Suddenly everyone is a sociologist. There's lots of desperate hand-wringing going on, a lot of doubt and fear. What I find most interesting about many liberals I know is that they don't know anybody who supports Bush, and therefore the idea that perhaps most Americans do is simply alarming. I also know many conservatives who support Bush; they only encounter people who don't when I'm around. Many of my long-time friends, and many in my family, are ardent, passionate Bushies.
Each side mischaracterizes the other: my liberal friends (and, to be fair, I shouldn't over-generalize--not ALL of my liberal friends--and I can't exempt myself from some convenient mischaracterizations) create in their compassionate imaginations drooling ignorant banjo-thumpers who go to the tractor pull once a week and read nothing more than TV Guide. Then they go handle snakes for three hours on Sunday before beating their children and polishing off a half-case of Shlitz and obsessing about gay people, abortionists, and witches. They never leave the county where they grew up, and are hostile to change and science and they can't tolerate diversity. The Cracker Barrel is fine dining for these people, and they think those "starving artist" sofa-sized paintings of mountains and streams are purty.
Do such voters exist? Certainly. I've got some cousins...well, that's another post. But let's just take some of the passionate Bush supporters I know and compare them to the above not-uncommon mischaracterization. T. has a degree in engineering from Penn State with a double minor in Russian and Japanese history. Buf has been an executive at a bank, a stay-at-home dad, and now works in the social services administration department for the state of MD. Sluggo is an accountant at Catholic Charities. He used to work for a large firm but had a sort of existential crisis and thought he should work for someone who did good works. These are honest, hardworking guys who love their families. They don't hate gay people. They are Catholic, Protestant, and Skeptic. They watch sports and fuck their wives (who are universally more liberal than their hubbies) and get their news from Rupert Murdoch. Not one owns a banjo, not one goes to a tractor pull, and they have all their teeth (tho Sluggo once broke his front tooth playing a drinking game).
Then we've got the common conservative mischaracterization of non-Bush supporters: my conservative friends summon up from the depths of their dread a horde of lazy, welfare-check-cashing city dwellers who don't want to work and who leach off honest hard-working people. This group is aligned with lazy, no-account union members who threaten to strike for more money if they don't get lavish compensation for jobs that can be shipped offshore for a tenth the cost. Worst of all are the "innalectuals" who read books and drink wine and tolerate everyone and everything and can't call bad behavior evil because everything is relative. They eat bizarre exotic foods, they travel, they visit museums and they cringe when Brooks 'n Dunn are on the stereo. They use American flag toilet paper and masturbate nightly over Mao's Little Red Book and portraits of Jacques Chirac. They have different sexual partners every week, and visit the abortionist twice a month. Whilst shooting heroin and discussing Boudrillard and Schopenhauer, they stir pitchers of martinis and send money to Al Qaeda. They are either athiests or Satanists. They want to tell you how to discipline your kids, how to dispose of your garbage, and what values are important. They don't want ANY religion in America, and will stomp all over your freedoms to accomplish their agenda.
I won't bother debunking the conservative mischaracterization of liberals; I know who reads this--debunk it yourselves. My point I guess is that the blue-red thing is an awful oversimplification, but there's a lot of truth to it. Is Chris Matthews right when he says at 3am the morning after the election: "East coasters look down on red-staters. In fact, they not only look down on them figuratively, but literally, as they fly across the country from LA to NY"? I'm not sure any of us can easily answer this question.
One note about National Security. Several of my Bushie buds point to this as the number one reason they like Bush (even topping the tax cuts). They all have kids, and prefer a yahoo with a trigger finger to an introspective, more nuanced president. To them I offer a prediction: 20 years from now a united Europe will be the new economic powerhouse, and we will have drained our treasury dry, indebting ourselves to them by borrowing money for years. All of our top scientists will flock there to work in a bioscience boom: cloning, genetics, microengineering. The Chinese and Indians will far oustrip us in metalurgy and engineering and computer science. The standard of living in Europe will be higher than anywhere in the world, and they will mirror the economic security of the US in the '50s and '60s without the intolerance. The Chinese will have advanced to where the US was in the early 40s, and will be on the rise, as will the Indians. The US, on the other hand, will be unable to compete economically or scientifically because schools from Virginia to Nevada will be teaching Genesis instead of science. Stripped of any social safety net, large sections of the US will become third world-style shanty towns where the poor simply squat in cement shacks as jobs disappear to Asia and Africa and Central America--why should we think this ridiculous given the percentage of wealth transferred up the food chain the last 20 years? The percentage is increasing in velocity, and it will certainly increase further now. Pollution and sickness will run rampant. As the noble tradition of liberalism vanishes from the US, intolerance and fear will rule and there will be no security for anyone except those wealthy enough to retreat to armed compounds. As our schools cease teaching and start indoctrinating, the quality of our leaders will continue to be debased by a hostility toward intellectualism and free speech and critical thought. Our biggest source of income will be renting our substantial armed forces to other countries, or conquest of our neighbors for resources.
Is what we've voted in today good, long-term, for our National Security?
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