A couple articles...
on the values debate.
David Brooks attacks the post-election conventional wisdom that "has to reassure liberals that they are morally superior to the people who just defeated them." This broadens the condescension beyond intellectual snobbiness and I think it's well founded. The liberal line seems to be that we need to talk about poverty, the war in Iraq and health-care in moral terms and in so doing unmask the immorality of the so-called morals voters. Brooks says that the country is simply more conservative which is not the same thing as saying more religious. If so, and it would probably be a natural reaction to 9/11, the liberals have a great deal more work to do than reframing. That said, I'm not sure all this rending of garments is called for. Solutions such as building up institutions seem the most level-headed approach. Such institutions have value regardless the number of one's supporters. There are so many voter blocs within the majority the Republicans won that it would be stupid to go after just one of them, even if it is the biggest (though Paul Freedman debunks that idea here.)
Mick Hume resumes a line he has taken before (probably where I got the idea that ran through yesterday's post) and attacks what he sees as racism against 'white-trash.' This line is near to what I meant by the Britney Spears loving proletariat: "Those who pour public scorn on 'American idiots' are parading the latest version of the socialism of fools." He gets 'American Idiot' from the Green Day song. "The contemptuous tone of this campaign is captured by a song I keep hearing called American Idiot, by the punkish American band, Green Day: 'Don't want to be an American idiot/One nation controlled by the media/Information age of hysteria/I'm not part of a redneck agenda'." I'm going to a Green Day concert in Minneapolis on Friday. It should be fun. Also at spiked is this article, a review of a movie similar in tone to 'Super Size Me' and Michael Moore's stuff. "But the more political films could also be described as feel-good movies, in that they make viewers feel part of something greater than themselves. Instead of class-based solidarity, The Corporation offers the kind of shared consumer experience pioneered by the very corporations it attacks." I would actually argue that class does play a part in that the 'white-trash' class is what Moore lovers seek to define themselves against. One can belong to the same economic class as 'white-trash' and still disdain 'white-trash'. To define oneself out of the 'white-trash' class by adopting the liberal ideas that attack the 'white-trash' class is to attach oneself to the educated and higher economic classes. Everyone talks about Howard Dean as a wild-eyed liberal, but one thing he wanted to do was break down this condescension and bring 'guys with confederate flags on their pickups' into the party.
David Brooks attacks the post-election conventional wisdom that "has to reassure liberals that they are morally superior to the people who just defeated them." This broadens the condescension beyond intellectual snobbiness and I think it's well founded. The liberal line seems to be that we need to talk about poverty, the war in Iraq and health-care in moral terms and in so doing unmask the immorality of the so-called morals voters. Brooks says that the country is simply more conservative which is not the same thing as saying more religious. If so, and it would probably be a natural reaction to 9/11, the liberals have a great deal more work to do than reframing. That said, I'm not sure all this rending of garments is called for. Solutions such as building up institutions seem the most level-headed approach. Such institutions have value regardless the number of one's supporters. There are so many voter blocs within the majority the Republicans won that it would be stupid to go after just one of them, even if it is the biggest (though Paul Freedman debunks that idea here.)
Mick Hume resumes a line he has taken before (probably where I got the idea that ran through yesterday's post) and attacks what he sees as racism against 'white-trash.' This line is near to what I meant by the Britney Spears loving proletariat: "Those who pour public scorn on 'American idiots' are parading the latest version of the socialism of fools." He gets 'American Idiot' from the Green Day song. "The contemptuous tone of this campaign is captured by a song I keep hearing called American Idiot, by the punkish American band, Green Day: 'Don't want to be an American idiot/One nation controlled by the media/Information age of hysteria/I'm not part of a redneck agenda'." I'm going to a Green Day concert in Minneapolis on Friday. It should be fun. Also at spiked is this article, a review of a movie similar in tone to 'Super Size Me' and Michael Moore's stuff. "But the more political films could also be described as feel-good movies, in that they make viewers feel part of something greater than themselves. Instead of class-based solidarity, The Corporation offers the kind of shared consumer experience pioneered by the very corporations it attacks." I would actually argue that class does play a part in that the 'white-trash' class is what Moore lovers seek to define themselves against. One can belong to the same economic class as 'white-trash' and still disdain 'white-trash'. To define oneself out of the 'white-trash' class by adopting the liberal ideas that attack the 'white-trash' class is to attach oneself to the educated and higher economic classes. Everyone talks about Howard Dean as a wild-eyed liberal, but one thing he wanted to do was break down this condescension and bring 'guys with confederate flags on their pickups' into the party.
posted by joe at
9:51 AM
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