A Nation Divided?

[C Elegans]

I saw your post in the thread about education in which you said that you're acquainted with a select group of Americans who share some of your own values and characteristics.
<snip>
How many of your American friends live in "red states"?

Your interpretation is correct, all my American friends and colleagues are from the urban coastal regions, most from California, New England (mostly Boston), NYC area, Chicago area or DC area. My private US friends have the same demographic characteristics as my Swedish or British or French or Asian friends - highly educated urban professionals between 25-55 years of age. My colleages, well, they are obviously an even more skewly selected groups since they are all scientists.

However (and this is also @Fable), looking at the BBC and CNN demographics of voters, there were between 37-48% of the population who voted for Bush also in the "blue" states (with the exception of the massive 90% for Kerry in DC). Is there any way to see votes for city v rural areas rather than for an entire state?
Also, of voters with a postgraduate exam, 44% supported Bush. So it's still mysterious to me why I never come in contact with all the Bush supporters (other than a few on this very board).

I know the US is highly demographically heterogeneous, and I know the rural-urbal cultural rift is deep...but what you and others have described to me here goes far beyond my imagination of just how deep this division is.

Do you think the division is deeper now than previously, ie 10, 20 or 50 years back? Do you think the US should strive for dimishing divisions, and if so, how?

Bush supporters (including self-proclaimed Democrats) voted for a Republican (not a "damn, liberal Democrat") who didn't act like he went to some northeast university like Yale (cough, cough) but claimed to be "born-again" and said he would sponsor a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage, said he would fight to protect school prayer and the Pledge of Allegiance, said he would fight against gun control, said he would appoint judges who would ban abortion, said he would never let other countries prevent us from defending ourselves, and said he would kick Saddam Hussein's ass again even though it has been proven that Iraq posed no threat to the United States. THAT's what people in this country voted for.

Thanks for your description of Texas and your reply to my questions! I have to admit parts of it that sound like parody made me laugh, although in reality I find it tragical that voters are so concerned about labels associated with their personal identity rather than actual political questions. Not that this voting pattern is totally unique for the US, but it seems considerably more widespread in the US than in any European country I know of. This is perhaps an effect of only having to parties and a generally polarised political thinking. The contemporary European voting pattern is to vote for (or against) particular issues such as the EU/EMU, taxes, job market, feminism or what have you, but the point is that moving between parties depending on specific issues has largely replaced the older voting pattern where people stayed loyal to one party and voted mainly for an ideology that had become outdated and no longer represented what it once did. I think the increasing movement away from labels and party-loyalty as part of subjective identity, is a positive development.

Anyway, it is clear that my understanding of the US is even more limited than I thought previosly despite my attempts to follow politics and social development as well as personal experience from three relatively long visits, many friends since early teens and a bunch of colleagues. Maybe I am in the same state of denial as Tony Phony suggest EU leaders are in.

It certainly seems that Texas and California are more dissimilar to each other than any European countries No wonder both states have "indepence" movements! A totally unrelated question I wish to ask VonDondu merely out of personal curiosity is: Given your obviously deviating values and opinions, why on earth don't you move? How do you survive? Are there any positive aspects that compensate for the ideological climate? PS - you don't need to reply to this if you don't feel like it.

[VonDondu]

[QUOTE=C Elegans]Given your obviously deviating values and opinions, why on earth don't you move? How do you survive? Are there any positive aspects that compensate for the ideological climate? PS - you don't need to reply to this if you don't feel like it.[/QUOTE]
I don't mind answering those questions. There are many different dimensions to my response, so please bear with me.

Quite simply, I don't find having values and opinions that are different from those of the people around me to be intolerable. I have a very high tolerance for that sort of thing. In most respects, our political differences have no effect on our interaction. I have a lifestyle that suits me for the most part, I'm very comfortable, and I love my family and friends. You must be assuming that I would be happier if I were surrounded by people who were more like myself, but that's not necessarily the case.

