Matt unarmed Welch (Matt Living in L.A., do you really want to announce that?) comments below and takes me to school with links two columns he wrote years ago on the Culture War. In case youre too sleepy this morning to go click through, Im excerpting them here. Go read the real things and get reminded of why he gets paid to do this stuff (while I get to buy a free CD on Amazon every three months from my referral fees).
From here:
There was a time in our politics, and in most countries’ politics, where a natural two-party divide would gather around Capital and Labor. I am not at all sad to see that grouping dissipate, since it led to the kind of mutual distrust and rancor that countries like France still suffer from (endless and frequently pointless strikes, the mistaken notion that all Business is Evil).
But there is definitely room in post-ideology politics for a party that is supposed to stand for — and articulate — the needs and rights of the working class vis-à-vis those who hold more power in this country. Unfortunately, what we get instead is a dispiriting divide based around abortion, guns and code words masking attitudes toward race.
So now the privileged young gather around Al Gore out of tired habit and aesthetic allegiance (except, fleetingly, when John McCain shook them out of their lethargy), while working class whites spread the vote, but still based on issues that have precious little to do with the condition of their lives. It’s not surprising that American politics are giving people the same feeling they have after a long day of barbecuing — tired, filled with crap, and ready for a long nap.
and from here:
I, like I guess a lot of people, have that incredible red/blue county-by-county presidential vote map on the wall in front of me, the one where Bush country is basically everywhere except the 100 miles along either coast and the banks of the Mississippi. It has been tempting, living here in L.A. and watching the Beltway/New York teevee shows, to dismiss the “flyover zone” as some kind of vast, inbred swamp of gun-waving Bible nuts with no brains, despite my personal experience to the contrary.
But I wonder if the real Cultural War in this country is actually the Great Frat Divide. After all, even San Francisco is full of bright sports bars pumping out Coors Light, and the GOP talent pool would be mighty shallow if it could only draw from Utah and Kansas. Anyone who thinks Hollywood is overrun with rich gay leftists hasn’t been to a rock club thick with “industry people” — invariably guys named “Marshall” who always look like they’re late for the next intramural flag-football game.
Look, even Matt wasnt even the first to write about this (read The Emerging Republican Majority by Kevin Phillips) and Im sure that an hour spent going through the books on my shelves would come up with four or five others.
But read what Matt has to say.
And take it damn seriously.
You actually get referral fees? Lucky. :p
The interesting thing about Kevin Phillips is that he is now no longer the Conservatives’ darling that he was in ’69 when, as a Nixon advisor, he wrote the “Republican Majority” book. Since then he’s gone after the wealthy and the “right”, especially digging into Reagan: see his 1990 book “The Politics of Rich and Poor: Wealth and the American Electorate in the Reagan Aftermath”
Phillips was on C-SPAN not too long ago basically saying the same thing that Judis & Teixeira wrote in their 2002 book “The Emerging Democratic Majority”… go figure…
Absolutely true (re Phillips)
Try Phillips’ “Arrogant Capital”…one of my touchstone books.
A.L. (who just cashed in $18 in Amazon referrals…)
The class divide can and has been successfully breached, and by a hardcore Leftie/Progressive who also gets major support from working class pick up truck driving beer drinkers.
Who might that be?
Michael Moore.
I liked the first Welch piece. The second one seemed to be a little too maudlin, like a Revenge of the Nerds movie gone bad. Welch himself said the frat folk are a mere 10% of the university population, and they hardly think alike. Gore was the most popular politician in the country when people thought he was stiff and geeky. It was only after many months of “Bhuddist Temple”, “No controlling legal authority”, “will say and do anything to be President”, “said he invented the internet”, “lying phony”, and even “threatened to change his Gulf War vote if he didn’t get 20 minutes extra TV face time”, that his numbers dropped.
I have complicated feelings on the Culture War. The short answer is I agree that it’s largely unnecessary and prevents us from reaching common ground, the long answer is that it takes two to fight a culture war, buddy, and only when both sides accept at least *some* responsibility for what’s happened can it be resolved. Attempts to put all, or almost all, the blame on arrogant liberals, and to suggest that liberals have the primary responsibility of of improving matters, are inaccurate, I think, and even harmful to putting both sides in the right mindset to declare a truce.
I’m not sure Phillips was ever a “darling” of the right. Although they surely found his theories interesting, he’s always been more of a Nixon man, and Nixon was never a conservative.
There are an awful lot of non-frat conservatives out there. Stereotypes are based on reality, but they can be taken too seriously, too.
I believe we’re in the middle of one of those once-or-twice-in-a-century massive political realignments, and the old way we think of left and right will change. Not that those labels haven’t always been elastic.
As for Michael Moore: I suspect that anyone who thinks he’s the next great messiah for the left is making a huge mistake. People like him and think he’s funny, but when you try to pin him down on specific things he wants to do…
C’mon guys. The election last week should have taught us all something. Certain issues do not sell to voters, period. Some can. The Left needs to reinvigorate itself, shed some old ideas that no one cares about anymore, and get serious about finding things middle America wants that Republicans are reluctant to give them. Comfortable assumptions aren’t going to cut it.
Roublen is not entirely correct in saying that it takes two sides to fight a culture war, or indeed any war. It is entirely possible for one side to start it and the other to act out of self-defense. Liberals have been the ones starting it.
That said, I don’t think they were entirely wrong to do so. For instance, despite calling myself a “conservative,” I consider gay marriage to be a very good idea, and I find conservative/red state resistance to be endlessly annoying.
So yes, I ultimately agree both sides are responsible and need to lay down their arms together. Country folk can get over gay marriage, city folk can stop with gun-control nonsense. (Instapundit has a great link about guns and gays–both are terrifying to the novice but not bad at all once you get to know them. His site’s down so I can’t link.)
But I don’t think we’ll see this anytime soon. Both sides get tons of political mileage out of portraying themselves as heroic fighters against the evil influences of the other side (NRA and gays).
This divide is especially dramatic here in Washington, where the Cascade mountains separate the red from the blue. As a red-state sympathizer who lives smack in the middle of Seattle, both sides drive me bonkers with their foolish rhetoric.