“Real” Americans
Thanks, Egipsey, for calling my attention to this latest outrage. When asked in an NBC interview who the dreaded “elite” are, Sarah Palin responds: “people who think that they’re better than any one else.” Fair enough. I think it satisfies at least one definition of the word. But then John McCain, who purports to be running for President of the entire United States pipes up with: “I know where a lot of them live. In our nation’s capital and in New York City.”
Hmm. Okay. Following on the heels of Palin’s angry differentiation between the “real” America and its fake co-citizens out here on the fringy coasts, it kind of gets me thinking. If this ticket does win, does their administration have any jurisdiction over me, since I live in New York City and am, arguably, a member of the “elite?” Is my region exempted from a McCain Presidency since it lies outside of “real” America?
Compare if you will, this stunning speech by Barack Obama.
“There are no pro-America parts of the country and anti-America parts of the country. We all love this country, no matter where we live or where we come from. Black, white, Hispanic, Asian, Native American, young, old, rich, poor, gay, straight, city-dwellers, farm-dwellers. It doesn’t matter. We’re all together.”
And you know what this Virginia crowd of Obama supporters, who live so close to those Washington elites, shouted back?
“USA! USA! USA!”
October 24th, 2008 at 6:48 am
palin & mccain’s “elite” comments offended me on so many levels. i’m elite because of where i was born?? W. was born in CT. and mccain wasn’t even born in the US. and how does palin “know” that i think i’m better than any body else? and why are we even talking like this!! this is so 3rd grade. it’s disappointing to see a leading party’s nominates setting such a low bar of discussion.
October 24th, 2008 at 7:50 am
At least Obama’s refusing to be dragged down with them. The lower they go, the more he seems to rise above. I recall one speech where people boo’d when Obama mentioned something about McCain. Obama stopped his speech and said something like, “now, now, we don’t need that. We need you to vote.”
The good news is that the candidate who’s appealing to our “better angels” is the one in the lead, whereas the candidate attempting to spur us to anger by prodding our worst instincts is sinking. That’s as optimistic a sign about our country as I can think of.
October 24th, 2008 at 8:37 am
As much as I generally enjoy the sparkling Egipsey’s comments on your blog, I think your and her particular point of frustration here is just plain silly and overwrought. Moreover, it is hardly a secret that much of the rest of the Country does not share the views of the elite chattering classes in NYC and Washington DC, and it is nothing outside the norm for a candidate to point that out. Indeed, Obama himself claims to be a Washington outsider and does his level best not to be broadly associated with the Eastern, urban elites (who fill his campaign coffers with money). Also, in your rush to condemn Senator McCain, you seem to have forgotten Senator McCain’s unequivocal rebuke of one of his own supporters who, just a week or two ago at a rally, commented that she could not trust Senator Obama because she believed him to be Muslim. Without hesitation, Senator McCain immediately rejected that sentiment and pointed out that he knew Senator Obama to be a good family man and person and, while he sharply disagreed with on the issues, he left no doubt in his response that he considered Obama to be a person of admirable grit and character. Likewise, in his concluding remarks at the Alfred E. Smith charity dinner, which were widely publicized, Senator McCain glowingly spoke about Senator Obama and, win or lose, the historic achievement his candidacy represents. Indeed, all this talk of Obama inclusiveness is such crap, since your guy is running on a platform whose principal tenet is a type of class warfare that depends on the naked grab of earnings from some (including more than 600,000 small businesses) to redistribute to millions of others who pay little or no income tax themselves. While one might support this wealth redistribution on equitable or religious grounds, it is highly divisive, is not designed to create a single job and is, by design, intended to pit one class against another. Finally, you might you think the rhetoric of two America’s is distasteful but it goes both ways as the Democrats have repeatedly made comments that suggest they loathe the so-called red states (a/k/a flyover territory). In the end, we are substantially more probably than not less than two weeks away from the trifecta of an Obama presidency, a Pelosi House and a Reid Senate. If that chilling combination doesn’t make you puke in fear it should. Now that is something worthy to blog about.
