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Home » Why did I vote for Democrats all those years?

Why did I vote for Democrats all those years?

The New Neo Posted on by

Commenter “OBloodyHell” opines, in the Naomi Wolf thread:

I do not believe you were truly “liberal” beforehand, Neo. I suspect you always had a part of your mind filled with doubt, conscious and unconscious of certain inconsistencies.

Depends what you mean by truly liberal. I certainly behaved that way in terms of my voting record. From my very first vote at 21 right up until the year 2004, when I was what a lot of people might consider old, I voted only for Democrats. What’s more, I couldn’t imagine voting for a Republican, and I couldn’t imagine ever voting for a Republican in the future. Somewhere between the fall of 2001 and the fall of 2004 that changed, but it was quite a difficult transition that involved – among other things – the shock of admitting to myself that I would be voting Republican.

Of course, for most of those years, Democrats were far more centrist than they have since become. I never was a leftist, and perhaps that’s what OBloody really means. But I was certainly a “liberal” as most people thought of it back then: was in favor of unions, welfare, civil rights, free speech, and more government in general. Of course I had some doubts, and I didn’t completely toe the line, but I don’t think that was unusual among Democrat voters in those days. For me, some points of contention that I can recall were that I never was in favor of affirmative action, nor was I keen on bilingual education or dropping programs for the gifted. I didn’t think the US was an evil empire, but most liberals of the time didn’t think so either; that was a leftist belief.

Did I think conservatives were selfish, greedy, and bigoted? Maybe; I’m a little foggier on that. Plus, I’m pretty sure I didn’t know any – at least not among the people with whom I habitually spoke. However, I almost never talked politics with people, so I wouldn’t have been able to say for sure. And that was fine with me. My experience of political discussions among those who disagreed with each other was that they were nasty, bitter, and solved nothing. And political discussions among those who did agree with each other were boring. So why bother?

I got my news from the NY Times and the Boston Globe, plus the New Yorker, and believed they gave their readers fair representations of the truth. But in general, politics itself bored me. I knew it mattered, and I paid attention to it – especially to the big stories – but it never grabbed me in the sense that I wanted to know more than my usual sources were giving me.

As I’ve described in great detail in my “A mind is a difficult thing to change” series, it took an unusual combination of factors to change all of that. My son was in college and I was separated from my husband and decided not to have the papers delivered anymore; my arm injury made it difficult to deal with disposing of piles of papers. So I had more free time than before, and with computers it was easier to read all sorts of newspapers, magazines, and even those new inventions called blogs. Link led to link, and before I knew it I was reading not only my old “liberal” sources but sources on the right, too.

Thing is, I didn’t realize they were on the right. I just knew they had unfamiliar names, but they made more sense than the Times and the Globe did. By the time I realized the sources I liked best were on the right, I couldn’t deny that they were more reliable and more logical, for the most part. That caused a lot of soul-searching, more research, and the rest is neo history.

If that particular unusual set of circumstances hadn’t happened to me – the divorce, the computer, the free time, and let’s not forget the initial jump-start of 9/11 – would I have had a political change? I think that by now I would have, but much more recently and mostly because of the extreme leftism of the Democratic Party in recent years.

But I don’t think I was all that atypical of a certain subset of “liberals’ during the last half of the 20th Century. Even now, my sense is that most of my Democrat friends are a combination of busy with other things, informed by leftist propaganda, and living in a social environment in which they know few people on the right. Add to that the fact that people on the right have been further demonized by that propaganda, and you have yourself the recipe for the perceptions of a large portion of today’s Democrat voters.

Comments

Why did I vote for Democrats all those years? — 113 Comments

  1. Almost certainly, nearly all Biden-supporters would consider it immoral or infra dig or unacceptable to espouse any conservative opinions or to support any conservative candidate, having long been programmed and conditioned by relentless propaganda from the “most-trusted” sources to regard the other ideological side as uneducated or uninformed or bigoted or somehow “nativist/racist”, when no-one widely read in history, literature, philosophy, or science can rationally hold to radical opinions about social change or “social justice” or the wisdom of pursuing the chimera of utopia (no-place).

  2. It is so disheartening how many people I know, including a couple of much loved relatives), who complain about crime, rampant homeless, inflation, the relentless wokery, etc. yet still merrily vote Democrat time after time.

    I try to gently remind them who is in charge of everything in this state and they are just ‘yeah I know’ then vote the same way the next time.

  3. The success of the relentless and ruthless demonization of anyone that questions the Democratic Party narrative cannot be overemphasized.

    And they know it.
    So it continues. Relentlessly and ruthlessly.
    They are so confident that the media will amplify it that they don’t care anymore how awful they look.
    Tulsi Gabbard HAS noticed.
    So has Naomi Wolf.
    I would imagine that Matt Taibbi has, as has Schellenberger.
    What about the third member of “the threesome”? “Honesty Time”, I guess…
    Even Manchin seems to have woken up…
    https://justthenews.com/politics-policy/manchin-opposes-third-biden-nominee-week
    RFK Jr. seems to be on the up and up. I hope so.
    But all this would appear to be merely a drop in the ocean of Democratic Party support amongst supposedly decent and perceptive, intelligent and caring people…
    La creme de la creme, in fact…
    (Many of whose cities are being destroyed as we speak. “Funny” that…)

  4. It is not easy to reevaluate ones beliefs, specially when the circles are more and more circumscribed by media academia even corporate america. whittaker chambers when he thought on his evolution he feared he had joined the ‘losing side’

  5. Many vote against republicans out of concern the Republicans will take away their:

    Welfare,
    Social Security,
    Medicare
    Medi-Cal (California)
    Tax deductions
    Integration
    Equal opportunity.

    Left has been using stuff like this forever, and they are good at it.

  6. Griffin

    It is beyond me how people like that don’t make the connection. I have absolutely no sympathy whatsoever for the voters in Portland, San Francisco, Chicago, et.al. You wanted it you got it.

  8. I have been informed that some yellow-dog liberal/Democrat relatives, who for years have been incessant posters of political diatribes on Facebook, have recently stopped posting their political stuff on Facebook. It may be that they are reevaluating their yellow-dog liberal/Democrat points of view.

  9. I think for a lot of people it is just inertia.

    This is what I have always done so this is what I will keep doing.

  11. I think, back when you were a Democrat voter, Neo, the socialists were a fringe portion of the party, not mainstream. It was possible for Democrat and Republican family and friends to have discussions and still be friends. Now that is much more difficult.

  12. Im drunk right now, on about two ounces of brandy because I quit drinking years ago. Why, you ask? Because I am trying t cope with a spouse who I fear is slipping into senile dementia. The past two years have been a trial of my faith, my beliefs, my entire world view. Everything seems to be turning into a pile of worthless crap. And yet I see people complaining about not getting their pronouns honored, and being deprived of the pleasures of life because someone with a different skin tone got what they deserved. And on and on and on and on. Oh God, it’s so tiresome. Don’t people realize that they are GOING TO DIE ONE DAY then face the judgment of their miserable existences? That knowledge lies heavy on me tonight. I just want it all to stop.

  14. I think, back when you were a Democrat voter, Neo, the socialists were a fringe portion of the party, not mainstream
    ==
    I don’t know of any ‘socialists’ among the Democratic voters in my social circle, bar two for whom it’s performative. I do know many people who have no conception of what others value no respect for it. I know people whose default impulse is to make accusations. I know people who are hopelessly other-directed and fad driven. I know people who make bad arguments for frankly criminal conduct or pretend it is not happening. Or they make excuses for the conduct of loosely-wired youths (and their faculty enablers) who cannot tolerate any sort of public discussion they do not control.

