Cultural ID comments thread

Digby had an interesting post up that spawned a huge comments thread. Within that were a number of subthreads, and I tried to pull one out...

[sidenote:If Republicans are on your side, why do they never do anything that helps you?]

Friday, May 26, 2006

Cultural ID
by digby

Chris Bowers writes about one of my favorite subjects today: American tribal identity.

Over the past year and a half, I have slowly developed an argument that the electorate is, in general, non-ideological, not interested in policy, and generally unmoved by the day-to-day minutia of political events that, within the blogosphere, are treated as cataclysmic events. Sure, most people hold general political beliefs, but in general national voting habits are motivated by something else--something more basic. As we look for ways to motivate voters in November, we need to remember the powerful role that identity plays in political decision-making. As progressives, we shrug off concepts such as the "battle of civilizations," but if you look closely at demographic data, maybe it is a battle of civilizations taking place after all. We may very well be living in an era of identity politics. Who knows, maybe every era of American politics is an era of identity politics.

I think the evidence is overwhelming that it is. He reproduces one of those great maps that break down everybody by something or other and like most of them, it ends up showing the south as being a homogenous region surrounded by a hodgepodge of different things everywhere else. In this case it's religion, but it could be anything, including electoral results or sociological indicators. It's just a fact that the south has a very strong regional identity of its own. And I don't think the rest of the country is quite like it. That divide has been with us since the beginning and it far transcends any mommy/daddy party dichotomy.

I watched the country music awards the other night and saw what looked like a typical bunch of glammed up pop stars like you'd see on any of these awards shows. Lots of cowboy hats, of course, but the haircuts, the clothes, the silicone bodies were not any different from any other Hollywood production. But the songs were not. There are plenty of Saturday night honky tonk fun and straightforward gospel style religious and patriotic tunes. But there is a strain of explicit cultural ID that wends through all of them.

[more]

The threads comments pick up here:

Just remind them who it was that established the following:

-- the 8-hour workday/40-hour work week with time-and-a-half for overtime

-- the minimum wage

-- unemployment insurance

-- worker's compensation for on-the-job injury

-- the right to organize and bargain collectively

-- workplace safety regulations

-- child labor laws

-- Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid

This body of work constitutes a foundation of security and fairness for ordinary workers and every part of it was put in place by the liberal democrats of their day. Whenever somebody wants to know "what do Democrats stand for?" I reply "well, let's look at the record" and point to the above and how my parents and their parents before them benefitted a great deal from that agenda. It infuriates me to hear Dean, Pelosi and all the others never ever talk about this stuff on Sunday mornings.
jaybee | 05.26.06 - 7:07 pm | #

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@jaybee & digby:

that laundry list is spot-on - but riddle me this:

those were the reasons that southerners used to vote Dem - and as a result Dems ruled this nation for years. Well obviously this has ended. Why?
mc | 05.26.06 - 7:58 pm | #

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"those were the reasons that southerners used to vote Dem - and as a result Dems ruled this nation for years. Well obviously this has ended. Why?"

Southerns used to vote Dem because the Republicans won the Civil War. When Dems finally put an end to legal racism, Southern Dems all became Republican.

I'd say the country has been basically divided between the north and the south from day 1. That's a bit simplistic, especially since Southern resentment has managed to absorb/corrupt other strands of American thought - anti-urbanism, anti-intellectualism, populism. But the bottom line is that the Northern ideal was always the small farmer, merchant, or artisan, while the Southern ideal was always the plantation owner. The latter is a non-cooperative, winner-takes-all outlook that is obviously very conservative, in the recieved wisdom/authority sense.

(Disclaimer: not all southerners or notherners are bad or good, but basic cultural outlooks can be either good or bad.)
Tom DC/VA | 05.26.06 - 8:26 pm | #

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This is one of my favorite topics too.

These kind of seperations go all the way back to the Civil War. If you want to think about identity politics, look at how divided the country was then, and just how those attitudes have formed modern politics as well.

Talk about "you're either with us or against us", it couldn't have been more stark at that juncture.

