Unfortunately, the headline and byline makes the link impossible to read.
I have a caricature in my head of the racist/sexist/xenophobic ur-Republican that I want nothing to do with, but most of the UMC Rs I actually know bug me for a different reason: they claim to be not-racist/not-sexist/not-xenophobic, but paying less in taxes is the single most important priority in their lives. This arrangement of priorities and/or, being generous, willful blindness to the actual effects of R policies, seems especially monstrous to me. That said, there's lots of Rs in my extended family and the simple solution to the problem is to restrict all talk to the weather and the parenting failures of persons not present.
I think all the moderate Republicans in my family have switched over the past decade.
Isn't it that back then, knowing whether someone was a Republican or a Democrat told you much less about whether you sympathized with them politically?
1 unfortunately gets it right -- though I'd read half the article before noticing the byline. I've somehow forgotten when, or even quite why, I conceived a hatred for Sunstein, but there it is.
That said! I'd love for people to ditch the derogatory use of the word "partisan". We seem to have gotten to the point where both a strong liberal and a strong conservative (or Democrat/Republican) are considered extremists, which is arguably the greatest con job the Republican party has pulled off in recent decades.
4: Sorta in 1960, in that the Dixie Democrats were abhorrent. Also, there was a historical window of solid Democratic dominance that created a group of "moderate" Republicans (in order to run against incumbent Dems in the North, for instance)
But Republicans still had a history of opposing the New Deal, Huac and Red-baiting, Robert Taft and union-busting, etc. Palmer raids. Coolidge.
No, I did not even like Edward Brooke, and it is interesting what policy position Wiki doesn't mention. A "liberal" Republican was still a Republican, even if slightly better than a Dixiecrat.
Agree with 2. Also, personally, of course I'd be enraged if my my kids married Republicans, especially of the kind described in 2 (becoming say a hardcore evangelical social conservative would be deeply disappointing, but forgivable; becoming an "I've got mine" anti-tax type equals automatic disowning).
The reason for the historical change isn't hyper-partisanship, it's just that the parties have become ideological and cultural blocs for pretty much the first time ever. If my daughter wanted to marry the reanimated ideological corpse of Republican John Lindsay that'd probably be fine.
the parenting failures of persons not present.
And yet somehow, the subject can still turn to politics, e.g., how the poor people on welfare don't feed their children proper lunches, and that's why welfare is bad.
7: it's just that the parties have become ideological and cultural blocs for pretty much the first time ever
Do you have time or patience to spell this out a bit? I'm reading "ideological" as "partisan" here -- insofar as the latter term has come to carry the taint of the former -- but I'm perhaps ignorantly not understanding what the parties *not* being ideological amounted to back in the day.
That is, again perhaps ignorantly: what was it to be a Democrat vs. a Republican in 1960? What were the issues or positions that decided whether you'd be one or the other, and how were those differentiating positions not ideological?
4: Right, and at least in MA, Republicans in the well-off suburbs were more likely to be pro-choice and support Planned Parenthood than working class "ethnic" Democrats.
Ugh, the subject of adjusting to who your kids marry is so fraught.
8: While welfare queens are generally not present, we typically restrict discussion to SIL A who spoils here kids and SIL B who doesn't spoil them enough.
11: Especially if you describe in great detail the type of butt they should have.
Here in Arkansas, my kid goes to school with (mostly) far-Right Republicans. It has gotten fraught, more than once.
When she was about eight, for instance, she came home from school with the news that one of her better friends had told her that *her* mother said that all Democrats were "dirty inside."
Which, wow. Great parenting, Mom.
(OTOH, on my part, I've told my kid I'll love her no matter what she does, but just please don't marry a Republican, okay?
"You're saying you won't love me if I marry a Republican?" she asks.
"No, I'll love you no matter what," I say. "But please. Just don't."
"Oh, Mom," she says, rolling her eyes. "I'm not an IDIOT.")
I don't want to overstate the case, which I think gets done way too much, in that already by 1960 it was pretty clear that the Democrats were broadly speaking the party of more social democracy and the New Deal and Republicans broadly speaking were not. But there was still a really huge amount if ideological range in the parties; Earl Warren was a Republican and plenty of far-right Dixiecrats were nominally Democrats, so the party labels weren't reliable indicators of whether or not you should disown your children. And the times were just different. The 1960 Republican platform to Nixon looks positively left (on the economy) by today's standards.
Especially at the rehearsal dinner.
*her* mother said that all Democrats were "dirty inside."
To be perfectly fair, my kids pretty much believe this about Republicans.
Ha. Now that I think about it, two years ago Cassidy was hesitant to trick or treat at the (only) house in our neighborhood with a Romney sign in the yard.
The two houses on my street that had Romney signs didn't pass out treats. Which seems about right. The people with Obama stickers on their cars were cutting off enough people that maybe it wasn't helping.
My daughter dated a 9/11 Truther for quite a while. Worse than an I've-got-mine Republican? Actually, not.
I'd be ok with adding John Lindsay to the family.
Lindsay would be a Democrat today.
It's not just the greed, it's also the suspension of disbelief that I absolutely cannot respect.
Yes. Greed isn't hard for me to relate to.
The reveling in greed is a bit of a stretch. I prefer my greed to be sneaky.
15: But there was still a really huge amount if ideological range in the parties; Earl Warren was a Republican and plenty of far-right Dixiecrats were nominally Democrats, so the party labels weren't reliable indicators
Maybe it's that they weren't reliable indicators of *what we now consider* to be the relevant ideological markers. I'm wondering whether the indicators were different back then, but still might have been called ideological, back then.