Before the election, I originally planned to travel to Ohio and rent a van and help get voters to the polls. I had to cancel those plans because my grandmother fell ill and I had to take her to the hospital. One of my acquaintances also wanted to go to a swing state and help "get out the vote", but she couldn't afford it, so I enabled her to go in my place. I gave her some money along with my cellphone and my laptop computer, and she went out there and she had a...well, she had a miserable time, but she did something she believed in, and I wish I could have been there myself. She did it because she wanted more Democrats to vote for Kerry, and that would have been my own primary reason for doing it.

But I also believe in something higher. I didn't want to work for the Kerry campaign itself, because I'm not really a Democrat--I usually vote "split ticket", which means I vote for candidates based on their merits regardless of their party affiliation. (Actually, some of the Republican candidates in Texas would be Democrats if Democrats had any chance of winning elections. Former Senator Phil Gramm, who claims that he was "conservative before conservative was cool", used to be a Democrat, but he became a Republican so that he could be on the winning side.) I made an exception in this election: I voted against every Republican who wasn't running unopposed. (Unfortunately, most of them were unopposed.) But I didn't vote "straight ticket" Democrat, because in many of the races, the only people running against the Republicans were Libertarians or Independents (Ralph Nader wasn't on the ballot in Texas), so I voted for them. It was my way of trying to kick the Republicans in the butt for their disgusting redistricting scheme. But to return to what I said about believing in something higher, I believe that all people should vote, no matter who they vote for. I did everything I could to help elect Kerry without working for his campaign, but I also did something else that you might think was at cross-purposes: I gave rides to a lot of people here in Texas knowing full well that they were going to vote for Bush. If I had given rides to people in Ohio, I would not have told them who to vote for. I believe that was entirely up to them. So as you can see, I respect other people's choices even if I don't agree with them.

In my post about Texas voters, I presented a skewed picture of the electorate, because I was mainly talking about rural Texas. Like every other state in the U.S., Texas is heterogeneous. I do have friends in the "big city"--i.e., Dallas. (I live in Fort Worth, which is NOT a "big city", at least not in spirit--in fact, it's frequently referred to as "Cowtown".) My "big city" friends are considerably more progressive than my rural friends. Some of them are more liberal than I am (although I'm actually a moderate). However, most of them live in the suburbs, and most of them are IT professionals, so...they do tend to vote Republican. As a general rule, the more money they make, the more likely they are to vote for Republicans. There are two main reasons for that: they want tax cuts, and they mistakenly believe that the Republican party is the "law and order" party and the Republicans will keep their families safer. They are more or less indifferent to social issues or issues like, "Did Bush lie to us about [take your pick]." They watch TV, including Fox "News" [sic], and many of them listen to Rush Limbaugh. Personally, I think they've been brainwashed by television, and since conservatives have been in control of the dialogue for over two decades-- Oh wait, I'm making my friends sound like conservatives, aren't I? Well, what can I say?

I do think that most of the people I know are ignorant and irrational (like all humans in general), but their political values don't affect our interaction. I enjoy doing the same things with them that I would do with a more liberal set of friends. We play, we party, we shop, we talk about our families, etc. If my friends were more liberal, the biggest difference would be that there'd be fewer smirks, grimaces, and tasteless jokes on those rare occasions when we see a gay couple in public. I don't watch much TV, so I don't watch my friends' favorite TV programs, and that in itself gives us a lot less material to argue about, e.g., "Who do you think is going to win the game" or "Who will be the last person left on Survivor?"

A couple of my friends are screaming, bleeding-heart liberals, and I would say they're more colorful than most of my other friends. But just because their values and politics are a little more like mine than those of my more conservative friends, that's no guarantee that we can get along any better. When you look at Republicans and Democrats, as a rule of thumb you can say that Republicans stick together and support each other, while Democrats form a circular firing squad and constantly snipe at each other. My liberal friends are much more likely to argue with me about virtually anything. That's one of the flaws of having a critical mind.

If I REALLY wanted to get away from American "heartland values", I'd move to another country, because I can't get away from them here in America. But as long as our economy doesn't crash and we don't lose all of our civil liberties and we don't start suffering from daily terrorist attacks on our own soil, I don't have any trouble "surviving" where I'm at.

