Fútbol Americano, or How Spanish is Degrading American Culture
An exchange from today’s Rush Limbaugh show, which I caught while roaming the roads in Texas:
CALLER: You mentioned that you watched the Miami-Jets game last night as I did.
RUSH: Yeah.
CALLER: And I wondered if you were as surprised as I was at a company sending a national add on NBC all in Spanish.
RUSH: You know what? I did not know that there was an ad all in Spanish.
CALLER: I believe it was right…I don’t want to name the company that ran the ad but I think it was right before halftime.
RUSH: Right before halftime.
CALLER: We certainly have a problem with illegal immigration and we have a huge problem with assimilation of the Spanish folk into the country, and I see this as just appalling that we would be running on national TV and national sporting events all-Spanish ads.RUSH: I ought to do a monologue about this. I think this is symptomatic of a whole bunch of things that are happening on our culture, the feminization of our culture. I see it in male, liberal sportswriters. I see how they’ve been feminized. I see how they have been feminist-ized. Our culture is more concerned with not offending our enemies today. We have a culture, if somebody attacks us, a growing percentage of our country wants to ask, “What did we do to cause this? It’s our fault.” Somehow they’ve been told and they’ve bought into the notion that America is hated deservedly. So this Spanish stuff that you see in this ad, this is just an outgrowth of America thinking it’s guilty of being so big and such a superpower that we have to reach out, we have to be nice to the people that we’ve oppressed or made angry. That’s one of the ways Obama got where he is, and I think it’s facilitating the total degradation of what used to be the American culture, because there was a distinct American culture. It’s under assault now from within.
Anyone who insists the Tea Party is not animated by a distinctively white unrest should read that whole thing three times slowly. I’ve had several conversations lately with people who insist, as Glenn Beck and other Tea Party leaders have done, that the movement is not about racism or xenophobia. I believe them. I doubt than anyone outside a small fraction of the activists who have marched in Washington openly despise black people or have personal antipathy toward the Hispanic immigrants in their hometowns. (In mine, they work for virtually every local business, and Mexican flags fly uncontroversially alongside the U.S. and Texas flags at many auto dealerships.) But one cannot listen to the exchange above and miss the clear sentiment behind the expressed concern: distinctive American culture, which happens to be the way white middle-class people who speak English live, is “under assault from within.”
People who dismiss the “white fear” interpretation of the Tea Party will no doubt accuse me of presenting anecdotal evidence, or say that Rush Limbaugh is not a Tea Party leader. That’s fair enough, and focusing on this undercurrent in no way suggests it is the only thing the Tea Party is about. But the ubiquity of the type of conversations like this “Fútbol Americano” exchange among the Tea Partiers I know, the reflexive undercurrent of hostility toward anything—Spanish, mosques, bike lanes—that is not distinctively American, gives something away. They are not just under assault from a Democratic president, but a host of vaguely-defined foreign invaders, just like Richard Hofstadter described in “The Psuedo-Conservative Revolt.” It just so happens that most of the defenders are white Christians and most of the invaders are something else. And the fact that these Americans can make wild connections between 20-second Spanish advertisements during NFL games and the “degradation” of American culture shows us something about what’s going on inside their heads.
(Image via The Rush Limbaugh Show.)
The tea party has a reflexive hostility to bike lanes? Not that I don’t believe you, since I believe anything in the current climate of silliness, but can you provide an example of this?
— John Spragge · Sep 28, 02:01 AM · #
(Check link in my name.)
“Republican gubernatorial candidate Dan Maes is warning voters that Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper’s policies, particularly his efforts to boost bike riding, are ‘converting Denver into a United Nations community.’”
— Gold Star for Robot Boy · Sep 28, 02:08 AM · #
There has been a drought of tea-party hating on this forum the past several days. I missed it, just as I miss the Sunday funnies when the paper carrier forgets to leave the newspaper in our box. It’s good to see that it’s back.
— The Reticulator · Sep 28, 02:10 AM · #
I should have provided a link, but the servicey Gold Star has saved my ass. Many thanks.
