...I don't mean that G.O.P. politicians are, on average, any dumber than their Democratic counterparts. And I certainly don't mean to question the often frightening smarts of Republican political operatives.I think Krugman is conflating pandering with anti-intellectualism--not that you can't employ both at the same time. Still, no party has a monopoly on the art of pretending that there are easy answers to difficult problems. I don't think Obama is above doing that himself--certainly Clinton wasn't. Remember the gas tax? That said, the past few weeks worth of attacks on Obama have had "stupid is a virtue" feel to them.What I mean, instead, is that know-nothingism -- the insistence that there are simple, brute-force, instant-gratification answers to every problem, and that there's something effeminate and weak about anyone who suggests otherwise -- has become the core of Republican policy and political strategy. The party's de facto slogan has become: "Real men don't think things through."
In the case of oil, this takes the form of pretending that more drilling would produce fast relief at the gas pump. In fact, earlier this week Republicans in Congress actually claimed credit for the recent fall in oil prices: "The market is responding to the fact that we are here talking," said Representative John Shadegg.
What about the experts at the Department of Energy who say that it would take years before offshore drilling would yield any oil at all, and that even then the effect on prices at the pump would be "insignificant"? Presumably they're just a bunch of wimps, probably Democrats. And the Democrats, as Representative Michele Bachmann assures us, "want Americans to move to the urban core, live in tenements, take light rail to their government jobs."
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Krugman channeling Colbert:
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I think you have a point, but I think the Dems generall oversimplify the message while still having complex policies. The reps seem to be believing their own BS.
Certainly if we take Emerson as a guide, the Republican attempts to pain the last 3 democratic candidates as flip-floppers have an anti-intellectual basis to them. After all "A foolish consitancy is the hobgoblin of little minds."
The difference between Democrats and Republicans is that this is the GOP answer to everything. It's their basic MO. It's part of the reason we went to war in Iraq in the first place. Between the Dixiecrats and the Contract with America true believers, you have a bunch of people who want to be John Wayne and just hate anyone who might be smarter, better educated, more cosmopolitan, etc. than them.
What Bachman derides in her last sentence at least shows they understand the true answer. Which makes their feigned stupidity all the more repugnant.
The difference between Democrats and Republicans is that this is the GOP answer to everything. It's their basic MO. It's part of the reason we went to war in Iraq in the first place. Between the Dixiecrats and the Contract with America true believers, you have a bunch of people who want to be John Wayne and just hate anyone who might be smarter, better educated, more cosmopolitan, etc. than them.
"Contract with America true believers"
What's that supposed to mean? People who think that a Balanced Budget is good? The $500/child tax credit? Cost-benefit analyses on stuff that costs more than $50mil?
Sorn, it has been McCain who has been tagged as a flip flopper earlier and more often than Obama. Mostly because McCain has flipped on more than a few issues (I say this as someone who will more than likely vote for McCain).
I was disappointed in McCain attacking Obama for high oil prices, because Obama certainly doesn't control the oil market. Just like I think Dems are full of crap when they think it is some mysterious group of speculators that have caused the increase. Both sides are using easy answers that appeal to their respective bases. Repubs can blame the hippie environmentalists and the Dems can say it is the evil corporatists.
I am not so sure the resentment of Repubs against the cosmopolitan types is based upon a hatred of the intellectual, but it is more a backlash to the arrogant preaching that sometimes infects certain members of the liberal class when they mock hillbillies in flyover country or christians as "poor, uneducated, and easily led".
I've been saying for at least 20 years that the real legacy of Saint Reagan was that he made it okay to be stupid again. And finally the Age of Stupid reached its apotheosis with the Bushpig administration, a conglomeration of morons incapable of doing anything right. It's a record that will be hard to beat.
DougEFresh writes: "I am not so sure the resentment of Repubs against the cosmopolitan types is based upon a hatred of the intellectual, but it is more a backlash to the arrogant preaching that sometimes infects certain members of the liberal class when they mock hillbillies in flyover country or christians as "poor, uneducated, and easily led"."
If by "christians" you mean the fundamentalists who voted for Dumbya in 2004 by a 4-1 margin, "uneducated and easily led" would seem to have some validity.
Agreed on Clinton and gas tax holiday. Also, did you read Harry Reid saying that the talk of cracking down on oil speculation helped bring the cost of a barrel down in the past few weeks? Unfortunately, our leaders are just as delusional as Republicans.
