[The Week] What if the polarization of American politics and rise of right-wing populism in the Republican Party are a function of rural parts of the country becoming more like the historic South?
That is the surprising suggestion of Will Wilkinson in a fruitfully provocative Substack post. Wilkinson is something of an expert on the subject, having done important empirical work on the role of population density in driving political polarization and populist backlash. His argument, in sum: Polarization and populism are caused by urbanization and its economic, social, and political consequences, with cities growing demographically and economically, and becoming more progressive, over time, while depopulating rural areas succumb to economic decline and zero-sum, reactionary politics.
“Lookit those dumb, dead-end hicks who can’t get anything right!” Also, the writer is ignoring the recent mass movement from big, Progressive cities and states to the previously declining and depopulating Conservative ones in response to Covid lockdowns, work-from-home orders, and corporate flight. His next opus should be a doozy.
In his latest post, Wilkinson merely extends this research a few steps by observing both an increasing cultural homogenization across different rural areas, each of which used to be more distinctive, and the growing prevalence of Confederate flags far outside of the historic South, in the rural areas of northern states and states that didn't even exist at the time of the Civil War.
So far, these are merely anecdotes, but if verified by more rigorous research they could point toward something real and important: Not just growing ideological unification across the rural areas of the country, but the drift of that ideology in the direction of the Confederacy. The point isn't that the American countryside increasingly wants to avenge the honor of Southern slaveowners for their loss in a war that ended over a century and a half ago. Rather, the people who live in these areas share with the historic South an intense distrust of the federal government, veneration of local law enforcement, resentment of city folk, suspicion of minorities and foreigners, hostility to technologically driven change, and a keen sensitivity to cultural slights.
#2
Nothing but the Othering of Americans outside the major cities. Only those people can be trusted - anyone else with a brain would have left the countryside long ago and made a beeline to the megacities. The writer did, wouldn't anyone?
#3
An intense distrust of the federal government, veneration of local law enforcement, resentment of city folk, suspicion of minorities and foreigners, hostility to technologically driven change, and a keen sensitivity to cultural slights.
Most of us are fine with minorities and foreigners, and we like new technology as much as any city dweller does. We're just suspicious of what some people are *doing* with said technology.
#4
If you want to see a "keen sensitivity to cultural slights": criticize a city's "gay men's chorus", question why inner city students can't read or do math, or question why tax payers are forced to subsidize professional athletic teams.
Posted by: Rob Crawford ||
09/01/2021 6:15 Comments ||
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#5
And now to an important question. What is the Yankee version of grits?
#10
More likely the liberal order stopped doing the minimal expected from government and fixating on divisive insanity and more and more people are turning against the chaos that results. Rural America is basically the same as it always has been except for an influx of blue-state refugees (hopefully a number of which are red pilled)
#12
Attract a love of Freedom-Curious people. By noon, their mask is off and though they may not be striking up random conversations at the check out lane, they have the relieved face of someone who finishing a haunted house marathon.
#14
I think secession is the only way this country survives. We need Guiliani policing, ie stop the little crimes. Our legal system is completely broken as is our government. there should only be americans not hyphenated americans. People rioting should be put down. We need a return to basics that i can't happen within our current system.
"Secession" and "The Great Divorce" are childish fantasies. Work to keep the country united and free; that's more likely to prevent a war than clicking your heels and wishing it all goes away.
Posted by: Rob Crawford ||
09/01/2021 19:56 Comments ||
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#16
g(r)om, this would be a fairly typical yankee breakfast...
Corn pudding, risotto, polenta,
Samp, Malt-o-Meal. Oatmeal at center.
More sides: Cream of Wheat,
Maypo, grits, and a beet
To make all a familiar magenta.
Posted by: Herman Thravirong8361 ||
09/01/2021 22:31 Comments ||
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[FOX] Americans relied on Fox News for information and analysis during the news-heavy month of August that featured the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan, the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and the devastating Hurricane Ida.
Fox News outdrew CNN and MSNBC combined among both total day and primetime viewers while snatching 94 of the top 100 most-watched cable news telecasts of the month. But Fox News didn’t only dominate liberal CNN and MSNBC, it finished as the most-watched network in all of basic cable.
