Uhh Yeah... OK.... Whatever you say...

[Andrew D]

Actually, the anti-gay bigotry amendment was barely -- not handily -- approved by those Californians who chose to vote on it. (52% - 48%)

Blessedly, the bigots are dying off. The bigotry amendment was heavily supported by voters who soon will not be among us. Human rights for gay people were heavily supported by the voters who will remain.

Time keeps on tickin', tickin', tickin' into the future ....

[Lord Jim]

So what explains the fact that there are at least five times as many right-wing bigots as left-wing bigots in the US? (You know it's true; for your own sake, please don't humiliate yourself by claiming otherwise.)

How very fortunate for me it is then, that my standards for whether or not I have "humiliated", myself do not rise or fall on the basis of your personal approval....

I have more to say about this, ("right wing bigotry" versus "left wing bigotry") but at the moment I don't have the time....

[Andrew D]

Oh, please. How much time can it take?

Are you seriously suggesting that small-town America is not a hotbed of racism and other forms of bigotry?

Are you seriously suggesting that Americans who are not both white and straight would (if they were to show themselves openly) get a reception in, say, Elgin OR, that would not be a manifestation of bigotry? Or in McCall ID? Or Fort Benton MT? Or Rugby ND? Or Etlan VA? Or Burton WV?

I have been to all of those places, and a whole bunch more, and I can tell you confidently that they would not.

That is small-town America: Staunchly Republican, small-minded, bigoted America.

And that is the America that the Republican Party constantly claims (correctly) as its home territory.

So if you can identify places in America where right-wingers would get the same reception as gay or non-white Americans would get in small-town America -- having the shit kicked out of them before being driven away (if they are relatively lucky) -- have at it.

-------------------------

I am not claiming that there is no left-wing bigotry -- far from it. But the most bigoted people in America are overwhelmingly Republicans, so much so that in many towns across America, simply identifying oneself as a Democrat or as a liberal or as voting for anyone other than the Republican candidate is enough to get one beaten up and tossed into the street.

I am also not claiming -- indeed, I AM EXPRESSLY DISAVOWING any suggestion -- that you are like that. I don't know you especially well, but we have talked some, including talking face to face, and we have posted to each other enough (long since enough) for me to know that you are anything but a narrow-minded, bigoted pig. (Indeed, you may recall that I have from time to time cited you as an example of what I call a "thinking conservative".)

But many -- very very many -- of your copartisans across America are exatly that: narrow-minded, bigoted pigs. When you vote with the Republicans, you are voting with them.

Of course, when I vote with the Democrats (which I often do not; I really am a Libertarian), I vote with the worst elements of that party too. But there is a significant difference: Your party is being taken over by the crazies.

Doesn't that bother you? Doesn't the fact that the loony fringers -- be it "young-earth creationists" for the school board in Texas, or birthers in Michigan, or a House candidate in North Carolina who thinks that the Gulf oil spill was the result of a collusion between BP and the Obama administration, or a gubernatorial candidate in Colorado who thinks that public funding of shared bicycles for commuters is a gateway to abortions -- are taking or have already taken over your party bother you?

I actually have considerable sympathy for the position in which you must find yourself. I am Libertarian, and the loonies have so completely taken over my party that I haven't been able to bring myself to vote for a Libertarian candidate (except when the outcome was so obvious that I knew that the Libertarian candidate had as much chance as snowballs in Hell) for many years. I became a Libertarian, because I was convinced by rational arguments for libertarianism. That was back in the day when Libertarian candidates were people who expressed rational, coherent policies backed up by rational, coherent principles. Those days, lamentably, are long gone. My party's conventions have turned into freak shows.

But the Libertarians had no power then, and we have no power now. So my party's degeneration into madness has had no significant impact on national (or State or even local) politics.

That is not true of your party. The degeneration of the Republican Party into madness has profound implications for national and State and local politics.

Don't you find those implications deeply disturbing?

[Jarlaxle]

That is small-town America: Staunchly Republican, small-minded, bigoted America.

