Re: Note The Applause

1

Is that the right response, though? It seems a lot like saying "okay, I'll wrestle that pig."

(Aw hell, banned again.)


Posted by: Hamilton Lovecraft | Link to this comment | 03- 3-07 11:16 AM
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The Hovercraft remains full of eels.


Posted by: John Emerson | Link to this comment | 03- 3-07 11:18 AM
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Deigning the SBVFT pigs beneath him didn't work out so well for John Kerry.


Posted by: apostropher | Link to this comment | 03- 3-07 11:18 AM
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And it's not as if Edwards is actually debating her.


Posted by: ogged | Link to this comment | 03- 3-07 11:21 AM
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Apropos two threads down, the Counter-Coulter has less sex appeal than a Medusa statue carved in stone.


Posted by: swampcracker | Link to this comment | 03- 3-07 11:26 AM
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I don't think that's a proper use of "deign", apo.


Posted by: ben w-lfs-n | Link to this comment | 03- 3-07 11:36 AM
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He meant "deeming", w-lfs-n.


Posted by: Clownaesthesiologist | Link to this comment | 03- 3-07 11:58 AM
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And: thanks a fuckin lot, -gg-d -- I had managed to get through 37 years of my life without listening to Coulter -- I could have made 38 easy -- but now it's all for naught.


Posted by: Clownaesthesiologist | Link to this comment | 03- 3-07 12:00 PM
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I'm glad we finally have a link to the video, which we totally didn't in my post...oh, wait, there's video there as well.


Posted by: Farber Labs | Link to this comment | 03- 3-07 12:07 PM
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How did my video get into your post?

Answers itself, doesn't it?


Posted by: ogged | Link to this comment | 03- 3-07 12:29 PM
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11

I have no idea what that means. Maybe you could draw a picture in my stall?


Posted by: FL | Link to this comment | 03- 3-07 12:31 PM
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Coulter's shtick is basically stand-up comedy

Yes, and I'm sure it's been said before, but most conservatives are just not very funny, even when they try to be (cf.). It also reminds me of one of my favorite This Modern World cartoons, which mocks conservatives who try to come off like they're all rebellious and cool.


Posted by: Stanley | Link to this comment | 03- 3-07 12:38 PM
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I don't think that's a proper use of "deign", apo.

Hmm, you're quite right.


Posted by: apostropher | Link to this comment | 03- 3-07 1:22 PM
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12: Yeah, Stanley, that is driving me nuts. Last night, on the phone with my mom, she casually brought up that America's just not safe for conservatives anymore. I said, "Mom, remember when you used to be an independent? And you didn't affiliate yourself with any ideology other than your religion?" She responded, "Oh, I'm not some extremist. I consider myself just a little conservative. But it's just so hard to watch conservatives being attacked and discredited all the time. It seems so mean and unfair."

Against this, what can be said? I asked her for specific examples, and she couldn't give any. I asked her what liberal policies have been pushed through, or how successful liberals have been at stopping the war, maintaining ground on abortion, or implementing even the tiniest bit of gun control. She just said, "Oh, you are a liberal. You always get your way in this country, so you don't understand."

How exactly did this happen?


Posted by: A White Bear | Link to this comment | 03- 3-07 1:50 PM
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How exactly did this happen?

The central organizing philosophy of modern conservatism is not small government or anti-tax fervor or religiosity. It's a sense of victimhood. No matter how much of the national discourse they control, no matter how many of the past thirty years they've held the White House or Congress, no matter whether they live in San Francisco or Montgomery, Alabama, their entire worldview rests upon their conception of themselves as being under relentless attack. Accordingly, they stubbornly cling to that fantasy, no matter how much reality plainly contradicts it.


Posted by: apostropher | Link to this comment | 03- 3-07 2:01 PM
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This is how they complain with a straight face about "activist judges" when 3/4 of the federal bench was placed there by Republican presidents.