Doug,
The dems argue that high prices are because of the fumdamental issue of supply running out and we need to switch to alternatives.
The "speculator" BS is coming from Demagouges on both sides. It just takes slightly different forms.
Point taken. I should have said previous candidate (John Kerry) Although the same label was sort of affixed to Al Gore. However that is my favorite Emerson quote
Point taken. I should have said previous candidate (John Kerry) Although the same label was sort of affixed to Al Gore. However that is my favorite Emerson quote.
Actually Krugman is channeling Obama, who made precisely this point about the McCain camp, et. al., the other day: "They take pride in being ignorant."
Too bad Krugman couldn't acknowledge that Obama is leading with a sharp attack on this mentality - wonder why no mention of that in this column. Could it be that Krugman - a longtime academic and technocrat who got blindsided by the reality of BushCo and latched on to vocal liberal politics late in the game - is still stuck in his Clintonite primary resentments ?
I agree with Doug. I see banging the anti- corporate drum as the Dem's favorite pet pander. Obama's "Big Oil" windfall tax, for example, just doesn't pass the sniff test for me.
Between the Dixiecrats and the Contract with America true believers, you have a bunch of people who want to be John Wayne and just hate anyone who might be smarter, better educated, more cosmopolitan, etc. than them.
Let's not forget the evangelicals who are to an extent anti-science.
The Republicans speak to the base of their coalition-white working class conservative males, but answer to the top of it: corporations and the wealthy. They know they dont need to go into details and therefore dont. Luckily, for them if they did go into details about what a ultra pro-business meant for the average American family they'd never win. Hence, the constant focus on cultural values issues.
Eric, you are right that there are Dems, like Krugman who have been on the ball about dismissing this speculator crap and that some Republicans have jumped on this idiocy as well, but from what I hear and read online, is it largely a left wing push to pass legislation to attack speculation.
And Moe, I think you might be surprised that Evangelicals are a bit more educated and well off than you realize. Maybe more would vote for democrats if rank and file dems treated them with the respect that Clinton and Obama afford them. But being nice to Xtians might get your hipster card revoked.
Krugman's stupid is another man's common sense.
To penetrate the roaring gray noise of people's everyday lives and grab a few minutes of people's divided attention requires simplified argumentation. To get an argument out you have to pare it down to bare essentials.
In the insular academic world of Krugman and many leftists, what looks good on paper suffices as an alternative to reality. Discussions of the costs and implications of such policy ideas are rare. That makes it easy for the Repubs to shoot such Dem and leftist ideas down in flames. Dems then have to back down, sulking away with their own words of consolation that their ideas were simply pearls before the public swine.
I wish there were viable alternatives to the Repubs, but you won't find anything realistic on offer. In his column, Krugman seems to say drilling here and now so that we consume more of our own oil than imported oil is not a good idea because we presumably shouldn't consume oil. But he offers no viable alternative. Not consuming oil all of a sudden would be an economic disaster.
Once you add in the problem that the Dems always have to "massage the erogenous zones," as Mark Shields once said, of all the party's disparate interest groups and subgroups, there's just not much room for coherent policy proposals that can be summed up in reasonable sounding terms.
DougEFresh of the Juice Crew writes: "but it is more a backlash to the arrogant preaching that sometimes infects certain members of the liberal class when they mock hillbillies in flyover country or christians as "poor, uneducated, and easily led"."
I don't know what other conclusion one could come to when dealing with a group of people who believe that the universe predates the invention of agriculture by a few hundred years.
I understand there is a certain smugness to liberal cosmopolitan elites--as opposed to those humble, simple folks who simply believe they know the mind of god and were chosen by him to be raptured away at any second before the end times fun beings, or that their favorite story book offers more compelling evidence than the entire canon of scientific research and development, yep not a smug bone in their bodies--but just as true is the fact that proud and willful ignorance is the hallmark of the GOP. In both personal and political style there is always something annoying about being told how wrong you are over and over again. Its why democrats suck at winning elections, they believe if only people had the facts they would see the light, when in reality people will only resent you more for making you face reality rather than deeply cherished illusions. (In the sake of fairness I should note that this particular door swings both ways, see above examples about gas tax holidays and speculators, just not really in equally egregious amounts.)