Give me a fucking break. I see small-town America all the time...I spend my vacations there. I was with my wife (not white, obviously not Christian), her best friend (not white, not Christian, covered in tattoos), and her best friend's husband (not white). We went through hundreds of small towns from Iowa to Alabama this year, stopped in many...never got more than a double-take.

[Andrew D]

[We went through hundreds of small towns from Iowa to Alabama this year, stopped in many...never got more than a double-take.

In other words, you stopped at a bunch of diners and motels on the highways. If you went through "hundreds of small towns ... this year," you couldn't have spent much time in any of them. So all you know is how people who have been trained to serve their customers pleasantly act, no matter what they actually think.

I have spent time -- not just eating at the local Denny's but real time -- in small towns across America. I have seen what you blew through too quickly to see.

[Jarlaxle]

This was the Power Tour--no highways, that defeats the purpose. Friendly people were almost universal...the only place I remember them being UNfriendly were Mobile, but that's probably because the idiots in charge of the Tour put us smack in the middle of a pretty bad neighborhood that was derelict-central.

[Andrew D]

Still, assuming that "went through hundreds of small towns from Iowa to Alabama this year, stopped in many" is an accurate description, you spent significant amounts of time in none or almost none of them. Pulling into a town's roadside diner is not the same as spending time in that town.

[Lord Jim]

Are you seriously suggesting that small-town America is not a hotbed of racism and other forms of bigotry?

I'll tell you what I'm seriously suggesting....

That bigotry is no more prevalent in middle America than it is in the Upper West Side of Manhattan, or Cambridge Massachusetts, or Bel Air or Berkley....perhaps more so in those locales...

Over the past several months in fact, with your posts here, you have made yourself a shining example of the sort of sneering, condescending, bigotry of the left that has been a part of our society for a long time...

You seem to be hell bent to prove Rick Sanchez's point about people who, "hate people who aren't like them"...

You've made yourself a perfect case in point....

Your contempt and prejudice towards those who don't meet your rarefied elitist standards of how a person is "supposed" to be is so thick you couldn't cut it with a knife....

You'd need a chainsaw....

The one who really ought to be "embarrassed" about what they've been posting is your own good self....

You've gone completely off the deep end with your constant, repetitive, spouting of predictable, tedious, DNC apologist boiler plate....

You're turning yourself into a caricature....

It's a shame really, you used to be a more interesting, multi-dimensional person....

But lately, every time I read one of your posts I feel like I might as well be reading rubato's....

ETA:

To be perfectly honest Andrew, I'm giving serious consideration to using the "ignore" feature on your posts, at least until after the election. That would be a shame because I generally enjoy your input and perspective, (though I rarely agree with it) but frankly you're so consumed with bitterness over the way the vote is likely to go that it's making you act like an obsessive crank.

[Andrew D]

There is a huge difference among the kinds of bigotries we are talking about, Lord Jim. Whatever I think of some right-wingers -- and I have tried to be careful about distinguishing people whom I consider to be thinking conservatives (of whom, as I have said repeatedly, there are many) from people whom I consider to be mindless sheep -- I don't run around beating them up. Nor do I refuse to deal with them.

That's the kind of bigotry I am talking about with respect to small-town America. If a gay couple were to walk arm in arm down the street in the evening in, say, Elgin OR, it wouldn't be a matter of their merely being sneered at, called "faggot," or even spat on. Not that those things are trivial, but they pale by comparison: A gay couple walking arm in arm down the street in the evening in Elgin would stand a very good chance of taking a beating -- and I mean a severe beating; not a punch in the face but limbs broken with baseball bats. And they would stand a substantial (though lesser) chance of being killed.

So even if I do exhibit "the sort of sneering, condescending, bigotry of the left that has been a part of our society for a long time" -- which would be slightly odd, given that I am not a leftist (consider my numerous postings on Second-Amendment rights, the liberals' ludicrous expansion of the Commerce Clause, and a host of other things) -- I do not do anything like what bigots in small-town America do. I do not even refuse to deal with right-wingers (e.g., refuse to purchase goods at stores operated by them, etc.), let alone do I run around beating and killing them.