Posted by: apostropher | Link to this comment | 03- 3-07 2:04 PM
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their entire worldview rests upon their conception of themselves as being under relentless attack

Stop oppressing me, apostropher.


Posted by: Idealist | Link to this comment | 03- 3-07 2:06 PM
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18

I think for my mother, this is embodied by something like Ellen DeGeneres hosting the Oscars.


Posted by: A White Bear | Link to this comment | 03- 3-07 2:10 PM
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I think, to be fair, that the sense of relentless attack comes more from cultural shifts than political realities. A lot of the political bullshit is backlash--in fact, most women *do* work, most of us *do* have a lot fewer kids, the existence of gay people is generally acknowledged without comdemnation by the mainstream media and the educated classes, television and newspapers do try to show black people in mainstream, middle-class settings, etc. I think that a lot of this is about the power of the media to shape people's perceptions of reality, and that that's why folks turn to Fox News: they want a sense that the "world out there" believes the same things they do: that homosexuality is bad, that christianity is right, that motherhood is the most important thing in a woman's life, etc.


Posted by: bitchphd | Link to this comment | 03- 3-07 2:11 PM
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Pwned by 18. Damn you, AWB.


Posted by: bitchphd | Link to this comment | 03- 3-07 2:13 PM
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most women *do* work, most of us *do* have a lot fewer kids, the existence of gay people is generally acknowledged without comdemnation by the mainstream media and the educated classes, television and newspapers do try to show black people in mainstream, middle-class settings, etc.

The weird thing is that conservatives see all that as a personal attack, rather than simply as other people not holding the same beliefs.


Posted by: Matt F | Link to this comment | 03- 3-07 2:18 PM
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Well, I think that the world we live in is highly image-constructed; it seems like a personal attack because what we see on tv seems like the world. It's not really any different from my feeling threatened by the titty pics in the other thread--even though the men in my life are all perfectly decent human beings, stuff like that (and advertising, and all the other image-based crap about women-as-objects) makes one *feel* threatened by a sense that there's a world outside one's bubble in which your own experience isn't valid.


Posted by: bitchphd | Link to this comment | 03- 3-07 2:23 PM
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23

One trait that's common (though not universal) among conservatives is an apparent inability to distinguish between allowing something and requiring it. Hence all that stuff about how liberals want to ban the Bible, as if the only alternative to mandating Biblical precepts were forbidding them.


Posted by: teofilo | Link to this comment | 03- 3-07 2:26 PM
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Yeah, I think they fully recognize that there have always been gay people, women have worked outside the home for a long time, and some people have fewer kids, but they're enraged that no one's ashamed about these things anymore. Like, it's fine to be a famous homo as long as no one knows who your partners are. It's fine to be a working woman as long as you feel guilty about not having the energy to rub your hubby's feet when you come home. It's reasonable to limit the number of kids you have, as long as you're not bragging about your contraceptive methods.

My mom was always a huge fan of Tennessee Williams, Truman Capote, and Elton John, as long as she could imagine that they were tragically trapped by their homosexuality, and that the depression and pain of that mental illness is what fueled their art. When EJ came out, though, it was like something in her snapped. You mean, he isn't tortured by his shameful secret anymore? He's no longer suffering nobly in silence, taking pains to keep his secret addiction from the world?


Posted by: A White Bear | Link to this comment | 03- 3-07 2:27 PM
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23: Exactly, Teo. Like the way they obsess about the "homosexual agenda" to force all elementary school kids to practice mutual masturbation with their own gender, just because liberals ask that maybe it's not okay for your five-year-old to call boys in purple T-shirts "faggots."


Posted by: A White Bear | Link to this comment | 03- 3-07 2:30 PM
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Does your mom watch a lot of TV or listen to a lot of talk radio, AWB? If so, that's probably the answer.


Posted by: John Emerson | Link to this comment | 03- 3-07 2:42 PM
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27

This is fascinating. I had no idea that so many of the deaths of military personnel in Iraq were from California. Sure, it's a big state, but 364? Damn.


