Good news for now, not so much for later (or: The blame game)

November's elections showed that the country is getting increasingly politically divided. Unlike the big GOP win in 1994, Republicans this time around won back the House without any real help from metropolitan areas, which remained largely Democratic. The GOP gains came mostly in districts "that were older, less diverse and less educated than the nation as a whole," notes the Washington Post. The good news for Democrats is that they continue to win among minorities and whites with more education, but they are increasingly losing working-class voters. While that's good news for Republicans it's also a shrinking percentage of the electorate. "Republicans do the best in areas that are typically not growing very fast and don't look like the present, or certainly the future, of the country," one Democratic strategist said.

--from Slatest.

Can you blame those enraptured in the Beck-ian fears that have taken hold of "white" (whatever that means) America (or Europe for that matter)? Yes. Is it understandable? Yes as well.


Fear is often the result of ignorance; however, this is not the case here. Whether by first-hand experience of whites who have indeed seen the number of non-whites increasing in their lifetime or who, living in less "progressive" areas, get it indirectly from the assertions by the Right (see Beck/Limbaugh/McCain even) or the Left (see above and social science), they are aware of the demographic changes going on around them. So they aren't unaware, ignorant; they just aren't smart enough to use that knowledge to be unafraid of its consequences.


To be sure, as the the percentage of non-whites increases, so will their share of the economic--and political--pie. But that's as it should be, logically if not ethically. Only, if one conflates the natural evolution of society's statistical balance, a process that takes time and shifts only gradually, with their own immediate circumstance--the non-smart part--than we can understand how they arrive at fear; they become reactionary.

Certainly there is a part of "middle"/"white" America who are looking at the long-game and don't like what they see--again, not ignorance but stupidity. Stupid because they are fearing the loss of something that never existed--surely not in any of our lifetimes--of a "white" culture, of the "real" America for which the pine for so dearly. (Even if true, no love-loss here.) It's simple prejudice; once again, a mere manifestation of stupidity.


But here's the thing: despite the slight tilt in electoral politics this fall--slight in what it says about the psychology of the country despite the exaggerated affect on our somewhat antiquated political system and the horse-race media mentality that spins its coverage--doesn't mean we're mostly stupid. It doesn't even mean that most who voted Republican are dumb. There's plenty of reasons to vote the bums (whoever they happen to be at time) out besides straight race-based fear. Mostly just that: whatever their persuasion, there are a whole lot of bums. Most of the old blood was blue and the new blood is red.


If anything, it says more about our increasing impatience, perhaps due in part to our decreasing attention span, and lack of faith in politicians to get anything done. I say perhaps about the attention span thing because at this point there isn't the data to back it up. But also because, in all the blame the 24hr news cycle has been receiving for this apparent circumscribed mental faculty, maybe something has been missed. Has the exponential media coverage of the politics so revealed the inherent inertia and seediness of the process that our reaction--abhorrence, frustration, and, yes, fear; from the Right and Left (see displeasure (ha!) with Obama)--is justified? Perhaps even a good thing? Perhaps.


Can anyone say WikiLeaks? For whatever diplomatic muck has been stirred up so far, can anyone say that, in the end, it isn't a public good? Not me. In the face of almost a million released documents, the best a tow-the-line general on The Daily Show this week could muster was that it might cause a national security problem--might?--while at the same time saying Assange is a bigger--not just as big, but bigger--threat to America than Al Qaeda. Sorry cool-general-that-is-fairly-progressive-on-other-issues-of-foreign-policy--though not on DADT, which Stewart gave him a good drumming for--but I call bullshit.


I'm sticking with my homeboy Robert Gates on this one:

Let me just offer some perspective as somebody who’s been at this a long time. Every other government in the world knows the United States government leaks like a sieve, and it has for a long time. And I dragged this up the other day when I was looking at some of these prospective releases. And this is a quote from John Adams: “How can a government go on, publishing all of their negotiations with foreign nations, I know not. To me, it appears as dangerous and pernicious as it is novel." …

Now, I’ve heard the impact of these releases on our foreign policy described as a meltdown, as a game-changer, and so on. I think -- I think those descriptions are fairly significantly overwrought. The fact is, governments deal with the United States because it’s in their interest, not because they like us, not because they trust us, and not because they believe we can keep secrets.

Many governments -- some governments deal with us because they fear us, some because they respect us, most because they need us. We are still essentially, as has been said before, the indispensable nation. So other nations will continue to deal with us. They will continue to work with us. We will continue to share sensitive information with one another. Is this embarrassing? Yes. Is it awkward? Yes. Consequences for U.S. foreign policy? I think fairly modest.

Keep speaking power to truth, brother!

Just because you're critical of a country doesn't mean you're an anarchist.
--Paraphrase of Daniel Ellsberg on WNYC talking about WikiLeaks