As to the tenor of my postings on political matters -- which, you may have noticed, are not the only things about which I post; I cannot see how, for example, my postings in the thread about squatters can rationally be construed as "sneering, condescending, bigotry" -- more later. At the moment, I am cramming this posting in while in the midst of preparing my wife's breakfast and lunch.

[Sue U]

As it happens, this appeared on another site today:

AMERICA IS THINKING!
Jesus-Loving Barber Will Be Nice To Muslims ‘Even Tho They Wrong’

Seems to say it all, but in case you need to see more, for some reason:
http://wonkette.com/424828/jesus-loving ... they-wrong

[rubato]

The sneering bigotry of the right wing murdered Matthew Shepard and tied his body to a fence and beat Emmit Till until he was no longer recognizable as human.

The the sneering bigotry of the right acquitted Till's murderers (who admitted their guilt later on) and few the confederate battle flag in celebratory glory of the vile hatred it represents.

Liberals don't do things like that. They are not mindless animals like the bigots of the right wing are.

yrs,
rubato

[Big RR]

Liberals don't do things like that. They are not mindless animals like the bigots of the right wing are.

Really rubato? i recall a number of leftist groups that indiscriminately blew up and torched buildings and indiscriminately killed and maimed innocent people during the 60s and 70s (the violence was a reason i left the antiwar movement). The right has plenty of idiots, but it hardly has a monopoly on them.

[Jarlaxle]

i recall a number of leftist groups that indiscriminately blew up and torched buildings and indiscriminately killed and maimed innocent people during the 60s and 70s

And I recall President Obama's good friend being part of one of those groups!

[loCAtek]

I don't recall R's two examples to have been politically motivated in any way.

[Andrew D]

An addition to my previous posting:

"Small-town America" (what I was talking about) and "middle America" (the term Lord Jim used) are not synonymous. Elgin OR is part of "small-town America," but its location in the Columbia Plateau hardly puts it in "middle America". Nor is Etlan VA, east of the Blue Ridge Mountains, in "middle America". Nor is McCall ID. Etc. Conversely, Oklahoma City OK and Kansas City KS/MO are part of "middle America," but with populations of over half a million each, they are hardly parts of "small-town America".

My point at the moment is not about geographic location (although when we deal with whole States, it obviously has a strong correlation to geographic location(s)) but about cultural insularity. All across America, there are small towns which are islands of white heterosexuality, and the people of those towns want to keep it that way. And they vote overwhelmingly Republican.

City-Data does not list information about residents' sexual orientations. But it does list information about residents' races. According to it, McCall is 96.0% white, Elgin is 96.1% white, Fort Benton is 97.6% white, and Rugby is 97.8% white. (I do not see information about Burton or Etlan.)

The one with which I am most familiar is Elgin. (I have friends there; I've visited numerous times, and I've been just about everywhere in town (which is not very difficult in a town of 1654 people).)

You probably won't find any reports of race- or sexual-orientation-based hate crimes in Elgin. They appear not to happen.

Well, of course not. No black person or gay couple in her/his/their right mind(s) would spend any significant time in Elgin.

(City-data says that there are 22 hispanic people, 6 Pacific islanders, 1 black person, and 1 Asian person in Elgin. In all of my visits there, I have never seen any of those people. Maybe their ancestries are not obvious (they are "passing"). Maybe they live far on the outskirts, so that the locals do not consider them to be living "in" Elgin. Maybe, by some odd anti-coincidence, our paths have just never crossed. Maybe city-data is just wrong. For whatever reason, in all my times strolling on Elgin's streets and patronizing Elgin's stores, bars (both of them), restaurants, etc., I have never laid eyes on anyone who appeared to me to be anything other than white. (With the possible exception of people in gas stations whom I assumed to be on their way Joseph and to Hell's Canyon, and I don't actually remember even any of them.))

