Outstanding essay on theology, history, sociology, archaeology, economics, and the impact of both long and short term change on human adaptation. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if more citizens had this information to support critical thinking in our ongoing crises today. Excellent summary. Thank you! 😊
This is excellent! The clarification of rural conservatism and urban progressivism, along with the massive changes that are taking place in this current “revolution”, clarify what is happening in the world right now. This is such a positive message, especially for those of us whose heads are spinning from trying to understand what is happening.
At what point does the gap between rural and urban become too big to bridge? Where does the scope of the changes, and rate of change, acceptable to one becomes intolerable to the other? And once that point is reached, when do the, rural or "rust belt", small-c conservatives see "destructive protest" as the only solution, even if it hurts them too?
The Brexit vote here in the UK was (IMHO) far more of a protest vote against the "London metropolitan elites" and "globalists" than it was ever about the rational pros/cons of EU membership. If you feel like you've been ignored for generations and suddenly you're given the opportunity to throw a hand grenade into the body politic why wouldn't you take it, even when you're going to be caught up in the blast?
Why you wouldn't do it is that other people get a vote, too, and if you're voted down, perhaps a solution is to look at where you've got it wrong as well as where you've got it right. Destroying others' worlds by brute force, cultural viciousness--let's make that woman die in childbirth to validate our religion--is tyranny by minority enforcement. Underneath this whole nasty facade is white supremacy, racism, and the will to continued male dominance. As far as having some bleeding heart for these people, among whom I grew up and whom I know deeply, I do not. It's always "their way or the highway" and since "their way" is the militant forcing of white supremacy tarted up religion, well, no. Nobody is going to be able to put enough lipstick on this pig for me to accept this squalid sty.
Why you wouldn't do it is that other people get a vote, too, and if you're voted down, perhaps a solution is to look at where you've got it wrong as well as where you've got it right. Destroying others' worlds by brute force, cultural viciousness--let's make that woman die in childbirth to validate our religion--is tyranny by minority enforcement. Underneath this whole nasty facade is white supremacy, racism, and the will to continued male dominance. As far as having some bleeding heart for these people, among whom I grew up and whom I know deeply, I do not. It's always "their way or the highway" and since "their way" is the militant forcing of white supremacy tarted up religion, well, no. Nobody is going to be able to put enough lipstick on this pig for me to accept this squalid sty.
I guess in some ways this is the "freedom fighter or terrorist" debate.
Re-examining your beliefs/policies when you are "voted down" implies a belief that "the system" (economic or political) works for "people like you". I can't speak to the US experience because, I agree, that it's more complicated due to race and religion than the situation in the UK. But in the UK there are economically deprived areas (our equivalent of the US "rust belt") where people can legitimately believe that "the system" doesn't work and either party in our two party first-past-the-post doesn't care about them (and hasn't since Thatcher in the 80s). Yes, there was a thread of xenophobia running through Brexit but that was deliberately stoked to blame "immigration" and "the EU" for all the failings of successive government to implement meaningful reforms to "level up" the economically deprived areas.
So, faced with an unfair political and economic system in which you are disenfranchised, when does "revolution" become an acceptable alternative?
"Protest votes" (like Brexit) or believing in the lies of populist "strong-men" leaders (even weak, self-serving moral vacuums like Trump or Farage) is appealing to a section of the public that feels that things are not "fair" and just feels inchoate anger that they don't understand and can't articulate other that through (unfortunately) violence.
I'm not saying it's right or making excuses, but any solution that's based on the idea that these "deplorables" are all stupid, lazy, racist, hicks is going to lead to the wrong solutions being implemented the wrong way. The more that groups are ridiculed and marginalised the more you push them away from the mainstream... And given that the population distribution is probably normally distributed the further you push the group away the more that the radical fringe elements get closer to violence (or at least being willing to justify violence to themselves).
Shining a very bright light on portions of the US population (as well as other First World nations facing similar political forces) that are so resistant to change. While the dynamics are very well spelled out, I see no workable formulation to change the unchangeable.