It doesn't really seem enough to suppose that party affiliation in 1960 was a matter of something besides ideology, say a matter of tribal or inherited affiliation, because that's still the case today. But I'm having trouble seeing what else there could be: if you don't choose a party because you agree with its policy positions (its ideology), why else do you choose it?
9-11 trutherism isn't so bad because its rooted in crazy, not evil.
Is there supposed to be a difference between a party's policy positions and its ideology? Is there a suggestion that the parties didn't used to have an ideology (be ideological)?
"The two houses on my street that had Romney signs didn't pass out treats."
This was true here in AR also. Except it was a lot more than two houses.
My stepdaughter is engaged, but the wedding seems to be put off indefinitely. I'm relieved, as I suspect if/when it happens she'll want a much bigger production than I'll be comfortable with, but I do recognize I am unreasonable in thinking everyone should just elope. Or go to City Hall at most. I mostly though feel a bit bad for the guy, who seems perfectly nice and absolutely in love with her, whereas I'm never quite certain she is as committed to him. I cannot tell if it is an expressiveness thing or just she's not that gaga over him. This is tricky as her father and I continue to be immoderately, passionately in love with each other and it is impossible not to want the same for all three kids. And for their partners! And everyone in the world! But awkward to say "are you sure you really love this guy?", no that is not a conversation I am going to have.
My stepson has had a girlfriend for several years who we've never seen much of, but the one holiday meal she came to several years ago I found her frankly alarming. She kept on telling fantastical, impossible to believe stories about herself that weren't even flattering, they were just worrying and bizarre. And clearly, plainly, on their face impossible to believe. I kept on frantically trying to factor in all the nervousness I could for her and then re-run each alarming utterance, hoping to conclude that when properly weighted for what must have been a highly stressful evening for her each statement on its own was not in fact waaaaaaay far out there. But no, never worked.
Also, she kept on going on and on and on about being obsessed with babies, pregnancy, children and it was VERY VERY WORRYING but nothing seems to come of that thus far.
I think I've mentioned this before, but I seem to know quite a few Republicans who have horrible views on issues like immigration and taxes, but are pretty decent in their personal conduct. (With the obvious caveat that pretty much all my friends are kind of weird, and probably nothing like real people.)
I think I have an easier time dealing with people who vote the other way every two years, than people who are selfish or unkind in their everyday lives. And I have an easier time understanding Republicans whose views come from direct experience, than those whose views come from Fox News.
Generally, though, I think there can be a pretty big discrepancy between how someone thinks government should behave, and how they think ordinary people should behave.
Both stepchildren's partners are personally very attractive. As are all our children. So if we end up having to take a more active role than preferred in the raising of the next generation due to the bat shit craziness of parents then at least they will likely be easy on the eyes.
34: KR, by "sectional" you mean regional?
36: How is that different now? Aren't party affiliations regionally and ethnically aligned now? In what way was it not ideological then, but it is now?
In the absence of any answers from the "it's ideological now!" crowd, I'll consider that among the significant changes since 1960 is that fewer and fewer people are self-identified Christians. How many people, after all, would be dismayed to learn that their child proposed to marry an atheist?
I've just finished reading the Sunstein piece, and the term "party prejudice" is just annoying.
One more time: Ornstein and Mann charts on political polarization.
Yes, 40 is right. Though even in regions where party affiliation wasn't so identified with regionalism, party affiliation could mask a really wide range of ideological diversity. E.g., Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan, on the one hand, and Earl Warren and Thomas Kuchel (now obscure figure, liberal California Republican who as Senate whip helped pass the 65 Civil Rights Act), on the other, were all California Republicans in 1960 (even though the California Republican party was still clearly the more anti-union, anti-social-democracy party).
One of the guys from my writing group has just started dating a Republican.
Well, "just." It's been about six months now.
The transformation is abysmal. She's pretty awful* and he's getting worse by the day. About a month ago, he posted something really hateful on FB (about how welfare mothers were like leeches, basically) and when I called him on it, went off on me.
*By awful: she's isolating him from his friends, she's inculcating him with some pretty terrible political opinions, and she's a 2nd Amendment /Ayn Randite / survivialist who won't shut up about it.
Thanks, Witt. Polarization is real (and asymmetric).
[S]he's isolating him from his friends, she's inculcating him with some pretty terrible political opinions, and she's a 2nd Amendment /Ayn Randite / survivialist who won't shut up about it.
"Now it's just 'fugue' this and 'concerto' that: I don't even recognize him anymore! The other day he posted something on FB about Sir Simon Rattle and I told him that I don't think adults ought to admit reading the Harry Potter books."
45: No, I was unclear or you didn't read me correctly. I'm aware of the intolerance. My point was that atheists are anathema these days among the electorate, and since most atheists affiliate with the Democratic party, there looks to be a shift from regional/ethnic allegiance to something people are calling ideological.
So the South represented an anomalous block of very conservative Dems,
But southern Dems were pretty ideologically diverse, except on the issue of segregation.
Yeah, on government works and infrastructure stuff, they were FDR's best allies.
Yep, 48 and 49 are also true.
Still wouldn't want my daughter to date a Republican, though.
||
Oh my god, am I ready for this election to be over so I don't have to hear any more of Thom Tillis' stupid-ass Senate campaign ads. The RNC must be dumping truckloads of money into this race because they are just non-stop.
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57: This is basically the people I'm describing in 2. "I'm basically centrist but I hate taxes so much I'll vote for the intellectually dishonest racist demagogues."
It is mildly gratifying to reprove the 57&58 attitude as free-lunch-ism. & when they argue that gov't is corrupt, double down on participation as part of the cost. Behooves one to order one's own house first.