I've spent time -- not just stopped for lunch -- in small towns around most of the US. And virtually all of them are like that. (The only exception that occurs to me at the moment is Nevada City CA, which, despite also being lily-white (91.6%) is a small oasis of liberalism in the Sierra Foothills.)

The residents are friendly toward (if slightly suspicious of) outsiders. They are generous with their time in helping lost tourists find their way. Service in their restaurants is attentive and cheerful (although the food is rarely good, and there is an overwhelming tendency toward dep-fried everything). And so forth.

But they are also astonishingly ignorant. Illiteracy is high: You can buy "bird feaders," "family resturants" caution against the use of "course language," and so on. Judging by their conversations, both those I've participated in and those I've overheard, most of them can't keep Iraq and Afghanistan even roughly straight, most of them think that the phrase "under God" has always been in the pledge of allegiance, most of them can't place Pakistan even on the correct continent, most of them believe that Obama is a Muslim, and on and on and on.

And they vote overwhelmingly Republican.

Without them, the Republican Party would be in the political wilderness. For the eighty-zillionth time, that is not to say that most Republicans are that ignorant or even close to it. It is to say that those people are a vital part of the Republican base. To paraphrase John Stuart Mill, the problem is not that most conservatives are ignorant and/or stupid; that is plainly untrue. The problem is that most people who are ignorant and/or stupid are also conservative.

[Crackpot]

You really underestimate "Small Town America" My wifes' Home town even to my surprise is the home of a cross dresser who seems to have made quite a decent life for himself in the town. Not to mention he performs an invaluable task for us in keeping an eye on the MIL.

[Jarlaxle]

ou can buy "bird feaders," "family resturants" caution against the use of "course language," and so on.

And in Massachusetts, you see a sign on a restaurant function room door saying "NO ADMITTANCE-PRIVATE POTTERY".

And of course, Crackpot...he's an elitist. What do you expect?!

[Crackpot]

Actually his story is quite interesting. He came to the town from Vegas with his lover (who's local) at which point his lover decided to start beating him. Instead of ostracizing him the town and local church (catholic even) took him in and got him back on his feet.

[Andrew D]

I do not "'hate people who aren't like [me]'".

(Well, of course, I hate some people who aren't like me: I hate child molesterers and torturers, etc., and they are not like me. But I don't hate them because they are not like me; I hate them because they are loathsome.)

I do not hate right-wingers. (Come on, Lord Jim, we've met in person and dined together (as part of a larger group). Did I ever do anything suggesting that I hate you? We've chatted on the phone several times. Have I ever said anything suggesting that I hate you?)

I do think that right-wingers are wrong about many things. (But not about everything: How many times have I agreed with right-wingers about gun laws? About property rights? About the power of the federal government as exercised through the liberals' wildly wrongheaded interpretations of the Commerce Clause?)

That should be self-evident: If I thought that right-wingers were right about most things, I would probably be a right-winger.

And I do hate some right-wingers. But I do not hate them because of their views; I hate them because of the things they do in accordance with those views.

"In accordance with" does not mean "compelled by." One can consider homosexuality immoral and, in accordance with that view, seek to deny homosexuals equal rights at every opportunity. On the other hand, one can consider homosexuality immoral but not seek to deny homosexuals equal rights. And even if one does seek to deny them equal rights, it is one thing to do so at the ballot box, and it is quite another to do so with a baseball bat.

I am, as I have said before, a left-libertarian. Libertarians come in a variety of versions (some of which embarrass me). Too many of them, in my opinion, emphasize issues which align them with the right and deemphasize issues which would align them with the left. I tend to go the other way.

Still, I have friends and loved ones of all political stripes. My wife is somewhat to the left of me; we have been together some twenty years. Our housemate is so far to the left that he makes The Nation look like a middle-of-the-road publication. One friend of mine since high school is a career police officer, a person that some over at the Other Place would call a "gun queer," and a staunch Republican. That has not interfered with our friendship.

