Caught in the crossfire of the 'two Americas'

Globe and Mail ^ | October 12, 2002 | DOUG SAUNDERS

[stainlessbanner]

WASHINGTON -- Sometimes, a nut with a gun is only a nut with a gun. If the moment is right, though, a nut with a gun becomes the stuff of political mythologies.

This comes to mind as I sit in the shadow of Capitol Hill, penned in by the sniper who has laid siege to this town's suburban perimeter all week. In the midst of this peculiarly American form of fear, I am kept aloft with a diet of crab cakes and bourbon, and a very thick and fitting new book, Jesse James: Last Rebel of the Civil War.

Mr. James was a nut with a gun, as we all know. Author T.J. Stiles does a good job of pointing out that the Missouri hero, beyond his eloquence and looks, was little more than a psychotic serial killer driven by racist and egotistical impulses. But what is much more important is the politics.

Jesse James arrived at a moment when the United States was polarized into two nations, one agricultural and racist and Democrat, the other industrial and urban and cosmopolitan and Republican. There was an impermeable barrier between these two tribes, possibly an even sharper divide than during the Civil War two decades before.

In the divided America of the Reconstruction, Jesse James was embraced by certain factions of the Democrats as a virile emblem of the Confederacy's continuing revenge, and by the northeastern Republicans as a warning of the bloody tyranny of decentralized power. His face was potent fodder in elections.

So here we are, 140 years later, four weeks away from a sharply divided American midterm election, preoccupied by a nut with a gun. Early in the week, the local TV stations were filled with ads run by supporters of Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, the Democratic candidate for Maryland governor, accusing her Republican challenger, Robert Ehrlich, of voting against every gun-control bill that came along. (She pulled them off the air on Thursday, citing taste.)

In turn, Mr. Ehrlich got on TV here to declare that it was not a gun problem but a "crime problem," and promised to build a new prison. The collective morality of guns versus the individual morality of criminal impulses -- a nice symbol of the American divide.

Two years ago, after the world had stayed up all night to watch a presidential election that wouldn't end, The New York Times published a colourful full-page map. The "blue" Democrat areas covered the east and west coasts, the Great Lakes states, and most of California. Everywhere else -- the agricultural centre, the "sunbelt," and eventually Florida -- was Republican red.

Red America and Blue America -- one religious, agricultural, extreme and uneducated; the other urban, ethnic, educated and dully centrist -- still stare at each other across a deep epistemological chasm.

Are these two Americas locked in battle, the way the Whiggish Republicans and the neo-Confederate Democrats were in Jesse James's time? Some believe they are. In an essay published in the current Washington Monthly, editor Nicholas Confessore argues that the new Reds are about to take total control of the nation. The Republicans are one seat away from controlling both legislative houses, the presidency and the Supreme Court, for the first time in more than 80 years.

And, unlike previous four-branch majorities, he argues, these "New Republicans" are radical activists, whose "few congressional moderates are cowed and marginal; its leadership is almost exclusively Southern and conservative." With no opposition, Mr. Confessore cries, get ready for holy war!

But a very different theory has everyone in Washington talking. Two dyed-in-the-tweed Democrats, John Judis and Ruy Teixeira, have a new book called The Coming Democratic Majority. Its title is resonant: In 1969, Kevin Phillips's The Coming Republican Majority told the GOP that it should turn away from racial minorities and court the angry working-class whites and religious southerners who'd been loyal to the Democrats since FDR's New Deal.

The Watergate scandals got in the way, but this new American divide had become reality by 1980, when Ronald Reagan stole the blue-collar base, leaving the Democrats with only the urbanites.

Now, computers and trade have put that blue collar-base out of business. As a result, Mr. Judis and Mr. Teixeira argue, we are in the midst of a "realignment." (Political scientist Walter Dean Burnham theorized that Americans have realignments, instead of revolutions, every few generations, in which the allegiances to political parties shift to conform to popular worldviews.)

This book holds that a new America has formed, one that included educated people in postindustrial, ideas-based economies across the north, the west and much of the south, as well as the old Blue base of women, minorities and some workers. The Democrats could seize this "ideopolis" from the Republicans if they stay in the centre, as most other Western governments have. The Republicans would then hold sway only "where the transition to postindustrial society has lagged," an island they will fiercely defend.

The authors' title may not come true soon -- things like Sept. 11 and Bill Clinton's penis tend to get in the way of ideological change -- but the idea, which is backed with fine-toothed empirical work, should be comforting to people outside the U.S. who see the country as a monolith modelled after George W. Bush.

The Reds won't rule forever; there will always be two Americas, and they will periodically shift their boundaries, transform their colours and throw up a new, different nation. And we should pay no attention to the nut with a gun at the centre of it all.
Copyright © 2002 Bell Globemedia Interactive Inc. All Rights Reserved.