60hr/wk precarious jobs & changing city every seven years makes participation really hard, of course.
It may help to imagine that for Republicans, the "Southern Strategy" had been a horizon for decades.
What was a Southern Democrat in 1948 to do, if Southern blacks, committed Democrats since FDR, got the vote? They would certainly drive the Democratic Party far to the left of what Dixiecrats could tolerate.
And Northern Republicans understood this, and their supposedly "principled" support for Civil Rights, never accompanied by increases in gov't spending in their own agenda, was always first and foremost about breaking apart the Democratic Coalitions, first in the South, then next in Northern Urban areas.
And then, by taking New Deal Federal spending projects off the table in the 80s with tax cuts, denying Democrats any possibilities of rebuilding a coalition.
Any hypothetical son or daughter in law who says "I'm fiscally conservative but socially liberal" is gonna have to eat Thanksgiving dinner with somebody besides me.
55.2-- I'm Facebook friends with this French cheese vendor here (also sells dried meats, that's why he's my FB friend) who combines (a) posts in English with standard US liberal platitudes, including being pro gay marriage, anti-war, anti-Republican etc. and (b) posts in French that are openly pro-Front National, with attractive racial politics to match. Not quite sure whether one or the other is a sham, whether he's just happy to live with the contradictions for different coointries, or whether there actually aren't that many true inconsistencies.
60: Took me a bit to puzzle that one out, but "As I'm sure I have mentioned here before." Also AISIMHB. Seems unique to Unfogged, possibly started by Sifu.
Yes, started by Sifu, and it seems like it's finally starting to catch on (unfortunately).
I don't really agree with the sequence of events in 52. the Republicans were moving towards polarizing to the right faster than Democrats were to the left for basically the entire post-WWII period. Worth remembering that the Republicans nominated Goldwater in '64 and supported Nixon and McCarthy in the 1950s. There was definitely a much wider range in the Republican Party but I do think that Bob's basic instinct is right -- even many liberal/moderate Republicans were basically anti-union corporate shittheads who were more than happy to move to the right when political space opened up for them to do so, and were happy to push in that direction. The fact that the Republican Party of 1960 was way better and less conservative than the Republican Party of today (which is true) shouldn't make us romanticize it too much.
I thought it was "As I suspect..." rather than "As I'm sure..."
62.2: Maybe racist French and liberal Americans are the biggest buyers of cheese.
OT: Air travel is a wretched, suffocating misery. Sure, let the security checkpoint personnel disperse for coffee breaks during a terminal lockdown--that makes a world of sense.
Air travel through JFK is especially miserable, IME.
The phrase "mentioned here before" sure does get a lot of Google hits when restricted to this site. We like to repeat ourselves, don't we?
73 pwned by dsquared in a righteous snitfir, long ago
As dsquared has mentioned here before.
I wonder if dsquared ever mentioned it before.
Is "tu" someone old, new, or typing poorly.
Is there some bizarre distinction between meat and cheese in the paleo pantheon?
In M experience French people generally see zero correspondence between USian racism and their own. Strange but consistent across class, background, political affiliation, etc.
Do I repeat myself? Very well, then repeat myself. I am large. I contain multitudes of really tedious things.
Is there some bizarre distinction between meat and cheese in the paleo pantheon?
That seems a really common distinction made by nearly everyone.
You can't melt ham and mix it with other ham, for starters.
But within the paleo world view of carbohydrates = trilateral commission/satan/all that is unholy?
That ceremony was done in under ten minutes. I'm impressed.
Respect!
Still think universal elopement the way to go.
Further to 79.2, not that anyone is interested, but general French view is USian racism attributable to original sin of chattel slavery, whereas French racism just pragmatic, hard headed realism born from bitter experience.
How is that Unfogged, alone amongst all blogs of a political bent, ended up with no trolls from the right? Am I forgetting some big purge from the Golden Age (before Ogged left us, and before he returned and absolved us of our sins)?
I appreciate the clarification on AISIHMHB, because I thought it was pronounced "here comes a story about hacking in the olden days."
James B. Shearer is the only long-lasting one I can remember. And even he wasn't that bad.
Oh, right. He was the one who was always being a little bit racist, right?
Yes, racist and philosophically opposed to teachers getting paid money.
You guys totally don't have to use AISIMHB. I was making fun of myself for telling the same damn stories over and over, but I've probably made my point. The next time I post nearly this exact comment I'm totally prepending it AISIMHB, though.
If we're repeating ourselves, you guys have seen tilde.club, right? This should bring back some memories.
I don't actually get too hung up about this, in part because I expect my kids to reject me (and to some degree they already do) and in part because I think my parents have to be okay with at least three of the four of us being atheist rather than Catholic and the last mostly just being polite, and I'd hope I could extend the same grace to my children. My parents are clear about how they wish I were religious and conservative, and probably that matters more than for my brothers since I have children, but they're more or less happy with how the girls are being raised and we get along okay. As long-time readers may recall, there was a time when Mara was first placed with us when my mom was really upset because it was one thing for us to foster teens, but a healthy (in some respects) toddler should have gone to a "normal" home, and so we were ready to cut them off but then of course they fell in love with her and have been good as grandparents since.
In other news, I'm writing this as the older girls fall asleep, and the last 8 minutes where none of them have talked to me have been my first in the last 13 hours, because I didn't even rate any totally unaccompanied bathroom time today. I am so impressed by single parents. (Though in fact Lee was with me for much more than a normal weekend day, but this time around it didn't particularly lighten my load.)