One need look no further than the divide between a patriarchal Southern system, and an eglitarian North to understand the roots of this sort of mentality. Just look at the ways Kevin Phillips and Patrick Buchanan implemented ways to exploit the cultural differences for political advantage during the Nixon administration. The infamous Southern Strategy was the product. By 1970, they had figured out how to exploit it for political gain.

Take a good look at Southern society circa 1854 and the answer to your questins wind up right in front of your face. While the Industrial Bubble was taking hold in the North, the South had deliberately locked itself into a system that by nature was never meant to change. Why do the work yourself when you can import slaves to do it for you? In the North, doing the work yourself and inventing was part of who you were.

The whole point of cessession was, "Leave Us Alone".

That lead to the Revolution against the Revolution. That was THE message of the Confederacy; We are rebelling against a hostile invader.

All this brings us back to Gretchen Wilson's lyrics. Country folk are always set upon. A Southern caste system naturally lends itself to simple proclamations about God, country, family, and what they stand for. Northern innovation has no grand unifying theme that spans those kinds of boundries, hence a massive lack of some kind of simple slogan or message that we can rally around. It just doesn't exist.

All you need is history to show you the way. It's all rooted in how this country developed, and I often find that the impact of the American Civil War is grossly overlooked.

While we're at it, hasn't this country had enough of presidents that come from Texas? The last three have started wars on their watch, and two of them have gone horribly wrong.

There are no Blue State country songs to had. There's no point for them either.

By the way, the next president of the United States will be George Allen He just enough rocks in his head to carry on the Republican legacy.
FuzzFinger | Homepage | 05.26.06 - 8:54 pm | #

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This reminds me of every time I've been in a bar wherever and some guy plays "Simple Man" by Skynyrd and buzzed dudes tell each other, in effect, "Right on. That's me." My younger brother and my dad are big listeners to the "young country." When I ask why (not in a jerky way), they always say something like, "It's positive," or, "it's simple." This stuff is liked because it rewards you for who you are, tells you nobody can change you (try as they might), sets you up as a person with a little dignity, no matter what some (nonexistent) outsider might tell you. It's self-affirming pap that doesn't ask a lot of you.

Obviously the South is ground zero for this kind of impotent, whining insistence, which still feeds on the old divisions. But this stuff's popular all over. The appeal the Republicans have crafted is great. I don't think it's so much that there's "Red State" music that is a cultural byproduct of ascendant Republicanism. I think that they've just figured out how to appropriate the disconnect people all over are feeling, Thomas Frank, etc. You're a simple man in a hard world who's capable of inordinate suffering? That's your thing? It doesn't, like, transfer to action, or anything? Cool.

Which makes me think we should just spend more time in Ohio and Colorado than try to dip into that inexhaustible well of ossified victimhood so many folks down there are addicted to. We can't compete.
rAD | Homepage | 05.26.06 - 8:58 pm | #

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There's some truth to what gurnBlanston said above -- I work in a blue collar sector and some of the guys (well, the white guys) fit the "southern victim" mold pretty well, one even said something along the lines of "the democrats hate the working man." And this guy was in his early 20s, bright Italian-American, kept up with the news and politics.

Here in New York, these mostly Irish & Italian blue collar guys, living out in the near suburbs, still buy into the Reagan "welfare queen, Democrats only want to take money from working people and give it to loafers" line. What they saw during what I call the decadence of liberalism was the separation of the New Deal Dems from the white working class to top-down social engineering like busing, from wealthy Ivy League types who were completely out of touch with the blue collar guys. This is on top of a long dirty history of the Irish fighting the Blacks here for the scraps at the bottom of the economic ladder. What these guys families saw was a wealthy, out-of-touch Democratic liberal elite foisting their ideas of social justice upon them in ways that would never touch them, the elite, in personal ways unlike those who's Mom's were held up by blacks at the candy store, or who's kids were forced to bus miles away for the sake of some idea of racial equality.

The Republicans took this resentment against elitist top-down liberalism and ran with it, and these Dem liberals, well, had no response to regain the working class. For them, health care, the minimum wage, Iraq, whatever, are simply intellectual exercises.

