Sarah Ibarruri (16,953 posts) Profile Journal Send DU Mail Ignore
Every day I marvel at how poor and middle class Republicans vote against their self-interests
Last edited Tue Jan 17, 2012, 02:42 PM USA/ET - Edit history (1)
I've read the studies showing that Republicans are people who are led by fears, who love authority, who don't feel comfortable unless there is an enemy. However, there's another school of thought about why people whose very life is precariously balancing on a high wire choose to vote for those who persistently destroy American life for the poor and middle class, and ensure they never get out of the hole. It is this: that poor and middle class Republicans don't like being made to feel stupid.
The argument kinda goes like this:
Republicans talk on the same level as people who don't have a great deal of education. They don't bother people with statistics, with numbers, and they engage in a good amount of name-calling. They also use a lot of "us versus them" (them being the enemy, of course), which makes the poor and middle class Republican feel important. The argument also poses that Democrats use statistics, numbers, and tend not to name call. Democrats tend to the label groups as the enemy far less than Republicans do. As a result, poor and middle class Republicans feel less important, and less intelligent when listening to Democrats, and think of them as elitist.
But this brings me to another question:
HOW did poor and middle class Republicans come to regard education as elitist? WHEN did education become something to be despised, rather than something to be strived for? WHY did ignorance become something to be proud of? I grew up in a family within which EDUCATION AND KNOWLEDGE were things to be sought after, admired, desired, ideals, not things to be envied and to hate someone for if they employed that intelligence.
WHY NOT HERE? Why must intelligence be hidden and relegated to a lower level? Why do poor and middle class Republicans feel that lack of education is desirable?
Dear Sarah,
Thank you for your concern. I'm quite well educated and even love to read books with big words! You can see the whole panoply of human behavior in literature. It allows me the opportunity to practice pop psychology without bothering with a useless liberal arts PhD. A doctor of literature? Really? Oh, but I did get a scholarship from the feminist National League of American Pen Women for a paper on Faulkner's use of fire as an expression of pathos & passion so I can bullshit with the best of them. Besides, if I got too much education I probably wouldn't remember to pretend to be suitably vapid when I'm around liberals. Lord knows, the slightest disturbance of your stereotypes is like a disturbance in the force...it can pretty much screw up your whole universe and your heads would explode. And conservatives would be left to clean up your mess...again! However, I think literature can teach us a lot about the liberal mind. Ironic, since most authors are liberal bordering on Marxist (they can afford to be), but then the best literature is rife with unintended outcomes.
Anyway, I was rereading
Absalom, Absalom last night and I got to thinking how representative the character of Wash Jones is to the average liberal. Wash is a squatter and a lazy one to boot, living off the largess of Colonel Sutpen. The colonel is a mean old coot, but like your average rich Democrat politician tolerates Wash because he worships at his feet and all he has to do is throw Wash an occasional bone. Not enough to thrive, of course. But just enough to easily led to believe his overlord has his best interest at heart. So when the dirty old man starts messing with his 16 year old granddaughter, Wash simply looks the other way. Wash's small comfort become more important than his own flesh and blood. Kinda like thinking it's okay to saddle your children and grandchildren with massive debt because you believe you're entitled to things you should get on your own through hard work. And when you're dependent on someone else, you adopt whatever twisted moral code they make you live by. Of course, just like DUmmies tell themselves they're still important, Wash pretends he's been a part of the exciting life Colonel Sutpen has lived. As the pathetic DUm...uh...Wash tells himself, "Maybe I am not as big as he is and maybe I did not do any of the galloping. But at least I was drug along where he went."
So when grandaughter Millie gets pregnant Wash thinks he'll finally make it to the big house. All his worshipping dependence has paid off. Except there's a catch. There always is. Sutpen wants a son and Millie gives birth to a daughter. Well, like all dependent white trash who've outlived their usefulness, the colonel brushes her aside. He says it's too bad she wasn't a mare because he could at least give her a decent stable in the barn. Wash comes unglued, kills the Colonel, his granddaughter and her baby. But before he kills Colonel Sutpen he tells him, "You know I never. You know I never expected or asked or wanted nothing from any living man but what I expected from you. And I never asked that. I didn't think hit would need: I just said to myself I don't need to." Except he did. He always had his hand out. Didn't even know how to take care of himself anymore. Sort of reminds me of voting against your own interest. When you vote for someone to give you things you neither earned nor worked for you're also voting for them to control your life. What they give they can take away or put such a high price on that it's nothing more than crumbs. Frankly, I'd just as soon not give them the chance to knock up my granddaughter.
But I will try harder to be a brainiac like you, Sarah. Because evidently poor and middle class democrats are smarter than poor and middle class conservatives. I think it has to do with the fact that I mostly grew up with my mother & stepfather in an upper middle class neighborhood full of democrats who, despite their cushy surroundings thought they were entitled to more. My stepfather actually says, "vote for the guy who promises to give you the most stuff". It never mattered whether the "stuff" was actually given, just that someone promised. Well, no one can deliver such lofty handouts. Conservatives just aren't willing to let themselves be fooled by pretty words. Maybe that's one of the things that makes you smarter. Being better educated and all it's easier for you to believe in all those big pretty words. I think as I gained more common sense as I got older, I lost some of that special nuance gene you get from all that book larnin'.
Well, that's about all the intellectualizing my poor brain can stand so I'm heading back to my nice little world of name calling and "us versus them" Sarah, you useless Marxist, elitist bitch!
Cindie