— David Sessions · Sep 28, 02:12 AM · #
My wife pointed out to me the Spanish in last night’s game. (We didn’t see the Spanish-language commercial, but we did notice the “Jets de Nueva York” and a few other instances.) We thought it was a bit weird until we recognized that the first Hispanic quarterback likely has appeal in American households that aren’t populated by native English speakers (let alone his potential popularity outside of the US). So we shrugged and said, “Good for NBC.”
I guess my wife and I have been overly feminized by listening to those nasty liberal sportswriters.
— Eric · Sep 28, 02:53 AM · #
So, making “wild connections between 20-second Spanish advertisements during NFL games and the ‘degradation’ of American culture” is out but extrapolating what’s behind the entire tea party movement from a Rush caller and a few unnamed friends of yours is A-OK.
Got it.
— Phil · Sep 28, 02:59 AM · #
Phil,
I’m very careful with my “extrapolating.” Nowhere did I say my interpretation accounted for all Tea Partiers or even constituted the primary motivation behind the movement. I said the Tea Party is animated by white fear, and that, in my experience, the Rush caller is closer to the rule than the exception.
And my experience is based on having attended Tea Party rallies, listened to scores of speeches by Tea Party candidates, engaged in serious conversations with a number of Tea Party activists I know, studied polling data about their demographics, and read countless blogs, websites, and videos containing their own explanations of their motivations. If that isn’t enough to get a robust sense of the movement, I don’t know what is. Most of all, I grew up as one of these people and I know them, as Rush would say, “like every square inch of my glorious naked body.”
— David Sessions · Sep 28, 03:44 AM · #
Given that you <i>made a wild connection</i> between a Rush Limbaugh segment and the Tea Party, one could presumably deduce that you feel like you’re <i>under assault from within</i> by <i>a host of vaguely-defined invaders</i> who are <i>hostile</i> to the sort of <i>distinct American culture</i> that you prefer.
Now that that’s been established on both sides, with undeniably impeccable logic all around, what exactly have we proved here? Anything?
— Sonic Charmer · Sep 28, 03:53 AM · #
“Most of all, I grew up as one of these people and I know them…”
Ah, yes. This explains a lot. There is no zealot like a new convert, nor one quite so zealous to stamp out the old heresies under which he grew up.
— The Reticulator · Sep 28, 05:45 AM · #
If you don’t want white people in America to feel and act like a minority — ethnocentric and racially touchy — then don’t make white people in America a minority.
— Steve Sailer · Sep 28, 07:37 AM · #
We thought it was a bit weird until we recognized that the first Hispanic quarterback likely has appeal in American households that aren’t populated by native English speakers (let alone his potential popularity outside of the US). So we shrugged and said, “Good for NBC.”
— Replica Swiss Watch · Sep 28, 08:15 AM · #
You’ll find this dynamic in discussions of the Tea Party all over. Some commentator tries to make any critical statement about the Tea Party whatsoever, and is immediately shouted down as not having enough evidence because of the incoherence of the Tea Party message. Meanwhile, any positive statement about the Tea Party is taken as universally true, the self-same qualities that make negatively categorizing the Tea Party apparently irrelevant in those instances.
This is why I’ve said for some time that an incoherent political message is actually the killer app of the whole damn show. You can’t criticize the political message when everyone insists that their is no specific message. And every conversation takes place under the veil of conservatives’ enthusiastic and loud embrace of the politics of oppression, where white Christians are loudly and bitterly announced to be the victims of terrible oppression and thus cannot be criticized except by bigots.
— Freddie · Sep 28, 11:59 AM · #
Since when did purely market oriented thinking become “feminist?” Sunday night football is a program designed at its core to sell products through advertisements. It has no other basic purpose. Targeting a specific customer segment in their own language is good business. In Rush’s world is capitalism itself now un-American?
— Matt · Sep 28, 01:14 PM · #
Your post tells us something about what is going on inside your head.