But what else can one do? Just sit back and pretend its harmless to believe in abject nonsense? If you think gay marriage is a threat to civilization, that tax cuts for billionaires will eventually "trickle down", or that Iraq or "terrorism" poses an immediate threat to our very existence chances are you are a very easy mark.
"What's that supposed to mean? People who think that a Balanced Budget is good? The $500/child tax credit? Cost-benefit analyses on stuff that costs more than $50mil?
Posted by Jaybird | August 8, 2008 1:11 PM"
Probably wasn't the best choice of words on my part. I meant the class of Republicans that came in with Gingrich in the 1990's that he stoked up for short-term political gain but over whom he ended up losing control, basically Gingrich's Frankenstein's monster.
Doug,
The windfall porfit tax stuff is a stupid pander, but behind it there are legit prposals for investing in alternative energy and so on. The Reps have their stupid pander (drill) and then? Bascially the pander is their plan.
Krugman just wants to get in on the SavingTheWorld gig with the book royalties, houseboats, Davos panels. Most Americans just don't understand these things, and can never hope to.
to brucds point, check out the last two sentences of this column that seem like a thinly veiled dig against Obama:
"In any case, remember this the next time someone calls for an end to partisanship, for working together to solve the country's problems. It's not going to happen--not as long as one of America's two great parties believes that when it comes to politics, stupidity is the best policy."
Are all baby boomers this sour, or is or just Clinton acolytes?
I want to defend Obama and the general notion that Republicans and Democrats are alike. Obama has said that there may be a place for environmentally safe drilling, but he consistently says that drilling is not the answer, would not help in the near term (7 years) or even very much later (20 years) and that energy policy must include moves to alternative sources, conservation, sustainable communities, and so forth. He connects energy policy with security and environment.
The Republicans are connected with some pretty big lies: that Saddam Hussein 'attacked us', that the tax cuts and trickle-down policies work (the economy under Bush, while technically not being in recession, has shown tepid growth, much, much less than previous so-called recoveries, that allowing gay marriage threatens other marriages, and others. There is no contest here.
Perhaps we are merely witnessing a normal human trend.
We like to think that representative government is more rational, that it makes more sense than the alternative forms of Oligarchy and Dictatorship. There is a long history --going back to the progressives-- which believes that open democracy will cure the evils of government. Perhaps it isn't so. Maybe just maybe the "Anti-intellectualism" of the Republican Party is a symptom of both parties. Is it possible that this is a logical outgrowth of an intense media culture coupled with a mass of uninformed people who rely on soundbites to make decisions. Personally I don't think this is anything new in human affairs. After All Jonathan Swift said that "Most people were as well equiped for flying as for thinking."
You know, what I don't get about the gas tax is that states with lower gas taxes have cheaper gas, by and large. If you ask an economist why gas is typically ten cents cheaper in Jersey than in PA, for instance, he'll say it's largely because Jersey charges 14.5 cents per gallon and PA charges 26.6. But if you ask an economist what would happen if the federal gas tax were suspended, he'll say the price will automatically go back up because people will start buying more gas. But we know that when states tax gas, it does have an effect on the price. So why should it be different in the case of the federal tax?
Ah, fair enough.
I think that the Contract with America is actually one of those things that the Democrats could have picked up in 2004 (well... let's say 75% of it) and run against Bush and the Republicans *AND WON*... without any loss of principle anywhere (the other 25%, yeah, sure, that's Republican stuff... but the good 75%? That's good stuff right there. Bring that stuff back).
DougEFresh replies: "And Moe, I think you might be surprised that Evangelicals are a bit more educated and well off than you realize."
That's why I left "poor" out, DougE. But I don't consider people who think that triceratops wore saddles to be "educated." I also don't equate evangelicals with the fundamentalists I'm talking about.
Hey Moe
What do you mean by educated?
I've said since day one of this campaign that one of Obama's big challenges is that many of his positions are nuanced. But the fact is that the world is very complicated. And the Republicans have been pandering to the uneducated by stating very simple "truths" that they have concocted. Obama's a muslim. Drilling on American soil makes us energy independent. Withdrawal equals failure. Etc. Etc. Devoid of further investigation by voters, it certainly makes a candidate look more favorable. Unfortunately the small group of people that frequent blogs and other commentary and news outlets to form their own informed opinions are a small minority.