  15. I have absolutely no sympathy whatsoever for the voters in Portland, San Francisco, Chicago, et.al. You wanted it you got it.
    ==
    Less ‘you wanted it’ than ‘you were willing to put up with it in lieu of better alternatives’. Affiliating with the Democratic Party has decayed into an exercise of vanity when it isn’t an exercise in resentment. Actually doing something different would require Democratic voters to re-evaluate their self-concept. Which they will not do.

  16. It is interesting that Neo for years (decades?) read the lying NYT. the Boston Globe which parroted it, and the stupid New Yorker, which I reluctantly abandoned 30 years ago because of its cartoons. Stopped reading anything in it’s propaganda long before, except cartoon subtitles.

    The Globe was bought by the Times for $1.1 billion in 1993. The Times sold it for $70 million and a tiny readership ten years later. Moral is to ignore the NYTimes by all that, like my brother, are still stupidly reading it (in Seattle!)

  18. “If you are not a liberal at 20, you have no HEART.

    …If you are not a conservative at 40, you have no BRAIN.”
    -a quote attributed to Winston Churchill.

    Of course, I believe that Sir Winston Churchill was talking about the 1920s-1950s era, conservatives and liberals, but please- look at the above quote in any way that you like.

    ( Winston Churchill was that World War 2 guy.

    His being the Prime Minister of Great Britain, and of the UK- helped save the Allies, and lots of other people in the world, from the evilness of [World War II, Imperial Japan], and from the evilness of Nazi Germany, and it saved lots of people from a host of other 1920s-1950s, world-wide nightmares.)

    (Just to let you know- I was not referring to anyone on this site, past or present, when I mentioned the above quote. )

  19. Art Deco:

    Socialism is “performative” for lots of people who call themselves socialists. Even if – or perhaps especially if – they lack a deep knowledge of what socialism is, they vote for what the left tells them to vote for. Isn’t that enough?

    From a Pew poll in September 2022:

    In 2019, nearly two-thirds of Democrats and Democratic leaners (65%) had a positive view of socialism. Today a smaller majority of Democrats (57%) say they have a positive impression.

    There has not been significant change among Republicans and Republican-leaning independents since 2019. Today, just 14% say they have a positive impression of socialism, while about four times as many say they have a very negative view of the term.

    And from March of 2020:

    Their results, published on February 11, 2020 do in fact show that 76% of the Democrats are willing to vote for a socialist for President. Meanwhile, only 45% of those who identified as “Independents” would vote for a socialist candidate. Republicans’ tolerance for a “socialist” candidate decreases considerably, with only 17% saying they would do so.

    That 17% of Republicans is rather perplexing, but the rest doesn’t surprise me.

  22. I think for a lot of people it is just inertia.

    Griffin:

    Yes, though I’d say it’s more than the tendency of an object to “continue its current motion until some force causes its speed or direction to change.” [basic definition of inertia]

    That’s true but doesn’t take into account the human cost of making the change after “some force,” such as 9-11 for neo, Gerard and myself (not to equate our cases), impinged.

    It required a significant amount of brain rewiring (literally growing new synaptic connections between neurons) to reach a new stable identity. It wasn’t easy. There were large internal (learning) and external (social) costs to the effort.

    I know I harp on this. But I do caution against the frequent conservative response to characterize those further to their left as people who must be evil, subhuman, or mentally ill.

    A few are, but most are not.

    We to your left are limited human beings with plenty already on our plates. So we may not, yet, see the big picture conservatives already have.

    Which is not to say that we won’t. The mileage may vary.

    However, as I read the news, more people are waking up than falling further asleep.

  23. Steve–

    Prayers up for you from one small corner of New England. My mother died of senile dementia in 2003 and a close friend died of early-onset Alzheimer’s three years ago– I wasn’t a live-in caregiver for either one, but the stress of dealing with their decline (including having my faith tested) was terrible. Then I came across a book that helped me so much that I’d recommend it to anyone married to/living with/caring for an Alzheimer’s patient. It’s The Thirty-Six Hour Day, by Nancy Mace and Peter Rabins, MD, and published by Johns Hopkins Press. The sixth edition was published in 2017, and can be ordered here: https://www.amazon.com/36-Hour-Day-sixth-Alzheimer-Dementias/dp/1421422239

    Used copies are available for a very reasonable price. I’ve loaned my personal copy to several friends in recent years, all of whom found it really helpful. In any case, you have a sympathetic group here at Neo’s– please keep us posted on your situation.

  24. Steve-

    You have my sympathy and prayers. May the Lord be with you and your spouse on the continuing journey. Lord have mercy!

  25. Steve, take Neo’s advice.

    My wife of 40 years passed away a couple of years ago succumbing to Lewy Body/ Parkinson’s disease after five years of accelerating decline. One of the local hospitals had a weekly exercise program for Parkinson’s patients that she would attend. Simultaneously, a social worker from the hospital would sit with us, the husbands and wives, and talk about the situation at home and how to deal with any problems that we or our spouses had during the past week. It was extremely helpful and carried on even during the pandemic via Zoom.

    If you can afford it, try to get a home health care worker for several hours of the day just to give you some relief.

    There may come a point where you just can’t deal with the burden of caring for your wife’s dementia any more and you’ll have to move her from home into a memory unit. That’s a very, very hard decision. You’ll have to get family help with that one as well advice from her doctors and social workers. This video helped me a lot.

    https://youtu.be/3ZuhqHK8wDE

    You have all my sympathy for your wife and you and wish you the best.

  27. Huxley

    “But I do caution against the frequent conservative response to characterize those further to their left as people who must be evil, subhuman, or mentally ill.”

    That ship has sailed. When I see decisions being made that knowingly harm this country/it’s children, etc. I am only left with one conclusion.

  28. Rich Cook (and others).
    Americans preferring socialism may not be as advertised.
    Perhaps they are thinking of a very high-benefits, high tax on someone else, lots of regulations.
    And government ownership of means of production does not occur to them or is irrelevant.

  30. Steve.
    Rough road.
    My father, strongest man I ever knew, needed help, in part to decompress.
    May God be with you and your wife.

  31. Rich Cook,
    It is possible that there are Democrats , especially older ones , who do not realize how much grooming is going on of children towards the alphabet lifestyle.
    There are a couple of older black, religious women that I OCCASIONALLY send them a link on some of the alphabet business. This week I sent a link to a video of Jill Biden and the State Department giving out awards for ” International women of courage “. One of the ” women” was a dude in a dress.

  33. I think ultimately it’s literally a change in consciousness, the coming to a spiritual sobriety. To see the world in a realistic manner – ie., what works and what doesn’t work – you must first achieve a certain level of self-awareness. You can have a stratospheric IQ, but without genuine self-awareness, you’re subject to all the emotions in the collective mind. You’re sleepwalking.

    Difficult to say what it is that awakens us. Maybe it’s just spiritual exhaustion and the consequent seeking of real meaning and substance. Maybe it’s suffering, maybe a traumatic experience in some cases. In any case, you’ve got to become aware of your own, in Blake’s words, “mind forged manacles” before you can see and understand the world clearly.

  35. Art Deco:

    Not a meaningful answer from you, and it doesn’t even begin to address the polls.

    Many people who know very little about socialism and could not discuss it intelligently – and who are therefore not really socialists – will support socialists running for office as well as socialist policies. That is the point.

  36. Hi Steve,

    I’m very, very sorry to hear about the situation that you and your wife are in right now.

    I’ll try to make my next remarks very brief, just because of the very, emotional subjects that I will try to cover in these remarks.

    Within the past 10 years: my mother was over 70 years old.

    [Warning: The following comment has a tragedy in it.]