Not much.
— Mrmandias · Sep 28, 02:53 PM · #
Freddie: It’s not all that incoherent- decentralized, yes, but who has insisted that “there is no specific message”? Is anyone confused about where the Tea Parties stand on TARP and ObamaCare?
Those of a speculative mind can say that the Tea Partiers don’t really care about the issues they claim to care about (all that money for Scott Brown was just to elect a white man to Massachusetts’s Senate seat,) but that is a different matter.
Since most Americans seem to like the idea of a culture dominated by the English language, and dislike the GZ Mosque and illegal immigration, I suspect that most Tea Partiers hold these sentiments as well. The exceptions are cultural liberals and minorities, people who are unlikely to join the Tea Party even if some of them are uneasy about the course of economic policy.
People usually have opinions about many political and cultural issues, but from there it is a leap to a “White Fear interpretation of the Tea Party,” reducing one set of opinions to another. An argument is needed.
— Aaron · Sep 28, 03:41 PM · #
So an American who wants his countrymen to speak English is paranoid?
— Mercer · Sep 28, 03:51 PM · #
I believe J.P. Losman was the first Hispanic starting quarterback.
— Just So You Know · Sep 28, 04:16 PM · #
Aaron, the problem is that the Tea Party has a clear opinion against Obamacare, but a muddled opinion on Healthcare in general. Some Tea Partiers want to end Medicare, while others say “Keep the government’s hands off my Medicare”. They call for cutting costs, yet when a cost cutting measure is introduced, they gleefully cheer on those calling it “Death Panels.” I think this is what Freddie means by incoherent.
— Dan L · Sep 28, 05:04 PM · #
What, nobody decided to defend Limbaugh? No “irony” defense yet?
The Rush Defense Corps is falling down on the job.
— Rob in CT · Sep 28, 05:10 PM · #
Ok, none of you know what you’re talking about. This “Fútbol Americano” has nothing to do with the Tea Party movement. This is pandering to the liberal left’s agenda of establishing amnesty for the millions of illegal aliens living here in America. They hope to be able to add most, if not all, to the democRat party as payback for granting citizenship. In other words, they are political prostitutes and NBC is in bed with them. That is the point Mr. Limbaugh made – if one listens to the whole conversation and not just the filtered version of it from this article.
— Bob · Sep 28, 05:21 PM · #
Dan L,
Even if you’re right, this doesn’t really support the White Fear interpretation of the Tea Party.
The apocryphal “keep gov’t off my Medicare” aside, the core of the health debate is pretty clear. The left dislikes private insurance companies denying care (see, for instance, Michael Moore’s Sicko) but that technocrats, legitimized by democratic deliberation (not of the Tea Party kind) about “painful, difficult decisions” can make decisions that are in some objective sense good. Denial of care is bad when done for economic profit, good when done by out of good intentions. (Is this incoherent, or just a reflection of statist principles?) The Left prefers the pre-ObamaCare status quo, however, to a system in which consumers control decision-making.
The right prefers consumer-driven health care, but dreads government-run health care more than profit-driven insurance companies. Most Americans take a conservative position on the idea of government-run care, so we ended up with a plan that entrenched insurance companies’ dominance. The double-game of whispering to the left that the plan would lead to what they want, while railing to the center against Sarah Palin’s death panel rhetoric, was the method of promoting the bill.
— Aaron · Sep 28, 05:30 PM · #
Why do I get sucked into linking to the American Scene? This post which hinges upon the ‘first hispanic quarterback’ for it’s logic needs only two words: Jim Plunkett.
Truly a waste of electrons.
— JohnMcC · Sep 28, 06:13 PM · #
Yes, when I think of overly feminized sectors of American society, the NFL is definitely the first thing that pops into my mind.
“we have to be nice to the people that we’ve oppressed or made angry.”
Those darn minorities! Expecting to be treated like actual human beings! Why don’t they read the Bible? It’s not like Jesus identified with the least of his people or anything.