Further to 101.1 is come on, how conservative can the black kids of queer/poor (whichever they choose to identify with more as adults) parents really get without being nonsensically self-hating to a degree that's hard to imagine? So I realize I'm grading on an imagined curve here.
103: I haven't even told the blog about Mara's imaginary boyfriend, Bar/be/cue Sa/uce Jon/es, right? They go out every night and eat shrimp and drink wine and have similar adventures. Seriously, we got through 18 months of Nia's crush on Justin Bieber and have dealt with various less-than-hoped-for relationships in their birth families fine. I think we can cope, right?
Also, and perhaps unsurprisingly, Lee is drawn to the broiest bros in the world, the kind of people Mallory Ortberg considers too dirtbag to be worthy of dirtbag quotations, so between the two of us we cover a lot of ground.
But seriously, Lee never came out to her parents, (bio grandparents who adopted her, so born to sharecroppers about a century ago). I think they would have liked me as a person even if they wouldn't have liked me as a partner for her, but I don't think that has any bearing on me or our relationship or on them as worthwhile people. I don't know; maybe I'm not good at this thing about imagining children's future partners.
If it hadn't been for hyper-partisans, everybody in Russia would be speaking German right now.
102: To the extent that I rebelled against my parents, I've become more liberal/radical, so there's always that.
I rebelled against my parents by doing the sorts of things they did, but less successfully.
AISIMHB. Seems unique to Unfogged, possibly started by Sifu.
Does anyone else mentally pronounce this "a-him-sub"? Like a sub-ahimsa level of nonviolence?
Perhaps the lurkers support him in email.
I mean "Ay-eye sim hub" sounds like some kind of computery thing, so I suppose that would fit with it's ultimate origin.
(That's the emoticon for "meh Odin")
My politics are embarrassingly similar to those of my parents, except that I'm less eerily like bob mcmanus than my mother, and I am for generational reasons less racist/anti-immigrant/anti-gay than either of them. (They're not terrible -- they're not embarrassing in public -- but there's stuff they need to get over. And of course I'm nowhere near perfect.) But on the basic economics/class/come the revolution, blood will flow in streets like borscht issues, I haven't rebelled at all.
I'm a lot further left than my parents, but they've always kinda egged me on. Pretty sure they would have been welcoming, if perplexed, if I had brought home a Republican.
My delightful niece had a very longterm relationship with a super-smart, comes-from-money, super-nice guy who was also brought up to be liberal in the normal, sensible way. Great guy.
She broke up with him, changed her own politics and married a rightwing religious Southerner whose prospects in life are mediocre at best and who, by all appearances, is also a great guy.
I spent a long time talking her mother down from a ledge. She had spent years bragging about the first guy, and essentially planning their wedding. She had a hard time accepting the breakup and subsequent events, but she ultimately worked it out.
My own daughter isn't old enough yet for this to be a concern, but I have little confidence that I will react with equanimity if I am similarly tested.
It's possible that I'm slightly to the left of my parents on economic issues but we pretty much have exactly the same politics. I remember my Mom telling me at age 6 or so that I was much smarter than President Reagan. I thought it was meant as a compliment but of course it wasn't.
My grandfather was a for real commie though. I used to think I was to his right but now I'm not sure, except of course in my choice of soul-crushing occupation. But also held elected office and sold a horse racing betting system to Texas Instruments, so was pretty all around awesom.
I'm trying to figure out which parts of 120, if any, seem below Halford. And I'm also a little sad the thread got beyond 117, but at least it did it well!
Beneath, I suppose, rather than below. I blame exhaustion but wish I could blame alcohol. Maybe if I stayed up later drinking I could blame both.
From way, way, way up above:
I think I've mentioned this before, but I seem to know quite a few Republicans who have horrible views on issues like immigration and taxes, but are pretty decent in their personal conduct...I think I have an easier time dealing with people who vote the other way every two years, than people who are selfish or unkind in their everyday lives. And I have an easier time understanding Republicans whose views come from direct experience, than those whose views come from Fox News. Generally, though, I think there can be a pretty big discrepancy between how someone thinks government should behave, and how they think ordinary people should behave.
I base a lot of my life on this difference. There are many genuinely lovely people with awful views on public policy. But when you're talking about my inner circle of friends: nope, it's a deal-breaker. I will not get that close to you. I totally get this discrepancy, but I also seriously hope my kids don't marry one of these sorts.
Also, we should have a Commies In The Family competition because I consider it a bragging point. AISIHMHB. Aren't I novel.
Also the tigers are at the Mirage, not the MGM, and they're not free to see in the lobby anymore, but rather in a newly built sanctuary that's rather nice. And given that Vegas charges you $60 to sneeze, $20 to see some white tigers seemed reasonable, and then we paid $30 for some ice cream, because fuck you Vegas.
At the large family gathering for breaking the fast this evening I asked my daughter what role politics played in her breaking up with her college boyfriend. She said it was ultimately how she knew they'd never make it work. He insisted that he would not want to send his kids to an urban public school, and she realized that not only had that system produced her, but she was preparing to devote her life to it. She says a lot of other opinions: taxes, race, urban/country, class were rolled up in it but that made it stark.
My dad considered himself a democratic socialist, but definitely not a commie. He had gone to volunteer to fight in Spain and backed out when he realized how CP the reps in Nova Scotia were.
Had by some weird chance Anarchists with POUM connections been the people he encountered he'd have gone, I think. Canada certainly has an Anarchist tradition but not in the Maritimes.
No blood relative I know about has ever been to the left of my dad and I, and my son and daughter. Most, including my brother and sister, quite a bit to the right of us on every conceivable issue.
