Book of the Month

Poor, White, and Republican

by artappraiser 2/15/2012 - 6:02 am

By George Packer, Daily Comment @ newyorker.com, Feb. 14, 2012

F.D.R. called him “the forgotten man,” but that was long ago. By 1972, he was a member of the silent majority and had become a Democrat for Nixon (he wore a hard hat with an American-flag sticker). 1980 produced the Reagan Democrat (this time he came from Macomb County, Michigan, and was discovered by the pollster Stan Greenberg). By 1994 he had curdled into the Angry White Male (he elected the Gingrich Congress). In 2008, he was simply the working-class white—by then he was no longer forgotten, and no longer a Democrat of any kind; he was a member of the much-analyzed Republican base. The television godfather of the type, of course, is Archie Bunker, but you can also trace his lineage more darkly through the string of hard-bitten blue-collar movies that begins with “Joe” (Peter Boyle, 1970), goes on to “Falling Down” (Michael Douglas, 1993), “Gran Torino” (Clint Eastwood, 2008), and, in a rural context, “Winter’s Bone” (2010). He’s a descendant of the thirties Everyman played by Henry Fonda and Gary Cooper, except that in the intervening decades he lost his idealism and grew surly, if not violent, consumed with a hatred of hippies, immigrants, blacks, government, and, finally, himself.

This election year, he’s back and getting a lot of attention from sociologists and pundits [....]

Read the full article at http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/comment/2012/02/poor-white-and-republican.html

Packer mentions on topic that

Sunday’s Times had a fascinating and disturbing lead story about the pattern of government dependency around the country.

I also highly recommend  the Times article, was actually thinking of posting it separately.  It really delves into the cognitive dissonance about conservative lower classes (and "red state" areas) using government benefits and hating them at the same time, without the usual facile explanation of "blame brainwashing by Rush Limbaugh et al".
 
The Times article also has a lot of interesting information to counter the common argument that reliance on government for income in this country went down over the decades; rather, there's a lot of data that it has gone steadily way up. See the map accompanying the Times article for specifics:
 
The Geography of Government Benefits

The share of Americans’ income that comes from government benefit programs, like Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security, more than doubled over the last four decades, rising from 8 percent in 1969 to 18 percent in 2009.

 

by artappraiser 2/15/2012 - 7:20 am

The guy in your post must be the Tom Hanks character in The Green Mile, he's at least 105 by now.

by Articleman 2/15/2012 - 10:10 am

I thought he was Dexter or maybe Hannibal Lecter. 

by Oxy Mora 2/15/2012 - 10:26 am

You and Articleman made me curious so I took a guess and looked up the 2010 movie Winter's Bone that Packer mentions:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1399683/

The photo is in the stills available there:

http://www.imdb.com/media/rm1831636224/tt1399683

It's Jonathan Hawkes, in a tale about an Ozarks meth dealer on the run from the law who has also put his house up for bail collateral, with poor daughter gone looking for him

by artappraiser 2/16/2012 - 1:04 am (re: Oxy Mora)

Based upon my experience with this kind of man around the backwaters of the Red River, I created a character called Ronnie Whitelaw, in my story, Ronnie Whitelaw's Utopia. They are reduced to a guitar, old pickup truck, moving in and then moving out from some womyn. They hate big government because the last thing on this earth they cling to is the notion they can hit the road and not have anybody intrude on that dream to start all over somewhere ,West of where they are at the given moment. In Ronnie's case, when even that illusion was crushed by his ex girl friend, Ruby, he dissembled into anger and violence. 

by Oxy Mora 2/15/2012 - 11:21 am

 

 

by EmmaZahn 2/15/2012 - 11:28 am (re: Oxy Mora)

That's it, Emma----especially them givin' their womyn anything other than "diamonds and gold". Therein lies the problem, every woman wants a song instead of half of the rent, right?

I have Murray's book, just started reading it. Major work. I heard him on a Charlie Rose interview. He described talking to women in industrial plants---they stay single because the white men of this ilk are "losers". 

by Oxy Mora 2/15/2012 - 11:38 am (re: EmmaZahn)

What ilk would that be?  

by EmmaZahn 2/15/2012 - 11:49 am (re: Oxy Mora)

These are guys who shift from one job to another in labor intensive plants---for example, building manufactured housing or building boats, pull trailers and such. I'm not knocking them as much as describing them. "Loser" was a quote from women in plants being interviewed by Murray, when he asked them---mostly single mothers---why they didn't marry "one of those guys over there". I don't have disdain for these guys, quite the opposite. They are the tail end of the economic policies we have had in this country for the last thirty years. But they are little understood, especially why, when they vote, they appear to vote against their economic interests. Murray is defining this group of white men and what he's doing is ground breaking. 

