There was a time when “Cracked” magazine was “Mad” magazine’s downmarket, cheap competitor; “Guitar World” to “Guitar Player”, “Hustler” to “Playboy”.
I have no idea what this online world has wrought – but while Cracked has turned into a hit-generating listicle mill, it has come to feature some excellent writing.
Now, forget the market talk.
In fifteen years, I’ve been trying to come up with an article that would explain this nation’s rural/urban divide – the divide that’s driving the Trump candidacy and the surge of animus behind it – as well as this article, by David Wong.
Just an exerpt, from the exposition:
If you’d asked me at the time, I’d have said the fear and hatred wasn’t of people with brown skin, but of that specific tribe they have in Chicago — you know, the guys with the weird slang, music and clothes, the dope fiends who murder everyone they see. It was all part of the bizarro nature of the cities, as perceived from afar — a combination of hyper-aggressive savages and frivolous white elites. Their ways are strange. And it wasn’t like pop culture was trying to talk me out of it:
Ruthless Records
“… And Into Some Nightmares”It’s not just perception, either — the stats back up the fact that these are parallel universes. People living in the countryside are twice as likely to own a gun and will probably get married younger. People in the urban “blue” areas talk faster and walk faster. They are more likely to be drug abusers but less likely to be alcoholics. The blues are less likely to own land and, most importantly, they’re less likely to be Evangelical Christians.
No, it goes way way way beyond that. This may be the best thing I’ve read on the internet all year
Read the whole thing. Forward it to your friends – especially blue-state fops who really just don’t get why Trump is a thing – and why he may just be the tip of the iceberg.
Remember the good ol’ days?
When the extent of a Republican presidential candidate’s misogyny was limited to “binders full of women”? I miss those days.
Imagine how differently Kimberly Jean Davis would have been treated if she were Black?
https://www.firstthings.com/article/2016/06/punching-down
On a different post, Emery commented: “Emery wrote: . . . we need to fundamentally identify and address the needs of the powerless ”
Powerless looks like Kimberly Jean Davis. No one felt as though her needs had to identified and addressed.
Just proving my point. The GOP claims to be the party of personal responsibility, but doesn’t actually have any. Deflect, deflect, deflect.
emery mewled:
Just proving my point. The GOP claims to be the party of personal responsibility, but doesn’t actually have any. Deflect, deflect, deflect.
and Hillary is the model to which we should aspire? Explain how this is true?
Specifically Emery, detail Hillary’s moral superiority!
Who says the GOP is the party of personal responsibility, Emery?
I have heard liberals say that. I’ve never heard a conservative say that.
I have issues with the article, but it does make an interesting point: why do the ‘marginalized’ communities have special advocates at the federal level? The truly powerless are the people who have no advocates at the Justice Department.
It is clear that Hillary Clinton despises a large part of the American population:
You know, to just be grossly generalistic, you could put half of Trump’s supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables. Right? The racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamaphobic — you name it. And unfortunately there are people like that. And he has lifted them up. He has given voice to their websites that used to only have 11,000 people — now 11 million. He tweets and retweets their offensive hateful mean-spirited rhetoric. Now, some of those folks — they are irredeemable, but thankfully they are not America.
http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/article/2016/sep/11/context-hillary-clinton-basket-deplorables/
This really is a remarkable statement from a person whose election slogan is “Stronger Together”. She is writing off tens of millions of her fellow citizens as irredeemably un-American, because their politics differ from hers. This is astonishing. I can not think of another candidate for president who has done this. Trump disparages non-Americans (illegal aliens and refugees). When Romney talked bout the 47% he was talking about the economic circumstances, not political beliefs, and not irredeemable populations. Like fascists, the Democrats consider America to be cursed with irredeemable populations who block national progress. That philosophy of the Democrat Party has not changed since it was founded by Jackson and Calhoun.
“Every survivor of sexual assault deserves to be heard, believed, and supported”
Kellyanne Conway
“Cliche is a substitute for a bad argument.”
-Bento Guzman
Also: “Do not accuse me of being a Republican.”
-Bento Guzman
Hillary Clinton and her supporters believe that Bill Clinton’s record of sexual assault disqualified him to be president in 1992. What an odd world.
Funny, Emery, that these so called victims of Trump’s “unwanted sexual advances”, are surfacing so long after the alleged incidents took place. These are just so much heat say and innuendo. Since none of these women filed formal charges at the time these alleged events occurred, they apparently weren’t too traumatized by them.
Of course, this whole story is a page right out of the DemonRAT play book. They pulled the same shit on Herman Cain in 2012. Funny, that manufactured victim didn’t file any charges, either, but mission accomplished by the libidiots.
They count on their drooling, sycophantic useful idiots to believe the lies and you proved that it works.
Something to keep in mind:
In March 2007 Democrat senator John Edwards and his wife announced that her breast cancer had returned and she was terminal. In October of that year Edwards announced his candidacy for the Democrat nomination to be president of the United States. In January of 2008, Edwards placed second in the Iowa caucuses, ahead of Hillary Clinton.
In March 2008, Edwards halted his candidacy when rumors of his extra marital affair became impossible to discredit. Although the affair was old news to virtually everyone in the Edwards campaign, Edwards and his ditzy blonde Mistress were able to confound the intrepid investigative journalists of the New York Times and other mainstream media outlets by using such clever stratagems as “checking into a hotel under an assumed name.”
Democrat John Edwards (the “Democrat” part is important) was able to carry on a highly credible presidential campaign while cheating on his wife. Edward’s Mistress gave birth to his and her child just after his second place finish in the Iowa caucuses, while Edward’s wife was dying from cancer — and no one in the MSM had a clue.