October 24th, 2008 at 10:36 am
Rocketeer, while some people on the coasts refer to “fly-over” country with the kind of snideness you should condemn, I’ve never heard Obama say that. That’s the difference. I don’t hold McCain or Palin accountable for any of their supporters’ words, only their own. Bravo to McCain for chastising some of his most obnoxious supporters, but it doesn’t get him out of jail free for condemning New York. Aren’t you, as a New Yorker, a bit tired of being the punching bag, especially in the name of “real” American-ness and patriotism? Last time I checked, we were the only city in this country to actually face a foreign terrorist attack. And, to blow our collective horn here a little bit, I think we New Yorkers handled the whole thing with grace and grit.
I will grant you that there is a whiff of class warfare in the air, something I normally oppose. The reason I’ve come around a bit on this issue is that the country had been heading toward a dangerously yawning gulf between the wealthiest and poorest–an inherently destabilizing situation. Nor was that growing gulf the result of any increase in merit or real world market value production on the part of the rich, but rather from a rigged economy that rewards wealth over work, money-conjuring over goods and service production. The economic fiasco we’re currently facing is bringing that trend to a screeching halt, but I think it will be a while before we can rely on purist free-market ideology to restore our economy to something sound and sustainable. Like it or not, we’ve landed ourselves in a mess only our government can address. Which is why both candidates support the bail out and, incidentally, why both candidates have made a habit of criticizing Wall Street.
I wish we were in the kind of economic situation where I could share McCain’s contempt for “spreading the wealth.” But look around you, Rocketeer. We’ve entered a new phase. Emergency room visits are up. Health-related bankruptcies are up. Homelessness is up. Soup kitchens are doing brisk business. Retired people are losing their homes. And you want me to shed a tear for the upper middle class, of which I am a member? The world’s changed.
October 24th, 2008 at 12:43 pm
As a life long New Yorker, I take no offense to jabs at the elite in NYC. The fact is, New York is no longer a State where candidates from two viable political parties compete on the merits of their positions for elective office. Rather, New York is a Democratic stronghold and New York’s signature newspaper is one of the most unabashed cheerleaders for the Democratic left. Given those exigencies, New York is a fair target for these kinds of rhetorical bashes. And, I am not sure Obama is the saint you make him out to be. His comments about Red Staters clinging to their guns and religion suggests a certain disdain for those immune to his many charms. Either way, who cares. It is a sharply divided electorate and part of campaigning requires each candidate, from time to time, to be on one or the other side of the divide.
The change that seems to be coming troubles me. And, even if I concede your concerns about the growing gap between haves and have nots, I still don’t see the nexus between redistributive tax policy and a palpable decrease in poverty in any of the areas you address. In fact, the broad majority of jobs are created by small business owners and high net worth individuals. By increasing taxes on so many of these businesses and individuals, Obama, by choking their cash flow, threatens to seriously decrease job growth. A disastrous policy in a recessionary economy. The policy seems even more imprudent when you consider that Obama is not going to freeze federal spending but instead intends to increase it by a trillion dollars.
In four or eight years, with the most liberal President, House and Senate of our lifetime in place, we may wake up to find that America looks a lot like France. And, as big as the central government is now, it will be larger and even more intrusive after your guy wins. And that growth will come at the expense of our most basic freedoms, which diminish as a majority of citizens becomes ever increasingly dependent on the leviathan.
October 24th, 2008 at 1:42 pm
Rocketeer, are you forgetting that the mayor of New York City is a Republican? And that the mayor he replaced was a Republican?
Although our current governor is a Democrat, here’s a quote from his Wikipedia article: “Although Paterson is a lifelong Democrat who was considered a liberal during his time in the State Senate, he began earning high praise from conservatives during his time as Governor for his efforts to combat the 2008 New York fiscal crisis by major reductions in spending and the enaction of an inflation-indexed property tax cap, a school tax “circuit breaker,” and unfunded mandate relief.”
Pataki who served before Spitzer’s disgrace was also a Republican.
To me New York seems to be much more open to the kind of bi-partisan inter-party borrowing of ideas than you find elsewhere in the country. We have pro-choice Republican mayors and Democratic governors who freely borrow from Republican playbooks. Seems pretty open-minded to me.
I’m not going to defend the New York Times because I share your contempt for it for reasons far too numerous to go into here.
