The Partisan Divide on Issues

[Classic-Xer]

(08-17-2021, 12:24 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: Eric, if that graphs shows what Classic X'er considers "diversity", then some of the diversity of economic result and consequence isn't so welcome. A diversity between indulgence and abject deprivation serves no economic end other than to reward people for already being super-rich and to punish poverty. It fosters callousness among the rich and hopelessness among the poor and near-poor. It might be 'good' for suppressing demands for higher wages and working conditions, as if maintaining the terms of employment characteristic of an early-industrial society were a good idea in itself. 

Low life expectancy, underachievement in mathematics and literacy (and thus school completion), infant mortality, violence (homicides and imprisonment), a high teen birth rate, a general cynicism about life, obesity, mental illness, drug abuse and addiction, and economic hopelessness are not the sorts of diversity that I welcome. My idea of healthy diversity is an ethnic festival. Latino culture is rich; MS-13 is unwelcome.  

As economic conditions worsen in such an area as the Mountain South, living conditions also worsen. I remember seeing a map of opioid addiction in recent years, and the worst places for opioid addiction by county were no longer the urban ghettos in counties such as Cook (greater Chicago), Wayne (greater Detroit), Cuyahoga (Cleveland), and Philadelphia (Philadelphia) but instead in Appalachia and the Ozarks -- places that fifty years ago were exempt from it. Of course there is a generational aspect, in that old people like us two (65 is "old" in experience) who knew about the urban epidemic of heroin scare the Hell out of kids now about heroin. 

Use of meth, crack, and opioids for non-medical or shaky-medical reasons indicates a very messed-up life. 

...Poverty is bad for children and other living things. It is more likely to destroy character than to promote any work ethic. It compels people to live for meeting one basic need after another, typically the same basic need, every day. Classic X'er may be speaking of some genuine low-life characters, but for many worker, poverty is a perquisite. Maximal profits and executive compensation require mass poverty that compels people to make satanic choices in life. Poverty implies life toward the bottom of Maslow's hierarchy of needs, ensuring that people depend upon such things as candy, chips, mass-market beer, gratuitous sex (teen pregnancies are far more common among the ill-educated poor girls who are much more ignorant about sexuality than middle-class girls who typically know only one fewer thing about sex than do prostitutes -- what sex feels like, because middle-class girls know enough not to do it), and mindless mass low culture. It compels a very short-term view of the world, getting what one can while one can because there might easily be no tomorrow. 

One characteristic of the lower end of the social spectrum is heavy reliance upon television for entertainment. Fussell cites someone saying in the context of Class that television is not a patrician medium. Television is little more elevated today unless one has a streaming service such as that of the Berlin Philharmonic or watches PBS, occasional news feeds, and perhaps sporting events with "higher" class appeal such as golf or tennis. Relying exclusively upon television for entertainment (which now may include video games that did not proliferate until long after Fussell wrote Class) is not good for becoming what Benjamin Franklin called "healthy, wealthy, and wise". Note also that television is also good for giving people copious advertising for chips, sugary sodas, mass-market beer, and sweets -- none of them healthy to devour while vegetating before the idiot screen and to promote obesity. 

I can't imagine the degrading poverty so characteristic of neoliberal America achieving any personal consequences other than cynicism, anger, despair, and even madness. So what do we get again as a reward? More egregious indulgence by elites, and an intensified cycle of booms and busts. Maybe the middle class and skilled workers have had the boon of super-cheap restaurant meals and some high-quality entertainment (the middle class has more selectivity about television and the movies) and some rapid improvements in electronic gadgets, but those will do no good when AGW messes up the world because the fossil-fuel industry can maximize profits only by promoting heavy use of petroleum and coal. 

Someone like Classic X'er shows contempt for the poor. Maybe if people would only suffer more for investors and executives to create more wealth there would be more wealth -- not that it would ever trickle down. Contempt for the poor, including the working poor, enforces itself. He does not understand fully the connection between supply and demand -- that people need the means with which to demand something like air conditioning in a place just cool enough in the summer that heat waves are unpleasant but not quite lethal. (Heat waves statistically kill more people than do all the other extreme weather -- windstorms, floods, and cold waves combined). I have suggested before that air conditioning is a necessity in Kansas City, St. Louis, and Indianapolis; it is on the borderline of necessity in Omaha, Des Moines, and Chicago; and it is nice to have in places like the Twin Cities, Green Bay, and Grand Rapids. The brutal heat wave that bedeviled the Pacific Northwest this year could appear next time in the Land of 10,000 Lakes.

I show contempt for those who make political careers and make millions off taking advantage of the poor. As far as the poor themselves, some are good (worth keeping) and some are bad (not worth keeping/expendable) just like everyone else. I'd say the Twin Cities gets about as hot and muggy as the southern states during the summer months. The only difference is we are only dealing with the heat and humidity for a few months a year.  Plus, the homes built after 1980 are heavily insulated and designed to retain heat during the winter months. So, the newer homes become ovens that slowly dissipate heat making them miserable to live in without AC. I'm telling you dude, air conditioning is way more important to people who live around here than you think these days.