    To try to tell you right away about her fate + not have it surprise you and people later on in my comment- she had a severe stroke that eventually made her pass on from brain issues later on.

    Anyway, in recent years- my mother was living with my father + I.
    She had had a major stroke that put her in a rehabilitation hospital.

    My father + I were not medical professionals, + were faced with big problems in helping my mom, but- we found nurses doctors, + other medical people, to help us bring my Mom to her home, + [my father, me, the medical people, our family + friends], helped my mom regain workable walking…with a walker, and about 90% of her ability to speak.

    My father + I, and my Mom, and our friends, were able to help my mom- come back to her house, the home she loved, to people that she loved and loved her, and we helped her stay in her home for around 5 more years, before she peacefully passed on.

    My siblings told my Dad and I- that she very much appreciated the help + care that we gave her, + that she very much loved that she was able to spend her time after her stroke, with her family, + in the home that she loved.

    I do not know the unhappy emotions that you + your wife are having with your current sad situation, but I believe that there are people who can understand a little- the very, hard time that you and your wife are currently going through.

    If you’ll pardon me, I don’t feel like I should give you + your wife advice about what you should do in your situation, since I don’t know all of the things that you + your wife will need in your situation.

    I’m wishing the best for you and your wife, And I hope that you both will get more than enough of [the emotional support, and all other types of help, + material goods, that you need], from: your family, your friends, your doctors + medical people, and from everyone else who can help you two people with your current situation.

    In closing, I hope that things will go well in the future, for you and your wife, in your current times.

    Sincerely, TR.

  37. There are no words I can write that will help you, except I hear you and can pray that you will find the energy and wisdom to help your wife. Some good advice has been proffered already. I hope some of it will be useful. You’re not alone. God bless you and your wife.

  38. In the Seventies and Eighties, liberal magazines like the Atlantic, Harper’s and the New Republic could be quite critical of liberal orthodoxy. That’s not true now. I suppose the generational shift was the main reason. If you weren’t alive in the Sixties or Seventies you might have a more positive view of progressivism than if you were old enough to see the consequences of the last wave of progressivism. Also, it’s not Gerald Ford’s Republican Party any more, and Republicans and conservatives are easier to caricature and see as ignorant provincials who either don’t need to be listened to — or as extremists who need to be suppressed by the authorities.

    Just what “socialism” means now is up in the air. True believers in a command economy and state ownership of the means of production are rare, but plenty of people call themselves socialists today. “Capitalism” becomes their word for everything they don’t like. They’re mostly young and live in cities, so many of us may not meet any of them.

  39. That ship has sailed. When I see decisions being made that knowingly harm this country/it’s children, etc. I am only left with one conclusion.

    Rich Cook:

    How do you handle changers then?

    I can understand your claim as an emotional personal statement, but if you were to consider it less emotionally, where would you put people such as neo, Gerard and myself?

    We once were the people you today consider evil, subhuman or mentally ill. We changed years ago, true, but there are people changing now.

  40. Steve –
    Prayers for you and your wife. I am not religious per se, but as my wife declined and then died, I found prayer to be cathartic, affective . . . like extended, expanded love.

    Having recently traversed similar territory, I’ll agree with Neo’s linked suggestion — there’s something about expression, talking with others, that helps. A final idea: every impression we receive affects us down to a cellular level, so be care-full to take care of yourself as well.

  41. }}} I never was a leftist, and perhaps that’s what OBloody really means.

    Indeed, and, when we speak of liberals “in those days”, we usually mean “Classical Liberals” as opposed to the now vastly more common, “PostModern Liberal” of today.

    Among their many other failings, “PostModern Liberals” are very very much of Harry Truman’s “professional liberals”:

    “Professional liberals are too arrogant to compromise,” Truman said. “In my experience they were also very unpleasant people on a personal level. Behind their slogans about saving the world and sharing the wealth with the common man lurked a nasty hunger for power. They’d double-cross their own mothers to get it or keep it.”
    – Harry S Truman –

    https://www.americanheritage.com/eight-days-harry-truman

    Truman, BTW, was, IMNSHO, a very decent man, even though an indisputable racist, and anti-Semite. The author of the above piece was Jewish, and, in 1970, (Truman was 86), the author was not allowed inside their home (possibly more Bess’s position, though Truman did not fight it) — so the interviews took place on the porch of their home.

    I still assert his basic decency, because of this, and his championship of anti-lynching legislation:

    “My forebears were Confederate… Every factor and influence in my background — and my wife’s, for that matter — would foster the personal belief that you are right.

    But my very stomach turned over when I learned that negro soldiers, just back from overseas, were being dumped out of Army trucks in Mississippi and beaten.

    Whatever my inclinations as a native of Missouri might have been, as President, I know this is bad. I shall fight to end evils like this.”
    – Harry S Truman –

    I think it’s clear from the initial line that he was still an undisputed racist. And yet his decency overrode that when it came to abusing men who had clearly done their country proud.

    “But I digress”…

    Neo, my sense of terms means I think you were a classical liberal, which isn’t any thing like a modern liberal — I assert that 95% of self-defined liberals these days are of the PostModern ilk, the “professional” ilk.

    I was meaning you were never a “liberal” as the term is used today. And the fact that you were able to shift in the early 2000s as you did suggests that there was a lot of stuff simmering below the surface to break you free of the Plantation, and those events were merely the “straw that broke the camel’s back”. So clearly, you were already unconsciously thinking about stuff in a “non-PML” way, and probably had been doing so (from your series on changing your mind) for quite a long while, perhaps over 30 years to some extent…

    All this is admitted guessing and surmission on my part, no question, interpretation from some of your writing. So no need to defend other than “nope. Not right”, if you disagree, or even if I’m egregiously worng. 😛

  42. }}} I think, back when you were a Democrat voter, Neo, the socialists were a fringe portion of the party, not mainstream. It was possible for Democrat and Republican family and friends to have discussions and still be friends. Now that is much more difficult.

    Indeed, back then, Ralph Nader was the far Left.

    Nowadays he’s a Fascist Running Dog.

    Not only are they so far out in Left field that they can’t see the center line, they can no longer view it even if they had use of the Webb telescope. 😀

  43. }}} We to your left are limited human beings with plenty already on our plates. So we may not, yet, see the big picture conservatives already have.

    Huxley, I’m not really looking for you to become a conservative. I would appreciate it a great deal if you began to argue for Classical Liberalism, however, which — yes, is going to get you ACCUSED of being an eeeeeevil ConPublican, no question.

    As the saying goes, “Liberals want you to think as they do. Conservatives just want you to think.”

    When you hear someone arguing that a man is a woman “if S/He says so”, then yeah, it would be nice if you — and the likely fairly large number of people who agree with you (I’m assuming, I grant) — challenged that position, so it was clearer to everyone that that notion is not the majority opinion.

    When Biden and the Deep State does something, such as denying the “QAnon Shaman” defense team access to video which largely exonerates him of the claims of violent insurrection, then yes, I’d like to see you express outrage. Because a Classical Liberal would damned sure have been outraged.

    When they talk about suppressing speech, and claiming — not proving, but claiming it is “disinformation” without actual evidence — yeah, I’d be really pleased if I heard you and others come down against that — because, again — a Classical Liberal would be offended by the very IDEA that people were doing that.

    Don’t side with me. Side with yourself, as a Classical Liberal.

    But stop being afraid just because at the start, you’re going to appear to be alone. Because you aren’t. You almost certainly will discover — as Neo did — that you as a Classical Liberal — have far far more in common with true modern conservatives than you do with the PostModern Liberals. But you might be surprised at how many Classical Liberals there still are, when push comes to shove.

