What Bernie might have said: After posting our last award-winning post, we turned straight to this new post by Kevin Drum. It's called, A Note on the Perils of Caricature.
On the one hand, we agree with every word Drum said. On the other hand, his graphic verges on what we were talking about in our own last award-winning post.
Drum starts with an exchange from tonight's All In program. Chris Hayes and Bernie Sanders have taped a program in McDowell County, West Virginia. At one point, this exchange occurs:
LOCAL WOMAN: I think a lot of people think we're just a bunch of hillbilly rednecks.Below, we'll suggest a better response. First, though, we'll suggest that you go to Drum's post and see what he said.
SANDERS: I don't think that.
We agree with every word he said. We think his analysis is very sensible, very much on point.
That said, take a look at the graphic he constructed. It characterizes the most "extreme" red and blue voters in terms of one variable. But uh-oh:
It characterizes their most "extreme" voters in an extremely critical way. It characterizes our most "extreme" voters in a morally neutral way.
Liberals, we're just saying! We liberals sometimes tend to be like that!
As for the exchange we posted above, we'll now suggest a better answer by Sanders. For ourselves, we would have stood and cheered had he offered this:
LOCAL WOMAN: I think a lot of people think we're just a bunch of hillbilly rednecks.Trust us. Our suggested answer would be remembered much, much longer.
SANDERS: I agree with you. I think a lot of people who may be right about other things do have an attitude like that.
I think their attitude is wrong. I don't think like that.
It's a basic part of comedy training: Tell the truth about whatever it is that just occurred in the room.
Go ahead—cop to the truth. Everybody else in the room already knows it's true!
Somerby wants Sanders to cop to one truth but not another.
ReplyDeleteYes, some people do consider hill people "hillbilly rednecks".
But some hill people ARE hillbilly rednecks in every sense of that word. That's the truth Sanders doesn't say (explicitly denies) and the truth Somerby ignores too. It is the elephant in the room.
Tell the whole truth.
"Stone racist" is not the right term for someone who is rigid about change. Xenophobe is a neutral term. You might need to differentiate between benign xenophobia (refusal to visit Europe) and hostile xenophobia (burning a cross on a new neighbor's lawn). The latter is more extreme and perhaps less rare but it is the former that results in Trump support, which in turn enables the latter form of xenophobia and its institutionalization in our culture.
ReplyDeleteAt the end of his essay Drum says: "That doesn't make them bad people, it just means they're a few notches away from us on the bell curve."
I suppose Drum is referring to the fact that most human characteristics are distributed in a bell curve across the population, but the only Bell Curve most people know about is the one related to IQ scores. So it sounds like Drum is calling those who dislike change stupid people. He should be more careful about that in an essay on tolerance.
Particularly since it is an inconvenient fact that the populations at the lowest end of that Bell Curve are overwhelmingly Democrat.
DeleteNot true. See: https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/unique-everybody-else/201305/intelligence-and-politics-have-complex-relationship
Delete"Are you with Obama or are you a racist?" was the false choice they crammed down the throat of America for 8 years. "Are you with her or are you a racist and sexist?" finally did force a different choice, upended the electoral map, and caused the biggest political backfire in history. President Donald Trump.
ReplyDeleteSo I guessing you are on the racist side then?
DeleteNo, I'm a Republican.
Delete"due to his repeating of Conservative economic nonsense.."
DeleteLike what? Never mind, Mr. Bunker.
"(due to his repeating of Conservative economic nonsense),"
DeleteThe racists always find some excuse. This one is especially clever.
Obama talking about the defect, during a time of high unemployment/ under-employment is the kind of thing an economic know-nothing would do.
DeleteAlso, making believe the federal government pays their bills "just like you do at your kitchen table" is beyond stupid. The federal government can print money. You can't.
Pro tip to Dems/ Liberals: Stop repeating conservative economic nonsense. It makes you sound as stupid as the mouth-breathers who voted for Trump.
The black president couldn't even understand basic economics, says the racist.
DeleteRepublicans have hillbilly rednecks and their apologists. Democrats have urban thugs and their apologists. Both groups are antisocial in their attitudes and behaviors including violent crime.
ReplyDeleteThere are enough ignorant and dangerous poor to spread around politically. Forget about being nice to them. We can make excuses for our own rednecks and thugs and attack our opponents for theirs.
Many in the coastal elites, including the ones that lean liberal, have looked at West Virginians as hillbilly rednecks for many decades. Yet well into the 1990s, they voted for the party most associated with civil rights legislation and supported by nearly 100% of the black community. So how come now that sense of victimization became a decisive political issue now and it wasn't then when the sensibilities of the Democratic Party were just a opposed to racial prejudice as it is now?
ReplyDeleteTrump said he would bring back coal jobs. Clinton didn't.
DeleteTom Zeug -- IMHO one key issue is that symbols mean different things to different people. To YOU a Confederate flag represents racism, but it may NOT represent racism to some other person.
ReplyDeleteFlying the flag of a failed confederacy that tried to dissolve the American union in defense of slavery cannot represent anything good. Even the historical events associated with the flag are shameful, racism aside. So, when people defend it in the name of history, we do suspect they are actually defending something else, something with more racial overtones. Because their other claims about it make no sense.
ReplyDeleteThat's your POV, and it's valid for you, Anon 6:24. But, for some people the Confederate flag just represents local pride. E.g, consider this article: "I am a black South Carolinian. Here’s why I support the Confederate flag....For me and many Southerners, the flag celebrates my heritage and regional pride. One of my ancestors, Benjamin Thomas, was a black Confederate cook, and I do not want to turn my back on his service to the South. So I hang the flag in honor of his hard work and dedication to South Carolina during the Civil War."
ReplyDeletehttps://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2015/06/24/i-am-a-black-south-carolinian-heres-why-i-support-the-confederate-flag/?utm_term=.51909e17c728
Not surprising that Comrade DinC is charmed by a symbol of bloody treason and racism.
ReplyDeleteThe Confederate battle flag represents treason in support of slavery.
ReplyDeleteEver heard of the term "outlier" David?
ReplyDeleteDavid,
ReplyDeleteI don't want to appear like I am piling on, but your post is a steaming pile of manure. This is the same crap southern schools were shoveling into kids in the 1950's. Enough already!
Thank you Gavin, for getting my point. To most people, the Confederate flag may have represented racism, but there were others, even some African Americans, for whom it represented regional pride or had some other non-racist meaning. Each of us assigned our own meaning to it.
ReplyDeleteDavid,
ReplyDeleteThe treasonous Confederate flag disappeared from the 1870s until the late 1950s, when Brown vs Board of Education was decided.
Southern pride my ass. I have to say, I'm zero percent shocked you'd carry water for racists.
Davis in Cal,
ReplyDeleteSouthern local pride in what? In slavery, treason and cowardice? Did your black confederate cook ancestor, have a choice to support such treason or did his master force him?
@3:50 PM - realty? Look who's talking.
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ReplyDelete