Of course, racism is at play, too, and these guys feel victimized by the welfare and benefits they imagine the blacks and latinos are soaking up off their hard work. While the Republicans mounted a very well-oiled argument that drip-down economics work (A Rising Tide Lifts ALL Boats!) the "liberal" Dems have never made a simple coherent argument to the contrary.

Frankly, I think we should have left the South to drift off at the time of Civil War, and seriously believe we should now consider separation -- in 1860 they were too economically important, cotton being the major American export, now frankly without Federal subsidies they'll be Mexico with less interesting architecture. The blue states are not that far from European social-democratic states in sensibility -- religion has no place in the public square, government has a role to care for ALL its citizens, keep an even playing field, the idea of the common good whether its environment or urban planning or day care for working moms or whatever.

I lived in Texas for 12 years and believe me, the comments above re a patron/plantation system are spot on. In Texas, the government exists mainly to enrich the already stocked pockets of the few families that run the joint. The term "white trash" is a southern construction (ie, whites who aren't much better than the blacks and hispanics). Frankly, cut 'em loose and let the rest of us move back into the "civilized" world. We can work with our blue collar guys, as in Europe you'll always have the Le Pen segment, but given the bankruptcy of top-down liberalism and the absence of a media (O'Reilly and Co wouldn't work in a divided nation, Murdoch's Post loses millions every year) I think we could win them over.
LeislerNYC | 05.27.06 - 12:10 am | #

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The sense of identity that Digby describes is the exact same sense of identity that the Nazis played upon in their rise to power. It is the identity of the loser, but not just any loser, the deposed rightful heir.

Germans had an overwhelming sense of having been betrayed by the other European powers after WWI. The rightful place of the German people was at the forefront of European society. Germany had produced Beethoven, Wagner, Bismarck. The Nazis came to power by telling the Germans they were right to feel that way. And giving them someone to point a finger at.

In much the same way, there is a sense among white Southerners that if they hadn't been betrayed by their Northern brethren that they would never have lost their position as the rightful rulers of this country. The Republicans try to ride that sense of resentment, but can never be as successful, because the Southern version is regional, not national. But it will be difficult to ever pull the South away from the Republicans as long as whites are the majority their, unless we begin to cater to the victim mentality that holds sway there.

It's pathetic how much our country is beholden to a bunch of racist hicks with an inferiority complex that is only matched by their sense of entitlement.
Singularity | 05.27.06 - 2:12 am | #

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This is a sloppy construct but I think American itself is the tribe the GOP plays to. If one adheres to American excetualism [sic: exceptionalism] in any of it's forms you will vote GOP.

The main form of exceptualism is the one that holds God has a special role for America. This springs mainly from that all American pre millenial dispensationalim so many fundamentalists adhere to. That isn't the only source of course for exceptualism has many faces, like Bush's two year PR blitz about spreading democracy. Spreading 'free markets' fits into it as well. In all cases American is seen as the font of moral goodness. America itself in that light is it's own religion, a civic religion.

The economic and military expansionists embrace the civic kind of exceptualism but love having the religious ones along for the ride.

It should be noted that one common element in this is that the status of The Nation is the primary concern. Americans standing as the most powerfull and richest nation must continue. There is a deep ironies in all this for such is absolutely a product of government and communal effort and identity, having zero to do with individualism.

No politician in America can even hint that they do not believe we are the greatest nation in history and that we should maintain and extend that status. If they do they are not members of the tribe.

Bush is an uber American. He embodies virtually every aspect of American exceptualism. He expresses often both the religious and the secular branches of it and there is zero doubt he belives them to his marrow. Such politician will win every time. There is no fighting it. Liberals play around the edges of rejecting American exceptualism and the lose. The only thing they can do is back away from the edge.

The big thing now is that economicaly America is losing it's dominance. The rise of China and Asia and how they interact with middle east oil resources is going to push back the edges of it economic and military dominance. Simple put American will not and cannot allow any drop in its status. How can we stop it you ask. Simple, blow it up. We are now proceeding on the path to blowing up the rest of the world.