Posted by: A White Bear | Link to this comment | 03- 3-07 2:43 PM
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26: No, John, but she does go to a Baptist church, which has, in the past ten years or so, become more or less a propaganda outlet for the Republican party. It's sad, because it used to be a really amazing worship community that did a lot of good. They've really taken the Bible itself out of the study groups and replaced it with politicized "Biblical thoughts" booklets by conservative political thinkers.


Posted by: A White Bear | Link to this comment | 03- 3-07 2:45 PM
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18, 19: plus, hey, let's not forget We the Liberal Academy. (Does anyone know whether primary/secondary schoolteachers also trend left? I suspect so, but don't recall hearing about any survey data on it.) I'm not sure we should discount the impact of having one's primary authority figures being more left than oneself for fifteen of the most formative years of one's life. My brief flirtation with the Right was certainly at least partially a reaction to particular high-school teachers. Again: the feeling of *political* victimization is absurd, but it's not that hard to *understand* why it has such currency among, eg., College Republicans.


Posted by: X. Trapnel | Link to this comment | 03- 3-07 3:11 PM
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29: fifteen s/b ... whatever. However long kids are in school these days. I'm just going to write this stupid paper now.


Posted by: X. Trapnel | Link to this comment | 03- 3-07 3:13 PM
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31

HS teachers and nurses are more conservative than most educated groups, IIRC.


Posted by: John Emerson | Link to this comment | 03- 3-07 3:14 PM
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32

27: That's in proportion to their population (they have about 11% of both the U.S. population and the total American deaths in Iraq), but it is striking to see such a large number for one state.


Posted by: Matt F | Link to this comment | 03- 3-07 3:22 PM
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33

That map is fascinating.


Posted by: teofilo | Link to this comment | 03- 3-07 3:26 PM
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34

When the map says hometown, does it mean where the person was born, where they lived when they joined, or where their residence was when they died?


Posted by: ? | Link to this comment | 03- 3-07 3:44 PM
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35

The embrace of victimhood, hatin' fags, hatin' wogs, hatin' impure women, are all about the same thing for conservatives: preserving symbolic markers of status. Any time a stigmatized group gets less stigmatized, it detracts from the value of not belonging to that group. Victimhood confers status (in this society) because it equals innocence where there must also be a moral transgressor.

All these symbols of status are important to people who don't have other, nonsymbolic routes to higher status going for them. The reason white-on-black racism has been so persistent in the south is precisely because there are so many poor whites there, who used to have a whole underclass to help them feel superior, and have been trying to keep the status of that underclass in place ever since emancipation. It's no wonder that conservatism, which relies so heavily on these symbolic status markers, is allied with the political movement committed to the most skewed wealth distribution possible. Contemporary Republicans, whether they realize it or not, are working to make the whole country resemble the antebellum and early reconstruction south in terms of a small wealthy elite presiding over a permanently impoverished majority. Since it's a nominally democratic system they're working with, it's way cheaper to put moral superiority in every heart than a chicken in every pot.


Posted by: cerebrocrat | Link to this comment | 03- 3-07 3:50 PM
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36

Oh, woops, this isn't DailyKos, is it?

(such rantiness probably doesn't really belong here, does it? Sorry 'bout that. Would you believe me if I told you I was a Republican as recently as 5 years ago?)


Posted by: cerebrocrat | Link to this comment | 03- 3-07 3:51 PM
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37

Don't worry about it; 35 isn't out of place here at all. I think it's great.


Posted by: teofilo | Link to this comment | 03- 3-07 3:54 PM
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38

It also ties in to another thing I've noted about contemporary conservatism, which is the notion that power is a zero-sum game and if one group doesn't have absolute power that means the opposing group must. Thus, the fact that conserative positions on social issues are no longer overwhelmingly dominant means that liberal positions must be, which makes conservatives oppressed victims.


Posted by: teofilo | Link to this comment | 03- 3-07 3:56 PM
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39

34: Where they lived when they joined, I think.


