The thread raises an important point. US citizens have been conditioned for decades to accept IMAGE distinctions for political viewpoints.
Cool = liberal = ironic, snarky, let it all hang out, do what you want = Jon Stewart.
Uncool = conservative = repressed, intolerant, stonyhearted, morally hypocritical = Glenn Beck.
Since these ideologies are really battles between competing elites, and since the average citizen is too exhausted or harried to research or even care about issues, it's all a matter of Cool and Uncool. (Ah, Levi-Strauss, the waltz king of blue jeans!) Cool versus Uncool.
The conservative elites appeal to a limited demographic of bumpkins, traditionalists, a few highly-educated freethinkers, and most devotees of (what Harold Bloom calls) the American religion.
Liberal elites appeal to a much wider base: academics who live in angry theory, workers who think their interests are being served, people who are unhappy, who are foiled, who feel thwarted and cheated by life, who wish the social progress were faster, i.e., everyone who is repulsed by fat, hypocritical white guys.
Since all is image and no substance, the liberal elites have a tremendous advantage. I mean, who wants a bigoted Southern quasi-Christian hypocrite to call the shots? In image terms, a no-brainer.
There won't be effective democratic debate of issues until the "image" issue is brought to level terms. In part the present image problem is the fault of a conservatives playing to the wrong base. In part the problem is caused by a liberal stranglehold on the arts (know any right-wing poets?); on comedy (Someone told me Dennis Miller had a radio show ... who knew?); and other "image-shaping" instruments of propaganda.
If we want problems to be addressed rationally, debated rationally, with the premise that all elite sides want what's best for the US, this image problem must be "solved."
Yours, Tristram Shandy ------------------------------------------------------------------ To change your Lit-Ideas settings (subscribe/unsub, vacation on/off, digest on/off), visit www.andreas.com/faq-lit-ideas.html