by Oxy Mora 2/15/2012 - 11:59 am (re: EmmaZahn)

True that they are little understood.  They are not really aspirational nor consumerist in the widely-accepted sense and the extent to which they participate in greater economy is often relative to any skills they may be able to barter.  Learning a lesser trade than doctor or lawyer or such is much more useful in their world.

by EmmaZahn 2/15/2012 - 1:06 pm (re: Oxy Mora)

I probably shouldn't have used the term "ilk", has a kind of pejorative connotation. 

Anyway, I'm wading into Murray's book. 

by Oxy Mora 2/15/2012 - 2:10 pm (re: EmmaZahn)

I used the word "ilk" once in a thread and it spawned a number of tangential threads for quite some time.  People seem to find it both pejorative and funny at the same time. 

Word History: When one uses ilk, as in the phrase men of his ilk, one is using a word with an ancient pedigree even though the sense of ilk, "kind or sort," is actually quite recent, having been first recorded at the end of the 18th century. This sense grew out of an older use of ilk in the phrase of that ilk, meaning "of the same place, territorial designation, or name." This phrase was used chiefly in names of landed families, Guthrie of that ilk meaning "Guthrie of Guthrie." "Same" is the fundamental meaning of the word. The ancestors of ilk, Old English ilca and Middle English ilke, were common words, usually appearing with such words as the or that, but the word hardly survived the Middle Ages in those uses.

by Another Trope 2/15/2012 - 3:31 pm (re: Oxy Mora)

Thanks, Trope. Didn't know the background. It's funny, though, you get the same effect if you use "kind" or "sort", as in "women of her sort", etc. maybe it's the thought that's bad, a generalization about what class someone belongs to, and is tangential to all prejudice. 

by Oxy Mora 2/15/2012 - 3:54 pm (re: Another Trope)

It's not the same with Trope, though. Mho: In the past he has had a bunch of word police that follow him around, and they get angry at him sorta the same way people get angry at David Brooks' writing. They seem to want to force him to change his personality. But he's not getting paid what Brooks is to take the bitchin' about his writing and personality. It's an interesting phenom.devil

by artappraiser 2/15/2012 - 11:29 pm (re: Oxy Mora)

Interesting to read the lyrics to "Take This Job and Shove It." The environmental situations were different in Johnny Paycheck's day (1974), but the "cowboy" character is the same:

http://www.lyricskeeper.com/johnny_paycheck-lyrics/204719-take_this_job_...

Which reminds me. When I've read Dan Kervick's recent essays, on getting the government to hire all the unemployed so that they can enjoy the Protestant work ethic, as well as getting some good old time New England town hall civic democracy responsibility going, and also some of his commentary about how libertarians are not grown ups, the first urge I often have is to comment:

"Dan, have you ever listened to any country music?"

And then to wonder what the plan is to do with all the country music fans....cowboys....renegades....ski & beach bums....hermits.....drifters & grifters & highway hookers....treasure hunters & wildcatters....club kids & drag queens.....wanna be comics & radical novelists & Thoreau's taking on quiet desperation.....race track denizens & artists that don't want to be paid by majority rule...I dunno, I guess best way to sum up what I am trying to say is all the American characters that are the absolute favorite of European filmgoers because they don't have very many people like that. Not that they don't understand the desires depicted, and the drudgery of following the rules of society, Kafka  sure did

by artappraiser 2/15/2012 - 11:38 pm (re: Oxy Mora)

Artsy, interesting cast of characters, I think I've met most of them. Really interesting comments on European views of our characters, love to hear you expand on that. 

by Oxy Mora 2/15/2012 - 11:51 pm (re: artappraiser)

I just got new thoughts on topic by you citing that song. Doctors and lawyers and such, while respected professions, are still service jobs, the worker serves a client or patient. "Cowboys" don't like service jobs. Not to mention real cowboys mostly vant to be left alone, not beholden to anyone.. (Also, if they have a boss, they either hate him or love him, and if they make something for a business, they either hate it or love it and are proud of it.) Recent immigrants don't hate service jobs, they want them (often  as a steppingstone to owning their own service business,) and they often revere or look up to the professions.