— north carolinian · Sep 28, 06:28 PM · #
What Steve Sailer said (I mean really, everybody just needs to read Sailer every day — along with checking in at NRO, getting your “Weekly Standard” and “Claremont Review of Books” delivered to your house, and checking out “The City Journal” online or having it delivered is what every good American conservative should be reading on a regular basis — if you are ambitious I would add “Commentary”, “First Things” and “National Affairs” and if you want to read one ‘mainstream’ magazine I’d go with “The Atlantic”).
Anyway, I sort of got off topic — folks need to understand there is a distinctive majority American culture and while minorities have contributed to that culture (think jazz and rock ‘n roll) we don’t want disfunctional minority behavior screwing up what is distinctively good about majority American culture (e.g. two parent families that raise their kids).
What was annoying to me about the Spanish language “moment” is that the announcers said it was to celebrate Hispanic Heritage Month, which is a liberal abomination that all good conservatives should denounce and mock with zeal.
As for the Tea Parties and their crazy ideas, read this and learn:
http://www.hoover.org/publications/policy-review/article/5387
— Jeff Singer · Sep 28, 06:51 PM · #
“distinctive American culture, which happens to be the way white middle-class people who speak English live”
Most immigration proponents claim immigrants magically transform into white middle class people. I take it you’re in the ‘expanding the unassimilated underclass is no big deal’ camp.
— Carter · Sep 28, 07:59 PM · #
Amen Carter!
Also, OneSTDV has some good thoughts on the Tea Parties here:
http://onestdv.blogspot.com/2010/09/tea-party-sucks-and-other-insightful.html
Does Dave Sessions even consider himself conservative? Or is he a Conor F. conservative, who is too “nuanced” to claim the label?
— Jeff Singer · Sep 28, 08:37 PM · #
Took a dark turn in here.
— Freddie · Sep 28, 08:45 PM · #
No Freddie, the Truth is never “dark”. Anyway, I just Googled Mr. Sessions and did a bit of reading at the “Patrol” web magazine. Yep, Sessions is sort of like a Christian version of Conor. If Sessions was Catholic, he would probably be one of the confused parishoners signing this ridiculous petition:
http://www.suntimes.com/lifestyles/religion/2752048,CST-NWS-priest28.article
I just wish Cardinal George would have explained to that confused priest that the Church will NEVER ordain women — it is impossible.
— Jeff Singer · Sep 28, 09:07 PM · #
Jim Plunkett was born to Mexican-American parents – wouldn’t that make him both the first NFL QB of Hispanic / Latino descent and also the first such Super Bowl winner. (Plus, to top it off he won the Heisman).
— Keith · Sep 28, 09:23 PM · #
Considering that Latino television is one of the few growth centers left in media, it’s smart for the NFL to make a run at marketing their product to such a large untapped market. Hell, Univision occasionally finishes THIRD in Nielsen overnights in some time slots.
— Pete · Sep 28, 10:27 PM · #
I can’t help but deduce that if you put Steve Sailer or you blogroll and you address the subject of race anywhere in a post, you’ll get a perfectly articulated racist mini-rant from – guess who? – Steve Sailer. Mr. Sailer is surely one of the worst people on earth. WHy do you associate with him?
— Ray Butlers · Sep 28, 10:38 PM · #
If this “anyone who is insufficiently conservative for my taste is like Conor Friedersdorf” meme picks up I am poised to lead a veritable army!
— Conor Friedersdorf · Sep 28, 10:51 PM · #
This comment thread has convinced me that it is high time to introduce a Spanish-language contributor at The American Scene. Or maybe even a few more women. But then Rush would never send over his readers…
— Walker Frost · Sep 29, 12:07 AM · #
north carolinian: “Yes, when I think of overly feminized sectors of American society, the NFL is definitely the first thing that pops into my mind.”
Not me. It barely makes the top ten in my book. And without the news/entertainment industry component, probably not even that.
Rob in CT: “What, nobody decided to defend Limbaugh?”