I recently spent a delightful, albeit too short, time at the home of someone who has been a dear friend for as long as I can remember. (He was a friend of my late father's since before I was born, and in my memory, he has simply always been there.) Many people here have probably heard of him. He is one of the Episcopal bishops who have taken their dioceses out of the Episcopal (i.e., U.S. Anglican) Church but not out of the Worldwide Anglican Communion.

(His diocese became part of the Anglican Communion's Province of the Pacific Cone. At the moment, he and like-minded bishops are forming (or perhaps have formed; the details are intricate) the Anglican Church of North America. Regardless of the ecclesiastical puzzles, the point is that he has made the news, not only in church circles but in secular circles as well.)

He is very conservative. The triggering event for his taking his diocese out of the Episcopal Church was the Episcopal Church's consecration of an openly gay man, living openly with a male partner, as a bishop. But even before that, he opposed the ordination of women to the priesthood. (Due to the Episcopal Church's "ratchet rule," he did not have to ordain any women as priests in his diocese, and he never has. But there was nothing he could do about the consecration as bishop of an openly practicing homosexual as a bishop except leave the Episcopal Church. Which he has done.)

Besides his theological conservatism, he is also very conservative politically. In the back window of his car, there are two stickers. One is in support of Proposition 8, which overturned the California Supreme Court and amended the California Constitution to prohibit gay marriage. The other says "TEA PARTY" and, underneath that, "Taxed Enough Already".

I disagree with both of those political positions, as well as with many other of his political positions, and he knows it. He knows full well that I support gay-marriage rights -- his sticker says "Restore Marriage," and he knows that by my lights, marriage did not need any "restoring" -- and he knows that I do not support the Tea Party thing.

(My issue with taxation is not that there is too much of it; it is that we are not getting our money's worth. Eventually, if we somehow manage to construct a libertarian society (as distinct from an anarcho-libertarian dystopia), we will pay far less in taxes than we do now, because we will expect the government to do far less than it does now. Meanwhile, however, the taxes that we pay ought to bring us the benefits for which we are paying, rather than being pissed away.)

Nonetheless, we had a great time together. We talked about all sorts of things -- his love of old movies and my thoughts about more modern films, his Wagnerianism and my tendency toward more purely classical classical music, various books we had read and recommended to each other (including, in my case, at least one book which has a very different take on some theological matters close to his heart) -- and we interacted on a deeply human level.

Some of our conversation was about deeply personal things. The details of that belong to me and him; the point is that our deep disagreements, about things theological and about things secular, did not get in the way of a powerful personal connection.

And I see no reason why the same should not be true here.

I try to differentiate views which I hate but people hold from the people who hold those views. But I have often failed, and I will almost certainly fail again.

(Some here may recall that I said to and about Lord Jim horrid things which had no justification. I apologized; he graciously, despite having no obligation whatsoever to do so, accepted (an act which I think, in itself, is as abundant a demonstration of his fundamental goodness as one could ask for); and we moved on.)

I can only hope that when I sloppily say something about someone's purported ignorance, people here will recognize that what I meant, even though I failed to say it the right way, was that the view expressed was, in my opinion, ignorant.

But I do not wish to dodge things either. It is true that there are times when my failure to distinguish a person's views from the person her- or himself, that is just sloppiness on my part.

But not always. Sometimes, I just get pissed off. I insult people, not by accident (some sort of sloppiness on my part) but on purpose. I become irate, and I say things to and about people which, in the heat of those moments, I really do mean -- but which I regret later. I don't regret them because I didn't mean them (that would be too easy); what I regret is that I did mean them, but now I realize that I should not have meant them.

I haven't found a cure for that affliction. If anyone out there has one, please let me know.

[Andrew D]

I find it interesting to be called an elitist.

There are ways in which I am what one could call an elitist, and I am so unabashedly: I resolutely think that when it comes to any particular subject, the opinions of those who are knowledgeable about that subject should be given far more weight than should the opinions of those who are not knowledgeable about that subject.