I am not so sure the resentment of Repubs against the cosmopolitan types is based upon a hatred of the intellectual, but it is more a backlash to the arrogant preaching that sometimes infects certain members of the liberal class when they mock hillbillies in flyover country or christians as "poor, uneducated, and easily led".
There is a genuine chicken-and-egg problem here: it’s not like the language painting urbanites as "latte sipping liberals" is new: before my generation, there were "effete intellectual snobs." For as long as I can recall, the news outlets have had a romantic obsession with the "real" America – the heartland. Never mind the sheer number of Americans living in urban settings; somehow we are all fakes, ripe for getting dumped on. I know that I, for one, am tired of this false and insulting frame.
And the preaching… you know what group is sometimes known for preaching? Preachers! Mike Huckabee didn’t exactly come from the much-reviled metropolises San Francisco or Manhattan. I’ll put the "evils of gay marriage" up there as the preachiest preaching that ever was preached, and there is no shortage of it from "certain members."
In the insular academic world of Krugman and many leftists ... Discussions of the costs and implications of such policy ideas are rare.
You don’t see the inherent condescension (that you earlier decry) here? Really? To you, this is just an objective statement of fact?
Uh, perhaps you could take an Econ 101 class and learn about supply elasticity, demand elasticity, and excise tax incidence. You would then understand why suspending the gas tax has little or no effect on retail prices.
"I am not so sure the resentment of Repubs against the cosmopolitan types is based upon a hatred of the intellectual, but it is more a backlash to the arrogant preaching that sometimes infects certain members of the liberal class when they mock hillbillies in flyover country or christians as "poor, uneducated, and easily led"."
Unfortunately, that mocking comes most painfully from the GOP, not the liberals. It was guys like Grover Norquist and Abramoff that considered the religious right to be a bunch of fools to be exploited, and the rhetoric about attitudes toward the midwest came from Rush Limbaugh trying to wedge long-time midwest Democratic voters toward Bush.
Sure, you find some liberals applying those labels on blogs and whatnot, but the arrogant preaching is generally nonexistent except from what guys like Rush fabricate for the audience.
No need to be sarcastic Savage. He asked a completely valid question. For the record, I'd love to hear a serious answer, myself. My econ is awful.
See, I have taken Econ 101 and I think the answer is that there just isn't a lot of demand elasticity with gas. For example, suppose the federal government started a 10% peach tax. You'd probably see a significant decline in peach sales as people switched over to untaxed nectarines. But gas isn't like peaches; there isn't really any good substitute for it, besides eschewing driving and going with public transportation. And unlike produce, which one can always just stop buying altogether, gas is a pretty necessary item. So I don't really believe that if you eliminated an 18.4 cent gas tax people would start buying up more gas. It just defies common sense to suppose that if the price of gas drops from 4.00 a gallon to 3.82, people are going to start behaving that differently.
Krugman has written on this issue several times on his blog, in particular when he was forced to call out Hillary on her endorsement of suspending the federal gas tax. Given short-run inelastic demand, tax incidence falls almost entirely on producers not consumers.
You've answered your own question and, in the process, highlighted why the proposal is poor policy... which might also be why McCain is for it.
Sorn asks: "Hey Moe
What do you mean by educated? "
Beyond having basic literacy and math skills I think being 'educated' should involve having critical thinking abilities. I don't see how people who think the Earth is 6000 years old or that "dinosaurs were on the Ark" can be considered to qualify for the label.
Fair enough but what seperates the educated "evangelical" from the il-educated fundamentalist?
I remember Fr. Sullivan talking about how he had a bishop dispute with him about the merits of Evolution. Surley the bishop was 'educated' in the accepted sense of the word. The process of Education is often seperate from and sometimes antithical to the process of critical thinking and investigation.
Perhaps and this is my interpetation of what you are saying it would be better to say that people should strive to keep ideology of whatever nature from blinding them to observed reality. Would unimperical be a better term that uneducated?
In the insular academic world of Krugman and many leftists, what looks good on paper suffices as an alternative to reality.