What a Crisis Cult is exhibiting is mass psychosis. The last major episode we had of this was the Nazi madness before and during World War II. Before that, it was the Inquisition. In smaller samplings mass insanity infected the Francoist-Falangist faction in the Spanish Civil War, and the slave master mentality of United States slavery. Before that the sense of. Manifest Destiny (long before the term was coined) that made whites think they could take every cubic inch of topsoil from every Native America group in North America. This is a HUGE problem, normally solved by conflagration. We'll have to come to a solution about this on many levels now or the species won't survive. But the FIRST STEP is just recognizing what the hell it is you're looking at. And this, for me, is an invaluable precis with which to try to understand. I am hoping you'll help to sleuth out a solution. Anytime you want to opine, I'm all ears.
Our dear Rupert Chapman wrote this piece and he's tied up with multiple things right now, but I think he'd agree that underpinning this *particular* crisis cult is a deep streak of racism that whites are trying to defend. And part and parcel of the attempt to overthrow the government -- and the present attempt to create a Christofascist state in America that will control both people of color, whose votes will be cancelled, and women, whose rights will completely be cancelled -- is white supremacy and the obvious writing on the wall that it will crash by demographic weight alone. And in this, we look very much like Nazi Germany with its OFFLOADING of shadow content onto vulnerable groups: gays, blacks (whom the Nazis sterilized every chance they got) and Jews, in our case to be joined by anyone of color, liberals, and (most especially) women who in all fascist states are brought under total control, stripped of the ability to be independent by being stripped of the right to work--in our case forced childbirth that will keep women home and away from competing with males for decades. And they don't just want to illegalize abortion but birth control, too. In Justice Thomas's case, he wants to illegalize birth control even for married couples. The solution, the only solution I can see, is an overwhelming push-back at the polls and a fervent support for the courts, the only powerful governmental group still standing.
I feel like you have a clear view of our current situation. How are you feeling about the current situation with the Supreme Court, in which several justices appear bought and paid for by powerful, wealthy right wingers? Do you think there is enough strength and organization in their opposition to remove the corrupt members of the Court? Or ... do you have any other ideas, such as the old "stacking the Court"?
Hey there ... I just posted The Supreme Court from Hell, Part III ... You should have it. And there's much more to come on that! Getting rid of a Supreme Court This is from the Supreme Court website: The Constitution states that Justices "shall hold their Offices during good Behaviour." This means that the Justices hold office as long as they choose and can only be removed from office by impeachment. Has a Justice ever been impeached? The only Justice to be impeached was Associate Justice Samuel Chase in 1805.
What I saw here on Haight Street San Francisco the night Russia handed 45 the presidency is this: rural voters hate us because their kids would rather live on the street in SF than stay back at home. That's the problem we need to solve. We need a positive lifeline and jobs that make these kids connected to both communities, with Jobs and housing
My gut reaction to dealing with the rural districts is to reduce their paradoxically outsized impact on national elections for President and Congress. That doesn’t mean they shouldn’t have a voice. They should, but their frankly backward, folksy, conservative values must not be allowed to stagnate the progress typically initiated in the urban areas. The outsized power of the underpopulated rural states (e.g. Wyoming, Montana) having the same number of senators as the more populous and more urban states (e.g. California, New York) is why Trump/MAGA have held us all in a choke-hold.
I and others seek a solution to this outmoded representation model, but the only actions to be taken near term are: 1) to change the Presidential election to a popular national vote total, doing away with the electoral college, and 2) granting statehood to Washington DC and ideally Puerto Rico. Those changes would go a long way.
However, all that said, there must be federal legislation to drive greater education to and inclusion of rural concerns.
A girl can dream.
Thank you again for your essay. It also got me rethinking the lessons of Gilgamesh, which is now want to re-read, as it has been a couple years.☺️
The employment of local farmers as postmasters and mail carriers can be traced back into the 1800s in rural America. Among my ancestors in both rural Indiana and Michigan were several who had won that rather political appointment in their area for at least a while.