Nope, I can’t defend my hero, Rush, when he talks like that. (And this isn’t the first time.) I dislike that kind of talk just as much as I dislike President Obama’s xenophobic jingoism; i.e., I dislike it a lot. (President Obama is not my hero, btw.)
— The Reticulator · Sep 29, 02:12 AM · #
“This comment thread has convinced me that it is high time to introduce a Spanish-language contributor at The American Scene.”
Indeed.
There are almost 50 million Hispanics in the U.S., and yet their impact on public discourse is almost nonexistent. If Geraldo Rivera finally retires to his house in Israel and runs for the Knesset, as he’s long claimed he is about to do, then the door will be open for Matt Yglesias to move up to being the most prominent Spanish-surnamed figure in the press.
— Steve Sailer · Sep 29, 02:57 AM · #
Walker Frost: “This comment thread has convinced me that it is high time to introduce a Spanish-language contributor at The American Scene. Or maybe even a few more women.”
See if you can get Mary Anastasia O’Grady to do a guest article. It would be a twofer. I wouldn’t want to take her away from her regular job on a permanent basis, and I don’t even know for sure if she does any writing in Spanish, but she might be able to recommend someone.
— The Reticulator · Sep 29, 03:19 AM · #
Aaron: I think your post establishes, pretty well perfectly, the problem with a lot of the conservative discourse in the United States. On the topic of health care, you wrote “The left dislikes…. The Left prefers…. The right prefers… but dreads…” while leaving out any consideration of objectively measurable outcomes. How do different systems actually work? What systems deliver the best outcomes for the health care dollar? Can the current or foreseeable levels of American economic activity sustain the level of health care spending needed to produce the results you claim to want with the system you have? An actual, external, measurable reality exists, independent of (and not bending to) the wishes and emotions of anyone. Needless to say, we do not have perfect means for measuring that reality; our wishes will always distort our perceptions. But we can draw some broad conclusions about the observations possible. For example, other systems (Canada, France, Britain) provide outcomes as good as those obtained by the American system while using a fraction of the resources. For another example, the United States government currently runs unsustainable trade and government finance deficits, and your health care spending accounts for a rising share of this unsustainable consumption.
Now you can naturally disagree on what to do about these facts, or how much weight to give them in your decision making, but it does not do to focus on emotion to the exclusion of everything else.
— John Spragge · Sep 29, 10:47 AM · #
Bravo, well said. It’s a mistake to call this phenomenon racism, though that is a part of it, because it stops the conversation and fails to get at the underlying fear of…what exactly? Change? The unknown? All these things. But this is why the health care debate got so frenzied a year ago. To those who showed up at the town hall forums, health care was about “takeover.” That one word resonated more than anything else, and it was not because Democrats were proposing a government takeover of health care, because they weren’t — they were proposing massive federal subsidies for existing private insurance. But shouting “takeover” caused people to take to the streets as a proxy for the malevolent sense of takeover they felt, of their country and their lives by forces they either could not, or dared not, define
— Ted Frier · Sep 29, 10:50 AM · #
Ted Frier: “not because Democrats were proposing a government takeover of health care, because they weren’t — they were proposing massive federal subsidies for existing private insurance.”
Oh, great. So now, in order to be considered sane enough to converse with leftwingers, we have to go around saying things like, “The sun is shining high in the sky; it’s midnight.” Or, “Don’t slip on the ice, Billy, or you’ll fly up to the moon.” Or, “federal aid does not equal federal control.” I guess if we can’t make ourselves talk like they do, there is no sense our being allowed onto the public square.
— The Reticulator · Sep 29, 12:34 PM · #
Reticulator: “allowed” onto the public square? Come on! Seriously, when are people going to stop saying “they don’t let you say” and then go right ahead and say exactly that? It’s like you actually believe that there is a PC police ready to knock down your door if it isn’t to the administration’s liking.
Just like everyone had to reiterate during the Dr. Laura fiasco, freedom of speech is not freedom from criticism.