    But that only means you are, in some regards, comrades against the same problems. And that is the point behind “The Wisdom of the Crowds” which Democracy is designed to work with.

    I would still not be surprised to find you supporting Unions, for example, as a Classical Liberal — and even making sure that laws protecting the basic essential rights of LGBTQPRXYZ are the same as “everyone else”. Because those are reasonable. It’s when they start turning into “special privileges” that it breaks the system.

    }}} Huxley

    “But I do caution against the frequent conservative response to characterize those further to their left as people who must be evil, subhuman, or mentally ill.”

    That ship has sailed. When I see decisions being made that knowingly harm this country/it’s children, etc. I am only left with one conclusion

    I do tend to agree with this. It’s not the people “to the left”, however, it’s the people who, as suggested above, are actually doing things that any rational person can see is destructive — such as encouraging young children to take hormone shots — which I categorize as “evil”.

    The problem is, those voices are loud and not very often objected to (well, never, actually) by others on the Left.

  44. Take national review, at its origins byckley had always been a conservative but he was a maverick type in mexico he translated the yenan way by a former latin leftist

    on his mast head was frank meyer and wilmoore kendall who had been on the left of course i mentioned whittaker chambers and burnham who was a fmr trotskyite

    This current crew at buckleys flagship is incapable of recognizing the left or even effectively countering it

  45. }}} The problem is, those voices are loud and not very often objected to (well, never, actually) by others on the Left.

    BTW, this is the same problem with Islam. Yes, there is no question there are “moderate Muslims”.

    But they don’s speak out against the fanatics, so they appear to be in agreement with them, regardless of the validity of that.

    I asked my cousin’s husband (who is Muslim) about it, and his response was that “they’re nutjobs and I don’t want them coming after me.”

    Well, the problem there is akin to that of black people not working against criminals who are black, “showing solidarity”.

    I hate to tell you, but if you don’t police yourselves, you really can’t complain too loudly about the tactics of those whom you force to police you. Clean up your own house, and THEN you can complain how you are treated by others.

    I’m sorry, I generally don’t like the idea of abortion for the most part, but some Christian takes it upon themselves to blow up a clinic, I’m going to turn him in if I know him and convict him if I’m one of his jurors. The police are not going to have to go rousing church members to find him because I didn’t say anything. Because what he did is wrong, pure and simple, even if I also agree the abortion clinics are doing wrong.

    The issue with Islam, and to a somewhat lesser extent, liberals, is that you don’t act, or even speak out, against your extreme elements. And thus you have little justification for complaining when we don’t deal with them as you would.

  47. Also, it’s not Gerald Ford’s Republican Party any more, and Republicans and conservatives are easier to caricature and see as ignorant provincials who either don’t need to be listened to — or as extremists who need to be suppressed by the authorities.
    ==
    No, they’re not ‘easier to caricature’, and the inclination to caricature is not sensitive to the properties of those caricatured. Brett Kavanaugh has been caricatured as readily as Marjorie Taylor Greene.
    ==
    Republican politicians remain remarkably unambitious in re policy. It’s just that the Republican establishment seldom makes a big show of being antagonistic to Republicans whose worldview is more internally consistent. They don’t seek out designations like ‘moderate’ or ‘modern Republican’ anymore. (And what they really are is grifters).
    ==
    Gerald Ford was in politics because as far as he was concerned, it was a more agreeable way of making a living than practicing law in Grand Rapids; he had certain sentimental attachments and there were stances he would never adopt consequent to his background and nexus of associations. Best one can discern, George Bush the Elder was in politics because he was a competitive man who liked ‘challenges’; the only issue he seemed to be invested in was the capital gains tax; everything else was negotiable. Richard Nixon combined burning ambition with a vigorous intellect; just as a lawyer serves his clients and has only an idle interest in abstract justice, issues for Nixon were fungible (to the degree he had an actual preference, he tended to side with Rockefeller over Reagan).
    ==
    The Democrats would prefer to have Gerald Ford’s Republican Party because there were fewer people in it who had ideas of their own (as opposed to reacting, often quite ineffectually, to the ideas of the Democrats). Republicans also lost elections more often in that era. Democrats do not believe in free competition for public office. Republicans electoral victories are acts of piracy in their minds.

  48. My experience of political discussions among those who disagreed with each other was that they were nasty, bitter, and solved nothing. And political discussions among those who did agree with each other were boring. So why bother?

    This is my credo. Well said.

  49. I started moving right in the mid to late sixties. I suspect getting out of NYC and moving to Alaska helped.

  50. I went through “the change” at about the same time as neo: voted for Gore believing he was a good man compared to Clinton. Look at the charlatan he has become.

    My spouse and children have followed the Democrats and the media down the drain, while I live in emotional isolation, surrounded by those who lured them. My only soul-mate is my sister who lives a continent away. We all have our (physical) health, for which I am grateful, probably not as grateful as I should be!

    Ps. Churchill. What would have happened had he never lived?

  51. Steve, my heart goes out to you. Take care of yourself.

    I was a liberal as a college student and then I took an Economics course. I doubt that would have the same effect today but that was the late 50s. In 1960, I voted for Nixon outraging my yellow dog family.

    I have two leftist children, both lawyers. My conservative son says his brother just does it to p**s me off.

  52. I agree with huxley. “We once were the people you today consider evil, subhuman or mentally ill. We changed years ago, true, but there are people changing now.” Quite so. (And I would argue that it is never acceptable to consider another person subhuman, but that is a slightly different topic.)
    I think much of the problem is ignorance. And that can be remedied. I believed the leftist tropes when I was young because I didn’t know any better. Once I learned how the world worked, my views changed. What helped me was information shared by better-informed people of good will. So that’s how I try to be now.

  53. Sarah Rolph:

    I don’t often try to share information. It starts furious arguments. Even if it’s been acknowledged in, say, the NYT–see Hunter’s laptop–it is dismissed.

  54. There was an expectation that college would loosen students’ tribal ties and make them able to think for themselves, but instead the college-educated became another tribe with their own totems, rituals, myths, and taboos.

    In the Thirties, there was a sense that there was, very roughly, a party of labor and a party of capital. Professionals could come down on either side or be uncertain. Academics might support FDR but not feel at home with unions and the working class.

    Today the academics have their own party. Academia is a bubble of progressive thought that doesn’t take well to outsiders, and many graduates have never left that bubble and believe that political ideas coming from outside of it can’t be decent or respectable or worthy.

    You could see that mindset developing in the New Yorker decades ago. But it wasn’t widespread in the country at large. Most people didn’t go to college. Ideas hadn’t trickled down from progressive colleges and elite universities to lesser institutions and the school system. People still thought in ethnic or sectarian or regional or local terms. Middle class progressives didn’t feel at ease with ethnic minorities, and there certainly weren’t as many grievance groups and activists promoting the progressive agenda.

    It’s curious that the Democrats have moved further “left” without losing votes, but their enemy isn’t the rich or the corporations. It’s the deplorables and irredeemables, and a lot of very well-off people have no problem supporting that.

  55. well at an early point, one would have lost a rather vivid recorder of events, like khartroum and malakand, moving on would there have a gallipoli type invasion,
    or the imposition of the 1925 gold standard as chancellor, of course we come to
    the crux of it, would lord halifax have taken over from chamberlain and what would be the result,

  56. I would love to see the Smithsonian* again and all the monuments I saw as a kid, but I’m not going anywhere near DC for the foreseeable future – probably ever!

    * that was pre-Air&Space Museum, dammit!

  57. its staggering the amount of garbage that the local news, local tv stations, down to supposedly apolitical sports and music media (sarc) overwhelm you with,

  59. Hi Ray Van Dune,

    [What if Winston Churchill had never existed?]…Oh geez! I can only try to imagine [that] what that nightmare would be like. Man.

