Great article that describes the large swath of the white male population which is seething uncontrollable anger.
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Come for the politics, stay for the snark.
We still have time to mess this up!
fuckem (in honor of the late great efgoldman)
Historically it was a little unusual for the president to be an incoherent babbling moron.
It’s the corruption, stupid.
We’ve had enough carrots to last a lifetime. break out the sticks.
Make the republican party small enough to drown in a bathtub.
I like you, you’re my kind of trouble.
A democracy can’t function when people can’t distinguish facts from lies.
Proof that we need a blogger ethics panel.
The cruelty is the point; the law be damned.
Since when do we limit our critiques to things we could do better ourselves?
If you tweet it in all caps, that makes it true!
Perhaps you mistook them for somebody who gives a damn.
Too often we hand the biggest microphones to the cynics and the critics who delight in declaring failure.
Come for the politics, stay for the snark.
Black Jesus loves a paper trail.
Putting aside our relentless self-interest because the moral imperative is crystal clear.
It’s time for the GOP to dust off that post-2012 autopsy, completely ignore it, and light the party on fire again.
The worst democrat is better than the best republican.
No one could have predicted…
Teach a man to fish, and he’ll sit in a boat all day drinking beer.
Our job is not to persuade republicans but to defeat them.
When I decide to be condescending, you won’t have to dream up a fantasy about it.
I really should read my own blog.
Derelict
As Charlie Peirce is always pointing out, it’s not about race because it’s never about race.
Bill E Pilgrim
Oh yeah I >read that.
Wait what does that remind me of? Oh right.
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P7VgNQbZdaw" rel="nofollow"
Villago Delenda Est
I’m a white male, and I have seething uncontrollable anger.
At these wussy jackass racist pricks who display the fucking Confederate battle flag and have no fucking clue as to how fucking lucky they were to be born white in the first place.
scav
Holy Free Market Sink Or BootStrap Auto-Levitation wasn’t sposed to apply to them the white male of heritage. Glub Glub Glub GluBubba! Ignore the waving, it’s feigned and we know a helping hand wouldn’t be correct (besides, it would be bitten).
Schlemizel
I have a seething uncontrollable anger too, but instead of aiming it at the poor and disadvantaged mine is aimed directly at the masters of the universe and the mouth breathing troglodytes that have given them the sword with which they are destroying my once great country. I will gladly volunteer for guillotine duty when the time comes, line those fuckers up and I will whistle a happy tune while moving them along to their well earned reward as quickly as possible.
c u n d gulag
That truck spells “M-A-J-O-R L-E-A-G-U-E S-T-U-P-I-D A-N-D I-G-N-O-R-A-N-T A-S-S-H-O-L-E!!!”
What, the gas-mileage, Bubba, wasn’t bad enough before you jacked it up, and added extra tires, you epic f*cking douche-canoe?
Baud
Lots of people have it tough. Seems like this one group are the only ones refusing to work with people who are trying make things better.
Redshirt
We need to profile against white males – worst monsters in history? I could list examples.
Keith G
Great. Sweeping generalizations supported by anecdotal interactions.
Look racism is real. Acting out due to compounded economic frustration is real. Michael Kimmel is a Professor of Sociology and he probably expects his students to show their work. Before attributing uncontrollable hate behavior (race-based anger) to a “large swath” of any population, I would like to know the foundational work.
gbear
@efgoldman: I’m an old white male, but I’m mostly just depressed.
Kent
I actually read the article. Kind of a mess of a piece actually. Just a few random points.’
1. There are basically no Vietnam vets under 60 anymore. Bo Gritz is nearly 75. This isn’t a Vietnam thing. I teach HS and see lots of these angry young white guys in training. For them Vietnam was grandpa’s war and deeper in the distant past than WW-II was for those of us who spent our childhoods in the 60s and 70s.
2. Lots of mention of supposed right wing conspirators frequenting farm foreclosure auctions and the like…roping people into tax schemes and other nefarious stuff and not one single in the entire article of talk radio and FOX news. Seriously. Read the article. Not one mention of the role of the media…talk radio, FOX, Sara Palin, Glenn Beck, Rush, the tea party and other Koch funded groups, etc. etc. Reading the article one would think this is all the work of fringe militia groups, Christian Identity churches and the like. Really?
3. After living in Texas for the past decade and having lived in other similar places (Alaska, rural Oregon etc.) I’ve come to conclude that most of this stuff is really just tribal. The racism, sexism, and hatred? Just tribal. Just like love for NASCAR or the Crimson Tide. Lots of these men are racist and sexist not because of some deep-seated ideological beliefs. Although some of the sexism does come from fundamentalist Christianity. In general though, I think it tends to be more of a convenient way to define tribal identities. The us vs them.
FlyingToaster
@Kent:
This.