And for the record, it’s a valid criticism of Republicans to say they claimed that there would be a “government takeover” of healthcare when no such thing was true.
— rj · Sep 29, 02:21 PM · #
And for the record, it’s a valid criticism of Republicans to say they claimed that there would be a “government takeover” of healthcare when no such thing was true.
And to think, they tell us that the tea partiers are the ones who say crazy things.
— The Reticulator · Sep 29, 02:25 PM · #
Steve,
(irony alert)
You forgot about Rick Sanchez:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rick_Sanchez
Although as a Cuban, do we really want to include him in our sample?
(irony alert over)
— Jeff Singer · Sep 29, 02:29 PM · #
Two points about Rush, Spanish, and the “feminization” of America:
1) Spanish-speakers fight with, or run along with, live bulls.
2) Rush is not a man himself without his little blue pills.
Seriously.
— Egypt Steve · Sep 29, 02:34 PM · #
All this talk of a “distinctly American culture” is unintentionally funny. To the extent that there even is such a thing, it’s disappearing. Thus the whole notion becomes a little more obsolete every day.
America is 65% white today; in about 30 years, it will be less than 50% white. And that trend will only continue.
The white majority shrinks daily, and the influence of the dominant “distinctly American culture” shrinks daily as well.
— bobsmith · Sep 29, 10:11 PM · #
Leading to comment threads such as this one, bobsmith.
— Freddie · Sep 29, 10:21 PM · #
@Reticulator: Please explain the logic behind your claim that medicine, a service under the control of a professional monopoly coded in law (law as made by government) and enforced by government, somehow suffered a government takeover when government moved to make the way you pay for this service marginally more efficient.
Models of actually free market medicine do exist; Milton Friedman proposed one, and other potential models exist as well. If members of the so-called “tea party” have proposals for reform along these lines, please point me to them, because if any opponent of President Obama’s reforms made any genuine free market proposal during the debate, I missed it.
Otherwise, you might as well complain that the government controls the army and the navy.
— John Spragge · Sep 29, 11:46 PM · #
John Spragge: You need an explanation of how government funding is a government takeover??? My word. You need an explanation about the birds and the bees, too? This is basic stuff. Not understanding how one gains power through maintaining power over expenditures is like trying to understand ecology/biology without understanding evolution. It really limits your understanding. Everyone inside and outside of government knows that the way to exert control is to be the one who writes the checks. Have you ever read a history book, or an anthropology or sociology text? Taken a course in gender studies? Ever had a job in a corporation? It’s one of the basic facts of human relationships. Most people understand it like they understand how to make babies. It’s not that hard to learn, and once learned it requires great restraint (either internal or external) not to do it.
Why do you think it took 1000 pages to write a law that gives away money? It’s the controls, silly. The government will make decisions for people.
Maybe that will be more efficient and maybe it won’t. Southern slaveholders used to claim that they managed their slaves’ lives better than the slaves themselves could, and if you didn’t believe it, you could look at the lives of the non-slave factory workers in the north. But whether or not slavery was more efficient in running peoples’ lives than free-labor and free-markets, it tended to generate opposition. People like to control their own lives and make their own life decisions. Do you not understand that?
If you don’t know about free market proposals that have been made over the years, then go and beat up on the nearest mainstream news person for hiding that information from you. There have been some.
Having said that, I will also say that conservatives and libertarians have brought Obama’s totalitarian monstrosity on themselves, because they have spent most of their time sticking their heads firmly in the sand about the need for reform. They have not pushed their proposals with the vigor needed. And they need a lot, because the leftMediaDemocratCelebrity oligarchy will do everything it can to block any proposal that empowers the people at the expense of the government.
— The Reticulator · Sep 30, 01:25 PM · #
Reticulator,
I love you man!
bobsmith and Freddie,
Are you both insane, suicidal, or both? To suggest that there is no such thing as a distinctive American culture is to suggest you have never travelled abroad and/or read any of the agitprop coming from the Left around the world that constantly complains about the export of American culture (both good and bad).
