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marfknox
SFN Die Hard
USA
3739 Posts |
 Posted - 04/01/2007 : 07:01:08
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This article very personally and sensitively illustrates one painful downside of the current American economy - the death of small rural towns. I strongly believe that this is part of the explanation for the rise of the religious right. http://www.austinchronicle.com/gyrobase/Issue/column?oid=460781
quote:
These rural people are not stupid. They're furious. Time has passed them by, and they don't know why. They've done and been everything that they were taught to do and be, and it's come to nothing. That's what liberals don't get. These people are furious, and they've got something to be furious about, however much their fury may be misdirected. They want somebody to blame – a useless but human need.
This is also why I think the pandering to the religious right on the part of the Republican Party is, in the long term, a losing political strategy. By becoming more and more identified with this kind of southern, rural, fundamentalist Christianity, the Republicans turn off anyone other than those people, and marginalize themselves as a regional party for a section of America that is shrinking.
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"Too much certainty and clarity could lead to cruel intolerance" -Karen Armstrong
Check out my art store: http://www.marfknox.etsy.com
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Vegeta
Skeptic Friend
United Kingdom
238 Posts |
Posted - 04/01/2007 : 08:09:12 [Permalink]
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I dunno much about US politics, but if this situation is still ongoing, and the republicans are midway through a second term, have these rural people not started to become disillusioned at all?
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What are you looking at? Haven't you ever seen a pink shirt before?
"I was asked if I would do a similar sketch but focusing on the shortcomings of Islam rather than Christianity. I said, 'No, no I wouldn't. I may be an atheist but I'm not stupid.'" - Steward Lee |
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GeeMack
SFN Regular
USA
1093 Posts |
Posted - 04/01/2007 : 09:21:33 [Permalink]
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quote:
Originally posted by Vegeta...
I dunno much about US politics, but if this situation is still ongoing, and the republicans are midway through a second term, have these rural people not started to become disillusioned at all?
Many seem to be living in a state of cognitive dissonance.
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Ghost_Skeptic
SFN Regular
Canada
510 Posts |
Posted - 04/01/2007 : 23:45:39 [Permalink]
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quote:
Originally posted by marfknox
This article very personally and sensitively illustrates one painful downside of the current American economy - the death of small rural towns. I strongly believe that this is part of the explanation for the rise of the religious right. http://www.austinchronicle.com/gyrobase/Issue/column?oid=460781
quote:
These rural people are not stupid. They're furious. Time has passed them by, and they don't know why. They've done and been everything that they were taught to do and be, and it's come to nothing. That's what liberals don't get. These people are furious, and they've got something to be furious about, however much their fury may be misdirected. They want somebody to blame – a useless but human need.
This is also why I think the pandering to the religious right on the part of the Republican Party is, in the long term, a losing political strategy. By becoming more and more identified with this kind of southern, rural, fundamentalist Christianity, the Republicans turn off anyone other than those people, and marginalize themselves as a regional party for a section of America that is shrinking.
But these people are not dissappearing or emigrating - thay are moving to the cities so this population is not actually shrinking, just becoming less visible, but probably not less angry or less fundamentalist. |
"You can lead a horse to water but you can't make him drink. / You can send a kid to college but you can't make him think." - B.B. King
History is made by stupid people - The Arrogant Worms
"The greater the ignorance the greater the dogmatism." - William Osler
"Religion is the natural home of the psychopath" - Pat Condell
"The day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus, by the supreme being as his father in the womb of a virgin, will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerva in the brain of Jupiter" - Thomas Jefferson |
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Dying towns in red states