Posted by: teofilo | Link to this comment | 03- 3-07 3:56 PM
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40

Michael Lind's "Made in Texas" makes the argument of #35 in detail. East Texas is dominated by heirs of the Confederacy who have moved into the third-world resouce economies, and they have genuinely reactionary attitudes. Bush is a fake cowboy, but he's a real Texan.


Posted by: John Emerson | Link to this comment | 03- 3-07 4:00 PM
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15: When your worldview is that Things Must Not Change or Things Do Not Change, the fact that things change must feel like an attack sometimes.


Posted by: Hamilton Lovecraft | Link to this comment | 03- 3-07 4:10 PM
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42

Wingnuts will not go away no matter what we do. Money feeds their narcissism, and publicity of all types (praise or derision) rings their cash register. The Counter-Coulter acts like the coarsest drunk in the tavern while putting on a demure appearance; she seems more eccentric and pathetic than dangerous. While I do believe she has a disturbed personality, what would be the point of fixating on her bad behavior? I choose to ignore the beast, not feed it.


Posted by: swampcracker | Link to this comment | 03- 3-07 4:23 PM
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As long as Coulters and Malkins and Boortzes are on TV, we can't ignore them. They say silly, false, nasty stuff and the low-information voters are persuaded.A few days ago Boortz said something like "The teachers usions are worse than al Qaeda" and Hannity agreed with him.


Posted by: John Emerson | Link to this comment | 03- 3-07 4:31 PM
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43 - Quite right, John, they are worthy of condemnation. I am also looking at her behavior from another perspective. The blogger at ThoughtCrimes
http://www.thoughtcrimes.org/s9/index.php?url=archives/1726-Of-bloggers-and-bigots.html#feedback
takes a position that the Left should treat the Right with the same invective as if those were indeed the rules of the game. I disagree. I prefer traveling the high ground and maintaining credibility. I would rather suffer an indignity than step out of character. Otherwise I would become indistinguishable from them.


Posted by: swampcracker | Link to this comment | 03- 3-07 4:44 PM
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37: thanks man. I worry I might get carried away, a la ex-smokers and such.

It's interesting; a lot of social status hierarchies among other animals do function as essentially zero-sum, and under those rules, if you want to protect a dominant status, you treat every possible threat as existential. This is clearly not the case for humans (and some other primates) but a lot of us still behave as if it's so.


Posted by: cerebrocrat | Link to this comment | 03- 3-07 4:49 PM
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46

Easy, swampcracker. Wear a blue bandanna, and you'll be easily distinguishable.


Posted by: John Emerson | Link to this comment | 03- 3-07 5:00 PM
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47

What does Mongolia have to do with anything?


Posted by: teofilo | Link to this comment | 03- 3-07 5:03 PM
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48

The alternative makes a lot more sense.


Posted by: teofilo | Link to this comment | 03- 3-07 5:04 PM
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49

What does Mongolia have to do with anything?

Such innocence...


Posted by: Matt F | Link to this comment | 03- 3-07 5:12 PM
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46: are you sure about the blue bandanna? But should it be light blue, navy blue, or teal blue? See: http://thedoghouse.org/members/bandanna.htm

I swear to god I'm going to write this paper now.


Posted by: X. Trapnel | Link to this comment | 03- 3-07 5:14 PM
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51

Or maybe red. If people try to shoot you, switch colors.


Posted by: John Emerson | Link to this comment | 03- 3-07 5:22 PM
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49: The gangs at my school were mostly local. I did once nearly get carjacked by some crips, though.


Posted by: teofilo | Link to this comment | 03- 3-07 5:38 PM
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27: I remember reading somewhere that California had the highest number of soliders in Iraq of all the states, but I can't find a cite.


Posted by: Magpie | Link to this comment | 03- 3-07 5:43 PM
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18 -- I'm with your mom as far as Ellen DeGeneres hosting the Oscars goes.


Posted by: Clownaesthesiologist | Link to this comment | 03- 3-07 6:41 PM
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5 Modesto kids on the list.


