I live in a Blue Family, so what do I know? Over hear in Blueville, there are certain things you don’t do in polite company. For example, you don’t break out in song with your rendition of “Barack the Magic Negro Lives in DC.” You don’t pose open-ended questions about the validity of the president’s birth certificate. You don’t use every cold day as an excuse to remind people that Al Gore is fat. If you don’t know what socialism is, you avoid the topic and remain silent when it comes up. You don’t expect your children to remain abstinent until they’re married, and you don’t expect them to be married until their late 20’s. You don’t expect your spouse to adhere to traditional gender roles or openly judge others who work or don’t work or stay at home with their children or don’t stay at home with their children. You expect people to use contraception if they don’t want to have a child. You don’t call people ‘faggots.’ You don’t care if gay people get married. You don’t look at people funny if they don’t regularly attend religious services. You don’t tell your children that they’re going to hell. ‘Ragheads’ is not a word you hear except when you’re at the gym and they have Fox News on the teevee. Most of the time when someone says ‘Jesus Christ’ they are expressing a certain degree of exasperation. You don’t come up to total strangers and offer to lay your hands on them and help them accept their lord and savior into their lives. ‘Old Europe’ is a place you’d like to visit, not a totem of derision. Science is something smart people do, not a conspiracy to make your child lose religion. You learn evolution so you can understand biology and plate tectonics so you can understand geology and the Bible so you can understand literature, and none of these things interfere with each other. You don’t question the manhood of anyone who eats foreign foods. You don’t repeat anything Sarah Palin says expecting people to agree with it. Nipples don’t freak you out. You haven’t met anyone who believes the Teletubbies are homosexuals. And you don’t think brown people are destroying the fabric and traditions of society.
We increasingly live in two different, largely incompatible worlds. It’s not all North vs. South. But it’s definitely Blue vs. Red. And all of it is dividing people along the wrong lines. It should be those who have vs. those who don’t. Instead, it’s those who are tolerant vs. those who are not. Or, those who believe in science vs. those who see science as a threat. We gotta get outta this place.
You asked for it(skip ahead to the 1 minute mark):
And since we are on that kick .. here is another .. the audio is actually pretty damn good for a bootleg:
Either your GOP neighbors are getting on your nerves, BooMan, or you need to get out more. I do not live in a world in which I hear crazy every day and I know lots of Republicans, most native North Carolinians, some transplants. The ones who are wound up with this stuff come mostly from a few churches where their pastor is really wound up on this stuff. And they repeat it as part of their “evangelization”.
Most Republicans here are hepped up on the small government theme. And their reasoning is something like this.
And then there are the “liberty uber alles” types who will deny to you that institutions other than government – like corporations, for example – can and do take away your liberty.
And then there are the Rushbo racists, and almost all of them are Rush fans, who are most angry about there being an African-American President. And these most all have economic resentments that they are blaming blacks for.
And then there are the folks who face increased competition from Hispanics in their business. And the charge there is that Hispanics are undercutting their standard of living by underbidding them (or their employer) on jobs. (The are mostly in construction and home repair services.)
Add two street preachers, neither of whom is political, and three guys on traffic medians with signs claiming they are unemployed and homeless. They are, but they are also too proud to receive offers of a place to stay and they are known not to function well with an employer. So the community sorta supports them in their “jobs”; it takes a lot of gall to sit out in a traffic median in the hot sun eight or so hours a day with a sign and do nothing else. Those guys tend to be down on the government.
The picture you paint is a media reality; out in the real world, it is not as bleak as it seems. And I think this media reality is blocking bloggers from getting out and canvassing for Democratic candidates. They are afraid they’ll spend hours trying to convert loonies to vote Democrat, when that is not what canvassing is about. Canvassing is about finding out who supports or is not hostile to a candidate or slate of candidates and making sure that they actually turn out to vote on election day.
“The picture you paint is a media reality; out in the real world, it is not as bleak as it seems.”
The media loves these controversial divides in public opinion because they get the blood pressure up and are incredibly easy stories to tell, but the real, and scrupulously ignored story is not about red-blue. It’s about how private capitol controls the government and systematically exploits the poor, the middle class, the environment, public institutions meant to improve our society, etc. The so called red-blue divide, along with the other bipolar divides the media loves, is mostly just rat-fucking the electorate as a whole.
But most of the public is not buying it in my local experience. There is a lot of inertia in politics; Republicans from non-Southern Republican areas vote Republican because they always have and they ignore the fact that Republican candidates are unhinged. Same for Democrats; there are a lot of yellow-dog Democrats here, which has been helpful to progressives in some parts of NC.
Most folks hate the talking points wars that go on between neighbors, at family gatherings, and at work and want to avoid talking about real issues because of it.
There are only a few “true believers” in the Tea Party claptrap out there but they are loud, write frequent LTEs, and seek out media attention by being more and more outrageous.
Corporations can control the media by buying it and by buying ads, but folks can use their personal networks to delegitimize those same ads. That is what all of those obnoxious conservative e-mails are about. But you beat them with a little honest talk to the folks in your political network, acknowledging your doubts, allowing them to acknowledge their doubts and talking about what’s real instead of political philosophy.
Here’s an example. I posted the healthcare.gov link on my Facebook status. The information on that site is real; it has a copy of the Affordable Healthcare Act; it has ratings of hospitals that delve into specialties; it has information about the state risk pools; it has information about small business insurance options. What it does subtly is knock the props away from the “socialist takeover of our health care” line that Republicans are running on for repeal. It doesn’t advocate anything; it just presents facts. That’s how you begin to deal with the corporate control of the media.
Lucky bastard! đŸ™‚ Can I come to your house for Thanksgiving dinner? I’m tired of listening to my family. If everyone sticks around long enough and sufficient alcohol is consumed, I’ll bet on most occasions at least half of what you outlined happens at our family functions. It just wears you down.
Isn’t it nice to live in Blueville?