Outstanding essay on theology, history, sociology, archaeology, economics, and the impact of both long and short term change on human adaptation. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if more citizens had this information to support critical thinking in our ongoing crises today. Excellent summary. Thank you! 😊
This is excellent! The clarification of rural conservatism and urban progressivism, along with the massive changes that are taking place in this current “revolution”, clarify what is happening in the world right now. This is such a positive message, especially for those of us whose heads are spinning from trying to understand what is happening.
At what point does the gap between rural and urban become too big to bridge? Where does the scope of the changes, and rate of change, acceptable to one becomes intolerable to the other? And once that point is reached, when do the, rural or "rust belt", small-c conservatives see "destructive protest" as the only solution, even if it hurts them too?
The Brexit vote here in the UK was (IMHO) far more of a protest vote against the "London metropolitan elites" and "globalists" than it was ever about the rational pros/cons of EU membership. If you feel like you've been ignored for generations and suddenly you're given the opportunity to throw a hand grenade into the body politic why wouldn't you take it, even when you're going to be caught up in the blast?
Why you wouldn't do it is that other people get a vote, too, and if you're voted down, perhaps a solution is to look at where you've got it wrong as well as where you've got it right. Destroying others' worlds by brute force, cultural viciousness--let's make that woman die in childbirth to validate our religion--is tyranny by minority enforcement. Underneath this whole nasty facade is white supremacy, racism, and the will to continued male dominance. As far as having some bleeding heart for these people, among whom I grew up and whom I know deeply, I do not. It's always "their way or the highway" and since "their way" is the militant forcing of white supremacy tarted up religion, well, no. Nobody is going to be able to put enough lipstick on this pig for me to accept this squalid sty.
Why you wouldn't do it is that other people get a vote, too, and if you're voted down, perhaps a solution is to look at where you've got it wrong as well as where you've got it right. Destroying others' worlds by brute force, cultural viciousness--let's make that woman die in childbirth to validate our religion--is tyranny by minority enforcement. Underneath this whole nasty facade is white supremacy, racism, and the will to continued male dominance. As far as having some bleeding heart for these people, among whom I grew up and whom I know deeply, I do not. It's always "their way or the highway" and since "their way" is the militant forcing of white supremacy tarted up religion, well, no. Nobody is going to be able to put enough lipstick on this pig for me to accept this squalid sty.
I guess in some ways this is the "freedom fighter or terrorist" debate.
Re-examining your beliefs/policies when you are "voted down" implies a belief that "the system" (economic or political) works for "people like you". I can't speak to the US experience because, I agree, that it's more complicated due to race and religion than the situation in the UK. But in the UK there are economically deprived areas (our equivalent of the US "rust belt") where people can legitimately believe that "the system" doesn't work and either party in our two party first-past-the-post doesn't care about them (and hasn't since Thatcher in the 80s). Yes, there was a thread of xenophobia running through Brexit but that was deliberately stoked to blame "immigration" and "the EU" for all the failings of successive government to implement meaningful reforms to "level up" the economically deprived areas.
So, faced with an unfair political and economic system in which you are disenfranchised, when does "revolution" become an acceptable alternative?
"Protest votes" (like Brexit) or believing in the lies of populist "strong-men" leaders (even weak, self-serving moral vacuums like Trump or Farage) is appealing to a section of the public that feels that things are not "fair" and just feels inchoate anger that they don't understand and can't articulate other that through (unfortunately) violence.
I'm not saying it's right or making excuses, but any solution that's based on the idea that these "deplorables" are all stupid, lazy, racist, hicks is going to lead to the wrong solutions being implemented the wrong way. The more that groups are ridiculed and marginalised the more you push them away from the mainstream... And given that the population distribution is probably normally distributed the further you push the group away the more that the radical fringe elements get closer to violence (or at least being willing to justify violence to themselves).
Shining a very bright light on portions of the US population (as well as other First World nations facing similar political forces) that are so resistant to change. While the dynamics are very well spelled out, I see no workable formulation to change the unchangeable.
