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The breakup of the New Deal Coalition in the 1960s led to the situation today. During the Civil Rights movement, women and racial minorities demanded their seat at the table of power, which alienated a lot of working class white men, especially in the South. The alienated working class white men steadily defected to the Republican Party during the 1970s (Nixon’s Southern Strategy) and 1980s (the Reagan Democrats).
Simply put, the politics of race & gender replaced the politics of class. That’s where we are now. It’s why the gap between the rich and poor keeps growing, and why we will soon be living under a permanent aristocracy.
The breakup of the New Deal Coalition in the 1960s led to the situation today. During the Civil Rights movement, women and racial minorities demanded their seat at the table of power, which alienated a lot of working class white men, especially in the South. The alienated working class white men steadily defected to the Republican Party during the 1970s (Nixon’s Southern Strategy) and 1980s (the Reagan Democrats).
Simply put, the politics of race & gender replaced the politics of class. That’s where we are now. It’s why the gap between the rich and poor keeps growing, and we will soon be living under a permanent aristocracy.
It wasn't just race or sex though driving that divide. It was the world around them. For a long time in America, the Frees and the Smarts just simply ignored the plights of the shrinking middle class and the lower class. Through the 80s and 90s, the GOP and the Democrats passed tons of free trade agreements and tax cuts for corporations that unleased the globalization we know today. The "If you just worked harder, things would be better. If you were more like me, life would be better. Why didn't you go to college?" sentiment really rubbed a lot of people on the right and left the wrong way.
I think this excerpt says it well:
Quote:
Early in the 2016 Trump campaign, I spent time with a group of white and Black steelworkers in a town near Canton, Ohio. They had been locked out by the company over a contract dispute and were picketing outside the mill. They faced months without a paycheck, possibly the loss of their jobs, and they talked about the end of the middle class. The only candidates who interested them were Trump and Bernie Sanders.
A steelworker named Jack Baum told me that he supported Trump. He liked Trump’s “patriotic” positions on trade and immigration, but he also found Trump’s insults refreshing, even exhilarating. The ugliness was a kind of revenge, Baum said: “It’s a mirror of the way they see us.” He didn’t specify who they and us were, but maybe he didn’t have to. Maybe he believed—he was too polite to say it—that people like me looked down on people like him. If educated professionals considered steelworkers like Baum to be ignorant, crass, and bigoted, then Trump was going to shove it in our smug faces. The lower his language and behavior sank, and the more the media vilified him, the more he was celebrated by his people. He was their leader, who could do no wrong.
A lot of people became sick of the Reals (the Romneys) and the Smarts (the Clintons) because they felt like the country they knew was disappearing.
There is a real fracture between the justs and the smarts. AOC/Omar (the justs) ram heads with Pelosi/Schumer (the smarts) all the time more publicly than anything you ever see between the Reals and the Frees.
In fact, I think the Free American's (the Reganomic politicans like Cruz) are more willing to compromise with the Reals to purely remain more popular and in power than either side on the left.
I would like to square populism with liberty, by definition they are opposite poles, yet you will hear Cruz talk about working people and try to pivot to populism since trump left. The names of free America and real America are just ridiculous.
The names of free America and real America are just ridiculous.
Lol I know, but the point of the names is that it is suppose to represent what the groups stand for. Or better, what they believe they stand for.
“Freedom from government”
“Smart Educated America”
“The true Real Americans who hold the real values”
“The just Americans fighting against injustice”
Something along those lines.
What ever happened to embracing fiscal conservatism, but liberal on social issues?
Seems most "normal" people are actually in that camp, but the loudmouths like Trump and his Krew try and marginalize them as "the L word implying less than normal IQ". My 15 year old grandson was reluctant at first to get the Covid vaccine because he was afraid his redneck friends would brand him that way. Even though he actually had Covid, probably got from those same redneck, ultra-religious friends. He fortunately had a very mild reaction to it.
Not fun living in the buckle of alt-right wacko bible thumpers.
Socially Liberal/Capitalist (Majority of Americans)
Socially Conservative/Capitalist
But there are significantly varying levels of capitalism.
As the author, rightfully imo, points out, the smarts have an appetite for some government intervention in terms of guaranteeing equal opportunity while pushing back against the more extreme point of views from the justs.
Quote:
The cosmopolitan outlook of Smart America overlaps in some areas with the libertarian views of Free America. Each embraces capitalism and the principle of meritocracy: the belief that your talent and effort should determine your reward. But to the meritocrats of Smart America, some government interventions are necessary for everyone to have an equal chance to move up. The long history of racial injustice demands remedies such as affirmative action, diversity hiring, and maybe even reparations. The poor need a social safety net and a living wage; poor children deserve higher spending on education and health care. Workers dislocated by trade agreements, automation, and other blows of the global economy should be retrained for new kinds of jobs.