Posted by: Clownaesthesiologist | Link to this comment | 03- 3-07 6:48 PM
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The reviews I saw said Degeneres was too bland. That's wha I hate about perverts, blandness.


Posted by: John Emerson | Link to this comment | 03- 3-07 6:58 PM
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It's particularly interesting to see which towns in each state have the most. Some are obvious (LA, Philadelphia, Las Vegas), but others are a bit surprising (Colorado Springs, Clarksville TN, Fayetteville NC). The ones in the second category, of course, are mostly military towns. Maybe not so surprising after all.


Posted by: teofilo | Link to this comment | 03- 3-07 7:13 PM
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To get a better picture, the thing you'd want to know was "last high school attended". I suspect that reenlistments are credited to the base where the unit the guy belongs to is stationed, but in any case a lot of military put town roots in military towns.

Going by high schools would also tell you a lot about class origins, and would let you zero in on local cultures where military service is very high.


Posted by: John Emerson | Link to this comment | 03- 3-07 7:20 PM
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You get a pretty good idea of class and local culture already, I think. Note the massive overrepresentation of rural areas.


Posted by: teofilo | Link to this comment | 03- 3-07 7:22 PM
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60

Also interesting: Despite what I just said about rural areas, the highest number in New York state are from Brooklyn.


Posted by: teofilo | Link to this comment | 03- 3-07 7:23 PM
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61

And a lot of guys from Newark, among the New Jerseyans.


Posted by: Clownaesthesiologist | Link to this comment | 03- 3-07 7:25 PM
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OTOH, 1 guy from Rome, 1 from Ogdensburg, 1 from Potsdam, is I think a higher proportion of Romans, Ogdensburgers and Potsdamers than 18 from Brooklyn or 5 from Newark.


Posted by: Clownaesthesiologist | Link to this comment | 03- 3-07 7:34 PM
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63

True.


Posted by: teofilo | Link to this comment | 03- 3-07 7:37 PM
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(Is "Romans" correct? You must be up on the naming of people from upstate towns.)


Posted by: Clownaesthesiologist | Link to this comment | 03- 3-07 7:39 PM
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The ones in the second category, of course, are mostly military towns.

To put it mildly.


Posted by: Matt F | Link to this comment | 03- 3-07 7:42 PM
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66

I don't know anyone from Rome, but I think "Romans" would be right.


Posted by: teofilo | Link to this comment | 03- 3-07 7:43 PM
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67

Five Navajos by my count.


Posted by: teofilo | Link to this comment | 03- 3-07 7:44 PM
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68

State deathtoll rank roughly is in synch with state population rank. NJ and MA are notably lower, and AZ, VT and VA higher than expected.

I would expect rural, black, southern, non-eastern, and non-rich biases. I can see the rural bias but the none of the southern states I looked at seemed unexpectedly high except VA. Can't say anything about race or wealth.


Posted by: John Emerson | Link to this comment | 03- 3-07 8:02 PM
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69

Tennessee and Louisiana seem pretty high to me, but I haven't looked at population figures.


Posted by: teofilo | Link to this comment | 03- 3-07 8:11 PM
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Louisiana is pretty high in the sequence, but Tennessee is about where ir should be. I didn't do per capita, just compared sequences.


Posted by: John Emerson | Link to this comment | 03- 3-07 8:43 PM
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I expected North Carolina to be higher, given the gigantic military bases here like Bragg (which probably explains Fayetteville) and Lejeune.


Posted by: apostropher | Link to this comment | 03- 3-07 9:23 PM
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71: I think this is explained by 34 and 39.


Posted by: NCProsecutor | Link to this comment | 03- 3-07 9:33 PM
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73

But as Emerson notes in 58, a lot of reenlistments are probably listed by the town where the base is. The numbers for Fayetteville etc. are really high.