That first detail is probably AISIMHB; I know I mention my dad a lot.
Huh, I had never actually heard that about your dad. Neat! Probably just as well, if he wasn't comfortable going along with the Party -- lots of people like that got shot in the back. One of these days I am going to make it up to Thunder Bay and go to the fabled Italian anti-fascist taverns. Although probably the actual guys are all in nursing homes now.
My dad was PL in 1969 - I can never remember if that meant Stalinist or Trotskyite, but it was one of the two, and he got on the front page being led out of a briefly occupied university building thanks to his big hair. He's no longer politically active in any way, that burned out I think, but he's still quite the lefty, formerly more than me but maybe not anymore.
On the quien es mas communisto front there's some family legend that someone in my Grandfather's family, who stayed in Russia, didn't just stop at party affiliation but became a full-on Red Army general under Trotsky in the teens and 20s. I've never known if there's any truth to the claim and don't even know the details, it seems like it should be pretty easy to check these days but it's pretty impossible to Google around for Russian sources and no one has maintained any memory or connection to family history. It does seem true that the folks who came here were OG Russian communists or socialists well before coming to America in about 1914.
Some of my favorite anecdotes about Simone Weil turn on the combination of her extraordinary clumsiness and obsession with the virtues of manual labor. She was eager to fight in the Spanish Civil War, but friends were deeply concerned about the thought of her wielding a firearm. Her parents secretly followed her to Spain, and it didn't take long for her to get badly injured stepping into a pot of cooking oil at a camp. It was then a real effort to find a hospital that would treat a combatant on the socialist side, and her father, who was a doctor, had to run interference to get her admitted. They took her back to France as quickly as possible, where she resumed her efforts to find some kind of factory work where she would have any chance at all of keeping up, not breaking everything, not shutting down the assembly line, etc. The work she finally found did give her real insight into labor conditions and human condition, although she absolutely sucked at it (despite giving 150% all the time).
I met a Spanish Civil War veteran in Madison, during my periods home from college. He was pretty old at the time but still gave presentations about his experiences at all the local schools; I visited his house once, in the company of a mutual friend, and remember reading his 2-volume biography of Eleanor Marx while the friend fixed his computer.
what was it to be a Democrat vs. a Republican in 1960? What were the issues or positions that decided whether you'd be one or the other, and how were those differentiating positions not ideological?
So, late-night show? I'm here and I'm dear.
My maternal grandfather was planning to ship out to Spain to join the commies in 1936, but got cold feet when his wife got pregnant. He stayed in Brooklyn and did some fundraising. Late in life he voted for Giuliani (although not Reagan).
My paternal grandparents were active in the Yiddish commie scene in Brooklyn in the 1940s. They were friends with Woodie Guthrie, and possibly in the same party cell, through his Yiddish speaking, activist wife. My paternal grandfather was also a typesetter and occasional writer for the communist Daily Forward, and was active in the commie international typographer's union. By the time I knew him he was mostly cursing the commie union leadership for making lousy investments that gave him too small of a pension.
I hope the pension fund managers have business cards reading, "The capitalist wing of the Communist party."
we should have a Commies In The Family competition
I'm the first in my family!
My wife's paternal grandmother was a well-off Jewish supporter of communism in Vienna between the wars. She happened to be back at her ancestral shtetl in then-eastern Poland during the Anschluss (her mother was dying) and stayed there. According to family legend her experience with the Soviets after invasion/partition pretty well soured her on the ideology. She ultimately made it to the US with her young daughter via Trans-Siberian Express to Vladivostok and then boats to Tokyo and Seattle.
I have the exact same politics as my parents, which is that the Republican party is deeply immoral because it wants to increase poverty and inequality. I think this situation is a lot more common in Britain and other countries where right-wing Christians haven't somehow monopolized "morality" in politics.
137: really that's what should be on the card of every banker, though
My great-grandfather fought in the streets of Ekaterinaslav (now Dnipropetrovsk) in 1905. After the failure of that revolution the Tsar's secret police tried to kill him, so he had to sneak out of Russia through Finland to get to America. He was actually a Menshevik, while his brother was a Bolshevik, and after they had both immigrated to the US they used to have huge fights over ideology in which they would throw shoes at each other and stuff. The Bolshevik brother's kids grew up as true red-diaper babies, and one of them went on to become a prominent composer in Hollywood who was blacklisted in the 1950s. I'm sure I've mentioned at least some of this before, but I'm not going to use the acronym.
My wife's maternal grandmother's family spent some time in Ekaterinaslav, but I believe it was in the 1880s. They ended up moving back to the NW reaches of Ukraine,
My dad's outlook didn't start with him. Most of his childhood before he was about 10 was spent in Springhill, the most famous coal mining town in Canada. My grandfather was an above-ground carpenter and member of the UMW in the early 20s, when it was an embattled and radical organization. My dad went to school with the immigrant miners' children, and never forgot their proud high culture: art songs, and violin--not fiddle--music at home. It was like growing up in John Sayles' Matewan.
Paternal grandfather fired for union organizing amongst Fresno's auto mechanics in the 1930's. Parents solidly left no signs of rightward drift.
My father was a card carrying member of the CP for a few months as a teen, but then again he was a card carrying member of the BUF for few months before (or after, I can't remember which) so I don't take it seriously. He settled down as a centrist before WWII but moved strongly left under Thatcher, almost meeting my sister and me half way, but not quite.