In some respects, I'm simply settling for what I have. In other respects, I'm comfortable having what I grew up with. Let me tell you about a recent experience that was a (minor) eye-opener. First, here's some background. When I was a child, my family used to visit our relatives who live out in the country. I really enjoyed those visits. A lot of people smoked back then, so stale cigarette smoke was one of the odors that was present in a country house. In the last twenty years or so, I have made very few visits to houses where people smoke (mostly because I hate cigarette smoke). But I recently paid a visit to a person whose house smelled just like those country houses did when I was a kid, and guess what? I felt happy and comfortable there. I remembered sitting in front of my grandmother's pump organ with a musty old hymnal beside a freshly-cut juniper bush that she used for a Christmas tree. We used to sit on her porch together shelling peas or pecans, or we'd be in the kitchen baking pies or fixing each others' hair. When we wanted to visit other people, we'd ride in the car for nearly an hour, telling each other stories and jokes. Being inside a smoker's musty old house made me remember all of those things. Of course, I was gagging before long, and I left as soon as I could. But the point is, those things from my childhood make me feel very comfortable and happy, and there's no getting around that. I have terrible insomnia, but when I slept in my grandmother's old house, I slept soundly and it took forever to wake up.

Finally, the most important reason why I live in Texas is because a lot of people depend on me--my mother, my grandmother, a couple of my aunts, and a couple of my neighbors. Sometimes I'd like to move, but if I did, I wouldn't be able to continue doing what I am now. Maybe I'll think about moving in a few years when they have passed away. But for now, I'm keeping myself happy.

[C Elegans]

I am straying more and more off topic here, sorry for that, but with some goodwill I think the discussions of how humans relate to each other socially also have some impact on the issue on how populations can become polarised.

[QUOTE=VonDondu]Quite simply, I don't find having values and opinions that are different from those of the people around me to be intolerable. I have a very high tolerance for that sort of thing. In most respects, our political differences have no effect on our interaction. I have a lifestyle that suits me for the most part, I'm very comfortable, and I love my family and friends. You must be assuming that I would be happier if I were surrounded by people who were more like myself, but that's not necessarily the case. [/QUOTE]

First, many thanks for your detailed explanation I'll just comment on some points. First, the basis for my assumptions:

A vast majority of humans, probably over 99,9%, have social needs. Social needs can be schematically cathegorised into multiple factors, for instance sexual needs, intellectual stimulation. empathy, perception of "likeness" etc, etc. What factors are most important for a single individual, and to what degree, is of course difficult to predict (unless you know a person very well )since the number of possible combinations are virtually endless. Since I don't know you apart from your posts here at SYM, my speculations about you will have to rest on a combination of 1) statistical data on what is most common among humans in general and 2) the limited specific information I have about you from your posts.

So, in your particular case, my assumption was that, judging from your posts you seem to enjoy a wide range of intellectual stimulation, and most people who want to have that from their social life as well. Thus I assumed A) you'd be happier with considerable amount of intellectual stimulation, which would be more difficult to get in an anti-intellectual environment. When people around you are very unlike yourself, they must either tolerate that you deviate, or you must adapt. Since the description you gave did not indicate a high degree of tolerance and also contained accounts of adaption from your side I assumed B) you'd be happier in an environment that required less adaptation from you (saves energy), ie either where people were more like you, or had a higher tolerance for variability.
Tolerance for variability can occur both in very homogenous settings, for instance native tribes who would "adopt" any kind-hearted outsider who came there, or in multicultural big cities due to the already existing variability.

For any social interaction, communication must occur, and for communication to occur there must be contact areas. Various intellectual stimulation can be such a contact area. Shared political, religious or general life values can be another such area. I was wondering what the contact areas were for you, and your post have illustrated that very well. Shared environment, family, connection to your own upbringing, etc are also such contact areas. Also, you display a high degree of tolerance to a certain type of political opinions, and the differences it doesn't affect your interaction with people who hold these views. Contrary to you, I have a little tolerance to political values I find discriminative to other people, I could not be friends with a person who was racist for instance. If people are anarchosyndicalist or ultralibertarians, christians, muslims or shamanists I care little about, as long as it doesn't contain inherent discrimination. I love discussing world events, social issues, humanitarian issues etc with all of my friends, and since most have different views (sometimes radically difference) it's always interesting to me. It would however be impossible for the interaction not to be affected by my lack of acceptance for the other person's discriminative views, since topics where the conflicting views would clash, would turn up every 10 minutes.