The thing that perplexes me about the allegations against Trump is that moving the divider, even if possible, only makes his moves more apparent. Look at the armrest on your office chair and imagine someone sitting at your level on the opposite side. If one of you wants to fondle the other at the chest or the crotch level, the armrest is no barrier.
It is also worth noting that getting a hand up someone’s skirt would take some doing unless the skirt was, shall we say, just a touch short for flying comfortably. And finally, somebody would have noticed….it would have been a scandal as he would have been walked off the plane.
Call me skeptical.
bikebubba,
me too,
first, her story is one cliche after another and the neo-puritanical language reads like the script for a bad made for tv movie from the 70s. While people may use cliches in relating a “traumatic” incident, they do not tell the whole story using cliche. I’ve read enough witness statements to attest to that.
Second, if, as you suggest, you try to act it out in real time it totally falls apart. In fact it has that same air of unreality that the Rolling Stone Rape story had.
In an alternate universe . . .
There are reports today that Republican Presidential Candidate John R. Kasich is facing accusations of sexual harassment. The accusations, which go back as far as the 1970s, are being made by five heroic women whose stories are told by investigative journalists from the New York Times. Among other serious allegations, one victim reports that Kasich hid under her dining room table and groped her repeatedly while she simply tried to eat dinner with her family in suburban Cleveland. Another victim said that she was certain that Kasich made references to pigs within her hearing while she judged hogs during an event at the 1997 Ohio State Fair.
A Hillary Clinton campaign spokesperson says that these allegations demonstrate the unfitness of Kasich to occupy the highest office in the land.
But it doesnt explain how a urban/suburban kid like me turned red. According to this article i should be a sanders supporter. I am the furthest thing from it
POD, well said. I actually went from moderately conservative to strongly conservative because of what I saw when I lived in Boulder. (plus, CU made me into a big Huskers fan) When you see the damage liberalism does, it’s just plain natural.
It’s interesting, back to the article, that the writer does not connect liberalism with the disasters that have befallen the inner city near where he lives, nor does he acknowledge that small towns are by and large doing a lot better than the cities–despite the fact that cities tend to be quite the money sinks in state budgets.
It all reminds me of a trip my brother and I took years ago with my mom to visit my grandparents in Wong’s native Illinois….he commented that out there, he went to sleep and saw cornfields, and woke up to see cornfields. I responded that in the big city, I could go to sleep and see slums….and wake up to see the same.
Yeah my dads was similar to that as well. He grew up in a city that had rednecks celebratimg the assassination of MLK Jr. By shooting off guns and riding down mainstreet shouting ‘We got the n****r!’.
A 30-year-old college grad I know was sharing with me how he’ll be voting Libertarian this November, simply as a message to the aging boomer elite that their idea of political alternatives falls far short of acceptable. He doesn’t care that there are differences between them; he hates both of the boomers. Fewer and fewer of those boomers who have given us Clinton and Trump won’t be around to vote as the cycle of elections continues; he will be.
Emery-
The awarding of the Nobel prize for literature to Bob Dylan is Peak Boomer.
In Tolkien’s The Silmarillian, the primal spider Ungoliant wanted to consume the light that powered the sun and the moon, and the darkness that would remain as well. The Boomers are like that. They want to control all time, and so consume it. A Boomer will be quite happy to tell you how people should live in 2100 AD or a million years from now. Their morals and values should be those perfected by the generation born between 1945 and 1960.
My fear is that the Boomers will consume everything and leave only ashes.
I don’t know all that many Dylan song lyrics, but I was always struck by the how “Blowin’ in the Wind” managed to capture the civil rights and anti-war movements so perfectly in 3 short verses of elegant metaphors, easily understood by all. It is a small, perfect song. At his best, Dylan was brilliant.
“At his best, Dylan was brilliant”
Dylan would treasure accolades from a simple minded troll whose best work is whatever hasn’t been identified as plagiarism yet. More than his Nobel, probably.
ah emery moves from providing political insight nonpareil to delivering trenchant post-modern literary criticism! What will this Renaissance man do next?
Swift: Is that the “whiny little keyboard warrior” in you backing down?
I suggest you forage for a pithy response on the web and claim it for your own. Your efforts would have to rise tenfold to even be considered inadequate.
There are a lot of good fiction writers. There are a lot of good poets. Dylan is in the “good” category. In anthologies of modern poetry, you will find a half dozen poems by Dylan Thomas for every poem by Bob Dylan. Dylan Thomas did not win the Nobel (and he could have used the money more than Bob Dylan!).
Here is Dylan Thomas reading his “Fern Hill.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8XG1B_7r4y8
The Boomers have debased the currency of the Nobel by awarding it to popinjays.
Mitch:
This is a seriously good article. Thanks for posting. Never really thought about the connection between urban density and the viability of the service sector economy.
Urban zoning restrictions now look worse. Not only do that price out current residents, but they deny deep rural folks the chance to immigrate to the cities for economic opportunity. Single family zoning is the liberal version of Trump’s wall.
Dylan Thomas really was a genius.
The line from “Fern Hill” that contains “Adam and maiden” works because the “maiden” half-rhyme with “Adam” is diminished, and the next line ends with “again”, which echoes the “maiden” ending the previous line.
If you are inclined towards literature, I would suggest comparing Dylan Thomas’s “Fern Hill”: https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/fern-hill
With Bob Dylan’s “The Times they are changing”:
http://bobdylan.com/songs/times-they-are-changin/