On the broader question, you guys are just going to have to suck up the polarisation thing. The US is as far as I know the only "democratic" country on earth where parties haven't been ideologically defined since the Napoleonic Wars, so join the gang. The old gag: "Mama, are Tories born wicked or do they become so?" "My dear, they are born wicked and grow worse." is of c.19 provenance.
"French" views on racism apply equally to Britain, except for the liberal intelligentsia and ethnic minorities who blame the empire (and never the twain shall meet). I suspect this applies pretty much across as much of Europe as regards open racism as requiring an excuse or explanation.
I am fairly unapologetic about my atavistic tribal hatred of Tories, though. If my son, in 20 years, came back and said he was marrying a Tory, I'd be fucking disgusted.
104 is completely great.
My Dad was a Trotskyist in his teens, he'd describe himself as an anarchist, now. There's a fair bit of hippy-tinged nihilism/misanthropy in there, though. Mum is a fairly straight down the line old Labour type. I don't particularly disagree politically with either of them. I suppose I'm less pessimistic than my Dad, but that's about it.
I'd guess my paternal grandparents would also have been Labour [working class Glaswegian Catholics, so that'd have been the norm]. My maternal grandfather is, I think, fairly liberal. He used to vote either Liberal or Labour. I don't think he's voted Tory, although if he had done in 1979, it probably wouldn't surprise me. He did stop taking the Daily Mail and switched to the Independent some time in the 1980s because of the Mail's politics [my grandmother read it]. My grandmother died before I was politically aware, but I'm fairly sure she had some racist and/or right-wing opinions. I've never heard opinions like that from grandfather [who is, as mentioned before, OLD. He's 100].
My father's parents were firm but moderate Tories; so was my dad until he followed the Clem Attlee route to the Labour Party (private school, Oxford, first job, holy shit there are a lot of really poor and miserable people around!, therefore: socialism). My mother's side are more tribal Labour, I think: because, you know, what else would you be? (Coal-town teachers and doctors, that kind of thing.) Paternal grandfather given to occasionally mildly racist statements ("I'm glad to see that Malcolm Rifkind has done so well, he's a good man and very bright, but of course he's Jewish and they tend to be pretty sharp") but nothing worse than that, at least not in my hearing. Fairly firmly anti-communist though. That, I suspect, comes from the war and its aftermath, especially Greece, and the way the Poles were treated - he always had a very soft spot for the Poles.
146.1: Aren't there people who won't vote Labour, despite policy preferences, simply because they have cooties, and that's why the Lib Dems are still around?
re: 150
Maybe. Although I suspect post-Blair, there may be more people who won't vote Labour, because of the residual brimstone.
124. My grandfather was a member of the CZ communist party when it was illegal under the Nazis, they were an organized resistance. He quit in 1948 when they seized power, not a great career move. He was later imprisoned.
150. Sorta kinda. The Liberals survived the really hard yeas as a sort of peasant party. When they were down to half a dozen seats those were mostly in places like Cornwall and the Northern Isles. Their revival really started with the split in the Labour Party after 1983, when they realigned with the Social Democrats. That meant that moderate, anti-Thatcher Tories started to vote for them. Come Blair, they made a pitch for the social (not socialist) left vote as well, which is why they're such a political mess now.
My Dad once mortified some rather conservative acquaintances he was dining with by coming out as an anarchist. It's a bit of a weird political position for a conservative christian, but he was an odd duck anyway. My Mom is hereditary Labour, though she hasn't voted in the UK since 1960-something.
. Although I suspect post-Blair, there may be more people who won't vote Labour, because of the residual brimstone.
Ditto Liberals, post-Clegg. They're at 7% in the polls now...
re: 155
Yeah. I can't say I'm displeased.
154: anarchist-Tory is a thing in the UK political tradition - or rather minarchist-localist Tory, I suppose.
"Hereditary Labour" sounds like a euphemism for serf.
158 reminds me of my antipathy towards the term "investor in people".
156. I'm displeased to the extent that too many of them will vote UKIP.
159: A professor once called me "a resource".
I would like to see the research on who has moved where since 2010. It's gone from roughly C40-L30-LD20-UKIP5 to C31-L38-LD7-UKIP15.
The obvious conclusion is that 10 Conservatives have moved to UKIP and 10 Lib Dems have moved (back?) to Labour, but I wonder if that's the case?
The beginning of the end of civilisation was when Personnel departments started being re-badged as Human Resources.
Another term I hate. Makes me think "gold fillings".
I'm kind of curious how my parents are going to vote next election, the first time they'll have been able to vote in UK national elections. Their constituency is overwhelmingly Tory, though (and without much UKIP support at the last election, though maybe that's changed), so it probably won't make any difference.
How are the liberals even at 7%? How stupid do you have to be to vote for those clowns? Also, how, in a country with such a proud tradition of drunken brawling, has Nick Clegg not been beaten up?
How are the liberals even at 7%? How stupid do you have to be to vote for those clowns?
People who are voting for locally specific reasons, i.e. they have a Lib Dem MP or local councillor and they think she's really good.
166. He had to move house because of the permanent picket on it. Also people were accosting him in his local supermarket, getting in his face and screaming, "I voted for you, you bastard, now look what you've done!"
163: Wow, hella defamiliarization. I never actually broke that phrase down (probably because everyone here just uses the acronym). Now I can't stop thinking "Meatbag Supply".
re: 167
Ironically, during the high Blairite period, when I'd rather have been booted in the nads than voted Labour, I also didn't vote Lib Dem because our local MP* was a Lib Dem, and was dreadful.
* Evan Harris.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evan_Harris#Defeat_in_2010_general_election
It doesn't mention there, but probably should, that he was a shit constituency MP.