To a lot of The Reality-Based Community, including The Kruggmeister (what the above person derisively calls "leftists"), invading Iraq and massive, highly regressive, and deliberately deceptive tax cuts looked horrible on paper. How'd that work out?
dearleader nyc, the type of liberal I have a lot of disdain for is the kind who states that we should be openminded towards Muslims who wish ill upon us, yet the same liberal practices closemindedness to the evangelical next door. Nicholas Kristoff, hardly a right winger, wrote a great piece on the hypocracy of some on the left who ran out an bought the Koran after 9/11, in order to get a greater understanding of those who murdered 3000 people.
Yet some of the same people who asked for understanding of Islam have never bothered to ask for an openminded view of Christians in America, many of whom practice a religion far less extreme than those who we were asked to show tolerance towards.
The other thing that bothers me is that a lot of these elitists love to mock the white churchgoer, yet would never direct their distaste toward the African American churchgoer. People who are on the right side of the aisle are mocked for believing in fairy tales of the Bible, but when Obama, Clinton, Gore, Carter and MLK talk about faith, they are exempt from the scorn.
I hope none of this comes off as a defense of the religious right, because I don't have a hell of a lot in common with them.
You've answered your own question and, in the process, highlighted why the proposal is poor policy... which might also be why McCain is for it.
He has no idea what you just said. He doesn't get why what he said is self-refuting and foolish (and perfect fodder for the topic addressed).
This drives me mad. Your average republican thinks he's an economic genius because he got told to like something he thinks of as capitalism at some point. Someone else told them, and I'm not kidding, I've heard this over and over "raising taxes destroys the economy, that's econ 101". That's all economics is. You wonder why anyone even needs a four-year degree. They should probably make the subject a two-week certification.
You've answered your own question and, in the process, highlighted why the proposal is poor policy... which might also be why McCain is for it.
He has no idea what you just said. He doesn't get why what he said is self-refuting and foolish (and perfect fodder for the topic addressed).
This drives me mad. Your average republican thinks he's an economic genius because he got told to like something he thinks of as capitalism at some point. Someone else told them, and I'm not kidding, I've heard this over and over "raising taxes destroys the economy, that's econ 101". That's all economics is. You wonder why anyone even needs a four-year degree. They should probably make the subject a two-week certification.
DougE writes: "People who are on the right side of the aisle are mocked for believing in fairy tales of the Bible, but when Obama, Clinton, Gore, Carter and MLK talk about faith, they are exempt from the scorn."
This seems exceptionally silly to me, DougE. The reason I and many others mock fundamentalists isn't because they have faith. It's because they do things like try to inflict creationism on science classes, or claim that Jesus wants to ban interracial dating. Obama, Clinton, Gore, Carter and MLK did nothing of the sort. You're comparing apples to bowling balls.
"the type of liberal I have a lot of disdain for is the kind who states that we should be openminded towards Muslims who wish ill upon us, yet the same liberal practices closemindedness to the evangelical next door. Nicholas Kristoff, hardly a right winger, wrote a great piece on the hypocracy of some on the left who ran out an bought the Koran after 9/11, in order to get a greater understanding of those who murdered 3000 people.
Yet some of the same people who asked for understanding of Islam have never bothered to ask for an openminded view of Christians in America, many of whom practice a religion far less extreme than those who we were asked to show tolerance towards. "
Who is responsible for more corpses - Dumbya Bush or Osama bin Laden?
And I've gone out of my way to understand both Christian AND Islamic fundamentalists, but my familiarity with our homegrown fundies goes back to 1979, when I first encountered the cultlike Campus Crusade For Christ. I am very familiar with them.
Also you seem to be forgetting that Jimmy Carter - an unabashed born-again - won the support of "liberals" in 1976 and 1980.
Ed Marshall writes: "Your average republican thinks he's an economic genius because he got told to like something he thinks of as capitalism at some point. Someone else told them, and I'm not kidding, I've heard this over and over "raising taxes destroys the economy, that's econ 101"."
I like pointing out to these people how both Reagan and Clinton raised taxes early in their presidencies and the economy grew anyway. They get this buglike look on their faces and barely know how to respond, but they always end up throwing out the does-not-compute data.
The GOP is a cult, not a party. It's crashing because only the true believers are left, and most of them are idiots or insane.
I'm enjoying this year.
"Unfortunately, that mocking comes most painfully from the GOP, not the liberals. It was guys like Grover Norquist and Abramoff that considered the religious right to be a bunch of fools to be exploited, and the rhetoric about attitudes toward the midwest came from Rush Limbaugh trying to wedge long-time midwest Democratic voters toward Bush.