The next interesting question to me is of course: how come you deviate so much from your native environment? I am very interested in issues concerning factors that influence conformism and non-conformism. When I was at uni I wrote and essay in social psychology about conformism and group effects. But that's a totally different story which hardly is suitable for this thread even with the best of will

[Scayde]

There were other choices in the election, but the media only gave real coverage to the two major parties. There are things that I agree with on both sides of the two party ticket..there were more that I agreed with on the Libertarian ticket. When I voted, I was very saddened to think that many of the names I marked would be passed over by other voters, not because of lack of merit, but because of lack of exposure. There is a very strong sense of, if you didn't vote for Bush or Kerry, you were waisting your vote. I tried very hard to not let that sentiment influence me, and though I managed not to buckle, I still felt the pressure from the two big parties to ignore my other choices.

I do not agree that 'most' Americans are ignorant sheep...Unfortunately though, most Americans do believe that we actually have a 'Free Press' and trust that the information they receive via the media is inclusive and unbiased. As fable pointed out..this is not the case.

There are things in both major parties I disagreed with...there were very few that I did agree with...I think there are many people, like myself who see the shortcomings of both parties, but due to a lack of organizational effort/funds on the part of the alternative movements...there are few alternatives.

The media likes the two party system..it keeps things simple.

I am not sure where in Texas VonDondu is from, but I would say that in the area where I live, our demographics break down about among whites (bout 60%), blacks, and hispanic (about 35% combined) voters with a small but growing asian community and a fringe of other minorities mixed in.

The Anglo community tends to go republican, with the exception of a group of blue collar pre-babyboomers known as 'Roosevelt Democrats'.

Both the Black and Hispanic communities tend to go Democrat.

There is a high percentage of educated, middle of the road, fiscally conservative constituents, who see the Republicans as the party for Capitalists, and the Democratic ticket for Socialists...Party affiliation does tend to follow racial lines, with a few exceptions. (ie:, very wealthy minorities tend to vote Republican, very poor whites tend to vote Democrat)

As evident by this statement, economic prosperity in my area tends to follow racial lines as well.

The issues were far more economic than anything else. It's unfortunate that you can't vote on issues a la carte...I think if you could, that map would look much different.

(Side note...I do not know about the rest of the country, but in Texas, the public school system is governed locally, so you will find wide diversity in the curriculums from one community to another...differing widely on classes offered as well as the quality of education as it is delivered in general.)

[Gwalchmai]

Here's an interesting map for you: A shaded map by county that shows how voters swung proportionally:

http://www.princeton.edu/~rvdb/JAVA/election2004/

[C Elegans]

Very interesting, thanks Gwally! I was surprised to see the clear blue areas in a belt going through Missisippi-Alabama-Tennessee somewhere, what are these areas?

[Gwalchmai]

On the East and West Coasts, as well as the north central area, Blue seems to be correlated with population centers. The blue stripe through the Deep South that you see (from the Mississippi River and to the east) seems to have an opposite correlation. I would just guess that a higher percentage of blacks live in these area. Better to ask someone else, though. Someone from the South. I live in a large purplish-blue county on the southwest border of the country.

[Scayde]

[QUOTE=Gwalchmai]Here's an interesting map for you: A shaded map by county that shows how voters swung proportionally:

http://www.princeton.edu/~rvdb/JAVA/election2004/[/QUOTE]

Very interesting map Gwally...I noticed a lonesome little spot of bright blue in that huge wash of red running up the great plains states..turns out to be Shannon County South Dekota...I was curious about the demographics..thought you might like to see what google turned up..

Shannon County S.Dakota

[VonDondu]

[QUOTE=C Elegans]I am straying more and more off topic here, sorry for that, but with some goodwill I think the discussions of how humans relate to each other socially also have some impact on the issue on how populations can become polarised...