[BADROTOFINGER]

Red America and Blue America -- one religious, agricultural, extreme and uneducated; the other urban, ethnic, educated and dully centrist -- still stare at each other across a deep epistemological chasm.

Oh please. Uneducated? Hardly. Dully centrist? It isnt even Halloween yet...JFK

[BlessingInDisguise]

Very interesting and informative read!

[Cicero]

This guy should stick to his bourbon and crabcakes.

[dark_lord]

...things like Sept. 11 and Bill Clinton's penis tend to get in the way of ideological change

I could never, ever have thought up that juxtaposition.

9/11...Bill Clinton's penis.

Yep. Its weird.

[stainlessbanner]

Very strange article. The author is ignorant (and probably a fruitcake).

[edwin hubble]

Ok.. let's see...the author says,

the red area is "extreme and uneducated"
while the blue area is "uneducated and extreme".

OK...If you accept these "empirical data" as 'given' then the argument for the "future of America" is easily made.
The red zone is the past... the blue zone is the future.

Actually the great ideas of the past 30 years have come from the leaders of the red zone, but you won't find that in the book.

[edwin hubble]

typo correction

the author says the blue area is "educated and centrist".
the red area is "uneducated and extreme"

[thedugal]

religious, agricultural, extreme and uneducated

This whole article is based on mythology. Pure bullocks.

religious: Clinton went to church, even if it was just to wave his finger at God. Most of the country is religious, right or left. Personally, I can't stand religion in politics, and I am no fan of the bible thumpers, but I'd rather have them on my side than the homicidal maniac communists and humanists.

agricultural: dan rather gets farm subsidies. thanks to the miracles of modern science, not all Americans need to farm in order to feed the entire world.

extreme: Democrats accuse the President of wanting to murder senior citizens and it's the republicans who are extreme. Put Lott and Carville in a room together and then tell me who is extreme. Remind me, is it the leftists or the conservatives who travel around the world wreaking havoc and destruction to protest politics they disagree with? The problem isn't extremism by conservatives, it is extreme APATHY by the average city dweller which is then guided to ugly new heights by extreme SOCIALIST leadership.

uneducated: Democrats got 60% of the high-school dropout vote in the 2000 elections. In other words, uneducated people vote DEMOCRAT. And this is the root of this guy's whole premise. Republicans are uneducated i.e. unthinking persons (religious, don't think, just believe, agriculture, farmers hicks hillbillies dummies, extreme, as in ruled by emotion not rational thought, uneducated, dumb). The majority of h.s. and college educated people voted for Bush.

I am completely fed up with this daily assault of vicious lies by hateful leftists.

[PianoMan]

Cynthia McKinney - educated and centrist
Orrin Hatch - uneducated and extreme

hmmm....

[okie01]

Suitable for framing:

"Red America and Blue America -- one religious, agricultural, extreme and uneducated; the other urban, ethnic, educated and dully centrist -- still stare at each other across a deep epistemological chasm."

In a single sentence, one of the best examples of liberal media bias one is ever likely to find.

Mind you, he's not being dishonest. Doubtless, this is what Doug Saunders really believes. He is a very sincere and committed bigot. Not consciously, but a bigot nonetheless.

[El Gato]

At the time Jesse James was running amok, The US was still overwhelmingly agricultural, by population at least. IIRC, the balance didn't tip towards more than half industrial until after WW-I.

[El Gato]

This book holds that a new America has formed, one that included educated people in postindustrial, ideas-based economies across the north, the west and much of the south, as well as the old Blue base of women, minorities and some workers. The Democrats could seize this "ideopolis" from the Republicans if they stay in the centre, as most other Western governments have. The Republicans would then hold sway only "where the transition to postindustrial society has lagged," an island they will fiercely defend.

Must be why the 'net is more conservative or more properly anti-liberal than the nation as a whole. Credibility rating: no pulse but still warm.

[ARCADIA]

"Red America and Blue America -- one religious, agricultural, extreme and uneducated; the other urban, ethnic, educated and dully centrist -- still stare at each other across a deep epistemological chasm."

It sounds good to me. I say we make our national elections process a little more complicated to challenge those ignorant hillbillies. I am sure the enlighthen masses in Broward and Miami Dade counties would just love that. (sarcasm on)

[M. T. Cicero II]

Clinton's penis and 9/11 have been the engine of change! (This guy's a moron.)

Where Republicans want to protect the country and 'Rats want to bend over! Where a "centrist" 'Rat is a person who thinks that Clinton might have engaged in improper behavior with Monica, but doesn't want their daughter playing "hide the corolla" with the President.