I should mention non whites can't really be of the tribe. As non whites become the majority it is inevitable that representative democracy as we know it will have to be abondoned.
rapier | 05.27.06 - 8:27 am | #

This post doesn't entirely fit in with the subthread, but I thought it was made a great point.

It is not about class, it is about resentment. It is not class identity that the Republican Right has been so successful in appealing to, it is resentment: irrational and perverse anger-hiding-shame-and-envy.

Straightforward Democratic appeals to economic self-interest run into resentment. Democratic attempts to offer a genuine war hero runs into the same obstacle: resentment.

Resentment can focus on blacks, gays, feminists, scientists, limosine liberals; whatever the instance, the issue is always the same: "you" are not being respected. The identity assigned to "you" is merely incidental to the key, which is the resentment. To focus on class and tribal identity, which is just a convenient short-hand in fashioning the thesis that "you" are not being respected, is to completely miss the point.

Resentment is a corrosive force, a perverse force. Resentment is the opposite of admiration, or its shadow, in Jungian terms. Resentment loves a fake; the Republicans have mastered the art of presenting the fake: Nixon actually faked being a fake, but Reagan made a profession out of being a fake, and Bush II: well, he's a born fake.

A genuine war hero has no appeal, where resentment is dominant. The truth is of little concern; and, even self-interest and love of country are subverted.

Resentment is what is being "sold" by the corporate right-wing media, day in and day out. It is the stock in trade of the O'Reilly's.
Bruce Wilder | Homepage | 05.28.06 - 12:59 am | #

And these two posts carry forward the last one, and offer a point-counterpoint:

Half the things the very first poster listed people I know would hate and I’m from the south. It is obvious from the posts here that there is a huge gap between the sides.

People I know vote Republican because the left scares them. They want to take away their guns, give their kids birth control without their consent, and keep them from praying before the Friday night high school football games.

We feel you bastardize the Constitution as bad as Bush does the English language. Its not that we love republicans either, they come with their own set of problems. However, for the most part until now they have stayed out of our personal lives. If the Democrats want to win back those voters they have to stop with the insanity.

Southerners do not want outsiders coming in and saying we know what is best for you. We believe in freedom and we feel that the Left does not. The things you call progress such as minimum wage and other government intrusions are the very things we do not want.

Open the borders and consider it a done deal you will lose. That is not necessarily my world view it is simply how things are in the South.
Frankly, both parties disgust me.
James | Homepage | 05.28.06 - 3:22 am | #

Resentment is about race and race is about class and class is about social status and status is about economics and so around the merry vicious circle. Sorry, James, I'm 55 and as Southern as the day is long, and I'm here to tell you that what white middle American "conservatives" - whether Southerners or "white ethnics" claiming "it's a neighborhood thing" - want is Affirmative Action ended, deunionizing and deregulation so the companies maybe will stay in the South or whatever low-tax Red area, a huge "defense" budget to support the hundreds of Red state bases and many billions of dollars put into Red economies ever since FDR jumpstarted the South and west with massive military spending in WWII, repeal of the Fair Housing Act or at least an end to Clinton-era enforcement of anti-discrimination and anti-redlining laws, media consolidation so that "the message" is all anyone ever hears, school vouchers to end the public school system and so end social mobility while they're still above somebody, cheap gasoline to underwrite the value of exurban houses (see also redlining above), artificial housing booms that benefit the construction trades, (and now that the housing boom is deflating) better wages for currently immigrant-held jobs by deporting immigrants and thus raise wages again (see history of every modern developed country), the truncation of the Bill of Rights to the 2nd Amendment so that minorities are subject to the tyranny of the majority, and de facto revocation of equal protection once whites are finally in the minority but still hold all the power. There's more on the agenda, but that'll do for starters. No one should ever forget that their "God" is centrally a guarantor of wordly success.

Oh, and Jose, I don't know how much they're paying you to post this puerile cant here but however little it is they're not getting their money's worth, though maybe it's just someone's business loss tax write-off.
jlb | 05.28.06 - 9:00 am | #

And finally, I think this would be a cool song:

Listen to the Wind