I can talk about this topic all day. Vox sums up the current cabal of lunatic liberals, who’ve abandoned their principles and the people who supported them in favor of a smug, globalist, elitist agenda that reeks with fascist dictorial condescension.
This.
Finding comfort in the notion that their former allies were disdainful, hapless rubes, smug liberals created a culture animated by that contempt. The rubes noticed and replied in kind. The result is a self-fulfilling prophecy.
The blue collar white middle class factory worker is voting GOP in overwhelming large numbers now–because the liberal establishment made a concerted effort to undermine him, in order to curry the favor of a more appealing, faster growing, demographic.
This will, inexorably, blow up in their faces.
The article is linked above. It is a must read.
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note republicans are ignoring the working class as well. there needs to be a new party. man I was hoping sanders or trump would start one.
No kidding, that establishment republicans are ignoring the working class as well. That’s where the appeal of Trump, a former Democrat, comes from.
Bernie beats Clinton 67-33 among under 30. The future.
Yes. The future. I wish it were also the present.
The article makes good points, but is highly repetative. I’ve summed it up here:
Liberal elite/politicians believe that middle america whites and working class whites are voting for the Republicans becuase they are ignorant of the “fact” that Dems represent their views. In reality,
“Abandoned and without any party willing to champion their (economic) interests, people cling to candidates who, at the very least, are willing to represent their moral convictions.”
This is the how article, and I had come to that same conclusion: although the R are clearly the party of the rich, this does not mean that the Ds are the party of the middle class. The Ds fight for their own classes of rich as well (Wall Street is a shared ally of both parties, as evident that they survived a post-2008 trifecta of Dem controlling the Senate, the House, and the Presidency without a reform bil passed). The Ds spend their political capital on social issues (equal rights) or helping the poor (health care, education) rather than anything aimed specifically at the middle class.
I don’t think the Dems have *undermined* the working class at all, although you could say they have undermined the advantages of *straight white men* who compose a very large portion of the working class.
No person personifies this better than Bill Maher. Also, an absurd documentary I recently watched is a great exampleof this. “The brainwashing of my Dad” pitches this notion that Liberals are intelligent and anyone conservative is just brainwashed by the right wing media and too stupid to recognize it. Comical documentary.
Maher isn’t nearly as bad as others. I actually agree with Maher on several issues and enjoy his show.
Yes, Maher is great. I don’t agree with him on everything either. But he is funny and makes a lot of sense.
The documentary has a point, if it says that conservatives are just brainwashed by the Right Wing media and too stupid to recognize it. That is true of a lot of Right Wingers.
Fox News Viewers Uninformed, NPR Listeners Not, Poll Suggests
http://www.forbes.com/sites/kenrapoza/2011/11/21/fox-news-viewers-uninformed-npr-listeners-not-poll-suggests/#722bbb806189
Some Trump supporters feel that they have been screwed by establishment Republicans and that is why they support Trump, who is hardly a typical Republican, and used to be a Democrat.
Of course only other Liberals are like that.
Interesting premise, and I won’t argue against it. However, I would point out the other side of the story is equally true. Conservatives actively cultivate pride in their lack of refinement and intelligence, evidenced in everything from the Creation Museum to Larry the Cable Guy. Ergo, both parties miss opportunities to capture potential votes due to their focus on culture rather than substance.
+1
The blue collar white middle class factory worker is voting GOP in overwhelming large numbers now–because the liberal establishment made a concerted effort to undermine him, in order to curry the favor of a more appealing, faster growing, demographic.
The liberals alienated the white factory workers by insisting that unions and workplaces be open to minorities. The GOP showed their respect for white factory workers by getting rid of the unions.
But the Vox piece really isn’t meant to judge whether one side is better than the other. It is the author’s criticism of US liberalism, and it makes some good points. The fact that it doesn’t address problems on the conservative side is not relevant, as long as one is aware that the article is not trying to do that.
Where Rensin fails, IMO, is that he doesn’t seem to understand a very basic motivation of liberalism among the well educated, the ones he is most likely to find smug.
Let me consider two examples from the piece.
First, this:
The rubes noticed that liberal Democrats, distressed by the notion that Indiana would allow bakeries to practice open discrimination against LGBTQ couples, threatened boycotts against the state, mobilizing the considerable economic power that comes with an alliance of New York and Hollywood and Silicon Valley to punish retrograde Gov. Mike Pence, but had no such passion when the same governor of the same state joined 21 others in refusing the Medicaid expansion. No doubt good liberals objected to that move too. But I’ve yet to see a boycott threat about it.
Second, the Kim Davis protest against issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples:
But a more fundamental element of smug disdain for Kim Davis went unchallenged: the contention, at bottom, that Davis was not merely wrong in her convictions, but that her convictions were, in themselves, an error and a fraud.
That is: Kim Davis was not only on the wrong side of the law. She was not even a subscriber to a religious ideology that had found itself at moral odds with American culture. Rather, she was a subscriber to nothing, a hateful bigot who did not even understand her own religion.
There are two motivations behind the liberal reaction to those events. The first is that people should not be given second-class status due to factors largely determined at birth (race, gender or gender affiliation, sexual orientation, etc.) or due to choices (religious affiliation) that have Constitutional protection.
Our Declaration of Independence asserted that “all men are created equal”, and the effort to fully honor those words is 240 years long and still going. A century after the Declaration, amendments 13, 14, and 15 ended slavery, promised “equal protection”, and opened voting to all races. Fifty years later, the 19th protected the right of women to vote. Another 40 years, and the Civil Rights Act and the 24th addressed the efforts of state and local authorities to work around the 14th and 15th. Another 50 years, and we have seen the extension of the 14th to give protection to sexual orientation.