To be perfectly honest, I’m not sure whether the fiscal policy we end up with courtesy of an Obama/Pelosi/Reid administration will help or worsen things in the broader economy. I have exactly the same ambivalence toward a McCain presidency when it comes to the broader economy. I don’t have a lot of faith in government’s ability to protect us from what appears to be a massively overdue correction. However, I think a leftward tilt will help to strengthen the safety net that will protect us while the free market licks its wounds. And I don’t think the Trickle Down Theory has ever proved itself in the real world. But I won’t go to the mat for redistributive taxation because for me it falls into the broad foggy knowledge region I refer to as “Stuff I Don’t Know Enough About and Nobody Else Seems to Either.” So let’s just hold our breath and see what happens.
I’m curious how you think increased dependency on government would diminish “our most basic freedoms?” Which “freedoms” are you talking about? Freedom to get hosed by health insurance companies? Freedom to be spied on by our government? Freedom to keep funding disastrous and bloody adventures abroad? I assume you have something else in mind here. Enlighten me.
October 24th, 2008 at 2:09 pm
You’re right of course about New York politics. I am just feeling sorry for myself that in every election the democrat presidential candidate seems to be handed New York’s electoral votes on a silver platter (along with California’s). I know there are several large states where just the opposite can be said to happen for the Republican candidate.
I guess the most basic freedom I see at stake here is the freedom to work hard, to accumulate wealth for yourself and your family and to enjoy the fruits of your own labors as you see fit, without having to give a substantial portion of your earnings to federal, state and local tax authorities in support of programs and policies that either don’t work, are too large or are beyond any reasonable scope of the government’s jurisdiction to solve.
October 24th, 2008 at 3:19 pm
I hear you, Rocketeer. The whole red state/blue state thing makes the indecisive swingers of this country far too important in electoral politics. Those of us in reliably red or blue states get taken for granted.
Believe me, I’m not starry-eyed about the government’s ability to incentivize people from poverty to self-reliance. Sometimes what seems like an assist is really a form of slavery. A few months working in the New York foster care system taught me that. Take heart that Obama has said he wants to use the presidency as a bully pulpit to wake people up to their own responsibilities. I think he really means it. And I think the Left has belatedly come around on the subject.
I think where you and I differ is on things like health care. From my POV, the free market has not only failed to deliver on this; it has grotesquely extorted from us. Having lived in England and having worked for a Canadian company, I have no fear of socialized medicine. So when I hear McCain and others mentioning these countries as examples of the dangers of socialized medicine, it makes me laugh. I’d take England’s health care bureaucracy over our own any day. I was very ill in England and I got great care. It’s loads cheaper than our own. And if you don’t like NHS, you can get private insurance.
I think the health insurance industry has done a bang-up job of scare-mongering on this by hauling out the terrifying “socialism” word. But we have all kinds of socialism in this country already. Public education, public roads, the energy grid, social security, the FDA, the entire state of Alaska, etc. American society is a matrix of free-market, socialism, constitutional democracy, and a whole host of other organizing principles. I’m not afraid of any of them. Each one has its place.
October 26th, 2008 at 4:24 pm
Hey! Sorry, this comment doesn’t have to do with this post but I wanted to tell you that I just finished “Cycler” and I LOVED it!!! I’m not a girl who usually likes anything that could be catologed under fluff or romance but “Cycler” really was amazing. I already have a list of friends that are now waiting to borrow it. Thanks!
October 27th, 2008 at 4:23 am
Thanks, Jessie! It’s great to hear from you. From what people tell me, Cycler is indeed hard to catalog. Some consider it romance, some science fiction, some fantasy, and some screwball comedy. As long as you liked it, that’s what matters. I hope your friends enjoy it too!
October 30th, 2008 at 4:45 pm
Belatedly: if you haven’t seen it yet, Jon Stewart had an immediate and wonderful response to that stuff in the first segment of the Daily Show on October 20. Here’s the episode.
October 30th, 2008 at 8:04 pm
Thanks, Karen. That was so unbelievably awesome. I need to start watching Daily Show again.
November 10th, 2008 at 7:19 am
damn…i’m so mad i missed this whole exchange with rocketeer. must check back more frequently.
good material to accompany my morning coffee. thanks!
November 10th, 2008 at 7:54 am
I love all of my posters, but my exchanges with Rocketeer are usually the most educational. Enjoy your coffee!