11-23-2016, 07:49 AM
We have all been deceived.
The Economic Right (the sorts who believe that no human suffering is in excess so long as the Master Class gets whatever it can get) has played a game with the single-area interests (for guns, school prayer, and fundamentalist control of the educational culture, but against homosexuality and reproductive rights), offering themselves as the only ones who care about such things. I have heard people say that they voted for Donald Trump because they wanted to support "God's Law" even if Donald Trump is the most immoral man to ever get nominated by a major political party for President. For the single-issue Right no human suffering, no human suffering is in excess so long as it leads one to Jesus. Eternity is everything, and it is worth being burned alive if in a preventable industrial accident if such spares one from the harsh judgment of a cruel God. Happiness in This World is suspect. sadist, meet masochist. Ultra-materialist, meet the ultimate deniers of bliss through materialism.
The Economic Right has also aligned itself with a white, rural mass low culture whose devotees (Sarah Palin's "Real America") believe fails to get the respect that it deserves. Anything exotic, arcane, or cosmopolitan fares badly in the rural areas of the Midlands, Mountain South, and Deep South. To be sure, Atlanta and Dallas may be as culturally sophisticated as such Northern cities as Cleveland and Milwaukee... but there are few such cities south and east of I-35 and I-64. The white, rural mass low culture is highly commercialized and only slightly creative -- but it is a big part of America. Wal*Mart serves it well. Maybe those of us who love hip-hop, folk, classical, or jazz don't have to adopt it, but we need to recognize the 'country' culture as valid as ours because it is far more American. Remember: if you are listening to Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, or Chopin, you are not listening to truly American music. Maybe you better fit the cultures of the old Hohenzollern and Hapsburg Empires than America.
White people who still have ties to the rustic culture are still the majority. You may prefer your un-American music and literature, your foreign films, your pseudo-French (if not French!) wines, and your micro-brews that are closer to German or Czech tastes in beer than to the mass-market swill that people drink to get drunk. If you truly love America, then maybe you need to defer to the unvarnished tastes of the "Real America" that won a smashing victory on November 8. Defer or cut yourself off from many possible friends.
If you dislike that culture, then maybe you are not really American. You either have become more Czech or Belgian than American, you are still a member of some Latin-American or Asian ethnic group even if your ancestors haven't been outside the US since the nineteenth century, or you are tied to some part of the Black Power movement that became part of the black middle class. But if you despise the majoritarian white culture, don't even think of any attempt to pry the white working class from the Hard Right. Cultural identity is a visceral quality, and the Hard Right has won the "Real America". Political entities that once seemed solid, like the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the Soviet Union, and Yugoslavia demonstrate what can happen under ethnic polarization. Cultural polarization is just as real.
The Economic Right (the sorts who believe that no human suffering is in excess so long as the Master Class gets whatever it can get) has played a game with the single-area interests (for guns, school prayer, and fundamentalist control of the educational culture, but against homosexuality and reproductive rights), offering themselves as the only ones who care about such things. I have heard people say that they voted for Donald Trump because they wanted to support "God's Law" even if Donald Trump is the most immoral man to ever get nominated by a major political party for President. For the single-issue Right no human suffering, no human suffering is in excess so long as it leads one to Jesus. Eternity is everything, and it is worth being burned alive if in a preventable industrial accident if such spares one from the harsh judgment of a cruel God. Happiness in This World is suspect. sadist, meet masochist. Ultra-materialist, meet the ultimate deniers of bliss through materialism.
The Economic Right has also aligned itself with a white, rural mass low culture whose devotees (Sarah Palin's "Real America") believe fails to get the respect that it deserves. Anything exotic, arcane, or cosmopolitan fares badly in the rural areas of the Midlands, Mountain South, and Deep South. To be sure, Atlanta and Dallas may be as culturally sophisticated as such Northern cities as Cleveland and Milwaukee... but there are few such cities south and east of I-35 and I-64. The white, rural mass low culture is highly commercialized and only slightly creative -- but it is a big part of America. Wal*Mart serves it well. Maybe those of us who love hip-hop, folk, classical, or jazz don't have to adopt it, but we need to recognize the 'country' culture as valid as ours because it is far more American. Remember: if you are listening to Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, or Chopin, you are not listening to truly American music. Maybe you better fit the cultures of the old Hohenzollern and Hapsburg Empires than America.
White people who still have ties to the rustic culture are still the majority. You may prefer your un-American music and literature, your foreign films, your pseudo-French (if not French!) wines, and your micro-brews that are closer to German or Czech tastes in beer than to the mass-market swill that people drink to get drunk. If you truly love America, then maybe you need to defer to the unvarnished tastes of the "Real America" that won a smashing victory on November 8. Defer or cut yourself off from many possible friends.
If you dislike that culture, then maybe you are not really American. You either have become more Czech or Belgian than American, you are still a member of some Latin-American or Asian ethnic group even if your ancestors haven't been outside the US since the nineteenth century, or you are tied to some part of the Black Power movement that became part of the black middle class. But if you despise the majoritarian white culture, don't even think of any attempt to pry the white working class from the Hard Right. Cultural identity is a visceral quality, and the Hard Right has won the "Real America". Political entities that once seemed solid, like the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the Soviet Union, and Yugoslavia demonstrate what can happen under ethnic polarization. Cultural polarization is just as real.
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.