During the four days I just spent in southern Alabama there were plenty of signs of conservative culture, from the ubiquitous churches to the types of displays seen in restaurants and bars. But there were very few overtly political indications that people opposed the president or that they belonged to the Republican Party. As we were driving along State Highway 98 along the Gulf Coast, however, we came across a large homemade sign that said simply: OBAMACARE LOOMS.
We all got a huge chuckle out of that and briefly considered turning around to get a picture of it. But we were in a hurry. One wonders what kind of action the sign-maker wanted to inspire. Surely, he wanted to do more than just invoke a feeling of dread. And there are no elections coming up that would have any bearing on ObamaCare, nor would a sign change their outcome if there were.
Yet, as people went about their business, buying and selling things, and going to work, there was no sense that people were dissatisfied with anything. There were no signs of rebellion. Secession was not in the air. No one expressed any hostility to the Yankees in their midst. It seemed like politics was the furthest thing from anyone’s minds.
Nonetheless, this country is more polarized than it has been since the Civil War. I just wonder how much of it is real and how much of it is driven, instilled, ginned-up, by right-wing media.
ObamaCare may loom ominously in the minds of those who watch Fox News and listen to hate radio, but it will become a reality soon with much more of a whimper than a bang. Suddenly, a lot of the poor and middle class of southern Alabama will have access to health care that they didn’t previously have. They will have nothing to be angry about, and much to be grateful for. The people who already have health insurance won’t notice much difference at all, except that their coverage might be better.
What happens, then, to all the portents of doom?
There will always be doom sayers on the right. Hell, Medicare, Medicaid and SS are still horrible to many of them.
As to how divided we are, in many ways, not as much as it appears. People self-identify with groups and tend to follow what they perceive as the groupthink of the group with which they identify. Therefore peopel who ID themselves as conservative will hate liberals because that is the conservative groupthink. People who ID themselves as liberal will look down on conservatives as stupid rednecks, because that is the liberal groupthink. People who ID themselves as moderate (and there are fewer and fewer of those) will look down on everybody else as being being partisan zealots.
And yes, the media plays right along with this and talks about the great divide and speaks in terms of group identification instead of ideas.
However, polling has shown that when people are just asked their opinions on specific aspects of life and public policy, there is a great deal of agreement among Americans. Heck, when the specifics of Obamacare are broken down into its separate parts, it is highly favored. The only thing most people don’t like is the mandate and that is primarily because they don’t understand it or why it is necessary.
The reason the RW media is the main driver of this is that they present one very specific, non factually based, viewpoint which is what the rest of the emdia has had to react to.
I agree that there’s too much looking down on conservatives as stupid rednecks, but in perspective, this is a false equivalency. For one thing, most of us know who creates and pays for the propaganda, and it ain’t rednecks. The other side’s minions seem to actually think that what they hear from fox, beck, limbaugh, etc, is “grassroots” rebellion or something.
That said, our side has failed miserably to support and converse with the victims of the vampire oligarchy that is on the verge of taking over this country for the long term. Now is the time to take some lessons from folks like Jane Addams, ML King, Studs Terkel, and even the WWW about practical communication with those who are not yet “us”.
What happens, then, to all the portents of doom?
Fox and talk radio just find some new enemies, or go back to old ones. The Benghazi cover-up! The war on Christmas! Violent black flash mobs! PSY denouncing American troops! The Ground Zero Mosque! (Don’t laugh — the Murdoch media was getting worked up about this just a couple of days ago.)
They’ll find something. They always do. They’ll keep the hate level high.
What happens, then, to all the portents of doom?
It all transforms into “you got all these nice benefits because we repealed Obamacare 33 times.”
I propose an experiment. Shut down the right-wing noise machine and the Wall Street Wurlitzer for three months. And have preachers just read the New Testament instead of interpreting and prooftexting it for their congregations. See how many folks are disenthralled.
Yes, the divisions are hyped up and overstated. There are no counties in the country that are 100% Democratic or Republican, or 100% conservative. And the number of counties that break 50% progressive are much too few.
The red state-blue state meme was a conservative attempt to freeze American politics based on the propaganda value of the land area of states on a map. And the focus on states instead of precincts.
It’s hard enough to find a good map of the election results by county beyond the Presidential totals. And almost impossible to find a map by precinct of any vote. But that is the level of analysis that would be helpful to dispelling the notion of unbridgeable divisions or “solid South” or “Democratic coast”. And go a long way to explaining Daniel Issa, Steven King, Michelle Bachman, and Pete King.
Well, it may be a GOP plot, but I have to think the emphasis on states is our wretched and eternal abomination called the Electoral College.
As long as there is money to be made with the polarization meme, then it will live on. Rachel Maddow had a segment last night on the scams run by Dick Morris and Karl Rove. The country is rife with fools willing to part with their money to perpetuate the silliness.
regarding his recent southern Alabama/Florida Panhandle experiences:
And then he writes:
Here we have proof of…among other things…the truly astounding credulity of the media-driven so-called “intelligent” liberal middle class.