Fox News averaged 2.5 million viewers during the primetime hours of 8-11 p.m. ET, compared to 1.2 million for MSNBC and only 819,000 for CNN. Fox News’ primetime lineup averaged 394,000 viewers among the key demographic of adults age 25-54, while CNN settled for only 191,000 and MSNBC managed only 163,000 average viewers among the crucial category.
Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited. By Oleg Airapetov
[REGNUM] Over the decade from 1895 to 1904, the main causes of strikes in factories and plants were problems of wages (1,071 cases), working hours (385 cases), order in the workplace (131 cases) and accidental (178). Now an accidental cause, bolstered by issues of wages and working hours, has led to political action.
The strike began to spread to other factories and factories, and Georgy Apollonovich Gapon could no longer stop it, he could only lead the movement. Fearing arrest, he spent the night of January 6-7 at the apartment of a worker in his organization, where he drew up the text of a petition addressed to the emperor.
Continued on Page 49
[Raymond Ibrahim, PJ Media] Although August 15, 2021, will forever live in infamy as the date the Taliban reconquered Afghanistan, for over 13 centuries that date was famous for another event — Constantinople’s defeat of the caliphate, August 15, 718. While these two events separated by exactly 1,303 years are vastly different in nature — not least that in 718 Islam lost, while in 2021 it won — they both confirm one irresistible point that the confident West should take to heart: the tenacity of Islamic jihad — this relentless snake of war that always bides its time, even if by remaining coiled for many centuries, before striking.
Consider the first event. In 718, the Eastern Roman Empire ("Byzantium") repulsed, in dramatic fashion, the Arabs. It was such a spectacular victory, and Muslim losses were so bad, that, for many centuries, the caliphates never dared make another attempt against the walls of Constantinople.
Put differently, for many centuries after the year 718, anyone living in Constantinople would have thought — and would have apparently been justified for thinking — that the Islamic threat, whatever it was elsewhere, was well behind them.
And yet, in the early 1400s — 700 years after the people of Constantinople had thought they’d seen the last of jihad — it was back again besieging them, with the city finally falling to Islam on May 29, 1453.
More significantly, those who besieged and conquered Constantinople in 1453 had little to do with those who besieged it in the eighth century. The latter were Arabs, under the Umayyad caliphate centered in Damascus. Those who actually conquered Constantinople were Turks, whose capital was Adrianople (now Edirne).
On the surface, there is no connection or continuity between those who in the eighth century tried to conquer, and those who in the fifteenth century did conquer, Constantinople — except, of course, for one thing: both were Muslims, and both articulated their hostility for and need to conquer Constantinople in distinctly jihadist terms: like every other infidel, the Christian kingdom had two choices before it: submit to Islam — which it rejected — or fight.
#1
Sword and Scimitar by Ibrahim is a superbly documented description of the eternal push by Islam to conquer the world by any and every means, and especially to defeat the West in modern times. The barbarity is stunning and adds context to those places where the conflict has become savage on both sides.
#3
If people came to your house to try and stop you from spraying for bugs, you should probably spray them too.
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
09/01/2021 16:24 Comments ||
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#4
You don't have to be a Christian to be an infidel. Just non-muzz. Funny how the atheists and so forth are more afraid of Christians than of actual savages.
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
09/01/2021 16:26 Comments ||
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#5
when a Christian is reborn, he obnoxiously gives testimony about his experience, i.e. witnessing
when a Jew becomes Haredi, he throws out everything in the refrig and tell you why
when a moslem becomes a sincere servant of allah, he straps on explosives and blows you up
Posted by: Lord Garth ||
09/01/2021 17:20 Comments ||
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#6
I recall a story from the Soviet period when we had people with the Mujahedin. They were not inclined to take any prisoners. The conversation got around to since our guy wasn't a Muslim how come they didn't shot him up. The Afghan's then said it was because 'you have a book' aka Bible, the Soviets had none.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
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Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
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[The Week] What if the polarization of American politics and rise of right-wing populism in the Republican Party are a function of rural parts of the country becoming more like the historic South?
[RedState]