Nick Clegg is so lame that he hasn't even gone full throttle with "I'm a worthless venal traitor, everyone hates me, so let's play the villain to the max." If I were him I'd go to Rob Ford level and beyond -- orgies in the parliamentary office, smoking crack on the floor of the House of Commons during questioning time, drinking wine from the skull of a suicided earnest young anti-Blairite who thought voting for him would be a good idea. Why not.
168: I wonder what he thought would happen.
re: 173
I expect he believed the whole Cameron niceynicey Tory-without-the-dripping-fangs-and-stench-of-pure-evil schtick. Which makes him an idiot, I suppose. Then once he was in coalition, not torpedoing the whole fucking thing, makes him pretty much as bad as the Tories.
174: mutatis mutandis, I'm with Phil Sheridan on the quality necessary for a Tory to possess in order to be a good Tory.
I would pause-play this, but it's not so far off topic: is anti-vaxx stereotypically liberal? I thought it was one of those things that didn't quite fit neatly into the red-state/blue-state culture war.
I think it's statistically non-partisan, but people trying to look evenhanded blame it on liberals because it's the most obvious anti-science thing that people on the left participate in at all.
Here's a map of percentage of kindergarteners with non-medical vaccine exemptions by state. Obviously, by state isn't by political affiliation, but, e.g., Idaho and Vermont are both hot spots.
178: Ashland, Oregon is full of people who refuse to vaccinate their kids. The CDC has actually tried to study their reasons.
I have a batshit insane family member who is red-state/right-wing-ish (that is, lots of Obama-hating on FB, I don't actually know how she votes) and works with disabled children, and firmly believes that vaccines cause autism because she's SEEN IT. OVER AND OVER AGAIN. KIDS WHO WERE JUST FINE, AND THEY THEY GET THE SHOTS, AND THEN THEY NEVER MAKE EYE CONTACT AGAIN.
Not really sure what's going on there. She also works as a substitute teacher, and firmly believes that middle school girls wear colored bracelets to indicate which sex acts they will perform on anyone who asks them.
It's actually really hard to think of a common thread to that set of states more specific than that. Not left, not right, ruralness seems to help but isn't required. Being Southern counts against it, although Georgia stands out (lots of in-migration, perhaps, but then why not e.g. NC?). Why not Indiana? Or Wyoming?
In the UK, the pro-Wakefield, anti-MMR campaign was driven to a large extent (but by no means exclusively) by organs somewhat associated with the left, most shamefully Private Eye* but also the Independent and for a while the Guardian. But the Mail was even more anti-MMR than the Graun in the long run, so it was hardly a partisan divide,
*To be fair, Private Eye is not really liberal, just anti-establishment, as evidenced by a history of homophobia among other things,
There was a pensions Tory who was slightly balding who always seemed nice and thoughtful (not Iain Duncan Smith) Just looked the person up. It's David Willets.
I find Kenneth Clarke sort of charming. Lobbying for tobacco is obviously evil, but, since he smokes himself, he's not a hypocrite.
Right, you look at the map and wonder what's the difference between Michigan and Indiana?
182: Hippies who are into auras and believe that eating organically is enough to keep their children healthy are also prone to being anti-vaxx.
I think that the common strain is a belief that healthcare is such a personal, private decision that the government ought to stay out of it. Concern for their own children but not society as a whole.
I wonder how many of the lefty ones are pro-choice.
You say "hippies eating organically," BG, but I wonder if granola has been co-opted. I mean conservatives are pretty invested in the idea that health outcomes are mostly or exclusively the result of personal choices. And somehow the whole project of trying to engineer perfect children seems very Republican. Plus, you know, look at John Mackey.
I'm not really the right demographic to know any "natural"-fetishist mothers, though, so you guys can tell me whether I'm right.
184. David Willetts was dumped at the last reshuffle because he has no friends in the Tory party. QED.
Right, you look at the map and wonder what's the difference between Michigan and Indiana?
As I understand it, a lot of the anti-vax movement (in terms of actually unvaccinated children) is highly localised (eg Orange County) , with smallish clusters of extremely high rates of unvaccinated children. So it could just be that one state has such a cluster and the other doesn't.
I'm vaguely acquainted (friends of friends) with a pod of hippie-antivaxxers in my neighborhood. I don't know voting behavior, but I'd strongly expect either Democratic or non-voting because politics isn't important to them.
I think it spreads more within communities than via mass media and Internet, so it's very randomly clumpy. And the reason it's lefty-associated is that some of the earliest places it got a foothold are Marin and the like.
My parents are the Northeastern Republicans discussed upthread, which means they vote Democratic and campaigned for Obama and single-payer health care. Vermont has open primaries, so what they're registered as, if anything, doesn't matter so much.
Like most people here apparently, firmly held right-wing views would be a deal-breaker for me in a close friend if I knew about them. It hasn't been an issue. Call me Paul Kael. I don't talk about politics with cousins I haven't seen in more than a year anyway. I'm told a neighbor of ours is a Republican despite being a 70-year-old black woman (and her son is disabled, just to add one more reason it's contrary to self-interest) and I'm morbidly curious about how she squares that circle, but I'm too polite or conflict-averse to ask. (And, realistically, it's probably not an interesting story, just family or something.)
A couple co-workers of mine identify as libertarians or whatever. I find this funny, considering that this office writes regulations. I asked one of them about it once, and he told me that he tries to only work on corrections and stuff like that. L'Espirit d'escalier: I wish I had pointed out that those projects are often given to new, inexperienced, or generally unreliable people, because they're so easy.