What I see up here in the People’s Republic is the Scott Livelys (et.al.) are of the “We hates fags” tribe, and most of the RC hierarchy is of the “We is Cathlick victims” tribe, and the old coot at the top of the hill in my town is the only member of his “I HATE EVERYONE WHO IS NOT WHITE AND ITALIAN AND MALE AND HETEROSEXUAL AND FUCK YOU ALL” tribe.
What the article misses, as you’ve pointed out, is the role of right-wing-noise media; it provides the shibboleths to allow these fools to find people who claim to be “like-minded”. Such as David Koch, Dick Armey, and Sarah Palin.
RareSanity
For those that are questioning the voracity of this article, I don’t think that you read the italicized text at the very end:
This isn’t a stand-alone article, it is an excerpt from a book on the subject. That may explain the somewhat disconnected feeling you are experiencing after reading it.
Kent
@FlyingToaster:
Exactly. I’ve come to think that the only reason religion is so popular in this country is that it provides otherwise ungrounded and unrooted Americans with a tribe with which to identify. Europeans have ethnicity. One is Scottish, Swedish, Basque, Bavarian, English, Polish, Croat, Dutch, etc. You already have your tribe by birth so you don’t need church. Here in the US we are mostly rootless mongrels with a hodge podge of ethnicities and regional ties. Religion provides a convenient tribe, especially the more aggressive Evangelical religions and the Cathlick old men types as you put it.
The Raven on the Hill
Reagan. The person who led the push that did these people in was Reagan.
And they voted for him.
fuckwit
@Kent: you got it. tribal. like football teams.
Chris
I’m surprised that the word “fascism” doesn’t appear once in this article, because that’s exactly what they’re describing. A rural, middle class movement saturated with ultranationalist values. Defined by opposition to the Undesirables and resentment for the memory of defeat. Guided by conservative politics but mad at the world those politics have built and the people running the movement whom they suspect of all being blood traitors. Thriving on economic downturn but ultimately more resentful of their fellow victims and anyone who’s trying to do anything about it than of the people who’re actually screwing them over.
If fascism comes to America, this is where you’ll find the Brownshirt thugs who carry it to power with deafening cheers only to be given the Night Of The Long Knives treatment as soon as the regime’s safely in power.
The Very Reverend Battleaxe of Knowledge
It’s the double standard that slays me. Remember the 90s? There was one, one sorta-kinda-in-a-dim-light “left-wing” terrorist out there: Ted Kaczynski,* and that was all anybody could talk about. Meanwhile Black Hundreds like this were forming all over the country and nobody paid any attention.
*Was the hoodie they put him in in that ridiculous artist’s conception how hoodies got to be so threatening?
El Caganer
Not everywhere. And not always. http://www.internationalist.org/bloodybogalusa19191202.html
El Caganer
@The Very Reverend Battleaxe of Knowledge: Best tweet I ever read: “If fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in excess body fat and carrying a misspelled sign.”
Matt McIrvin
@The Very Reverend Battleaxe of Knowledge:
No, since Mr. Kaczynski was white.
But I always thought that drawing looked remarkably like the drummer from ZZ Top.
Another Holocene Human
@c u n d gulag: I swear, some people buy Silverdildoes just because of the horrible gas mileage.
It’s like a bad financial decisions Olympics and they’re committed to #WINNING.
Another Holocene Human
@Baud: It’s hilarious (not really) how they blame the j000000000000z for their economic woes rather than Nixon’s “get big or get out” farm policies and Reagan’s naked union busting.
Goldbuggery plays into it too.
Note that D’s don’t have clean hands–Volker arguably applied “discipline” to inflation both too late and too excessively, and Clinton signed NAFTA, which promotes ‘race to the bottom’ labor practices and does nothing to protect strategic industries, you know, assuming the US had such a thing as an industrial policy, which would be Communism, because American Exceptionalism #sarahpalinspeak
Another Holocene Human
@Keith G: It’s nice to know that a fine mind like yours can glean everything you need to know from a gloss rather than RTFA. Anyway, your emotional reactions are so much finer and deeper than ours–we get strident and shrill and–ungrateful–we could never know what deep wounds you endured reading the gloss on the article which is an excerpt of a book based on a research project which Keith G knows is wrong, wrong! to its very corrupt core! without ever having to engage on the substance or the evidence on the matter.
Another Holocene Human
@Kent: Agree. I thought the article was interesting but not particularly insightful. I mean, it’s just one academic and he’s defending his research and how he interprets it, but my mind kept screaming “psychology! you’re missing something here! psychology!”.
Paul in KY
@Villago Delenda Est: They truly are a pathetic lot.
Paul in KY
@Matt McIrvin: Boy! Never thought of that, but I can see the rersemblance.