DDG, To begin with, I suspect that you and I are similar in terms of our social goals. So I think what we’ve stumbled across here is a difference in perspective; but not an underlying political clash.
“I was “questioning the importance of the messenger’s message”. So some Canadian researchers come panting and huffing to tell me that American attitudes have become a teensy bit more conservative?”
It’s this kind of exaggerated rhetoric that made me think you were defensive in the first place. “Panting and huffing” to tell you something? To be fair, the article was addressed to Canadians and it hardly suggested that you or any other American ought to pick up sticks on the spot. “A teensy bit more conservative?” What I recall was a dramatic contrast between Canadian and French gains and American losses. I simply can’t write that off as “teensy.” I may wish it were “teensy,” but I don’t see it that way.
" Well, gee, thanks guys, but, um, I already had the 2000 presidential election to tell me that. Thanks anyway.
(Okay, now the quibble about election statistics. Sure, the liberals may have won it on numbers, but I’m saying
that in America there was a shift was away from the Clinton era of liberalism, that was reflected in the election.
No, it wasn’t a landslide election, but it was significant that the Gore campaign, who might reasonably have
been viewed as Clinton’s successor, “more of the same”, didn’t get a landslide, either. See what I’m saying?"
Yeah, I do but I see what the Candian survey documents, and what the election indicates as potentially different. Bush ran on a “compassionate conservative” platform with his multicultural convention, and his waffling on abortion, the environment, etc. In other words, he did everything he could to mute his cultural conservatism, and emphasized his economic conservatism. At the same time, Gore’s lackluster support had a lot to do with Gore’s personality and with backlash from Clinton’s Monica problems. So I did not see the election as a clear mandate for cultural conservatism. That said, I don’t disagree with your main point: a more “liberal” electorate would have chosen Gore over Bush regardless of all of this. (BTW: I never think of Clinton or Gore as liberals; I think of them as center Democrats. Paul Wellstone is my idea of a liberal.)
“And I predict it will swing back the other way in 8 to 12 years/”
You may well be right, but a lot of things can happen in that time. Consider how precarious a woman’s ability to get a safe and legal abortion has already become. Just as the Bush tax cuts will plague Americans for years after some possible swing to the left, so further tampering with abortion provision could be very hard to reverse, regardless of changing opinions.
*"I find it amusing that Canadian researchers have nothing better to do than to go around measuring American attitudes to things. *
Well clearly they’re interested in seeing where Canada stands in relation to other parts of the world. This is a reasonable attitude for social researchers: if Candians are become more equalitarian on sexual difference, how are other parts of the world faring?
“I’m not aware of any American researchers who are currently measuring Canadian attitudes to things. We don’t care. Why should they?”
First, I suspect that American researchers do take an interest in Canada for all sorts of things: again, a comparative approach. Second, maybe you don’t care, but others might. I pay attention to Canadian elections (and to Mexican) b/c these are our nearest neighbors, our trading partners, etc. Third, it’s unreasonable for you not to recognize that other nations, especially Canada, pay more attention to the US then the US is likely to pay to them. The US has more military and economic power than any other country on the earth. US policies have far-reaching and real repercussions for other nations. Culturally, other nations increasingly consume US media (e.g., “Baywatch,” the most watched television show on the planet) more than their own media. That gives them a strong motive for taking an interest in US cultural trends, don’t you think? Fourth, I think it’s terribly insular to be interested only in one’s own country; I wouldn’t congratulate any nation, least of all the US, for limiting cultural awareness to its own frontiers.
*“Mandelstam, I’m trying to tell you that this one survey does not represent what’s really going on at the
grass-roots level in the United States. We are not, by and large, as a culture, going back to the Bad Old Days
of the Eisenhower Era and “keep them in the kitchen barefoot and pregnant.” No way. Never happen.” *
Well, actually, now you’re saying something quite different. Before you were saying that you already knew what the Candian survey was telling you. Now you’re arguing that the survey is misleading. Okay, I’m listening…
*"The phrase “master of the house” means hardly anything here in the Heartland, Canadian surveys notwithstanding. Every year I know more and more women who are ruling the roost, raising kids, working full-time, sometimes making more money than the “master of the house”. Every year I know more and more women who are getting up on their hind legs and telling the “Master of the House” just where he can go with his drinkin’ up the paycheck every week, blue collar, white collar, it doesn’t matter, it’s “shape up or ship out”. And every year I know more and more women, at the grass-roots hometown level, who are electing to have, and
raise, kids all by themselves, with no “Master of the house” in their lives at all. There’s no way any of these
women, whether “significantly othered” or not, are gonna go back to “we let the Man of the House make those big important decisions.” *
Well, it’s good to know you feel that way. As I said, we’re undoubtedly on the same side. But don’t you think it’s a shame that some American women feel they must pay lipservice to the “Master of the House” rhetoric, even while in real-life they run the house, raise the kids, bring home the paycheck etc.? Or that some American men would feel emasculated if they didn’t hold on to that myth? Wouldn’t you be pleased if the American numbers had looked more like the Canadian numbers?
“It’s changed. Permanently. We can never go back.”
On abortion, I think we could. That is, I think we could easily get to the point where poorer women are forced to go to illegal providers or to give birth to children against their will. I also think women’s economic success could easily suffer if such attitudes continue to gain ground. That doesn’t mean I throw up my hands in despair. It only means that when I read about a trend of this kind, if it seems to have been done by professional researchers, I take it for what it is.
not sure how you read that into it? ) I find it amusing that Canadian researchers have nothing better to do than to go around measuring American attitudes to things. I’m not aware of any American researchers who are currently measuring Canadian attitudes to things. We don’t care. Why should they? They’re the ones who sound defensive. “Canadians do SO have a viable culture of their own!”
It reads like a somethingawful website.