...in your particular case, my assumption was that, judging from your posts you seem to enjoy a wide range of intellectual stimulation, and most people who want to have that from their social life as well. Thus I assumed A) you'd be happier with considerable amount of intellectual stimulation, which would be more difficult to get in an anti-intellectual environment. When people around you are very unlike yourself, they must either tolerate that you deviate, or you must adapt. Since the description you gave did not indicate a high degree of tolerance and also contained accounts of adaption from your side I assumed B) you'd be happier in an environment that required less adaptation from you (saves energy), ie either where people were more like you, or had a higher tolerance for variability...

The next interesting question to me is of course: how come you deviate so much from your native environment? I am very interested in issues concerning factors that influence conformism and non-conformism. When I was at uni I wrote and essay in social psychology about conformism and group effects. But that's a totally different story which hardly is suitable for this thread even with the best of will [/QUOTE]
I'm sure that there are a lot of other people like me who live in an environment where they don't conform. I'm not sure how other people cope with that, but here's some insight into how I cope.

First of all, I have always felt different from everyone else, so I had no choice but to adapt to that feeling. Furthermore, I've always had a significant "independent" streak. From what my parents and relatives tell me, when I was a toddler, I refused to let other people tell me what to do. "Hardheaded", "difficult", and "impossible" were often used to describe me. However, my family did discover an easy way to gain my cooperation: all they had to do was ask me to help them with something, and I'd gladly do it. I might be a little different from other non-conformists (I'm a non-conformist, aren't I?) because I do like to get along with other people and I really enjoy helping other people. A lot of people think I'm eccentric, but they like me and appreciate my company, so they have a higher tolerance for my variability than they do for other people's variability.

I'm sure that my physical attractiveness also helps, since attractive people can get away with far more deviance than less attractive people. I don't go out of my way to manipulate other people, but being an attractive woman yourself, you can probably appreciate the effect it has on other people. When I was young, my father (who was in the insurance business and later in the real estate business) liked to take me along to meet his clients so that I could "butter them up" (just by being myself). In hindsight, that might have been somewhat abusive even though it was intended in a benign way, since other kids might not have reacted so well to it, but I think it helped my self-confidence rather than hurting it, because I did enjoy meeting all of those people and it made me feel good about myself.

I don't know if you can relate to this, but my mother was very critical of me when I was young. My sister-in-law is Chinese (she grew up on the mainland), and her mother is a lot worse than my mother ever was. My sister-in-law is actually going through a crisis right now because she has been imagining that my mother thinks my sister-in-law is a bad mother. My mother has never uttered a single word of criticism, but I think that's part of the problem: since my mother hasn't said anything, my sister-in-law has been imagining what my mother "must" be thinking, and I guess she figures that my mother must be just like her own mother. When my brother confided this to my mother, my mother was a bit defensive, and she said (truthfully) that she had found no fault with my sister-in-law. But of course, when I devilishly asked the question, "But do you think she has been doing anything wrong?" my mother had no trouble thinking of something to criticize. (My mother thinks that my sister-in-law has been trying to do too many things at once. There, she said it. She wasn't going to tell anyone, but I dragged it out of her.)

My own defense against such criticism was "my mother is an idiot", and it became my defense against everyone else who found fault with me. "I'm right and everybody else is wrong." I got used to living like that. I've known other people who were similarly afflicted with the same sort of defense mechanism. Thankfully, I have outgrown it some degree. (I'm sure that being aware of it helps.) The difference between me and my sister-in-law is that she agrees with her mother's criticism and takes it to heart. She is a lot more conformist than I am.

As for intellectual stimulation, I do require a lot of it, but I get it through reading, taking notes, and writing rather than through talking to other people. To be honest, I'm not very good at processing verbal information, at least not in an analytical way. I can't make other people pause in conversation while I form ideas in my mind or pursue the questions that spring to mind like I can when I'm surfing the internet. And of course, conversation lacks the depth of a well-researched article.

In the education thread, you said that you used to read at the dinner table instead of participating in your family's conversation. Well, I didn't read at the dinner table, but I couldn't get enough intellectual stimulation from other people, so I sought it elsewhere. (I should mention that when I was in high school, my boyfriend and nearly all of my friends were in college, and being in a mature peer group helped.)

I think one of the reasons why I don't try to share more of my ideas with the people I know is because of my alienation from them. I fit in well enough, but I don't think they'll understand my more elaborate ideas, so I don't bother trying to share my ideas with them.