Sure, you find some liberals applying those labels on blogs and whatnot, but the arrogant preaching is generally nonexistent except from what guys like Rush fabricate for the audience.
Posted by Martin | August 8, 2008 4:17 PM"
In addition, according to Time, Bush didn't do more to help out Delay with his legal troubles because DeLay was a working-class former exterminator, which Bush couldn't relate to. Apparently Bush and Rove (who is non-religious and maybe even an atheist) used to mock the evangelicals together in the Oval Office.
"dearleader nyc, the type of liberal I have a lot of disdain for is the kind who states that we should be openminded towards Muslims who wish ill upon us, yet the same liberal practices closemindedness to the evangelical next door. Nicholas Kristoff, hardly a right winger, wrote a great piece on the hypocracy of some on the left who ran out an bought the Koran after 9/11, in order to get a greater understanding of those who murdered 3000 people.
Yet some of the same people who asked for understanding of Islam have never bothered to ask for an openminded view of Christians in America, many of whom practice a religion far less extreme than those who we were asked to show tolerance towards.
The other thing that bothers me is that a lot of these elitists love to mock the white churchgoer, yet would never direct their distaste toward the African American churchgoer. People who are on the right side of the aisle are mocked for believing in fairy tales of the Bible, but when Obama, Clinton, Gore, Carter and MLK talk about faith, they are exempt from the scorn.
I hope none of this comes off as a defense of the religious right, because I don't have a hell of a lot in common with them.
Posted by DougEFresh | August 8, 2008 11:59 PM"
Personally, I have found this in my experience to be a bit of a parody of liberals. I grew up in a rather Catholic town outside of Boston where nearly everybody worshiped the Kennedys, yet just about everyone sent their kids to CCD or Hebrew School. What Northeastern liberals have a problem with is a very specific type of fundamentalism that has become pretty much just another structure within the GOP apparatus; think of the preachers saying things like America is a Christian nation founded to destroy the evil of Islam, gays are evil, Jews are declaring war on Christmas, Bush is a savior sent by God, the US must support Israel so it can take over all of Biblical Israel to bring about the Second Coming and force all Jews to choose between conversion or death, global warming is an evil myth perpetuated by the leftist science conspiracy, etc. In many ways, establishment evangelical white protestantism has become purely political and has stopped being about faith. These are the preachers who talk about how secular liberals like us are evil because we do not share their faith.
My black and Asian evangelical friends have never tried to convert me or force their religious beliefs on me and also have many gay, lesbian and bi friends they accept and love, yet too often the white evangelicals in my life have tried to make the most normal conversations about why I should convert, why my lack of religious belief is wrong and my ancestors' faith in Hinduism was wicked, why my gay friends are evil, why science is wrong, why I shouldn't listen to rap and punk rock, why I am evil to not be a virgin anymore and why I must do God's will by supporting Bush and the war in Iraq.
In addition, the historical institutional racism of many white Southern evangelical and fundamentalist also plays a role, even up to this day with stories like churches refusing to allow half-white, half-black children who died young to be buried in all-white church cemeteries. Jerry Falwell's language about the religious organization of the civil rights movement does make it seem like he saw black religious Protestants as members of a completely different people despite sharing the Protestant faith. Meanwhile, Jeremiah Wright supported gay rights.
While I don't deny there are secular liberals who do go to the Bill Maher extreme of equating religious belief with mental sickness, how many atheists or agnostics are actually in Congress or heading the DNC? Voting against a party just because you don't like some of its supporters is stupid. I disagree with white Southern evangelicals on a lot, yet I would have no problem joining them in voting for Carter in 1976 and 1980 if I had had the chance. A lot of us secular liberals take a "live and let live" approach to such things, yet the GOP evangelicals and fundamentalists want to force us to adopt their lifestyle. The GOP mocks things like eating argula and drinking low-sugar iced tea as somehow un-American, yet we would never get away with openly mocking their faith in ads.
Reality Man: I am an avowed socialist, religiously agnostic, practically oozing with tolerance and non-judgementality. But you should not listen to rap music. It is depressing.