Rensin poisons his entire piece when he claims that the Indiana boycott shows liberal disdain for the dispossessed. The liberal boycott for the LGBTQ legislation was to send the message that it is abhorrent to use the law to protect discrimination against people for the way they are born. That message is easy understand and support, so a boycott was effective. Indiana’s failure to expand Medicare, in contrast, does not discriminate against a congenital feature of people. Furthermore, the Supreme Court had already ruled that the Federal government could not penalize a state for opting out of Medicaid expansion. It was a matter of political preferences, not unconstitutional discrimination. Liberals objected, with passion, to state decisions not to expand Medicare, but a boycott would not have attracted corporate support. Resin ignores the fact that boycotts don’t work without the support of large corporations–especially those already within a state.
The second motivation behind liberal response to Indiana and Kim Davis in next comment —>
What a waste of time. What the hell is the Q in LGBT?
I dunno. The vox author put that in. Every time I see the letters, there is a new one.
Thanks for the article, Fly. It’s an interesting one. And thanks for your analysis of the article, Ottnott, which I also find interesting.
In both Indiana and the Kim Davis situation, liberals were in opposition to people who claimed a religious right to discriminate. Liberals objected not only to discrimination against a congenital feature (as covered at length above), but also to the notion that religious beliefs should be elevated above secular law — above our Constitution.
The notion of “reasonable accommodation” for religious practices and beliefs has been with us for a long time and has become better defined since 1972 legislation amending the Civil Rights Act. That “reasonable accommodation” dealt primarily with the accommodations made by government and by employers for an individual. The legislation in Indiana and other states would have allowed the burden of accommodation to fall on the discriminated party, would have removed the “reasonable” limitation on the accommodation, and would have extended the religious accommodations to non-human “persons”. Any entity that could be sued was an entity that could assert religious belief as a defense.
That’s bad enough if it meant only that businesses can say “we don’t serve your kind” to non-heterosexuals, but the liberal objection was also to a much broader problem. Courts and other government institutions are extremely reluctant to judge what is and is not a legitimate religion, religious belief, or religious practice. As an example of this, refer to John Oliver’s series of shows where he legally established a church as a tax-exempt organizations and began accepting donations (see Wikipedia overview https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Our_Lady_of_Perpetual_Exemption or watch the first video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7y1xJAVZxXg ). With any entity now able to assert a “religious belief” defense to suits, and with “religious belief” very poorly defined, legislation meant primarily to spare bakers the soul-torment of baking a cake for queers could be utilized for many other types of discrimination not specifically prohibited by existing law.
Mr Fly,
I assume a man of your intellect may already know of the late American historian and cultural critic Christopher Lasch (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Lasch.) I won’t summarize his work but I think you would find him very interesting. A Marxist turned conservative, he offers brilliant insight into liberal elite mind. His book titles alone tell much of the story.
1962: The American Liberals and the Russian Revolution.
1965: The New Radicalism in America 1889-1963: The Intellectual As a Social Type.
1969: The Agony of the American Left.
1973: The World of Nations.
1977: Haven in a Heartless World: The Family Besieged.
1979: The Culture of Narcissism: American Life in an Age of Diminishing Expectations.
1984: The Minimal Self: Psychic Survival in Troubled Times.
1991: The True and Only Heaven: Progress and Its Critics.
1994: The Revolt of the Elites: And the Betrayal of Democracy.
Check him out if you have a chance.
Peter
From the most popular Amazon book review of Lasch’s book, The Revolt of the Elites and the Betrayal of Democracy.
“Lasch is no partisan. Conservative proponents of unfettered capitalism get bashed about the head by Lasch just as much as liberal critics of capitalism. Populists will find themselves nodding in agreement with some sections, while communitarians will concur with other sections. About the only folks who will be offended by all of “The Revolt of the Elites” are hardened libertarians and extreme left-liberals. Highly recommended.”
Liberals do need to appeal more to the white working class. Anyone wanting to understand this class better should read this excellent book. I am in a book discussion on it now, and most people there are fascinated by the new information they are learning. Since Right Wingers are sitting idle now in the Congress that they control both Houses of, our only hope for solutions is the Left. So those of us on the Left need to learn about and communicate better with this class, that keeps voting GOP, even though folks like Bernie have far more to offer them.
The GOP establishment has no solutions or ideas. They just complain about liberals. Liberals can do far better than that. But we need to get back Congress first.
Deer Hunting with Jesus: Dispatches from America’s Class War Paperback by Joe Bageant
http://www.amazon.com/Deer-Hunting-Jesus-Dispatches-Americas/dp/0307339378/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1461269595&sr=8-1&keywords=deer+hunting+with+jesus
The author of the article has some real points. However, to call liberals elitists is the height of the pot calling the kettle black, since the GOP is the party of the .01% and of Citizens United. And since elitism and the established social order of the .01% is what unites all conservative thinking and policy throughout its history.
The Reactionary Mind: Conservatism from Edmund Burke to Sarah Palin Reprint Edition
by Corey Robin
http://www.amazon.com/Reactionary-Mind-Conservatism-Edmund-Burke/dp/0199959110/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1461269908&sr=8-1&keywords=edmund+burke+to+sarah+palin
Trump cant win. People arent that stupid. -Wife
He has no chance of the nomination even, unless he gets it on the 1st round of voting at the convention. Because the GOP establishment will surely block him otherwise.