I do listen to other people's ideas, probably more than most people. I can understand other people's arguments even if I disagree with them, and what's more, I respect their opinions. When giles337 singled out you, me, and Fable for being "extraordinary", my first reaction is that I'm not as well-educated as you and I'm not as well-read as Fable (I don't know his educational background, and of course you are also more well-read than I am), but I do take pride in my ability to process lots of information objectively. I majored in Philosophy in college, and having an open mind was required to succeed.

I guess in the end, you could sum it up as follows: I have adapted. But I guess that doesn't cause as much strain or turmoil for me as it would for other people. But of course, I'm in the 0.1% that's different from the other 99.9%. Statisticians love to sit next to me.

[asurademon]

I've always considered where I grew up to be conservative, but after reading Von Dondu's post I've realized that was only by my Californian standards. Now I bet that the place I was raised by the standards of some of the other states (like where Von Dondu lives) would probaby be seen as very moderate. I did leave that place because I didn't fit in, at all, but I only had to move an hour away to escape the mentality of that town, which is very different than having to move far far away to escape it (which would be your case if you wanted to move somewhere more liberal right Von Dondu?)

I certainly think really that it's important to find some people that one can feel are "their people", but while fitting in to some degree is nice, I think if I ever found myself fitting in too well I'd start to feel like I was losing myself, and it would make me uncomfortable. I need to be able to stand apart from the people around me to some degree. Also if everyone saw things eye to eye with me conversation would get rather boring, hell interacting with people in general would become boring. In my opinion It's a diversity of view points that really makes things interesting and is stimulating, not just a bunch of people that agree with me. So where I have moved is a place that I've found enough people that I really feel comfortable with and see eye to eye with, without ending up somewhere that I just feel like a member of the herd.

[Weasel]

[QUOTE=Gwalchmai]The blue stripe through the Deep South that you see (from the Mississippi River and to the east) seems to have an opposite correlation. I would just guess that a higher percentage of blacks live in these area. Better to ask someone else, though. Someone from the South. [/QUOTE]


(Note I haven't been thru every county, this just my view on the ones I have traveled thru.)

The strip thru Alabama is a mix, the main thing being these are some of the poorest counties in Alabama...bad roads, limited funding for schools. Some of the towns still look like places out of the 1930's and 1940's.

[dragon wench]

I just found this somewhat edgy article in the Seattle Stranger.....

http://www.thestranger.com/current/feature.html

[fable]

"It's time for the Democrats to face reality: They are the party of urban America. If the cities elected our president, if urban voters determined the outcome, John F. Kerry would have won by a landslide. Urban voters are the Democratic base."

Hell, what have I been saying? The rural belt of the US is closer to the rural belts all over the world in its characteristics than to US urban areas in culture and outlook. The US remains a largely agricultural (farms, ranges) society, although that's not the group which traditionally has led the nation, or communicated its interests abroad.

[Dottie]

Despite that I think the solution in the article is the wrong one though. Even if I can understand the agression I dont think he answer to narrow-mindeness is to strife towards isolation and self serving ideas. I can hardly see the long term benefit of that.

[fable]

[QUOTE=Dottie]Despite that I think the solution in the article is the wrong one though. Even if I can understand the agression I dont think he answer to narrow-mindeness is to strife towards isolation and self serving ideas. I can hardly see the long term benefit of that.[/QUOTE]

The US isn't moving in that direction, @Dottie. Rather, it's the agri-belt is finally becoming vocal--much as blacks did, for the first time back in the 1960s. Then, they voted for the Democrats. Now, the rural folks are becoming part of a computerized, church-based network, achieving both a sense of shared identity and a vocal presence in elections. You probably missed my rant the first time around.

What could reverse this trend? A depression, for one. Or at the very least, a deep, abiding recession. The only time the rural culture in the US ever considered itself liberal and voted Democratic in the 20th century was after 1929. Until WWII, the mid-West took whatever handouts it could get from the government, never complaining about government busybodies, or size, or virtue. If that happens again and the rural economy collapses, the agri-belt is going to be on the dole, feeling betrayed by the neo-cons, and turning its back on its new political friends.

But will a depression occur? Doubtful.