Derek Pennycuff Joe Lansdale weighs in.
Derek Pennycuff Joe Lansdale weighs in.
Originally shared by David Brin
What underlies the confederate uprising? Is it 'values'? Or something simpler. It's not that the pro-Trump people are stupid or ignorant, it's that they've been sold fear: Fear of immigrants, fear of blacks, fear of losing their job, fear of economic collapse, fear of liberals, fear of the smartypants professionals like scientists, teachers, journalists, doctors who understand a century that they find boggling.....
"What drives these folks is fear; but for many, it’s a delicious fear. It’s a chance for the bored and disappointed to play army, a way to justify having tons of guns and ammunition. They feel that if not for their vigilance, dead-eye aim, and concealment due to camouflaged pants and a Duck Dynasty cap, we would be standing on the edge of a precipice looking into the bowels of hell," writes Joe Lansdale in the Texas Observer.
https://www.texasobserver.org/east-texas-trump-voters-lansdale/
Originally shared by David Brin
What underlies the confederate uprising? Is it 'values'? Or something simpler. It's not that the pro-Trump people are stupid or ignorant, it's that they've been sold fear: Fear of immigrants, fear of blacks, fear of losing their job, fear of economic collapse, fear of liberals, fear of the smartypants professionals like scientists, teachers, journalists, doctors who understand a century that they find boggling.....
"What drives these folks is fear; but for many, it’s a delicious fear. It’s a chance for the bored and disappointed to play army, a way to justify having tons of guns and ammunition. They feel that if not for their vigilance, dead-eye aim, and concealment due to camouflaged pants and a Duck Dynasty cap, we would be standing on the edge of a precipice looking into the bowels of hell," writes Joe Lansdale in the Texas Observer.
https://www.texasobserver.org/east-texas-trump-voters-lansdale/
yep, caught joe's article via twitter yesterday. but it wasn't tweeted by joe. his social media push lately is focused on the new hap & leonard short story collection he's got coming out.
ReplyDelete"Thing is, the support of Trump in Texas — and I speak specifically of my region, East Texas — goes beyond the smart and the not so smart, the educated and the uneducated. It is more a result of what I like to call the happily stupid; the ones who hold stupid views by choice, not due to lack of intelligence, but due to a kind of tribalism. Facts that interfere with their version of the world are there to be ignored. It’s like putting a hat on a pig and insisting the porker is your Uncle Frank, contrary to all other evidence."
ReplyDelete...in other words: Rednecks.
Dear universe: you can be well-off and established and still be a "redneck" culturally and mentally.
Support for either of the two primary candidates is driven purely by emotion, not intelligence. That is not to say that Trump and Clinton supporters are dumb - they certainly can be booksmart and well-educated. I just mean that people are making decisions based off of how they feel about the opposing side, not facts or logic or history or anything real. It's all about pride, fear, hate, resentment, competition, bitterness, personal identity, and cultural tension. Once a person has chosen a side, they no longer allow new information to adjust their views.
ReplyDeleteThat's straight up false equivalency, which seems to be what keeps all the US papers in business during the election. The choice is between the status quo, which sucks, but whatever, and Trump, who is basically a monster. Curious what new facts make Trump palatable?
ReplyDeleteBut also ignorance.
ReplyDeleteRamanan S There are no new facts which make Trump more palatable. All the new facts seem to do is induce one's gorge to rise.
ReplyDeleteYou are correct about the false equivalency, but there is also something deeper going on. It's important to recognize that fear of Obama and Clinton are in direct proportion to their successes. Conservative ideology does not admit to their being correct, about anything, so their successes must be the result of favoritism, chicanery or flat-out criminal behavior. To someone whose behavior is predicated on the belief system promulgated by propaganda agents (Fox, Limbaugh, etc.) there is no other way to explain reality.
I, like many others, laughed at Clinton's "...vast right-wing conspiracy..." but she's not completely wrong. There is a vast right-wing culture which exists to constantly churn the proletariat into a froth. The degree to which one accepts this mythology, even if only tentatively or even partly, allows one to believe the two are equivalent. I know plenty of people who once identified with the Tea Party, only to be repulsed by its explicit racism, yet who still believe that Vincent Foster was a murder victim, a belief only slightly less credible than astrology.
This is not say that Clinton is spotless or blameless. Her need for secrecy is well documented, and I was somewhat less than enthused about the behavior of her surrogates in the primaries. Robert Reich's assessment that "...she’s the most qualified candidate for president of the political system we now have...” also explains why she won the primaries so handily, despite her lack of affinity for campaigning. On the other hand, political acumen has been a component our best leaders who did enact sweeping changes (Lincoln, Johnson, Franklin Roosevelt) so i suppose there is a measure of comfort in that fact for Leftists and Sanderistas.
One's ability to discern reality from ideology can only be predicated on doubt, especially about one's own beliefs and and most strongly held convictions. Like scientific theory itself, our ideologies must always be considered provisional, to be abandoned the moment we find a better explanation.
It is this same doubt which men such as Trump eschew with such contempt. What reasonable individuals see as a strength can only be seen as weakness by such men, who seek always to make the world conform to their wishes through power.
They seek to make fantasy into reality, lies into truths and seem to ready and willing to destroy (whether politically or physically) those who get in their way.
The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary. - H. L. Mencken
ReplyDelete