Illinois is the surprising one to me. Otherwise white+outdoorsiness seems to predict it. (Michigan being the outdoorsy part of the Midwest.)
Though I guess LA is like chicago in being antivax but not outdoorsy. So there is some big city exception going on.
189: L. You're absolutely right about the right-wingers who emphasize personal choice as the determinant of health outcomes. John Mackey of Whole Foods believes that if you eat right, you'll never get sick. Therefore there's no need for good health insurance--especially not behavioral health.
It's a weird crossover that doesn't fit neatly along party lines.
189: I missed that you mentioned John Mackey and went straight to him, because I have strong feelings. I personally hate him, because he didn't offer WF employees behavioral health coverage.
It's apoliitical rich hippies here, though they probably vote Democratic when they vote. People whose other big pet issues would be raw milk use and no-kill animal shelters. The Democratic vote is a pure cultural affiliation, these are people who are abstractly in favor of poor people building wells in Nicaragua or wherever but would never let their kids play with a Nicaraguan immigrant on a public playground, except of course for their nannies.
198: Wow - I just did some research, and it looks like while behavioral health is part of the essential benefits required for individual and small-group plans under the ACA, large employers can decline to provide it and still not be subject to the penalty that starts next year, because their minimum requirements are worse-defined.
200: I thought that had changed. My experienc predates both the ACA and MA healthcare reform.
And now I know the group noun for hippie-antivaxxers.
How do you get to be a rich hippie, unless it's all inherited? Or do you just mean new agers?
204 -- I take it you have never been to California.
More detail here. In a nutshell: super rich Westside-of-LA schools have vaccination rates comparable to South Sudan.
I was wondering if the map in 178 might correlate with % home-schooled. Not that there would be a causal relationship one way or another, but that both were stances that cut similarly across standard political categories.* But am not finding any good home-schooled by state data**.
*Although I guess the actual home-schoolers would not show up in the data in that map (probably not a big direct effect unless the percentage in that population is very high).
**Here is a map of home schooling regulation by state--not well-correlated, for instance both Michigan and Indiana are low-regulation states by their measure.
200: Weirdly, they are required by the Mental Health Parity Act of 2008 to offer behavioral health benefits on a nondiscriminatory basis if they offer those benefits at all. But they are permitted* under the ACA to simply opt out of providing those benefits all together. The architects of the ACA made a serious error of omission in assuming that large group benefit standards were basically sound and didn't need any minimum regulation, and now big companies that employ a lot of low wage workers are bulldozing right through that loophole.
*That's true if they are self-insured plans regulated under ERISA. Large group fully insured plans are subject to state regulation, and some states have certain mandated mental health or substance abuse benefits. In those cases, the Mental Health Parity Act provisions do apply.
210: Thanks.
And not surprisingly, Whole Foods does indeed use an ERISA plan.
The amount of home school regulation has some weird historical artifacts based on when the laws were passed. E.g. PA's law was one of the first modern homeschooling laws passed, and so it was quite unrestrictive for its time, but is restrictive now. So if you want to measure whether this correlates with something homeschooling related you're going to need some other measure on the homeschooling side.
210: there was parity before 2008, and they opted out earlier.
211: just spoke to an ERISA lawyer 2 minutes ago who reminded me that almost all commercial plans are ERISA even when they are not self-insured.
210: Can people buy stand-alone mental health coverage on the exchanges, because, honestly. Ridiculous.
just spoke to an ERISA lawyer 2 minutes ago who reminded me that almost all commercial plans are ERISA even when they are not self-insured.
In the sense that most employee welfare benefits are subject to ERISA rules (non-discrimination and the like), sure. But the relevant issue is whether state insurance regulation is preempted by ERISA, i.e. whether the plans are exclusively regulated by federal law; and that is generally the case only for self-insured plans.
Also, he would be correct to say "most covered lives" are covered by plans exclusively regulated by ERISA, but not "most commercial plans", much less "almost all commercial plans", except in the very limited sense noted above.
216: right. I had always thought that state insurance regulation was preempt ex , because all ERISA plans were self-insured. But I was wrong about that.
Not goverment plans and not individual plans, obviously. But fully insure business plans are still subject to ERISA.
But fully insured business plans are still subject to ERISA.
Yes, in the limited sense I noted in 216. But fully insured employer group plans are also subject to state insurance regulation, not merely ERISA. If California wants to mandate coverage of harmonic crystal therapy, ERISA will not preempt that.
219: I get it. The whole conversation we had was about how he deals exclusively with ERISA plans and appealing denial of coverage, but if it's a fully insured plan, he still refers people to the state office. The O/P/P can tell people how to file appeals before suing anyone. Their information is irrelevant for self-insured plans, of course.
German Green party antivax is similar, in being an elite taste, but there you have the extra weirdness of anthrosophy chucked in. (German-speaking link: http://scienceblogs.de/weitergen/2008/04/masernepidemie-in-osterreich/ English shorter: http://anthonycox.org/?p=1757)
The UK version's social profile is rather different: http://anthonycox.org/?p=2687
Huh. My comment didn't post. The lawyer's point was that he still referred people to the O/P/P for information on how to file a state appeal before suing--if the plan was fully insured.
You down with O/P/P?
Yeah, before you sue me.
Of/fice of Pat/ien/t Pro/tect/ion. Newly moved from DPH to the Hea/lth Pol/icy Com/mis/sion.
Anthroposophy has a pretty strong influence on the US version as well, but only as one of the distinct (and sort of unrelated) groups that make up the anti-vaxxers here. (It's just less explicit because the Waldorf schools keep a lot of that stuff hush hush due in order to masquerade as just another Montessori style set of schools.)