The secret key to politics in America, almost more so than party, religion, or race, and bleeding into all three, is square conformism. We talk a good game in this country about admiring the rebels and iconoclasts, but it's really all about not sticking out too far. The long boom of the 20th century middle class has bequeathed to us an accumulated mass of expected behavior, and anyone who behaves publicly in a manner that would be out of place in an episode of Happy Days is priming himself for a smackdown. The ultimate beneficiaries of this are White Protestants, our national subconscious "default setting" and white Evangelicals - squareness's missionary wing. The degree to which one is perceived to deviate from this unacknowledged norm is the basis of almost all social problems.
Reality Man: I am an avowed socialist, religiously agnostic, practically oozing with tolerance and non-judgementality. But you should not listen to rap music. It is depressing.
The secret key to politics in America, almost more so than party, religion, or race, and bleeding into all three, is square conformism. We talk a good game in this country about admiring the rebels and iconoclasts, but it's really all about not sticking out too far. The long boom of the 20th century middle class has bequeathed to us an accumulated mass of expected behavior, and anyone who behaves publicly in a manner that would be out of place in an episode of Happy Days is priming himself for a smackdown. The ultimate beneficiaries of this are White Protestants, our national subconscious "default setting" and white Evangelicals - squareness's missionary wing. The degree to which one is perceived to deviate from this unacknowledged norm is the basis of almost all social problems.
REalty, I do plead guilty that I have used a bit of stereotyping of liberals, but I find that liberals often engage in a lot of this with respect to evangelicals. Not all of them are that way, but the most vocal and publicized ones are the ones that stir a lot of shit.
Maybe my perspective is skewed because many of the liberals I am friends with have a rather distorted view of that community. One in particular makes bizarre arguments that evangelicals have so infested the Metro Detroit area women, that so few of them put out anymore.
Of course it is a lame attempt to explain away why he can't get laid, especially since Detroit is not a hotbed of evangelicals.
With regard to your evangelical friends who not attempt to convert you, I wonder if they would attempt to convert you if you were Asian or Black, not because they are bigots, but maybe they just feel more comfortable preaching to those in their community. While Wright may have supported gay rights, many black churches are not very gay friendly. Obama had that one clown, Donnie ?, at an event preaching something insulting about gays.
I don't think these people vote Republican solely because they hold the Democratic Party guilty for the voices of the few. But if you hear a mocking of your lifestyle in the popular culture and 9 times out of 10, the mocker is a liberal, it will effect your view of the party of liberalism.
Reality Man: I am an avowed socialist, religiously agnostic, practically oozing with tolerance and non-judgementality. But you should not listen to rap music. It is depressing.
The secret key to politics in America, almost more so than party, religion, or race, and bleeding into all three, is square conformism. We talk a good game in this country about admiring the rebels and iconoclasts, but it's really all about not sticking out too far. The long boom of the 20th century middle class has bequeathed to us an accumulated mass of expected behavior, and anyone who behaves publicly in a manner that would be out of place in an episode of Happy Days is priming himself for a smackdown. The ultimate beneficiaries of this are White Protestants, our national subconscious "default setting" and white Evangelicals - squareness's missionary wing. The degree to which one is perceived to deviate from this unacknowledged norm is the basis of almost all social problems.
I swear I only hit submit once...
DougEFresh, fair points. However, you really don't hear that much liberal mocking of mainline white Protestant beliefs. Even a show like "Family Guy," written by a guy who seems to be a New England liberal, mocks Irish Catholics (and the Pope) and Jews a lot more than evangelicals. The Daily Show and the Colbert Report make fun of liberals a lot as well. The evangelical movement is somehow allowed to mock us as a bunch of sushi-eating, latte-sipping, pseudo-cosmopolitan America haters who want to make public schools into 24-hour bisexual orgies, yet the movement's leaders can't take a few jokes in return. Everyone gets made fun of in America. That's one of the great things about our country.
What also gets a lot of liberals is the hypocrisy of the evangelical and fundamentalist movement. An evangelical like Carter who has been faithful to his wife and dedicated his life to helping the less fortunate and his country gets mocked by the evangelical base for not killing enough Muslims, yet they worship an adulterer like Reagan (who also raised a daughter who ended up in Playboy) because he seemed tough to them while also engaging in race-baiting. Establishment fundamentalism and evangelicalism claims to be the true American culture, yet also creates pop culture products with the explicit aim of separating the faithful from the American mainstream (the lack of ability of young evangelical and fundamentalist Christians in wider communities to be allowed to truly engage their classmates, etc. leads to depression, which is why religious retention rates among such groups is rather low).