What a Crisis Cult is exhibiting is mass psychosis. The last major episode we had of this was the Nazi madness before and during World War II. Before that, it was the Inquisition. In smaller samplings mass insanity infected the Francoist-Falangist faction in the Spanish Civil War, and the slave master mentality of United States slavery. Before that the sense of. Manifest Destiny (long before the term was coined) that made whites think they could take every cubic inch of topsoil from every Native America group in North America. This is a HUGE problem, normally solved by conflagration. We'll have to come to a solution about this on many levels now or the species won't survive. But the FIRST STEP is just recognizing what the hell it is you're looking at. And this, for me, is an invaluable precis with which to try to understand. I am hoping you'll help to sleuth out a solution. Anytime you want to opine, I'm all ears.
Our dear Rupert Chapman wrote this piece and he's tied up with multiple things right now, but I think he'd agree that underpinning this *particular* crisis cult is a deep streak of racism that whites are trying to defend. And part and parcel of the attempt to overthrow the government -- and the present attempt to create a Christofascist state in America that will control both people of color, whose votes will be cancelled, and women, whose rights will completely be cancelled -- is white supremacy and the obvious writing on the wall that it will crash by demographic weight alone. And in this, we look very much like Nazi Germany with its OFFLOADING of shadow content onto vulnerable groups: gays, blacks (whom the Nazis sterilized every chance they got) and Jews, in our case to be joined by anyone of color, liberals, and (most especially) women who in all fascist states are brought under total control, stripped of the ability to be independent by being stripped of the right to work--in our case forced childbirth that will keep women home and away from competing with males for decades. And they don't just want to illegalize abortion but birth control, too. In Justice Thomas's case, he wants to illegalize birth control even for married couples. The solution, the only solution I can see, is an overwhelming push-back at the polls and a fervent support for the courts, the only powerful governmental group still standing.
I feel like you have a clear view of our current situation. How are you feeling about the current situation with the Supreme Court, in which several justices appear bought and paid for by powerful, wealthy right wingers? Do you think there is enough strength and organization in their opposition to remove the corrupt members of the Court? Or ... do you have any other ideas, such as the old "stacking the Court"?
Hey there ... I just posted The Supreme Court from Hell, Part III ... You should have it. And there's much more to come on that! Getting rid of a Supreme Court This is from the Supreme Court website: The Constitution states that Justices "shall hold their Offices during good Behaviour." This means that the Justices hold office as long as they choose and can only be removed from office by impeachment. Has a Justice ever been impeached? The only Justice to be impeached was Associate Justice Samuel Chase in 1805.
What I saw here on Haight Street San Francisco the night Russia handed 45 the presidency is this: rural voters hate us because their kids would rather live on the street in SF than stay back at home. That's the problem we need to solve. We need a positive lifeline and jobs that make these kids connected to both communities, with Jobs and housing
Once the tooth to tattoo ratio is that low there’s not much hope for change.
Really enjoyed that essay. Thank you!
My gut reaction to dealing with the rural districts is to reduce their paradoxically outsized impact on national elections for President and Congress. That doesn’t mean they shouldn’t have a voice. They should, but their frankly backward, folksy, conservative values must not be allowed to stagnate the progress typically initiated in the urban areas. The outsized power of the underpopulated rural states (e.g. Wyoming, Montana) having the same number of senators as the more populous and more urban states (e.g. California, New York) is why Trump/MAGA have held us all in a choke-hold.
I and others seek a solution to this outmoded representation model, but the only actions to be taken near term are: 1) to change the Presidential election to a popular national vote total, doing away with the electoral college, and 2) granting statehood to Washington DC and ideally Puerto Rico. Those changes would go a long way.
However, all that said, there must be federal legislation to drive greater education to and inclusion of rural concerns.
A girl can dream.
Thank you again for your essay. It also got me rethinking the lessons of Gilgamesh, which is now want to re-read, as it has been a couple years.☺️
The employment of local farmers as postmasters and mail carriers can be traced back into the 1800s in rural America. Among my ancestors in both rural Indiana and Michigan were several who had won that rather political appointment in their area for at least a while.
Very interesting
So brilliant. The waves of destruction were like repeating tsunamis crashing on the heads of those in their way.