    Just as, although he never would: [I wonder what the racial-equality movement, + the civil rights movement, would look like], if Mahatma Gandhi (sp?) had just decided, when he was a young man, something like: “The heck with the racial problems…in India, and in South Africa!
    I’m just going to move to England…+ make a good living there, instead. The heck with fighting racism + unfairness. That’s just not my thing”.

    If he had done that, I wonder what: India, South Africa, The United Kingdom, + also the United States, would look like now,…without his doing his works for justice and peace?

    Oh wow.

  60. Though neo and I *occasionally* disagree our political journeys were quite similar. Both Jewish, close to the same age and began voting Republican around the same time in the early 2000s. Biggest difference may be my change was more gradual, I began doubting as early as Reagan.

    One key thing I believe we have in common is that even through our Democrat/liberal years we never trusted the hard left. This was a lot easier to reconcile when “liberal Democrat” included principled, patriotic individuals such as Scoop Jackson and Daniel Moynihan. Indeed my rejection of the party was complete when I decided that not only had the hard left taken over the Dems but that the party “elders” who should have known better were going along with it for political reasons.

  61. I have absolutely no sympathy whatsoever for the voters in Portland, San Francisco, Chicago, et.al. You wanted it you got it.

    All they ‘wanted’ was peace, love and free handouts, and they knew from the ‘news’ media that those only came from Dems. Most of them had no analytic ability, and all their friends were Dems, and so we’ve had decades in Seattle of sliding ever so much further into the disastrous descent into authoritarian Leftism. Wear your masks, ignore all those shuttered small businesses, and vote more taxpayer largesse to the increasing mobs in their tents under the freeways. But even the Seattle Times has to address, though sporadically, the radically increasing crime, street violence and gunplay, though its solution to that is more restrictions on popular rifles in gun stores, and continued blindness toward who the shooters and shootees really are.

  63. Maybe subanda bhose the fan of the squads chakrabarti might have taken the leadership, japan might have taken india

  64. in general, politics itself bored me

    I for one miss the days when politics were boring and weren’t such a big goddamn deal all the time. Sadly I don’t believe those times will come again, or at least not any time within the next couple decades.

    As human civilization becomes more and more affluent and more and more secular, politics in general have seemed to become more and more important in people’s minds. People have become much less tolerant of opposing views with the rise of social media and the decrease in face-to-face communication. People have become extremely zealous about their ideas, particularly those on the Left, but some on the Right as well. And there’s more of a desire to shut down any dissent.

  65. All they ‘wanted’ was peace, love and free handouts, and they knew from the ‘news’ media that those only came from Dems. Most of them had no analytic ability,

    My sister and many of my family still live in or near Chicago. They keep moving southwest. If you know Chicago, you know that northsiders NEVER move south and vice versa. I doubt any vote for Democrats anymore, if they ever did, but they are white and middle class. Chicago is now run by black gangs. Long ago it was run mostly by unions but that was the Daley era. The whites who still vote Democrat are mostly “gentry liberals” who live in high rise lakeshore enclaves with good security.

  66. What you describe is very much like what happened to me after 9/11, though the doubts had begun during Clinton’s second term and grew quickly in my outrage over the slanted mainstream coverage of the 2000 election and the Tea Party protests.

  67. I also hail from the left, and actively campaigned for McGovern back in the day. That party was cannibalized earlier this century and is no longer recognizable. Anyone who argues otherwise (that it was not much different from the present) should admit that Democrats of old were at most only potentially what they’ve become.

    The result of the Great Cannibalization over the past two decades is the brain-eating zombie coalition we see today. Their own brains have been eaten, and they are voraciously hungry for other brains – especially those of children (“Toddler brains, yum!”). More from Daniel Greenfield:

    The Zombie Apocalypse of Leftist Institutions

  68. Indeed my rejection of the party was complete when I decided that not only had the hard left taken over the Dems but that the party “elders” who should have known better were going along with it for political reasons.

    Aye, Jimmy Carter, Walter Mondale, Gary Hart, Michael Dukakis, Robert Kerrey. Not sure any of them have critiqued the direction of the Democratic Party. Remember the GooGoo groups like Common Cause and the League of Women Voters? Complete frauds now.

  69. I was surprised–upon reflection, I suppose I should not have been–by the loving, supportive and helpful responses to my inebriated comment of last night. I have begun to follow up on the many suggestions, and believe that my wife and I shall find the support we both need at this time, and into the future. God bless all of you wonderful, caring and helpful people! And especially you, Neo, for being so kind as to notice and respond and for providing a forum that enabled the outpouring of concern from your other readers. Better days ahead for us all!

  70. I voted for Carter, Jerry Brown and a slew of notable Democrats. Then Carter gave his “Malaise” speech and Brown was lowering expectations. I thought to myself that’s not how America rolls.
    That’s when I converted.

  71. Sympathy and best wishes to you and your wife, Steve. It’s something I think we all dread as we get old.

    On the subject of changing: I think I’m the only one here who was vehemently leftist in my youth in the late ’60s and changed his mind fairly early. I think by 1980 I had become willing to call myself a conservative, though I wasn’t keen on a lot of right-wingery.

    A big part of it for me was having seen left-wing radicalism up close. What happened first for me was a sort of conversion to love for the Western cultural tradition. I had seen and heard first-hand that the trajectory of leftist thinking was toward the destruction of that tradition. At the same time I was noticing that at the level of practical efforts much of what the left claimed and advocated was simply very ill-advised. Affirmative action was a prime example. The leftist commitment to the sexual revolution was another, and bigger: it seemed clear that the fallout from it was more negative than positive, but the left would not see or admit it, and just preached and more “liberation.” There is nothing in our current sex-n-gender craziness that was not already being thought of by radicals in the ’60s.

  72. Count me among those praying for you and your family Steve.
    “This is my comfort in my affliction, that your promise gives me life.” – Psalm 119:50

  73. Jon Baker

    I have tried that(sharing info) and all it does is start arguments which I weary of. I think the Balkanization is almost complete.

  74. Steve, I was late to this thread. You will have my prayers as well, for you, for your wife, and for support for both of you.

  75. I didn’t mean to suggest that one should go around constantly taking the initiative to try to straighten people out. I agree there’s no point in starting useless arguments. But I think it’s imperative to do one’s best to keep an open mind about why people are being so stupid, to treat them with good will to the extent possible, and to be available to provide information when the time is right.
    For example, I went to an informal college reunion where everyone but me was still very liberal. At a certain point we were asked to say a little about what we had been up to since college. Quite a few people took the opportunity to make a political point, so I did too — I made it clear that I am no longer a liberal. One of the organizers told me he thought that was brave. But the key point is that one of the women there was interested in my views. She asked if I didn’t think it was a good idea to soak the rich. I said no, the rich already pay way more in taxes than anyone else, we are lucky to have them. She didn’t actually know this, or hadn’t thought about it. When she persisted to try to make the point that the rich should pay a larger percentage of their income in taxes than anyone else, I asked her why. That stumped her. She thought there was some principle there, but when she actually looked, she couldn’t find it. Maybe she forgot about this later, but there is a possibility that she thought about it again. So that’s what I mean by taking an opportunity; just a small comment when it might matter.
    The main thing is to try to stay at least a little bit hopeful about the human spirit. If we start de-humanizing one another, all is lost.

  76. I was an oddity in my 20s – a long-haired conservative. I grew up in an armpit or butt hole of K.C. and was never soft on criminals as the area was rife with them. By the time I left in my 20s, eleven of my childhood friends were dead. Many from stupid, but two from murder and another couple got killed during crime. I was out the second I got a job.

