Hope, and a brass ring
Nov. 17th, 2004 08:54 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pecuniumThe question has been asked, "What's wrong with Kanas?". By which the author What's the matter with Kansas? means, why does the middle of America, once a bastion of progressivism, consitently vote against interest these days.
I've asked this question before, and the answer has always been, somehow they have been sold a bill of good. Orcinus gives a good answer today. The short of it is that, contrary to those who have been buying into the astroturf of the hateful left, the answer is talk radio.
Forget (no don't, but put aside for the moment) all the people ranting that the densely populated parts of the country don't count as much as the more sparsely settled mid-lands (and yes, I have seen that argument, as if, for some reason not having a lot of space means those numbers ought not to matter), and think about the side effects.
Here in San Luis Obispo I have access to more diversions than I can possibly keep up with. When I lived in Los Angeles (or in Seattle, or even in my sojourn in D.C, where I knew no one, and had nothing but my wits and sense of adventure with which to find amusements beyond the library and the television) SLO looked like a barren wilderness.
Transplant yourself to the open spaces of Kansas, or Wyoming, or... and put yourself on a farm, or in a small shop in a small town. How do you fill the empty hours? What do you listen to in the combine, or on the harrow, or waiting for the customer at the store?
Radio.
And what's on that radio?
Limbaugh, and Hannity, and Savage, or the local versions of the same.
And what do they preach? That effete liberals in the cities hate them. When the agribiz gets laws passed that ruin small farms, who got the blame? Liberals. When a scapegoat is needed, Liberals are trotted out.
I don't know what to do. In part we need to find a way to reach them. Remember, despite there being only a few radio stations, and that talk radio is right-wing, a lot of those "red staters" voted against Bush, so it isn't that the hoodwinking is unbeatable, but we have to find a way to preach the message, get the facts of the matter out there, where they can be fairly decided (and I can see the critique now, that I am implying only liberals can be fair. No. When only one side is getting to present the issues, they get to frame the debate, a la Limbaugh's habit of hanging up and then finishing the caller's argument, so he can burn the straw man that isn't a fair airing of the questions).
We can't condescend, but we don't need to pander. We don't need to try and give up what we are in the hope we can make them like us. That won't work, they will see us as fakes, and fauxnies. Which will be worse than being rejected honestly, and more deserved.
And sometimes we need to be less civil. When people say liberals need to be head stomped, or clubbed like baby seals it's not the time to be polite. But telling the south to fuck off, while perhaps an understandable release, isn't really an answer. And becoming the hate-filled people of which we are accused, even less so.
We are half the country, now we need to show the other half why they ought to join us.
I've asked this question before, and the answer has always been, somehow they have been sold a bill of good. Orcinus gives a good answer today. The short of it is that, contrary to those who have been buying into the astroturf of the hateful left, the answer is talk radio.
Forget (no don't, but put aside for the moment) all the people ranting that the densely populated parts of the country don't count as much as the more sparsely settled mid-lands (and yes, I have seen that argument, as if, for some reason not having a lot of space means those numbers ought not to matter), and think about the side effects.
Here in San Luis Obispo I have access to more diversions than I can possibly keep up with. When I lived in Los Angeles (or in Seattle, or even in my sojourn in D.C, where I knew no one, and had nothing but my wits and sense of adventure with which to find amusements beyond the library and the television) SLO looked like a barren wilderness.
Transplant yourself to the open spaces of Kansas, or Wyoming, or... and put yourself on a farm, or in a small shop in a small town. How do you fill the empty hours? What do you listen to in the combine, or on the harrow, or waiting for the customer at the store?
Radio.
And what's on that radio?
Limbaugh, and Hannity, and Savage, or the local versions of the same.
And what do they preach? That effete liberals in the cities hate them. When the agribiz gets laws passed that ruin small farms, who got the blame? Liberals. When a scapegoat is needed, Liberals are trotted out.
