02-17-2017, 09:08 AM
(02-17-2017, 01:05 AM)Eric the Green Wrote: I might post the next report next week. But meanwhile, what do you think are the causes of this trend?
I have my opinions, of course....
This statistic started with boomers in 1999 from the age of Donald Trump and Bill Clinton to about the age of Mark Warner and Lindsay Graham, and has increased markedly since then until today for Xers from the age of Chris Christie to about the age of Marco Rubio. The line runs upward from 1999 to today for those aged 45-54.
It concentrates among those without higher education.
These are the folks who put Trump in the White House. Still enough of them around to do that, I guess.
This sickness is contagious.
Many of them have lost jobs. Many of them are using drugs and overdosing. There is increased social isolation and seclusion. Suicides are rampant.
Under-educated people are often materialists without means. It used to be possible to make a good living, a middle-income living, on mining or manufacturing jobs -- but those jobs no longer are available. Or they have become subsistence jobs. The lay-offs are longer and more frequent.
Quote:I think culture is important; the fact that TV, music, movies are so vacuous and negative in these days of the 3T and 4T. This makes a difference. And this extends to decline of social gathering places like churches, union halls, clubs, and families of people that have moved away, with many left behind in red states because of industrial decline. Guns make suicide easy, and drugs and alcohol make self-medication and escape easy.
Let's remember something else about the mass culture: non-rich people over 48 are 'trash' to advertisers on radio and television. Any TV show whose audience is 'old' gets cancelled. They are either set in their brand loyalties or are such capricious shoppers that they can never develop 'brand loyalty' that advertisers so cherish. To be sure, people in midlife can be desirable audiences for advertisers if they have plenty of disposable income that they are willing to spend or invest (on foreign travel, high-end automobiles, real estate, brokerage services, and insurance products) -- but that is not what one can sell to a laid-off miner or factory worker. Blame the mass culture for the plight of such people? There is no mass culture marketed to them.
Quote:Americans have such empty lives that if they lose their job, they can't see any purpose for themselves. This is due to the inherent emptiness of our culture, and inability to recognize what life is about, despite the counter-cultural movements that revealed it, but were ignored and condemned in white middle red-state America. Like maybe doing some creative things: the arts, science, entreprenuership, new relationships or family, contributing to and helping others, going back to school, or moving to a blue state where culture and opportunity is greater. Unwillingness to take the financial risk of change because money is too tight. If your life is empty, and thus doesn't get you high or fulfilled on life, it's easier to take a drug or a drink to get a false and addictive high instead. Despair leads to self-destruction.
Emile Durkheim lives!
The prescribed meaning in life for millions of Americans was long "do your work, don't gripe, and be satisfied with consumerism as your compensation". The place is eastern Kentucky, never known as an intellectual haven, a place of uncritical materialism. When the mines were producing and miners got good wages for infernal work due to the then-powerful United Mine Workers, a miner could often point to his nice car, furniture, appliances, and other evidence of an above-average income, "That's why!"
Because such people are under-educated, they are unlikely to have much exposure to culture other than some folk tradition unique to themselves. They are unlikely to be entrepreneurs because they lack imagination. Doing machine-paced work will kill imagination and curiosity. If they are hooked on drugs or alcohol, they might not be the sorts of people who can develop relationships with younger people because younger people are looking for wholesome relationships with older people. Unions eviscerated, working people are quickly atomized. But pain that causes one to reach for alcohol leads to cirrhosis, a nasty way to go.
Moving to a 'blue' state? What could they do in California or Connecticut -- or for that matter, in such 'blue' cities as Columbus, Pittsburgh, Atlanta, or Louisville? The younger adults can take jobs in higher-technology manufacturing, testing themselves by making 70-mile commutes twice a day until they are no longer on probation and can rent an apartment or buy a trailer. But even that is less than, in real terms, what attracted people from the Mountain South to the auto plants in Greater Detroit.
If you think Kentucky is bad, then wait till you see Ohio and Michigan ten years from now.
Quote:The economic stresses are caused by computer automation, free trade, and wage and salary decline due to concentration of income for the bosses; plus a failed education and cultural system, and poor social services and lack of investment in public infrastructure.
Mirror-image Marxists, the sorts of people who see a Marxist critique of capitalist inequity and exploitation and, contrary to the norm of people who say "Horrible!" or "No longer relevant!" say "WONDERFUL!", now dominate American politics. Such people believe that no human suffering is in excess so long as economic elites get what they want. Entrench them in power and America will be the sort of country that people want to leave -- and not so they can listen to opera at La Scala, visit the Prado, or enjoy the real Budweiser (not to be confused with the slickly-marketed American beer) -- but so that they can be paid fairly for their efforts.
Quote:And of course, you can make the situation even much worse by taking out your frustration and despair on liberals and voting Republican, because you are brainwashed into one of their ideologies that hook you: blame the colored people, blame immigrants, blame PC and identity politics, blame women and feminism, blame non-Christians and lax morality, blame welfare recipients, blame taxes, blame gun control, and don't question the bosses, but look to them for salvation, because they are the "job creaters" and are not "dependent," or you can also fall for religious right nostrums and "make America great again!" or patriotic and militarist slogans. When your life is empty, you can't question authority or think critically and with imagination, and you are ripe fruit and easy pickins for a demagogue like Trump. The result is that there are no social services or income supports to help boost you and your community out of economic ruin and emotional despair. No, that would be dependency on big government, and I am too strong and self-reliant to do that. Oh pardon me, I need to get my fix......
...but these people see the educated middle class as the real oppressors because that lesbian b!+ch at William Jennings Bryan Elementary school corrected the kids' grammar as her mother did back in the '60s and '70s... or that physician with a skullcap won't agree with me on religion, or that black people see something wrong with being shot in the back for shoplifting. They see TV shows in which people mock Donald Trump or commit such horrors as 'race-mixing'. "At least we have a Real American as President now", they say. After all, there is an identity to protect.
Quote:America is sick, literally, and needs a great big change, and soon. Something to blast these people out of their deadly self-defeating patterns! There is a greater destiny for America, hidden in our history and our western and world culture, if only we can find it again. If only we can look past our despair and prejudice.
Their kids will be cannon fodder in the next War for Profits. When such a war goes badly under Donald Trump, those kids will start coming back in body bags.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.