Posted by: teofilo | Link to this comment | 03- 3-07 9:38 PM
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27: A lot of those California soldiers might be fairly recent immigrants. But one of the things you don't realize about Cali unless you live here a while is that there is a LOT of entrenched semi-poverty. Partly this is about high cost of living, partly it's about the number of kids who don't go on to college, partly it's about the giant suckage of decent jobs away from the agrarian areas ever since big agribusiness kind of moved in. But I think a lot of it is about our self-conscious identification as the golden state--people here are inclined to talk a lot of shit about get-rich quick plans, are inclined to spend a lot of money we don't have on *looking* richer than we are, and are kind of inclined to see hard work as a sucker's game.


Posted by: bitchphd | Link to this comment | 03- 3-07 10:13 PM
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Tying things together, despite the numbers coming out of New York and California, we're still going to hear shit for the next two years about the disgusting values of the liberal coastal elites, which are totally different from people in the honest heartland where people know what's up. Dead soldiers from Brooklyn get to be honorary Kansans. And it'll be parroted by jackasses in the Fox News studio in New York, with their special guest, Connecticut's self-hating daughter, Ann Coulter.


Posted by: snarkout | Link to this comment | 03- 3-07 10:15 PM
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people here are inclined to talk a lot of shit about get-rich quick plans, are inclined to spend a lot of money we don't have on *looking* richer than we are, and are kind of inclined to see hard work as a sucker's game

I have to say, having lived in California for 15 years, I don't see this at all. Maybe it's different outside of the major metropolitan areas.


Posted by: Josh | Link to this comment | 03- 3-07 10:27 PM
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76: Even in the big cities you'll run into that. Unless, of course, you only associate with your own kind.


Posted by: bitchphd | Link to this comment | 03- 3-07 10:31 PM
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I think the main thing is that California is big, with lots of wealth and poverty and empty land and congested urban areas and people of all types. Really an enormously diverse state, and it's hardly surprising that it would contribute a lot of soldiers despite its reputation.


Posted by: teofilo | Link to this comment | 03- 3-07 10:31 PM
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I think actually the thing people outside California tend not to realize is just how much of it is rural (and poor) -- that there are huge swaths of Central Valley and I don't even know what all up north of Sacramento as well as the famous cities and expensive countryside like Napa.


Posted by: redfoxtailshrub | Link to this comment | 03- 3-07 10:38 PM
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79 to 74, and largely pwned by Teo.


Posted by: redfoxtailshrub | Link to this comment | 03- 3-07 10:41 PM
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79: The same is true of New York, actually.


Posted by: teofilo | Link to this comment | 03- 3-07 10:47 PM
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Good point.


Posted by: redfoxtailshrub | Link to this comment | 03- 3-07 10:48 PM
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83

Unless, of course, you only associate with your own kind.

Golly, thanks for that.


Posted by: Josh | Link to this comment | 03- 3-07 10:48 PM
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Having grown up in L.A., I suspect a lot of the CA guys are poor urbanites, not rural guys, same way you see a lot of the NY and NJ guys are from Brooklyn and Newark. In So Cal especially, not only is the Marines are an escape from the inner city and money for college, but Pendleton is only 90 minutes south, so it's easy to stay in touch with friends and family and such.


Posted by: gswift | Link to this comment | 03- 3-07 10:59 PM
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"is the Marines are an escape"

Gah, s/b "is the Marines an escape"


Posted by: gswift | Link to this comment | 03- 3-07 11:02 PM
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California's deaths aren't really disproportional though, are they? At 33 million or so people, they're about 11% of the US population. 364 deaths out of ~3200 is a little higher than that, but not much.


Posted by: apostropher | Link to this comment | 03- 3-07 11:03 PM
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No, they're just about proportional, as Matt F pointed out in 32.


Posted by: teofilo | Link to this comment | 03- 3-07 11:06 PM
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88

people here are inclined to talk a lot of shit about get-rich quick plans, are inclined to spend a lot of money we don't have on *looking* richer than we are, and are kind of inclined to see hard work as a sucker's game.

That ain't unique to Cali. Mult level marketing and such is fucking everywhere in Utah.