I don't know what to do. In part we need to find a way to reach them. Remember, despite there being only a few radio stations, and that talk radio is right-wing, a lot of those "red staters" voted against Bush, so it isn't that the hoodwinking is unbeatable, but we have to find a way to preach the message, get the facts of the matter out there, where they can be fairly decided (and I can see the critique now, that I am implying only liberals can be fair. No. When only one side is getting to present the issues, they get to frame the debate, a la Limbaugh's habit of hanging up and then finishing the caller's argument, so he can burn the straw man that isn't a fair airing of the questions).
We can't condescend, but we don't need to pander. We don't need to try and give up what we are in the hope we can make them like us. That won't work, they will see us as fakes, and fauxnies. Which will be worse than being rejected honestly, and more deserved.
And sometimes we need to be less civil. When people say liberals need to be head stomped, or clubbed like baby seals it's not the time to be polite. But telling the south to fuck off, while perhaps an understandable release, isn't really an answer. And becoming the hate-filled people of which we are accused, even less so.
We are half the country, now we need to show the other half why they ought to join us.
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Re: I would
Date: 2004-11-18 08:12 pm (UTC)I quoted the active half. The back half was an adverb phrase that was demonstrably untrue. It's inclusion would have, in no way changed or invalidated my response. The whole quote:
The democrats didn't to offer a different message than the one on the right, they just preached the mirror image of it, bigotry and all.
I say again... The democratic and republican platforms were markedly and obviously differentiated on most major points. In the case of some points, the differences were small but no less extant. In no single platform point of platform "message" was either side's positin the "mirror image" of the other. Please feel free to point out an example to the contrary.
I can fully understand the worry that the Bush administration may be able to appoint conservative judges to the SC.
Can you? Besides losing your reproductive freedom, how much legal "tolerance" of your basic, unchangeable being will you have to kiss goodbye when it happens? Because barring some major miracle, it will happen.
And on the subject of tolerance... Heh. On one hand, we're talking about people who want to criminalize me for something I'm no more in control of than my skin color at birth. On the other hand, we have the "good" side... the "moderate right"... At least in public, they say I should be "tolerated" for the way I was born... The same way, I suppose, they "tolerate" blacks, jews, and hispanics. America is not about tolerance. It's about and freedom and equality.
What I don't understand is the intolerant, aggressive treatment of people who voted (or would vote)for him because of that *possibility*. It's an ugly reality, but it is still a hypothetical. It's be like bedviling all Kerry voters because of the possibility that he will begin prohibiting the practice of religion the left considers intolerant.
This is a wholly inaccurate, innapropriate illustration. First, it's not hypothetical in any real sense. Justices will retire, and it's the President's job to appoint the new ones. While I would certainly hope a responsible, freedom minded jurist would cling to his position from the inside of his iron lung, waiting for a more fit President to appoint his replacement, That's just not going to happen in ever case.
Second, your comparative is far afield of logical reality. Who or what "the left considers intolerant" is not at issue... Either someone or something is intolerant or it's not. For now, there are legal checks in place to keep that religious intolerance in safe suspension, in the realm of belief and out of the realm of action. Simply put, at the point one person's "religion" allows or requires them to harm another person, in the US, that religion runs afoul of the law.
Third, we're concerned about a constitutional certainty, and you're comparing it to an imaginary and illegal threat.
And so now it is unamerican to vote based on one's personal creed?
Always, always has been. Although it doesn't go against the laws of this country, it absolutely goes against the founding principals of this country to vote for someone for a religious reason... This same founding principals, paradoxically, ensure that it should not ever be against the law.
The idea is that everyone is free to hold their own religious beliefs. Given that that freedom is, as nearly as possible, constitutionally guaranteed, when you vote your religion, you're not voting for you to remain free to live as you please, you are, by definition, trying to enforce your religious beliefs on others... And that is as unamerican an idea as can be discussed.
...more... damned full quotes...