Still, there’s a limit to how much government the meritocrats will accept. Social liberalism comes easier to them than redistribution, especially as they accumulate wealth and look to their 401(k)s for long-term security. As for unions, they hardly exist in Smart America. They’re instruments of class solidarity, not individual advancement, and the individual is the unit of worth in Smart America as in Free America.
I skimmed through it. There's a lot of merit to the argument over the "four Americas." Those of you who keep saying you don't fit any of the four groups ignore that it's not you who matters, it's the aggregate that matters and most of us probably would align more closely with one of the four over the other three, even if we don't agree with everything ordained by the quartet we align with and we overlap with other quartets.
I also agree that the writer has pretty strong biases and it comes through and while he tries to be balanced in describing all four quartets, his bias is too evident and not even handed. He does provide ammunition and criticism for all four quartets.
My comments on the four quartets:
1. Free America
Libertarians who resent regulation in favor of individual freedom, tracing a through line from Ronald Reagan to Newt Gingrich to Ted Cruz
This is the oldest America, it's not a recent demographics but one that dominated most of America up till the Civil War. Its heritage goes back to the Revolution, however, it does not include the Founding Fathers.
2. Smart America
A class of high earners and technocrats who attend competitive schools, embrace meritocracy, own MacBooks, and don’t intermingle with the rest of the country
They come closest to the Founding Fathers' ideals of a natural aristocracy they envisioned running the country with a light hand and for the benefit of all. However, this demographics, who did provide much of America's leadership and stewardship in the past, have indeed moved beyond America to embrace a more globalist outlook and have less innate loyalty or understanding of American First that their forbears immediately understood and took for granted. As they drifted further from their roots, they have become more blind to their own corruption and biases and vanity. The "we believe in science" people, refusing to question the wisdom of experts even if the experts are very wrong (as we saw multiple times in recent years). They have lost a great deal of legitimacy as a ruling class, and have also become oblivious to their lost of prestige to anyone outside their class.
3. Real America
White Christian nationalists, as recently energized by Sarah Palin and Donald Trump
This is a greatly misunderstood and stereotyped demographics. After all, to an astute observer, it's difficult to lump Trump with Christian evangelists, but many try to do so anyway, and exhibit their own blind bias in the process. There's a big overlap between "Real America" and "Free America" and the author, like most people from Smart America, doesn't understand them or their outlook. Are some racist? Sure. But most are not. As a class, they have been belittled and ostracized by Smart America, who steadfastly refuses to try to understand them or their perspective or fears. They also bear most of the burden of the economic and cultural gambles pushed through by Smart America. They know what it's like to see high paying jobs offshored, unlike Smart America.
4. Just America
A young generation that believes injustice is at the heart of the country’s problems and speaks the language of identity politics
In a sense, this is nothing new. There's always been an intolerant, judgmental streak in America, among reformers and evangelicals. Just the latest generation. They have also been badly served and badly educated by their elders in Smart America.
All four narratives, Packer argues, “emerged from America’s failure to sustain and enlarge the middle-class democracy of the postwar years”—and all four are helping pull the country apart.
What ever happened to embracing fiscal conservatism, but liberal on social issues?
Seems most "normal" people are actually in that camp, but the loudmouths like Trump and his Krew try and marginalize them as "the L word implying less than normal IQ". My 15 year old grandson was reluctant at first to get the Covid vaccine because he was afraid his redneck friends would brand him that way. Even though he actually had Covid, probably got from those same redneck, ultra-religious friends. He fortunately had a very mild reaction to it.
Not fun living in the buckle of alt-right wacko bible thumpers.
I am inclined to agree with you. My gut tells me you are right, but my brain says something else. I know I live in a bubble. Everyone in my inner circle went to college. Outside of the random FB friend from High School, I don't really see the opinion of the 'Real' American group outside of City-Data. My Republican friends still like George Bush more than Trump and are squarely of the Free group. That's why my brain says don't agree. I see how popular the alt-left can be in the inner cities. This author obviously writes from the view point of the smarts
Quote:
My generation told our children’s generation a story of slow but steady progress. America had slavery (as well as genocide, internment, and other crimes) to answer for, original sin if there ever was such a thing—but it had answered, and with the civil-rights movement, the biggest barriers to equality were removed. If anyone doubted that the country was becoming a more perfect union, the election of a Black president who loved to use that phrase proved it. “Rosa sat so Martin could walk so Barack could run so we could all fly”—that was the story in a sentence, and it was so convincing to a lot of people in my generation, myself included, that we were slow to notice how little it meant to a lot of people under 35. Or we heard but didn’t understand and dismissed them. We told them they had no idea what the crime rate was like in 1994. Smart Americans pointed to affirmative action and children’s health insurance. Free Americans touted enterprise zones and school vouchers.
Of course the kids didn’t buy it. In their eyes “progress” looked like a thin upper layer of Black celebrities and professionals, who carried the weight of society’s expectations along with its prejudices, and below them, lousy schools, overflowing prisons, dying neighborhoods.
I can't stand people who try to put others in groups based on that person's flawed conception of them.
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