Quote:
Originally posted by irateplatypus
i felt your argument was well-formed and well-articulated... though i think that to a devoted republican the division of society into classes (or social constructs?) such as educated and working is a foreign notion.
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Thank you for the response. I wasn't sure how to frame groupings of people I was referring to without overemphasing the dichotomy.
That is, I am comfortable with stating that class divisions exist, but reluctant to claim particular class divisions characterize party affiliation.
I wanted the thrust of my point to focus on the division between regular working people and the disdain I hear them say about ivory tower intellectuals. I tried to draw that out by using working class, rural individuals (not necessarily uneducated) contrasted against professional, urban individuals (usually working in academia or in closer contact to it both in proximity and ideologically). I wasn't specifically limited this to particular regions. My point was supposed to have been that most Americans live in rural areas and that in both regions (rural and urban) the vast majority of people are not part of academia nor the wealthiest slices of society. Their is a definate ideological debate between academics and corporate representatives--although some members from both groups shift into the other.
So here I am speaking about an ideological schism between bus drivers, cab drivers, steel workers and professors, graduate students, and people with jobs that place them in contact with such people. I wanted to point out that Republicans are traditionally associated with corporate interests and Democrats are traditionally associated with working class interests. It is not surprising that professionals would feel served by Republicans, but it is surprising that a steel or mill worker would feel their interests are being protected by the people who are aligned with the interests of their corporations' owners--Republicans.
The way I think it is being done is through ideological manipulation, which is surprising to some economists, political scientists, and sociologists because we predominantly expect people to vote according to their economic interests, everything else being equal. Everything else isn't equal because conservatives are posturing themselves as safeguaring American ideals--so people are willing to sacrifice certain economic expectations to protect what they regard is the higher good--protection of liberty, individualism, national safety, national sovereignty, and etc.
This is fallacious, in my mind. Neither liberals (nor Democrats) are attempting to subvert liberty or individualism or national safety--we believe in an alternate course to achieve those goals. Rather than presenting both sides of the debate, which should center around those two alternate paths so that people can decide which one they agree with and vote accordingly, the conservative side is undercutting the democratic process by injecting the sceptre of anti-americanism. Who in their right mind would vote in an anti-american president? By deliberately framing the entire liberal platform as anti-american rather than a valid, alternate course of action, which reasonable people can agree or disagree with, an entire branch of ideology is withering as liberal thought is being brutally forced from the podium.
The worst thing, in my opinion, a liberal can be branded is anti-american. Furthermore, it goes against their very ideological structure to be anti-intellectual (by intellecualism I mean willing to explore alternate belief structures and reject or accept them on their merits) and unwilling to explore new options. Conservative thought, however, is defined by maintaining the status quo. It is, by nature, resistant to change. This may or may not be a course I am willing to follow--but I don't claim that people who are willing to change social structure are more american than those who are not. Once that damaging critique is raised, many people are prone to shut their mouths for fear of reprisal and/or refuse to align themselves with others who espouse such sentiments.
Disagreement is fine and healthy to a liberal. But to brand someone as against his or her own nation is damaging to the political process. I claim this because the political process is supposed to be an amalgam of the citizenry. That is, since the political process is supposed to embody my beliefs as well as yours, I can't possibly be opposed to my nation--it's, at least in part, comprised of my ideas. Once one group locks a particular branch of thought out of the political process, or poisons the well sufficiently enough to choke off oppositional ideas, that presents a threat to one's political efficacy specifically and democracy in general.
I think I've written enough on that.
But could you please explain why you believe class divisions are a foreign notion to Republicans?
Oh yeah, irate, I'm not equating "bumblings" with rural people or uneducated southerns or anything like that. What I meant by that statement is that average joe's (wherever they are from, north or south) are more likely to feel affinity with someone who makes mistakes while speaking. It makes them seem more real, or down to earth. Academics and professionals (it's actually well-documented that upper-class people do this to each other, in general) are more likely to judge one's intelligence level on one's verbal or writing articulation. Some of us criticize Bush because we think it's a sham (I can almost bet he wasn't saying ain't and nucular at the dinner table, prep school, or Ivy League) to connect to the common people (who haven't been to speech class or manners prep). I should point out that Eisenhower, Carter, and Clinton mangled that particular word, as well. It's a common mispronounciation. The difference is that all four of these people have been prepped on what to say, are surrounded by people who would look disparingly on such word usage, and would certainly point out the "correct" way to speak in public--so the conclusion some of us make is that it's intentional.
Others actually do make accusations that he isn't intelligent based on the way he speaks. I don't think that's necessarly true--but their isn't any way to verify either contention unless we can somehow proctor an IQ test to him. The result, however, is that both arguments are looked upon by the common people who don't particularly give a shit about their language skills in this respect (although they may still judge various racial group's intelligence based on speech differences--see the irony there?) think both arguments are just liberals grasping at straws when in reality judging one's actions by speech is pretty common among all groups of people--valid or not.
If you haven't read all that I'll put it in a nutshell: When Bush flubs a word, most people think, "so what, real people make real mistakes." I like Bush cuz he's a real person.
Others say, "Bush is unintelligent because he can't speak straight."
And still others say, "Bush flubs words constitently. We know upper class people are tutored in how to present themselves in public and we know that members of the upper classes judge other members based on their speech and writing. We don't expect he would have gotten very far in life if he didn't conform to upper class expectations. Since he did get far in life, we think his flubbing is intentional. We don't like Bush because we think he's trying to be folksy to get more votes."