He bases his “polarization” statement on media reporting of said polarization, in this instance a Wall Street Journal article. (Bear in mind that The Wall Street Journal is the Cadillac of the execrable media line that is owned by the Murdoch group, a corporation that also produces cheap media vehicles for the masses like the NY Post and Fox News. Thus Booman is functioning as a Murdoch media tool, only he rides in a better-produced car than do the right-wing plebes.)
The article states:
So Booman sees quite clearly what is really happening in a supposed “red” area…people going about their business, little or no slathering at the mouth over the presence of northerners from blue states, politics the furthest thing from their minds. And then he turns around and yells “Fire!!!” in society’s theatre because to him the media reality is more real than his own reality.
And people wonder why I continue to pound upon the idea of “Newstrike.”
Most of the people that he is observing also swim in a media world that is more real to them than their own in many respects. Bet on it. But that media world consists of only about 2% or 3% “news.” Maybe even less in terms of viewer minutes. The rest? Sports, movies, music, documentaries, TV series, advertisements…all consumed with equal relish/equally lax attention and all quite efficiently forming a body/mind/emotion-based gestalt that basically says…to paraphrase and expand upon Booman’s quite accurate observation:
I will flat-out guarantee that if you put most Americans on some sort of truth machine or drug, Black Friday and the commercial aspects of the holidays would now be more important to them than is any sort of politics or social thought whatsoever. Then comes “The Holidays” and all of that forced merriment, then New Years and “a look back” at what supposedly happened this year, and then back to the buying, selling, working and consuming thing again. Buying, selling, working and consuming interspersed with little consumer holidays like Stupor Bowl Sunday, President Day sales, Valentine’s Day and Easter.
What does that WSJ article really say? Between the lines? It says that only somewhere between 10% and 25% of the electorate thinks and votes independently of its immediate societal surroundings.
I make it somewhere less than 30%, myself. The whole national presidential campaign, from soup to wingnuts, was about capturing a little more than half of that 30%. Everybody else? Pre-hypnotized. Clomp clomp clomp.
I have to go to work now…if making real music should be considered “work” (The don’t call it “playing” for nothing, y’know.)…but if we could get an accurate count of the monies expended upon the presidential campaign and an equally accurate count of the number of real independent voters, I wonder how many thousands or tens/hundreds of thousands were spent on each questionable vote.
Makes ya feel all worthwhile, don’t it? I wish they’d just drop the money directly on me. It would make things so much simpler.
Later…
AG
“What happens, then, to all the portents of doom?”
You must be kidding. Everyone -from left wing single payer purists to right wing death panel kooks- will find something to complain about, because that’s what they are expecting.
If it doesn’t happen, they’ll invent it.
There is a homemade sign — actually, two — on Route 15 north of Frederick, Maryland, saying: US OUT OF THE UN! They look like they’ve been there a while.
It’s always something.
Remember the “Impeach Earl Warren” signs that used to decorate parts of the south back in the 60s?
What happens, then, to all the portents of doom?
For a comparison, think back to the liberals who spent 2010 wailing that Obama was going to bomb Iraq, keep the troops in Iraq, and not repeal Don’t Ask Don’t Tell. They all admitted they were wrong and changed their views appropriately.
Oh, wait, no they didn’t. They just made up some new shit. Most are though three or four iterations of this process by now.
It will be the same with the other variety of bone-deep Obama-haters.
I’ve been noticing how the Obama hate goes on unabated as if no election ever happened and there was another presidential contest just around the corner. I’ve pretty much stopped reading political news sites except for a favored few, but there’s no longer any escaping the crazed obsessing over Obama. Go to an electronics site, a neighborhood site, a science site, a DIY site, and there’s a better than even chance that some drooler will be there screaming about Obama.
Some of them are just robospam, but many actually refer to the context. One article on Curiosity’s latest findings was replete with claims that it was a plot to give Obama and the UN a base to end our “freedom”.
There’s no difference between “real” and “driven, instilled, ginned-up, by right-wing media”, any more than it was in the Spanish American War or the Cold War or the “red scare”. The real question is, do we try to persuade the dumbass herds, or do we go for the instigators? Where, for example, is the investigation into Koch military contracts and the question of whether open haters of the US government can bid for them or any other government business? We spend way too much time worrying about Alan West, Bachman, McCain and other irrelevancies instead of using our personpower and our money to expose and destroy the rot at the top.
calvin knows exactly why we’re so divided. It’s the damn computer. It allows the wonks in state capitols to gerrymander districts so that nobody ever has to worry about pleasing anyone other than the most conservative residents of their district. The more idiocy they spew, the greater their chances of being re-elected.
No more negotiating because it might affect your chances of serving another term. Successful candidates become great ideologues. Compromise is a four-letter word.
Note that the introduction of desktop computing correlates highly with the divisiveness in the country. It just kept on escalating to the point we reached a few years ago and won’t get better until the entire country adopts the redistricting as is done in California.