Anyway, do you think that an America populated by over 50% minorities, specifically black and Hispanic minorities would have given us the internet/web/blogs for you to both be posting your nonsense here? Quick, name all the wonderful contributions (besides food) that Hispanics have made to American culture? Heck, name all the wonderful contributions to world culture from all of Latin America? [Off the top of my head I would say Octavio Paz, Mario Vargas Llosa, the economist Hernando de Soto, and maybe Shakira — just kidding about her).
Hispanic out-of-wedlock births are over 50% (you already know blacks are over 70%). Hispanic gangs and violence are a growing problem and educational achievement, just as for blacks, significantly lags whites. Do you think this heralds exciting new vistas for an ennobling American culture?
— Arminius · Sep 30, 11:32 PM · #
Arminius,
Friend me on Facebook. Follow me on Twitter.
Yours,
— Satan · Oct 1, 04:03 AM · #
Dear Prince of Darkness,
I reject all of your lies. My friend is the Lord Jesus Christ. I follow the way of the cross, which leads to Heaven.
— Jeff Singer · Oct 1, 02:03 PM · #
no doubt. I heard some guy complain about Mexican food yesterday. Said something about his American stomach not being able to handle the spice.
I can’t say for sure he was a tea-parier, but you can’t hear people refer to language and cultural heritage and not make the connection to the fact that we all ought to be very aware of how dangerous American ignorance is when it that clings to easy code-words and blanket distinctions that hide real people and persons behind helpful stereotypical and false categories (like ‘cultures’ and ‘peoples’ and ‘ethnicities’ and ‘them’) by which they can be tagged and treated differently.
This tea movement surely is fueled by racist rather than economic policies because everything is. This is because people have a hard time accepting that with which they are unfamiliar and don’t understand by categories they are comfortable with, instead of learning about ‘them’, who they are exactly, and how they are just like us (except that they presumably put no stock in false distinctions like race, language, and culture, since that would make them equally flawed and racist and anxious like teapartiers).
We could start by learning the spanish speakers’ language and then we can take them at their word that they are only interested in their economic wellbeing, rather than wiping out english-speakers in racist rage against our non-gendered barbaric tongue, due to their ingrained ignorance and anxieties about us.
Thanks for taking the first step toward that future tolerant, post-culture age by bringing this ridiculous conversation back to earth to examine its real roots and fears in our inherent, nagging, constant racism and talk about race and culture and nation.
— handwrung tsker · Oct 3, 05:50 PM · #
“Not understanding how one gains power through maintaining power over expenditures is like trying to understand ecology/biology without understanding evolution.”
An obsession with theories of power dynamics and an ignorance of how power actually exists in the real world, who has it and what they do with it characterizes too much of right wing thinking today.
Mike
— MBunge · Oct 4, 03:17 PM · #
You’re probably right, Mike. We should all just accept the cliches and shibboleths the left has been spouting for the last hundred years, and humbly acknowledge the left to be the rightful ruling class. We should not question their authority.
— The Reticulator · Oct 4, 04:03 PM · #
“We should all just accept the cliches and shibboleths the left has been spouting for the last hundred years, and humbly acknowledge the left to be the rightful ruling class. We should not question their authority.”
I really have no idea what that’s supposed to mean. Conversing with too many conservatives has become like that Star Trek: The Next Generation episode “Darmok” with the aliens who can only communicate through cultural and historical references the Starfleet folks don’t know or understand.
Mike
— MBunge · Oct 4, 07:49 PM · #
@Reticulator: I’ll try this again. When the government, operating through a medieval-style craft guild (known today as a “self-governing profession” exerts pretty much absolute control over the supply of labour in a field (in this case medicine), they don’t need to write any cheques. Milton Friedman has proposed one model for eliminating this control; others exist. The fact remains that right now, nothing like a “free market” in medicine now exists. Can you point me to one member of the so-called “tea party” who has endorsed Milton Friedman’s proposal, or any proposal like it?
— John Spragge · Oct 5, 09:37 AM · #