One theory is that each pre-independence region of British settlement in America had its own “hearth culture,” based on that of the particular region of Britain that produced its settlers, and Appalachia’s was the individualistic and civically dysfunctional culture of the Scotch-Irish and the Scottish-English borderlands.
Yeah, the reflexive attempt to blame safety-net policies put in place by Democrats is bogus. But I do see some non-PC truth in there other than that (and maybe more so in the original than in the post commenting on it: I’d love to read the whole thing). Maybe they are just shitty people “whelping” successive generations of shitty people.
Does anyone else find that a tad excessive? Is voting in a primary, or dropping out of - continuing to run in - one really all that noble and selfless and dangerous?
This National Review article is just telling it like it is. Just some cold hard truth.
I thought the Trump supporters liked it when people cut out the bullshit and just spoke plainly, without all of the political correctness and namby-pamby coddling.
Oh. They actually don’t like that. Only when it’s directed at other people.
Call me politically correct if you wish, but I prefer not to use such dehumanizing language as “whelping” to refer to my fellow human beings. And if they’re “shitty people” (as in, chronically unemployed and into drugs) it’s because their environment is shitty, not because they’re genetically predisposed to be bad people.
Have you ever heard of the Rat Park experiment? I think most of us have heard about how if you put a rat in a cage with a choice between a regular water bottle and a water bottle laced with cocaine, the rat will keep going for the cocaine, often killing itself by overdosing. But there’s a twist to this story:
What if rural appalachians are just like the caged rats in the experiments? Take them out of their cage (the crappy social conditions they are in) and I suspect they’d behave a lot differently.
Are you really that surprised, GOP hardliners? These people you disparage may not be the sharpest tools in the shed, but neither are they idiots. They learn slowly at times, but they do learn. You have been promising them since the Reagan era that if they would support the rich, all boats would be lifted. So they voted for you, and your response to their support was to leave them jobless and tell them it was their fault for being too greedy and asking too much. When they are losing their homes, can’t feed their families and there are no jobs to be had, they’ve finally put two and two together.
Jumping into Trump’s boat may be ill-advised, but as a Republican, he’s still a New York Liberal in many regards, and by refusing to complicate his message with too much factual information or any research into the possibility of delivering on it, he has given them a message couched in terms they can understand. It’s much like the Rush Limbaugh effect. Tailor your message to your audience and you are likely to communicate much better, no matter how far down the educational scale you have to tailor it.
The quoted article, where you rail against your erstwhile former supporters who have gone in search of what they think are greener pastures, is unlikely to get any of these folks to rethink their position. You are as vitriolic as you would be if your butlers and maids all quit on the same day and you were left to wash your own clothes and cook your own dinner.
It is still ill-advised, his positions have devolved really.
Yeah, he claimed that he evolved from his liberal positions. But it is more likely that he was and he is mostly an opportunistic mercenary of the ideas prevalent in the places that he was and is trying to take over.
Based on his support of guys like Joe Arpaio it is clear of what ideas he is using in his attempt to take over.
You say this like the Democratic party is any different. It would have been just as possible for a populist meathead to have taken over the Democratic elections by appealing to the majority of voters who have no idea what the ideological or real-world basis is behind Liberal policy and don’t care so long as it more closely aligns with their view of how the world works.
Most people just don’t have the time, resources, education, nor character to go and research policy, consider philosophy, study economics, etc. to understand the issues that the government deals with. And that’s true on all sides of the court.
Beyond that, policy is decided by compromise between parties and other entities (like the EPA or UN) so you need to not only understand the arguments of your own party, but the opposite party, and various governmental entities as well.
Most voters, regardless of party, don’t understand the government’s decisions and don’t feel like the politicians are listening to them, because they make bizarre choices. The people generally put that down under the heading of “politicians being bought off” when, more likely, it’s just that they don’t understand all of the arguments nor the compromises that were involved.
And so the voters on both sides would prefer to elect politicians who view the world in the way that they view it and suggest solutions that work in that world view.
The only thing that saves us from idiot politicians, who do the things that the people want, is that the parties generally are able to screen out these types and convince them to run for city and state jobs.
This seems to be a quirk of the human brain: the most-successful despots always seem to be the goofy ones (think Putin, bare-chested on horseback; fat, self-important Mussolini; and ratty little Hitler).
Kevin Williamson seems to be expressing a common-to-the-GOP-elite outrage that the saps have found a new religion (Trumpist over-grown toddlerhood, instead of the old tradition of swallowing dog-whistle xenophobia as a substitute for actual advocacy for their interests by the GOP overlords). His righteous indignation is both hilarious and sad.