    The thing i learned early on was that anyone will tell you they’re a decent person. You have to watch what they do, not listen to their words.

  77. neo:

    Whenever I watched my girlfriend do those steps (I kept it to myself, but) I always heard that diddle-diddle-diddle sound used for small cartoon characters running.

  78. Sarah Rolph: “… to be available to provide information when the time is right.”

    I agree completely with your overall point but couldn’t help laughing somewhat bitterly at those particular words. A couple of years ago I thought I was doing exactly that when a friend posted on Facebook about the Georgia election law that progressives, including our scoundrel president, were denouncing as “Jim Crow on steroids” etc. One thing they were saying was that the law made it illegal to give a drink of water to anyone waiting to vote. Well, I thought that sounded preposterous, so I looked up the law and found that any honest reading was that it was just an extension of typical restrictions on politicking at the polls. So I pointed out, and I think I was really quite civil, that the law didn’t really do what she said it did.

    I’ll sum up her response as “BOOM!” You’d have thought I was threatening her children. And someone else joined in to call me names. That friendship did not recover.

  79. I’ll sum up her response as “BOOM!” You’d have thought I was threatening her children. And someone else joined in to call me names. That friendship did not recover.

    Your friend, such as she was, was emotionally invested in a particular conception of Georgia’s Republican pols. How she got that way is something to contemplate.

  80. “But I do caution against the frequent conservative response to characterize those further to their left as people who must be evil, subhuman, or mentally ill.”
    ==
    The characters who are ruining accreditation for medical schools and teacher training programs, the characters introducing sexual content into elementary school classrooms, the characters poisoning people with hormones and mutilating them with unnecessary surgery, the characters implicated in vote fraud, the rioters, the Antifa twerps and the people financing them and getting them out of jail, the prosecutors and judges in the J6 cases, the prosecutors who tried to destroy Kyle Rittenhouse; the prosecutors, judges, and jurors who did destroy Derek Chauvin, the characters who had Paul Church bounced off the attending list of four hospitals in greater Boston, the characters trying to get Amy Wax fired from the University of Pennsylvania, Peter Sztrok, Andrew McCabe, Andrew Weissman, Adam Schiff, Addison Mitchell McConnell, &c. Just what am I supposed to call these characters?

  82. I, too, started voting Republican in 2004. I COULD not vote for John Kerry for President during a war. Period. It was the lesser of two evils….

  83. I am, again, shocked at how people can be as provincial as liberals firmly established in liberal cocoons.

    The deacons for a Southern Baptist Church in rural Mississippi aren’t nearly as provincial, lacking in curiosity or ill-informed as the liberals Neo describes. Or as prejudiced and judgmental. Or as hubristic.

  84. Art Deco asks: “Just what am I supposed to call these characters?” I agree with him.

    -These characters are motivated by hatred.

    -They actively lie, slander and ‘other’ innocent people.

    -They believe themselves morally superior. So much so that they support criminality and constitutional abuses in their quest for power.

    – And they use force in their determination to play God in the lives of others.

    If this isn’t evil, we need to make the effort to define terms better.

  85. Vis a vis the _American Spectator_ article about the Arizona school board linked to above, I just read a very good book with deals with the “logic of intolerant tolerance” among many other timely issues: _Pagans and Christians in the City: Culture Wars from the Tiber to the Potomac_ by Steven D. Smith. I recommend it.

  87. HUXLEY

    “But I do caution against the frequent conservative response to characterize those further to their left as people who must be evil, subhuman, or mentally ill.”

    Perhaps this is another rendition of “pot, kettle,” but over the years I have the impression that conservatives/the right have a greater tendency to label the other side as poorly informed, whereas the left/liberals/progressives have a greater tendency to label the other side as “evil, subhuman, or mentally ill.”

    For example, which President was more likely to have his opposition label him as mentally ill- Obama or Trump? By a landslide, more left/liberals/progressives labeled Trump as mentally ill than conservatives/the right labeled Obama as mentally ill.

    I have no interest in trying to convert the other side- or even debate with them- as I have seen that nothing I say is going to convert them.

    stan

    The deacons for a Southern Baptist Church in rural Mississippi aren’t nearly as provincial, lacking in curiosity or ill-informed as the liberals Neo describes. Or as prejudiced and judgmental. Or as hubristic.

    The hubris of the left is what impresses me. My fundamentalist Christian grandmother had sufficient humility that she loved to laugh at herself- she was the best source for jokes on herself. Not the left: smug, self-righteous.

  88. “The deacons for a Southern Baptist Church in rural Mississippi aren’t nearly as provincial….”

    I have a few funny stories relating to that, one involving some Jewish women in NYC who seemed to really believe that they would be murdered if they ventured into the Deep South. Pointing out the presence of generations-old Jewish families in many a little Southern town didn’t faze them. I guess they just didn’t believe it. But maybe I shouldn’t be too hard on them, since I have always believed that one’s chances of being knifed or shot on the New York City subway are at least 8 out of 10.

  89. Krauthammer was right twenty years ago. Liberals thought conservatives were evil because they viewed politics differently.

    Today, I say liberals are evil because they employ nasty, vile, vicious tactics which are EVIL. I don’t ever, ever consider someone evil because they favor higher marginal tax rates, or a minimum wage, or different levels of regulation or favor higher welfare payments.

    Othering innocent people is evil. Cancel culture is evil. Abusing constitutional rights is evil. Solitary confinement of political prisoners without bail or trial is evil. Nasty, vicious, relentless slander of opponents is evil. The Russia collusion hoax is evil. Election theft is evil. These matters have nothing to do with government policy. They have everything to do with horrific abuses.

  90. Mac

    I have a few funny stories relating to that, one involving some Jewish women in NYC who seemed to really believe that they would be murdered if they ventured into the Deep South. Pointing out the presence of generations-old Jewish families in many a little Southern town didn’t faze them.

    I wonder how they would react upon finding out that the first US Senator of the Jewish Faith was Judah Benjamin of Louisiana (1855-1861) He also served in various cabinet positions in the Confederate government. David Yulee, his second cousin was US Senator from Florida from 1845-1851 and 1855-1861, but he had converted to Christianity.

  91. I am a 9/11 conservative, and younger than you, but everything you wrote applies to me too. I will admit, though, that the first tiny crack in my worldview occurred when I visited Poland in 1988, and ritually denounced Reagan, only to be met with shock and my hosts’ earnest, well-founded appreciation for his standing up to the Soviets.

  93. Perhaps those Jewish women from New York were aware of this piece of history, which led to the creation of the Anti Defamation League.
    ==
    Frank arrived in Atlanta and settled into a thriving Jewish community (his wife was a native, IIRC). After his murder, his wife remained in Atlanta until her death. She never remarried.
    ==
    It’s a reasonable wager Frank was innocent. However, the local police were going to have him on the list to consider because he was one of a single digit population of men known to have been at the factory that day. (The factory was on temporary shut-down due to lack of supplies; most of it’s work force was female; the only people on site were Frank and a skeleton crew of support staff). Frank got to be their principal suspect do to his reaction when they visited his home and told him the dead body of one of his employees had been found in the basement.

  94. In re Leo Frank: there is an excellent book about the crime and trial written for a YA audience: “An Unspeakable Crime” by Elaine Marie Alphin, which is referenced several times in the Wikipedia article Neo linked.

    https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/elaine-marie-alphin/an-unspeakable-crime/

    Wikipedia: Some things never change.