If white American Protestant evangelical and fundamentalist institutions were primarily about faith these days, I doubt liberals would care that much. It was the decisions of the Falwells and Robertsons of the world, and their congregations to choose to follow them, to turn religion into a GOP regressive political machine that has done the most to earn them scorn. If you preach about how Jews, Muslims, gays, lesbians, bisexuals, Catholics, women, the Civil Rights Movement, etc. are evil, you are asking to be mocked. You can't preach hate and then expect to be respected.
Also, Northeastern secular states like Massachusetts are rather religious. Such states also boast things like lower rates of teen pregnancy, abortion and divorce. IIRC MA and CT have the highest proportion of their population married than any other states. Overall, Northeastern liberals are closer to living the daily life that evangelicals and fundamentalists tell us we are supposed to live, yet somehow they get to act superior for preaching without following through.
Reality, I can't argue much of what you say, and I agree with it. Though the NE liberal is more likely to be Catholic which still brings about a negative view of divorce.
I don't mind the proper critiques or people pointing out the obvious about their distortions of the scriptures. I have a larger problem when people who profess tolerance are more likely to tolerate Islam over Christianity. I remember even Bill Maher making a rare defense of fundamentalists Christians when he rebuked 9/12 thinking that all fundamentalists are the same.
I am also at a disadvantage, I know many conservatives, and none of them are overly religious. So I don't have a ton of people asking me to convert to anything (other than the rare visit from the JW). In fact, if the average evangelical followed me around, there is a good chance he would think I was a godless liberal while I am neither. So understand it must get on your last nerve having judgement made upon you by people who claim God is the sole judge.
I also am a bit hypocritical, because I loved when South Park made fun of San Francisco liberals when Kyle's family move West because the rednecks in Col. wouldn't drive hybrids.
Reality Man - 1:05
What a mess of ideas! Reagan was divorced by the time he met Nancy. He did not commit adultery. His daughter was in her 30s when she posed for Playboy. Do your parents have control over your silly posts or your life?
Race baiting - You better look at "Precious" before you start throwing stones at the Republicans.
DougEFresh, that was a fun episode of South Park. However,
"I have a larger problem when people who profess tolerance are more likely to tolerate Islam over Christianity. I remember even Bill Maher making a rare defense of fundamentalists Christians when he rebuked 9/12 thinking that all fundamentalists are the same."
Who are these people? There is a difference between trying to understand fundamentalist Islam and trying to promote tolerance of Islam in general. From my own past in human rights advocacy, when push came to shove it was liberals who were willing to get involved over things like stoning Muslim women over having children out of wedlock. Conservatives, meanwhile, couldn't care less.
"What a mess of ideas! Reagan was divorced by the time he met Nancy. He did not commit adultery. His daughter was in her 30s when she posed for Playboy. Do your parents have control over your silly posts or your life?"
Fine, but she was pregnant before they got married. I don't care what the Reagans do with their private lives, but the evangelicals and fundamentalists can't expect us to take their political advocacy seriously when they turn their religion into near-pure political advocacy and then work to elect and worship people who don't actually follow the "family values" they claim to believe in.
"Race baiting - You better look at "Precious" before you start throwing stones at the Republicans.
Posted by Denia | August 10, 2008 4:22 AM"
Oh come on. The modern GOP is largely the product of the Dixiecrat movement to the GOP. There is a reason why blacks, Latinos, Asians and Native Americans tend to vote Democratic. You can't be the party of Hurricane Katrina, Willie Horton ads, purging blacks from the 2000 Florida voter rolls, smearing McCain as fathering a black baby out of wedlock, Jesse Helms, Trent Lott as Senate Majority Leader, Cheney labeling Mandela a terrorist, Reagan's "I believe in states' rights" in Philadelphia, MS, etc. without being the party of race-baiting and racism. The GOP has much depended on playing the race card or homophobia since Watergate in order to get votes.
Reality Man
The modern DP has put forth the least qualified candidate to be President. His poll numbers are down. With all his advantages, he is basically tied with McCain. The GOP is right that he is not even a flip flopper because he has two positions on everything.
Wow, how could it be that every single Democratic nominee somehow has two positions on everything? Could it be that the GOP likes to repeat the same old tropes? You're just a troll.