Then I am reminded of Clint Eastwood He just agreed to do the Superbowl ad promoting the idea of getting "the good ole USA back on its feet DBA Detroit." At the same time, he is known to be quite libertarian along the lines of "I like the libertarian view, which is to leave everyone alone." and that "There's a rebel lying deep in my soul. Anytime anybody tells me the trend is such and such, I go the opposite direction. I have a reverence for individuality... I've always considered myself too individualistic to be either right-wing or left-wing."

by artappraiser 2/15/2012 - 11:25 pm (re: EmmaZahn)

Also reviewed by Nicholas Confessore at the NY Times:

Few people today would dismiss the idea that values, culture and intelligence all play a role in economic success. But it is hard to know what to make of some of Murray’s findings. As with David Brooks’s “Bobos in Paradise,”Murray’s sociology depends a lot on his own, sometimes highly idiosyncratic, fieldwork. To demonstrate that the elite are more likely to drive foreign cars than domestic ones, Murray notes the makes of automobiles in a couple of mall parking lots. In an otherwise persuasive chapter arguing that Ivy League graduates tend to live near one another, Murray quotes a remark by Michael Barone, the conservative commentator, complaining about the profusion of Harvard and Yale graduates on his former block. If Murray believes that wealthy yuppies suffer from creeping nonjudgmentalism, I invite him to spend an hour on UrbanBaby.com.

by Donal 2/15/2012 - 3:56 pm

"idiosyncratic" fieldwork sounds an awful lot like "spotty and unscientific", doesn't it? I think it's significant that he concentrated on whites, demonstrating that "low income" is a much bigger and pervasive problem than just with "minorities". 

Here's a tidbit. Stepdaughter works in an upscale child's boutique. Couple came in spent over $1K in the space of an hour for clothes for 5 and 7 year old, preparing for a vacation trip. 

by Oxy Mora 2/15/2012 - 4:09 pm (re: Donal)

As a academic, Murray is different, but I have never really understood the level of blogosphere anger I've seen at "non-scientific" stereotype pop culture opining that people like David Brooks do. His pieces like that are usually enormously popular (most popular or most emailed lists) because nearly everyone's brains work or think that way in some shape or form, but few dare to verbalize or write about it openly. To write about it openly gets people talking about it. Without people talking about it, no one can challenge or confirm the stereotypes that their brains are forming, because no one knows that they are thinking about it (except friends relatives and perhaps water cooler conversants, often basically serving as an echo chamber.)

by artappraiser 2/15/2012 - 10:39 pm (re: Oxy Mora)

Thanks, Artsy. Charley Rose asked him, "So what are the prescriptions you would make for our culture". Murray looked at him in disbelief and said, "Prescriptions. What prescriptions? I'm trying to describe the culture.". 

When Murray repeated the words of the single mother working in a plant, about the "losers", it rang true with me instantly. 

by Oxy Mora 2/15/2012 - 11:36 pm (re: artappraiser)

and said:"What prescriptions? I'm trying to describe the culture"

That's actually fun to know about, as I think of him as sort of fancying himself an English Proust, or something along those lines smiley

by artappraiser 2/15/2012 - 11:43 pm (re: Oxy Mora)

Thanks. First thing I noticed, before getting much into content, is that it's another great first paragraph on Confessore's piece, same as Packer's struck me.  It's like these reporters have dealt with this meme so long, they could sum up the history succinctly and in good style in their sleep? smiley

by artappraiser 2/15/2012 - 10:24 pm (re: Donal)

I have been poor and white. I am still white. While it is not a problem now, the future is unknown about the poverty thing. It is perfectly possible that it could return at any time.

Needing help feels like a failure when one's efforts aren't enough to make a living. If one has felt the arbitrary quality of that kind of losing, it tempers the pride one might take in "victory."  Not feeling entitled to good fortune is the beginning of having a conscience.

The first thought that struck me reading Packer's piece is that the desperation he is talking about is also the ground of common understanding between people from very varied backgrounds. What binds some people together in tight circles of shared identity prompts others to abandon those circles.

So it will ever be.

by moat 2/15/2012 - 11:51 pm

"Not feeling entitled to good fortune is the beginning of having a conscience."  What an insight. 

by Oxy Mora 2/16/2012 - 12:00 am (re: moat)

Moochers Against Welfare

By Paul Krugman, New York Times, Feb. 16/17, 2012

[....] Many readers of The Times were, therefore, surprised to learn, from an excellent article published last weekend, that the regions of America most hooked on Mr. Santorum’s narcotic — the regions in which government programs account for the largest share of personal income — are precisely the regions electing those severe conservatives.