    Soon after the murder, Atlanta’s mayor criticized the police for their steady release of information to the public. The governor, noting the reaction of the public to press sensationalism soon after Lee’s and Frank’s arrests, organized ten militia companies in case they were needed to repulse mob action against the prisoners.[72] Coverage of the case in the local press continued nearly unabated throughout the investigation, trial, and subsequent appeal process.

    Newspaper reports throughout the period combined real evidence, unsubstantiated rumors, and journalistic speculation.
    …
    During the trial, the prosecution alleged bribery and witness tampering attempts by the Frank legal team.[117] Meanwhile, the defense requested a mistrial because it believed the jurors had been intimidated by the people inside and outside the courtroom, but the motion was denied

  95. Neo: perhaps they were, and no one can deny the existence of anti-Semitism in the South. The point though is that their personal fear was insanely out of proportion to any actual danger. I was mostly joking about my own feelings about riding the subway in NYC; at most I would be mildly uneasy. But they were absolutely serious. It was a ludicrous level of provincialism.

    My father, btw, who manufactured agricultural equipment sold throughout the South and Midwest, once told me that he had never encountered locally the kind of anti-Semitism he sometimes observed in the Midwest. For what that’s worth.

  96. Transplanted (Massachusetts => Alabama, with lots of stops along the way) Jew here. The regional ignorance and political parochialism among NYC Jews in particular that Mac describes is real. I’ve seen it in action among my relatives and among native New Yorkers in our social circle. FWIW, I’ve lived in Alabama for almost twenty years and have not experienced Jew-dislike or -hatred in this part of the Deep South. (Or perhaps it was so cleverly disguised that I couldn’t detect it.) I can see how some of my northern co-religionists might consider archaic Southern terms like “the Jew store” (almost every small Southern town had one–I remember seeing a faded “Cohen Bros.” sign on the side of an old brick building in Calera, Alabama) to be anti-Semitic. I don’t–I kind of get a kick out of it. For more on the contemporary Jewish experience in the Deep South, see “Shalom Y’All” by Bill Aron and Alfred Uhry: https://www.amazon.com/shalom-yall/s?k=shalom+y%27all.

    I did occasionally experience overt or thinly veiled animus of the “you know it when you see it” variety while growing up in western Massachusetts and at grad school in D.C. (but not later in Munich, of all places). My father, who grew up in Boston in the 1920s-1930s, encountered it in a less subtle form almost daily. His neighborhood was in South Boston and abutted an Irish Catholic neighborhood; I remember him saying that Easter was an especially dangerous time for getting into fights. He also spent some time in the Deep South (Georgia) during WWII, when he was training to go overseas with the USAAF. He didn’t encounter Jew-hatred but he did get a taste of another form of bigotry when he innocently took a seat at the back of a city bus. He was informed by fellow passengers that white folks didn’t sit there.

  97. Thank you, Hubert. That all fits with my experience and observation. Your last point is important: anti-black racism, especially in the segregated South, dwarfed any other ethnic/racial/religious prejudice by many orders of magnitude.

    I never heard the term “Jew store” growing up in the ’60s, but the little town where I grew up had one that fit the bill: Mr. Jaffe’s dry goods store, on the east side of the square. I was never aware the he was Jewish. Nor that the mother of one of my friends was Jewish (married to a Christian) nor that her father, a hugely respected judge, was Jewish. It was only long after I grew up and learned more of the ways of the world that I realized it. No doubt there were anti-semites around who said nasty things about all these people, but I certainly never heard it.

    You may be aware of a book called The Jew Store, by Stella Suberman. Sounds somewhat similar to Shalom Y’All. It’s a memoir by the daughter of a guy who ran one in a tiny Mississippi town in the twenties. Very enjoyable.

    A sad footnote to the story of Jews in little Southern towns: the decline of the towns has meant that the little Jewish communities in many of them are now gone. A friend of mine, another who grew up mixed Christian-Jewish, was lamenting recently that “all the Jews are gone” from the town where he grew up. But then he isn’t living there anymore, either.

  98. Mac; Hubert:

    Some people in each region of the country tend to be somewhat ignorant of the viewpoints of people in other regions. There’s nothing especially ignorant about New York Jews in that regard.

    In addition, I have known plenty of New York Jews, and I have literally NEVER heard a single one mention anti-Semitism in the South. So you may know a particular couple of people who are upset about that, but I certainly don’t know any. I’ve heard plenty of discussions by New York Jews of anti-black racism in the South, however – particularly during the 1950s and 1960s and 1970s.

    But anti-Semitism exists everywhere to different degrees. It certainly existed and still exists in the South – and North, and West, and East, and middle. I’ve heard and read plenty of examples. It was certainly quite overt when I was growing up, even in NYC. There were many clubs that excluded Jews, for example. Is this a terrible form of anti-Semitism? Of course not, and it can’t be compared to gas chambers, etc.. But it – and casual expressions one would hear fairly often, like “he jewed him down” – certainly was anti-Semitic.

  99. ‘casual expressions one would hear fairly often, like “he jewed him down”’

    Yeah, now that one I heard occasionally when I was growing up. Haven’t heard it for a long time but then I’m not often around the kind of people who would use it.

  100. Mac:

    I’m not sure what “kind of people” you think use it.

    One person I heard use it was a blue-blooded DAR-type WASP friend of mine. It was quite a while ago, however.

  101. ‘I’m not sure what “kind of people” you think use it.’ Insensitive, indifferent to offensive ethnic stereotypes. Or possibly actively prejudiced/hostile. Not thinking of any particular social class.

    Also: we’ve gotten away from the point that kicked this off, made by stan (above, yesterday, 1:57pm), that what makes the provincialism of, for instance, New Yorkers with regard to, for instance, Mississippi, amusing is that the New Yorkers are more likely to see themselves as specifically *not* provincial. Just as it’s amusing to see liberals praising their own open-mindedness while demonstrating the opposite. That was basically stan’s point, and mine: the Jewish women I mentioned happened to be an instance that has stuck in my mind, because their view was so strong and yet so unwarranted.

  102. Had a Jewish friend who grew up in a medium town in Texas. I heard from him a year or so back discussing how hard it was for Jews then–he was born in the late Forties.

    After college in the midwest, he returned and built a very successful business and has no current issues with the folks around.

  103. I’ve absolutely never heard the expression ‘jew you down’ or ‘jew me down’ in ordinary conversation. The first time I can recall hearing it otherwise was in an idiot comedy film called Drop Dead Gorgeous and it was uttered by a furniture merchant played (I see from IMDB) by an actor named ‘Sam McMurray’ (who I’ve otherwise never heard of). Drop Dead Gorgeous is set in a small town in Minnesota, though a Los Angeles screenwriters’ caricature of small-town Minnesota (which owed nothing to Garrison Keillor), so I doubt the expression is current there.

    I seem to recall Jesse Jackson raked over the coals in 1984 for saying something like “Ya got to go down to Jewtown if ya can’t negotiate the suits down, and start negotiating with Hyman and sons”.

  104. Slightly surprised that you never heard it, but then I’ve never heard it more than a few times, and those long ago. It sticks in the mind because it was shocking.

    Just in case this got lost in the conversation: I didn’t just throw in the fact that those women were Jewish for New York effect or whatever. The whole point of the story was that they feared they would certainly be murdered quickly, solely because they were Jewish.

  105. Neo: correct–there are ignorant, prejudiced people everywhere. But Mac’s story was about a New York Jewish lady who had a stereotyped view of the South. Her misconceptions were similar to what I heard from my NYC cousins and the New York-born Jewish residents of the Massachusetts retirement community where my parents spent their last years. When I told them I lived in Alabama, I got an earful. Despite not having visited the region since 1961 or at all, they knew for a fact that southerners were:

    Racist.
    Anti-Semitic.
    Supid.
    Ignorant.
    Bible-banging hicks. And of course
    “Right wingers”!

