Republicans tend to live in different kinds of communities and consume different kinds of media than Democrats, so it isn’t all that surprising that they’d have different perceptions about what issues are the most important ones facing the country. Still, it’s interesting to see the disparity in the polling data:
When asked in the new NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll which issue should be the top priority for the federal government to address, Republican primary voters’ leading response was national security and terrorism (27 percent said it was their first choice).
That’s followed by the deficit and government spending (24 percent), job creation and economic growth (21 percent) and religious and moral values (12 percent).
By comparison, the top priority for Democrats in the poll was job creation and economic growth (37 percent) — followed by health care (17 percent), climate change (15 percent) and national security and terrorism (13 percent).
When you think about terrorism, you probably imagine it taking place in large population centers like New York City or Boston or Washington DC. These are overwhelmingly Democratic areas. To find similarly strong Republican areas you need to go into rural Kentucky, the Deep South or the ranch counties of the Plains states and Mountain West. In other words, where the threat of terrorism is real and pressing, voters tend to place a low priority on terrorism, and where the threat of terrorism is remote and basically theoretical, voters consider it the most important issue facing the country. Could this have something to do with how right-wing media conditions their audiences?
Of course, over in England, the people who are most concerned about immigration are the people who live in constituencies with the fewest immigrants. And, here at home, the states that have the best ratios of taxes paid to/money received from the federal government are Republican strongholds like Mississippi and Alaska. Meanwhile, affluent states like New Jersey and Connecticut that get the worst tax deals with the federal government are among the most reliably Democratic in federal elections.
You can look at this both ways, of course, as neither side seems to hold opinions that reflect their real circumstances. The difference is that Democrats are unconcerned about realities like heavy immigrant populations, a lousy deal with the government, and a persistent threat of mass casualty terrorism. The Republicans don’t even need to worry about these things, yet they are obsessed with them.
I think that if you leave people alone and don’t saturate them with outside messages, their concerns are going to pretty much align with their realities. A rancher in Idaho will probably be concerned about drought, pestilence, coyotes, the price of commodities, the quality of the schools, and whatever crime crops up. It’s possible that they might run into some federal regulations that irritate them or cut into their bottom line, but they certainly should not be more concerned about terrorism than a Manhattanite. And they’re probably more naturally interested in being able to find enough farm hands than with gang violence in the immigrant community.
To distort things the way they are distorted, you need someone to introduce fear and misinformation into the equation. And that is what right-wing media do extremely effectively.
Now, it’s true that a homogenized community is comfortable with the broad consensus they have in the worldview, and they aren’t comfortable with the idea that there are parts of the country where people are less religious or practice different religions. They aren’t used to dealing with people who come from different backgrounds and they like their communities they way they are and don’t want them to change. But, without media prompting, they aren’t going to worry about a war on Christmas unless they see some actual manifestation of that in their community.
What’s threatening these communities is not a bloated federal budget or terrorism or immigration. The threat is mainly from economic stagnation and the methamphetamine and opioid epidemics that fill in the financial and spiritual holes left by deindustrialization and the loss of family farming.
Some of this Tea Party angst is basically a natural response of “traditional” communities facing demographic and economic change, but most of it is manufactured anxiety that is produced in right-wing studios and board meetings. It’s ginned up. Fake.
And it’s very, very wrong.
It’s just wrong to terrify rural people through media to the point that they think terrorism is the biggest threat facing their communities.
I would argue that the cognitive dissonance is much older, starting with the founding of the country. Residents of small, rural states were afraid of big states that diluted their power and wielded (in their minds) undue influence. Ergo, the Senate. And that’s without getting into the issue of slavery.
I really wish that the Founding Fathers had the foresight to put in a clause that terminated the Senate after so many years. Like maybe after 100 years.
Of course, I doubt that they would’ve anticipated that the United States would last for anywhere near as long as it did.
(DUMB)FUX “news:
We distort.
YOU decide.
Oy……………
Prohibition became a popular idea largely in the Midwest, west and south because the large rural populations there looked at the cities and saw them overrun with crime, corruption, immorality, orphans and disease and all that was associated with Irish, Italian, German and Eastern European immigrants who were associated with alcohol, bars and ethnic (i.e. Drinking) clubs. They saw that and wanted none of it in their self-reliant, orderly, religious communities.
Today cities are still feared but the blame goes to blacks and immigrants from south/Central America, Africa and the Middle East. IMO the republicans pump out the fear because that is what many people want to believe about the cities and the nations most of our immigrants come from. The hype doesn’t create the fear as much as exploit it. — especially for the low information public.
