliers here. I am not sure how much Detroit helps Michigan stay blue considered the city is still retracting. It is the urban areas of Ohio that keep it blue for Presidential elections.
On “Paradise Lost: “Eves, Apples, Adam Smashers!””
I have yet to read Paradise Lost but as I have heard you and others say: The Devil is the more compassionate, cooler, and sexier character.
I don't think this is the fault of the artist even if Milton intended otherwise. Rather it is a problem with humanity on a psychological and philosophical level. Most people want to think of themselves as being good, not cruel, etc. Maybe for the most part, most people do lead lives where they treat their fellow humans very decently. However, sometimes the "bad" people just seem like they are so much cooler and have so much fun that it is intoxicating.
We are all attracted to the outlaw somewhat. I don't think most people want to be sociopathic murderers but something more on the scale of a slightly to moderately amoral perpetual prom king or queen.
It can be very hard to write characters who are good but also interesting.
"
I think Birth of a Nation is a better example of immoral art than the Protocols of the Elder of Zion.
D.W. Griffith produced many innovations in that movie. The use of existing music, long-form epic films, close-ups, etc. But it is a highly racist work. Of course it is our modern sensibility that renders it immoral. The original audience probably largely agreed with the racist sentiments.
For moral art? Night by Elie Wiesel? Christ Stopped at Eboli? Native Son? Invisible Man? To Kill a Mockingbird? Angels in America? Johnny Got His Gun? Slaughter House Five? Beethoven's 9th Symphony?
There are many pieces of art that I consider moral. Interestingly they have also been frequently banned.
"
I don't consider The Protocols of the Elder of Zion to be art. I consider it to be propaganda issued by the government of Czar Nicholas II.
The same goes for things like The Turner Diaries.
Maybe this is a bit self-serving but whatever. Now Will Eisener's graphic novel on the Protocols and how they helped spur modern anti-Semitism and the Holocaust is art.
"
I question the whole idea about whether art can be immoral. Or whether we should be concerned with immorality in art.
Art is a manifestation of how an artist or collection of artists view the world or a particular theme of the world. The theme can be emotional, physical, sexual, religious/spiritual, etc.
All people are capable of both moral and immoral thoughts and actions. Hence all artists should be capable of producing art that is moral, immoral, and possibly both at the same time. Some artists because of their biographies might have a world view that most people would consider a bit to very warped and damaged. Harvey Darger comes to mind here.
To say that a piece of art is immoral is to imply that it should not have been produced or needs some kind of correction for it to be good. I am not sure that this is the case and I find it interesting that you pick out high art/older art for your examples. How about something like a Black Sabbath album or art that is purposefully meant to shock and challenge. For example, Robert Mapplethorpe photographs, the plays of Sarah Kane, Brecht, etc.
On “Faulty Polls and Self-Offsetting Tax Cuts”
"Perhaps their insistence on writing the Left out of the American tradition will finally cease."
If someone believes this (and I am not saying that you do), I have a bridge in Brooklyn that I would like to sell them.
The tradition of wirting the Left out of the American tradition goes back way before Fox News, way before Goldwater, and Hofstadter's Paranoid Style/Anti-Intellectualism.
It seems to me that the right-wing has always dismissed the American Left as being part of the other even though we have been around since the Colonial Era. I consider Roger Williams, William Penn, and Anne Hathaway to the originators of the American Left in their own ways. Same with many of the Founders.
On “A Lump of Coal”
Bike lanes are also a UN plot, don't cha know?
"
As I said to Brandon, I don't care that he is raising prices on pizza. A lot of restaurants in San Francisco charge a small surcharge (besides the normal sales tax) because they are required to provide health insurance for their employees. I don't mind paying this. It often comes out to about 50 cents to a dollar or so extra. This is a pittance.
I think the Papa John's guy is a jerk because he was trying to turn people against Obamacare by suggesting pizza prices would go up a pittance. He thought that people would hate the idea of paying just a small bit more for pizza that they would turn against the legislation. That is what pissed me off. He is being an absolute jerk.
Also cutting hours in order to be outside the range covered is also jerky. The dude lives in a huge mansion in Kentucky, Obamacare is not going to reduce him to a one bedroom apartment.
"
Because non of the chains make good Pizza.
"
The issue is not the increase on the price of his pizza.
The issue is that he was very cynically trying to turn people against Obama care by saying that pizza prices would go up by a pittance. 50 cents really is a pittance. He thought that this would make people revolt against Obamacare.
The jerk part is reducing hours so to avoid giving employees healthcare.
On “Numeracy, Hedonism and Journalism: A Place-Holder”
My biggest problem with Kate Bolick's piece was not that she has no intention of getting married. It was largely being very dense around the issue of her class privilege. There was one section where she talked about borrowing a house in the Hamptons. I think the friend was another single lady who spent most of her time in London. My immediate thought upon reading this sentence or hearing about it was:
"Really? How many people have the time for all that?"
My inner socialist kicks a lot at trend pieces about the 1 percent or close to 1 percent. There is a big difference between being a single woman who can borrow a house in the Hamptons and a single woman struggling via low-wage jobs!
On “A Question About Same Sex Marriage”
Probably not.
I would welcome the end to at least one stupid aspect of the Culture Wars though.
I am still economically on the left and believe in the welfare state, unions, single payer-healthcare, and end to our draconian prison system, and many other issues. The entire economic message of the Republican Party seems rooted in a protestantism that is alien to me.
On “Sailing Away to Irrelevance, Part II”
All this being said, I never understood why 24/7 news is a viable market. It is true that only a small handful of people watch each station but they seem to do so constantly. All three repeat stories numerous times a day and this makes it kind of dull.
Do people just like it as background noise?
"
CNN is absolutely worthless as far as I am concerned. They are the feather-weights of Cable News.
MSNBC is left-leaning but there is a big difference in the books that Rachel Maddow and Chris Hayes writes and the books written by Hannity and company. Maddow and Hayes write about actual serious issues and put forward policy changes like restoring Congress in their war-making powers. Hannity writes a book long elementary-school bully taunt that roughly translates as "Look at those dumb libruls"
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.