    I said they were absolutely right and that the Deep South is a horrible, horrible place. Keep away! Stay up north!

    I suspect they got their ideas from The New York Times, which is the substitute Bible for secular northeastern Jews. Interestingly, the Times has or had strong connections to the Deep South and covered the region extensively. Example: long-time NYT bureau chief and editor Howell Raines is an Alabamian from a prominent Birmingham family.

    Mac: I first heard the expression “the Jew store” from a former woman friend, a Mississippi native who grew up on a farm outside Hattiesburg. I found it rather funny. I think she may also have mentioned Suberman’s book; I know she brought “Shalom Y’All” to my attention. She grew up Southern Baptist (of course), attended the University of Southern Mississippi, earned a Ph.D., and worked as an administrator at a university in Alabama. A local Jewish family was/is one of the university’s major donors (buildings, a sports arena, a medical center etc.).

    Deco: I’ve heard the expression “to Jew down” used ironically, sometimes by Jews. And I believe the expression that got Jackson into trouble in the 1980s was “Hymietown”. Racial slurs: I’ve heard the n-word used in casual conversation by working-class southern whites, but not in the sense I expected. Rather, as an intensifier (e.g. a farm boy who joined the Marines and fought in Vietnam: “My daddy worked me like a [n-word] on the farm, so I was glad to get away and join the Marines”). One thing that many southern whites and blacks share is the experience of rural poverty. It creates surprising bonds–at least surprising for northerners whose idea of the region was formed in the 1950s and 1960s. There is perhaps no more quintessentially southern experience than having Sunday lunch at a meat-and-three (vegetables, including mac ‘n’ cheese) restaurant in a small town and watching middle-age black folks and white folks share family news while standing in line for fried chicken, collards, cornbread, sweet potato souffle, and squash casserole (washed down with SweeTea). Everybody knows everybody else, and probably have for generations. Bad history? Sure. But other things too: sympathy, respect, and a shared attachment to the place.

    Speaking of place: Mac’s point about the disappearing Jewish communities in small southern towns is sadly true. There was a program a few years ago to lure Jews from other parts of the country to the Deep South. I had a mental image of yarmulka’d men in black suits being air-dropped from DC-3s into small towns in the piney woods, like fingerling trout into stocking ponds. Don’t know if it’s still going on, but I do know that there are worse places for Jews to live.

    Related true story. A now-retired colleague at the university where I work was putting together a search committee. He took his list of names to the dean. She said he needed to put a minority representative on the committee. My colleague, a native Kentuckian who likes to “torque” people, slyly said “Well, we’ve got [my last name] on there, he’s a Jew”. The dean said “He’s a white male! HE DOESN’T COUNT!” Higher ed in a nutshell.

    Finally, to Neo’s point about “what kind of people”. One of the overtly anti-Semitic comments I heard in grad school came from an otherwise affable classmate from a very accomplished family with strong D.C. connections. He was and I suspect still is a good guy, but hearing him say what he said left me gobsmacked. In fairness, his father had clashed rather famously with a firebrand Jewish congresswoman from New York in the mid-1970s (over Fourth Amendment rights and government surveillance of American citizens–plus ca change! etc.), so maybe he came by it honestly. Or at least understandably. Most of us are bigots about something (Deco: “Prove it.” Me: “OK. 6x+ years as a human being observing and dealing with other human beings.”). The trick is to know it–and try to outgrow it.

  106. “Jew-down” means, of course, to bargain. To bargain down. To get a better price. To get a better deal. For either purchases or services. rentals, etc.
    In many Western countries, historically, either the Jews were the ONLY bargainers (though this is doubtful) or they were the toughest bargainers (more likely).
    Cultural thang, not necessarily religious.
    Never forget the time I was buying a shirt or something at “The Bay” (i.e., The Hudson’s Bay Co.) in a city in western Canada. It was in the early 90s, I guess, and following me at the checkout counter were some young Muslim women. When I finished making my purchase and they placed their things on the counter, they started bargaining about the price of their purchases with the young (female) cashier after she told them how much they had to pay. She checked the cash register and repeated the price. They insisted on bargaining. She didn’t understand what was happening to her. Didn’t know what hit her. Probably never happened to her before. When she finally did understand what they were trying to do, she said, finally she didn’t think so, but she’d have to speak to the manager….
    And so…the souk came to Western Canada…

  107. Hubert:

    Actually, his statement was not about NY Jewish women having generalized stereotypical fears or contempt for the south or southerners. I would say that sort of feeling is very widespread among people who are not southerners – whatever their ethnic group.

    He was talking specifically about NY Jewish women thinking they would be murdered in the South because of anti-Semitism.

  108. Barry Meislin:

    It means “to bargain” but usually “in an unfair or greedy manner.”

  109. In fairness, his father had clashed rather famously with a firebrand Jewish congresswoman from New York in the mid-1970s (over Fourth Amendment rights and government surveillance of American citizens–plus ca change! etc.), so maybe he came by it honestly.
    ==
    Blabzug. Redistricting landed her in the same constituency as Wm. Fitts Ryan in 1972, so they had a primary campaign. Ryan was unaccountably running for re-election even though he had terminal cancer. Among those campaigning for him was Ed Koch, who thought he was a lousy politician but nevertheless preferable to Bella. Ryan won the primary. The returns began to come in and it appeared he had won a 2-1 majority in Bella Abzug’s home precinct. So, a reporter collars Ed Koch and asks him why he thought that was; he ponders for a moment and says “Her neighbors know her”.

  110. Hubert

    To me this speaks of an intellectual laziness that is widespread. The willingness to believe something simply because of the source. I think I came out of the womb as a conservative, but, I am very hesitant to believe because “our side” said it. People do not want to take the effort to research what they believe.

    Speaking of Alabama:

    An acquaintance said some derogatory things about “the hicks in Alabama.” My rejoinder was “You DO know that NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory is in Huntsville, Alabama? Do you think they employ hicks!”

  111. Rich Cook: close. The NASA JPL is in California. However, the NASA Marshall Space Flight Center is indeed in Huntsville, Alabama. This is the facility that designed the Saturn V rockets that took us to the moon. It was led in the 1960s by Wernher von Braun and the department heads were almost all ex-Nazi rocket scientists:

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marshall_Space_Flight_Center

    Hmm. Maybe those NY Jewish ladies had a point after all.

    Huntsville is also home to the U.S. Army’s Redstone Arsenal. Lots of high-tech and manufacturing R&D in Huntsville. Good German restaurants too. A friend is the development officer for the Huntsville Symphony Orchestra (founded 1955)–another gift to the city from Dr. von Braun and his team. Talk about mixed legacies. See Monique Laney, “German Rocketeers in the Heart of Dixie: Making Sense of the Nazi Past During the Civil Rights Era” (Yale University Press, 2015).

  113. Perhaps this is another rendition of “pot, kettle,” but over the years I have the impression that conservatives/the right have a greater tendency to label the other side as poorly informed, whereas the left/liberals/progressives have a greater tendency to label the other side as “evil, subhuman, or mentally ill.”

    Gringo:

    I wasn’t addressing which side does what more. My concern was with conservatives who do so. There are some on this blog, I would note.

    How often does one read “liberalism is a mental illness” all over the conservative sphere?

    Even while I was on the left, I got tired of the left’s demonization of the right. When I hear such demonization from the right, I get a “My, how much things haven’t changed” feeling.

    Generally, I agree the right is more realistic and correct than the left or I wouldn’t be here.

    I am skeptical that an absolute, black-white, good-evil stance towards half the other citizens in America is healthy for oneself or effective for finding solutions.

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