And I think that there are subjects about which I am more knowledgeable than are most other people. So on those subjects, I think that my opinions should be given more weight (a bit more, a lot more, or overwhelmingly more, depending on the relative degrees of knowledge).

I guess that makes me an elitist. When it comes to, say, the meaning and import of the Tenth Amendment, well, I have read a great deal about it. (When it comes to legal matters, reading is the primary way of learning.) I have read what those involved in its writing and adoption by Congress and its ratification by the States had to say about it. I have read scholarly interpretations of it -- from all over the political spectrum -- ranging from the eighteenth century to the twenty-first century. I have read reams of Supreme Court opinions about it.

I think that my study of the Tenth Amendment has equipped me to present opinions about it which should carry far more weight than should the opinions of those who have studied it very little. In that sense, I guess that I am a Tenth-Amendment elitist.

(And that is true, it seems to me, of a host of other legal matters. I have been studying legal matters for decades, and I think that all that study has given me a better understanding of those matters than the understanding of those who have barely studied them at all. (Even so, there are various legal matters which I have not studied with as much care as I have studied others. That is why I have often deferred to others who have studied those matter more carefully -- Sue U on matters concerning health insurance, Andy H on matters concerning housing law, etc.))

But that elitism, if elitism is what that is, cuts both ways. I would readily defer to Jarlaxle or QuadDriver on a matter concerning auto mechanics. I know very little about auto mechanics, whereas they appear to know a great deal.

And I do not intend that to be in any way condescending. Auto mechanics is important. If I am stuck at the side of the highway, my ability to discuss coherently the differences between Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics and Kant's Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals is not going to do me a damn bit of good. Because I know very little about auto mechanics, I would find myself at the mercy of those who know much more than I do. I can only hope that they would be charitable.

So when it comes to auto mechanics, one could say that because Jarlaxle and QuadDriver know so much more about it than do most of us (I don't think that I am going out on a limb with that), their postings on that subject are elitist. And one could say the same thing about loCAtek's postings on the subject of welding, Gob's postings on the subject of British (or Australian) politics, @meric@n wom@n's postings on subjects having to do with nursing, rubato's postings on various things having to do with physics and chemistry, and so forth.

But in another way, and it may be more important, I think that I am not an elitist. Indeed, I think that I am quite the opposite.

Just recently I bemoaned the fact that higher education in California's public schools is no longer free. In other words, I expressed the opinion that higher education in California's public schools should be available to everyone who possesses the intellectual wherewithal to pursue it.

(I presume that we can all agree that making higher education available to people who have shown themselves unable to master lower education would be a waste. Anyone who thinks that affording a free higher education in English Literature to someone who has not been able to master nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs should just write me off as an elitist and be done with it.)

Is that an elitist position? It seems to me that it is an anti-elitist position. The elistist position is the one that prevails now: Regardless of your talents, regardless of how hard you have worked to master the things that high school requires of you, you cannot get a higher education in California's public schools unless you have a big pile of money behind you -- unless you are already among the elite.

(Or you are willing to assume a huge quantity of debt.)

The anti-elitist position, it seems to me, is mine: It doesn't matter whether you grew up accustomed to yachting when the waters are calm, going on safari during summer vacation, and having your bed made for you and your meals prepared for you by your family's domestic staff. It doesn't matter whether you grew up with a crackhead-prostitute mother, an absent father whose name you never even knew, and stray bullets from drive-by shootings forcing you to dive into the bathtub in order to survive.

What matters is what intelligence or talent you bring to the table. (Intelligence and talent are, of course, not the same things: Great cellists and great woodworkers do not need to be great expositors of medieval scholasticism, and vice-versa.) If you have what it takes to succeed in a higher education in architecture or history or music or political science or sculpture or whatever, you can pursue that education. If you are rich, you can pursue that education. And if you are poor, you can pursue that education.

Isn't that quite contrary to an "elitist" position?