Well, let’s just say that there was a deadly spider living in a tree in your backyard and you didn’t know about it.
You certainly have a healthy fear of deadly spiders, but you aren’t thinking about them or worrying about the one in the tree in your yard.
Then someone tells you that this spider is there. Now, all of a sudden, you are terrified and obsessed with getting the spider before he gets you or the kids.
You can not like something and fear it in the abstract, but it doesn’t become a priority for you until it impacts you directly.
Now, what if this spider isn’t in your backyard and doesn’t even live in your region of the country?
That’s logical and. Am kes sense. I’m just saying that. IMO that’s not entirely what is happening now .
Westerner and Southerner have been suspicious of cites and later immigrants since colonial days even when those newcomers and perceive strange and immoral outsiders barely ventured west of the Hudson River or outside of cities. But that suspicion and fear was enough (along with some other elements of a perfect storm) to pass a constitutional amendment banning manufacture and sale of alcohol.
That fear has been there a long time andMurdoch and the GOP have exploited (and yes nurtured) it to collect billions of dollars and millions of votes.
In serious temperance states like Kansas, you had these cowboys rolling in seasonally and just causing all kinds of moral outrage and vice. So, it wasn’t abstract or necessarily about some theoretical Irishmen on the Lower East Side. Alcohol abuse on the frontier was out of control and so was violence against women.
The prohibition movement took hold in Ohio and was widely and overtly supported by Progressives and (especially pietistic) Protestents. They in particular were concerned with Catholics, German Lutherans and Episcopalians and their different views on the Bible and use of wine and even more so by the saloon culture much loved by their immigrant congregations. Prohibition was driven by both moral concerns and outright racism against other culltures and people.
And little has changed. You don’t have to travel farther west than western NJ (or north of Westchester Co, NY) to be hit in the face with racist fearful attitudes towards NYC and it’s residents
There’s a somewhat similar problem with perception of crime. Violent crime rates are falling fast and approaching all-time lows. But most people think crime is going up because they see so much of it. Which they do – on TV. Mostly fictional, even.
It’s a real pity TV doesn’t depict the reality, where suicide by gun is more common than homicide, and where accidental gun deaths are more common than justifiable homicide.
most of it is manufactured anxiety that is produced in right-wing studios and board meetings. It’s ginned up. Fake.
Absolutely. And it’s been going on for well over a hundred years. 1919
Or well over 200 (Burke’s Reflections on the Revolution in France was published in 1790). Once the rulers are forced to accept something like democracy, they have to find votes, and they can’t get them by advertising their policies, which are plainly against the voters’ interests, but fear nearly always works.
between living in Manhattan, for example, and a small town or rural area, is how one experiences the space. something happening a block away in Manhattan is very very far away in terms of how one experiences the space. in a small town one is connected in with everything for miles around. the other night there were multiple fire engines and ambulances outside when I exited the building. I asked 2 guys cleaning up the front of the restaurant next door what had happened; they said, we don’t know, it was next door!!. next door! this is normal behavior around here but antithetical to how people in lower density population areas live.
what I’m saying here is that people live differently in terms of what they experience as affecting them. people in large density population areas are used to tuning out a whole lot all the time; people who live in low density areas are used to being affected by news in the community around them. both assume everyone lives the way they do – I’m seeing on this thread everyone assumes it’s just a matter of media stirring things up; that’s not true
I live in one of the safest counties in the entire state. Yet we are consistently near the top of the list in yearly issuing of concealed carry permits. And my county is also among the most reliably Republican in the state. Is there a correlation between these? I can’t say for certain. But I do know that you can’t go anywhere in this town without having Fox News blaring at you. And we live in the shadow of a 50,000 watt radio station which, along with its sister station, is broadcasting conservative talk all afternoon, every day.
And what are the fears of most local people? I can assure you that it won’t take you three guesses to figure it out. It really is virtually impossible to crack that shell of fear. And I don’t think that many of the people want to contemplate anything else but their fear. Because if they do, then it forces them to possibly think about the root of their fears not being some mysterious outsiders, but their own lack of control over so many facets of their lives. It is a nice, simple and neat way for them to wrap up all their inadequacies and doubts about life and lay them at the feet of someone or something else. The Tea Party has done a masterful job, along with a heavy lift by conservative media, of convincing people that their travails are not their own fault, they have been done in by all those others who are not like them and do not share their values. And if they all pitch in to help and hold to their common cause, then those evil foes, whoever or whatever they might be, can be vanquished once and for all. Sounds eerily like just another variation on the Armageddon theme so popular with religious fundamentalists.
The short answer:
Oooga Booga BOO!