I want to direct your gaze toward this Vanity Fair article titled "Red State Babylon." It addresses one of the recurrent themes of the blog. Writer James Wolcott compares the Upper West Side of New York to the mythical American heartland:
It's like Jewish-Hispanic-Amish country up here! The broad sidewalks present a wholesome cavalcade of baby strollers, Columbia University students, diabetics on canes, and tourists posing in front of Tom's Restaurant, the diner made famous on Seinfeld. It isn't the cultural bastions of the blue states such as the Upper West Side that are greasing America's slide into the disco inferno. It's the Republican red states that are lowering the country's moral standards and dragging us through muck and malaise, the red states that are pustulating with horny hypocrites, rampant crime, polygamy, crystal-meth labs, federal handouts (The Economist recently christened Alaska "America's welfare state"), illegitimate births, blimping waistlines, and future generations of dumb bunnies. JonBenet Ramsey, dolled up and immortalized in her beauty-pageant footage, is the pre-pubescent red-hot-mama mascot of red-state Babylon.I wish Wolcott had placed greater emphasis on the financial aspects of red state hypocrisy. With the understandable exception of Maryland, the blue states pour more money into the Federal government than they receive, while the pork-addicted red states just leech, leech, leech.
When will a national figure chide the arrogance of these pious pseudo-humanoids, these Monsters of the Id?
It's never fun having your ass shot off, but the odds of that occurring seem higher in the red states, which account for all of the top 15 states in rates of death by firearms (2003). Methamphetamine addiction is a national scourge, but it's been chewing the heart out of the red Middle West, where Missouri has the tragic distinction of hosting the highest number of lab incidents (meth labs or production facilities raided by authorities), with Indiana, Tennessee, Iowa, and Kentucky also among the top six states afflicted with an outbreak of bootleg chemistry. The 10 states with the lowest meth-lab incidents? Eight of them are blue. Then there's the violence or despair directed selfward. Of the 15 states with the highest adjusted rates of suicide (2003), 14 are red.We see the same principle in miniature in California. The wealth-producing blue counties hug the coast. Drive inland toward the red counties, and you'll encounter higher crime rates, higher illegitimacy rates, higher rates of welfare dependency. That's where the meth labs are. And the radio blares Jesus Jesus Jesus 24/7.
4 comments:
one problem with going after the repugs for this, of course, is that they would come back accusing hypocrisy for our liberal demands that the rich give to the poor.
we must therefore be prepared to point out to them that our observation of the red-blue discrepancy is not hypocrisy; we still insist that the privileged share with those who are not.
our observation is in itself pointing out THEIR hypocrisy, which is of course even deeper than that, because it also betrays the truth of their very unchristian position against the liberal agenda to give to be generous to the needy.
except of course when they can extend the begging hand.
except the christian position is voluntary altruism, not charity coerced by the power of the State.
" except the christian position is voluntary altruism, not charity coerced by the power of the State."
Exactly; red state right-wingers, with their gerrymandered districts and disproportionate Senate representation, are coercing the rest of us to subsidize them. Very unchristian, no?
The red state position is hypocritical, however you slice it.
FWIW, after the 2004 election, I found an interesting collection of maps of the voting patterns that sorted by a number of different criteria, rather than the simplistic one that a state was either blue or red.
One that caught my eye (and I don't remember where I saw it) had a more nuanced breakdown, perhaps by county. It showed not only were the blue voters coast huggers, they tended to spread up the major river valleys too. It was fascinating to see the vote break down as juicy vs dried-up.
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