[....] Contrary to what Mr. Santorum and Mr. Romney suggest, Mr. Obama has not radically expanded the safety net. Rather, the dire state of the economy has reduced incomes and made more people eligible for benefits, especially unemployment benefits. Basically, the safety net is the same, but more people are falling into it.

But why do regions that rely on the safety net elect politicians who want to tear it down? I’ve seen three main explanations [....]

by artappraiser 2/16/2012 - 10:41 pm

Finally, Cornell University’s Suzanne Mettler points out that many beneficiaries of government programs seem confused about their own place in the system. She tells us that 44 percent of Social Security recipients, 43 percent of those receiving unemployment benefits, and 40 percent of those on Medicare say that they “have not used a government program.”

​Maybe some people (including me) think of these as insurance policies that just happen to be administered by the Federal government and not a private insurer.  And why not.  It says insurance right there in their names.   Premiums are paid and funds are held in trust.   And, it is how the programs were originally sold to the public.

​I can understand why Republicans desperate to undo everything New Deal try to paint them as socialistic 'wealth transfers' (like every economic transaction isn't a transfer of wealth) but why, oh, why do so many Liberals and Progressives think of them that way, too.

by EmmaZahn 2/16/2012 - 11:07 pm (re: artappraiser)

And why not.  It says insurance right there in their names.   Premiums are paid and funds are held in trust.   And, it is how the programs were originally sold to the public.

I agree. I remember when it was common for some in the blogosphere to ridicule Tea Partiers saying the government should "keep their hands off my Medicare," I didn't think people saying it were that nuts. Those programs were sold as separate insurance that you paid for individually in advance, and that deduction off the paycheck for decades wasn't easy for a lot of people to take. It's rational to think it isn't their fault if the government didn't handle the pre-payments correctly; also, getting upset about changing rules over time is quite rational when you're pre-paying for something.

Those programs are where the word "entitlements" is used correctly, as opposed to the distorted uses of the word.

Still, when you get to the disability coverage functions of SS, that's where things get murkier. As is with workingman's comp and unemployment insurance, which are insurance programs with premiums paid by employers, too. But the funding is murkier, as are the rules.

by artappraiser 2/16/2012 - 11:31 pm (re: EmmaZahn)

Ever since that fellow wrote the book about Kansas.

I do not understand it.

I met so many misdemeanants and felons up here who made their living in the drug culture--I did not partake and never have.

You would think that those folks stuck in jail would be the last to vote repub.

And yet, that was not my experience with the people.

They all took advantage of whatever government subsidies might be available--like food stamps for kids and special food stamps for newborns or unemployment insurance or whatever.

But the fellow who blew up the federal building in Oklahoma was a saint to these people.

And they all voted--when they were able--for repubs.

Repubs sent more folks to prison over the last twenty or thirty years than had been sent to prison over the entire fifty years prior.

I do not understand the social mechanism involved except when one considers racism and ethnocentrism.

These lowest of the low never went to church. They never loved the AA sect.

Like these militia folks, they hate everybody.

They hate this country.

I would attempt to bring them all to the bright side of things and they would look at me like I was mentally retarded.

They knew enough not to use the 'n' word or 'sp' word in my presence.

Try as I might, i could not get to the nub of their philosophy!

Anarchy is an easy word.

But anarchy has nothing to do with the repub party.

Anyway you have me thinking.

 

by Richard Day 2/16/2012 - 11:43 pm

Conservatives' Politics of Fear a Biological Response

Researchers looking at how we fixate on threats uncover more evidence of a biological component to the red-blue divide.

By Emily Badger, Miller McCune (Pacific Standard) Magazine, Jan. 23, 2012

[....]

“If we had only had this study, and if you asked me how strongly I thought biology was implicated in politics, I would not be willing to give any strong conclusion,” Dodd said. But there is all of that other research, done by some of these academics and others. “They are kind of pointing toward a common story of how there’s much more of a negative bias in conservatives and a positive one in liberals. That being said, our point of view this entire time has not been biological determinism; it’s not that biology is the only important thing. But it seems to make sense it’s clearly a piece of the puzzle.”

This is not a controversial idea in plenty of other contexts [....]

by artappraiser 2/18/2012 - 3:09 am

Lunch with the FT: Charles Murray
The social scientist talks to Ed Luce about black-truffle pasta, blue-collar America, and why the Republican party’s candidates for the White House fill him with despair

By Edward Luce, Financial Times, March 9:

http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/2/628d8524-690b-11e1-956a-00144feabdc0.html...

by artappraiser 3/15/2012 - 2:36 am

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