Posted by: gswift | Link to this comment | 03- 3-07 11:08 PM
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I'm not sure how I missed that comment. Please disregard 86.


Posted by: apostropher | Link to this comment | 03- 3-07 11:08 PM
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Not only is California huge and diverse, a lot of it is basically a "red" state.


Posted by: ogged | Link to this comment | 03- 3-07 11:20 PM
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81: Yeah, but poverty (and ruralness) in California is different, unless you get pretty far north. It's hard to explain, but most of "rural" California looks more like suburban everywhere else, and poverty tends to look like middle- to lower-middle classness in the midwest. The people I've known who've joined the military or worked high-school graduate jobs were Filipinos, Samoans, Mexicans (and mixes of all those plus Anglos) whose parents worked in government jobs, or as bookkeepers, or nurses, or owning small businesses like martial arts studios or donut shops. Rich enough not to be destitute, but not rich enough to afford two cars and big tvs (which are bought on credit). And most importantly, I think, not rich enough in cultural capital to really think of anything other than maybe community college as a serious option. The college-bound kids in towns/neighborhoods like that tend to be kinda weird, and to spend most of their adolescence bitching about how they can't wait to get out of this goddamn place.


Posted by: bitchphd | Link to this comment | 03- 3-07 11:55 PM
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Also, 88: I think there's a peculiar kind of western false consciousness about poverty that buys into pyramid schemes and tupperware parties and selling makeup out of your house and shit like that. Which there's also a surprising lot of in the military, actually.


Posted by: bitchphd | Link to this comment | 03- 3-07 11:57 PM
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91: I think the sort of people you describe are the demographic most likely to join the military generally, actually, and not just in California.


Posted by: teofilo | Link to this comment | 03- 4-07 12:02 AM
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Yeah, but there just seem to be more of them here. Or they look different. Or else they seem to be in the majority. Or something.

Or maybe I just spot it more easily at home b/c it's what I grew up with.


Posted by: bitchphd | Link to this comment | 03- 4-07 12:04 AM
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Or maybe you're now living in an area with more of them than you were before.


Posted by: teofilo | Link to this comment | 03- 4-07 12:05 AM
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96

No, quite the contrary.


Posted by: bitchphd | Link to this comment | 03- 4-07 12:07 AM
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97

Well then.


Posted by: teofilo | Link to this comment | 03- 4-07 12:08 AM
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98

I still don't think it's anything peculiar to California; most of the people I knew growing up who joined the military came from that kind of background (not a whole lot of people, actually, because I didn't run in those circles). Maybe it's a western thing.


Posted by: teofilo | Link to this comment | 03- 4-07 12:11 AM
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98: I recognize what B is talking about, and I agree with you that it's not anything peculiar to California. I don't think it's even a western thing; it sounds entirely like people I knew in Pennsylvania.


Posted by: Josh | Link to this comment | 03- 4-07 12:16 AM
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Maybe it's just a particular socioeconomic stratum, associated largely though not exclusively with small-town and rural areas, from which a large number of military recruits come.


Posted by: teofilo | Link to this comment | 03- 4-07 12:19 AM
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There are a lot of places where guys are just expected to go into the military. Partly it's patriotism, partly it's macho, and partly it's wanting to get away from home.

If you could analyze it down to the high school level, my guess is that there are a lot places where close to 50% of the men and a fair number of the women go into the military at one point or another, and lot of others where fewer than 10% or even fewer that 5% go. And it probably is a sort of BoBo divide -- rural communities, ethnic neighborhoods, mostly-religious places. (Red state / blue state misses too much). But I'd like to see an actual study.

With the volunteer army standards were raised, so kids who go into the military might be the elite of a poor community. Oddly, during a war when it counts, standrds are lowered.


Posted by: John Emerson | Link to this comment | 03- 4-07 6:09 AM
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There's also the simple fact that a disproportionate number of military kids sign up.


Posted by: CharleyCarp | Link to this comment | 03- 4-07 7:13 AM
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