(Tom Toles via GoComics.com)
“Everybody” — defined as that narrow subset which reads political blogs like this one — seems to be discussing the latest Pew Quiz, data source for their recent “Political Polarization in the American Public” report. As presented here, it uses 26 two-choice questions to sort respondents into one of eight categories, firmly limited to the R/D red-blue spectrum: Steadfast Conservatives, Business Conservatives, Young Outsiders, Hard-Pressed Skeptics, Next Generation Left, Faith & Family Left, and Solid Liberals. (A cynic might label them Tea Partiers, Establishment Repubs, Libertarians, Working Class (White), Millenials, Working Class (Minority), and Totebaggers.) A full 10% are labelled Bystanders — those whose votes aren’t worth courting, because they’re either ineligible or incapable of taking an interest. “While Solid Liberals, Steadfast Conservatives and Business Conservatives collectively make up only 36% of the American public, they represent 43% of registered voters and fully 57% of the more politically engaged segment of the American public: those who regularly vote and routinely follow government and public affairs.”
.@JuddLegum Mindless, hysterical nationalism is a traditional family value.
— billmon (@billmon1) June 26, 2014
***********
Apart from agreeing that a nice totebag is always good fashion, what’s on the agenda for the day?
Higgs Boson's Mate
Twenty-six two-choice questions to sort people into 28 categories? Statistical methodology seems to have made some remarkable advances since I took Stats.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Higgs Boson’s Mate: I had to use a probability device to answer some of the questions.
Higgs Boson's Mate
@BillinGlendaleCA:
I take it that you could not answer any of the questions with “42.”
Anne Laurie
@Higgs Boson’s Mate: Nope, just eight categories — 28 might’ve been better, but I doubt the advertisers would pay Pew for that kind of granularity. It’s firmly based on the idea that you’re gonna vote R, or you’re gonna vote D, or maybe you’re a dismissible luzer who won’t vote at all.
OzarkHillbilly
This might seem like a silly question but, WTF is a totebag?
BillinGlendaleCA
@OzarkHillbilly: It’s a bag you put totes in, silly.
Schlemizel
@OzarkHillbilly:
A gift from NPR when you make a pledge of any size. The phone lines are open and I see we have a number of people available o take your call right now.
When you call please consider a sustaining membership at either the 5 dollar or 10 dollar a month level to keep this great programing you depend on . . .
Its used derisively here as a euphemism for people who say they are liberals but believe NPR (Nice Polite Republicans) define the left most edge of liberalism.
Chris
I kinda like the Political Compass test http://politicalcompass.org/
Discovered it as a freshman nine years ago, have taken it every couple of years since, and ever since have been slowly drifting deeper into the left/libertarian quadrant.
On the other hand, not a clue where they’d sort me in for this study.
Anne Laurie
@OzarkHillbilly: Those canvas or canvas-oid bags with sturdy handles you traditionally got when you pledged money to the local public radio station. Or, these days, to cart home your groceries without ‘wasting’ plastic or paper sacks. A natural accoutrement for the progressively-minded… or for us Bag Ladies who tend to carry around books & needlework projects & extra sweaters & very small dogs :]
evodevo
@Schlemizel: Two thumbs up and a totebag for you !!
OzarkHillbilly
@BillinGlendaleCA: OK, that answers that question. Next one: WTF is a tote?
evodevo
@Chris: Same for me – I started out at -6.00/-3.90 in 2007, and have been sinking leftwards ever since. Just keeping track of the Great Crash and its beginnings have radicalized me more than I could have thought.
BillinGlendaleCA
@OzarkHillbilly: If you ever took Economics, it’s like a widget. Only smaller.
evodevo
@OzarkHillbilly: A tote is one of those lidded plastic boxes you get at Walmart for putting stuff in for storage/moving. You know, when you get foreclosed on/tossed out of the apartment and have to move out. It’s one of Walmart’s/Dollar Store’s best sellers.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Anne Laurie: Plastic bags are illegal in the Jewel City, so everybody carries around canvas bags.
Glendale, CA is the Jewel City. Why? I haven’t a clue.
MattF
@Schlemizel: I’ve noted that my own opinions haven’t changed all that much, but quizzes all agree that I’m drifting leftward. I’m old enough to remember when the ‘MacNeil Lehrer Report’ actually had an occasional no-kidding leftist as a guest, back in the days when PBS represented some diverse opinions. The notion that my views constitute the hard-left side of the political world is pretty depressing.
Fred
@OzarkHillbilly: A tote bag is one of those heavyish canvas bags with canvas web straps, often with a screen print on it’s side.
I don’t know why Solid Librul=Totebagger. No doubt it is cute to come up with an antithesis to Tea Bagger but it is a silly reach, don’t you think? Also what the F*** happened to Socialists? I know it’s supposed to be a dirty word and all but still… If you are going to list bat shit crazies on the right why not name people who actually have rational ideas on the left? Pure socialism may not be my cup of tea but at least there is a theory there besides NO! SCREW DA GUBAMINT!
Anne Laurie
@OzarkHillbilly: Same as a tote bag, honestly! You can get one with Tunch’s picture on it, even…
P.S. Yes, there is a standing joke about how all Good Liberals have a tote-bag full of tote bags stashed in the hall closet. Since they’re handed out as ‘swag bags’ at cons, and for similar targeted advertising (they gave me one during my last mammogram, to put my clothes in) they tend to accumulate, like hangers. And, like hangers, no matter how many you own there’s never one handy when you need it immediately!
MattF
@Higgs Boson’s Mate: Well, two-to-the-twenty-sixth power is a pretty big number. The real problem is that the answers to the questions are probably all highly correlated, so you’re not measuring twenty-six independent properties.
OzarkHillbilly
@Anne Laurie: OK, so it is a sturdy re-useable bag in which you put things of worth, as opposed to any other bag in which you put things which maybe is not so sturdy but still useable and the things in it are not quite so worthy, and unlike those cheap POS bags one gets from WalMart that inevitably tear in the parking lot about halfway to the car scattering your groceries over the pavement at which point one throws the bag up in the air in absolute disgust whereupon a passing breeze (usually stirred up by a passing car) catches it and takes it higher and higher into the atmosphere until it is caught in the jet stream from whence it hitches a ride out to the Pacific, falls to the surface of the ocean and becomes a part of that great floating mass of plastic that rivals in size the mass of the Indian sub-continent.
I see…
So tell me again why “totebagger” is derogatory?
Schlemizel
@OzarkHillbilly:
Its what one does with a barge before one lifts that bail and then one gets a little drunk and land in jail.
Mustang Bobby
I’m renewing my Florida drivers license today. It takes more documentation to do that then it does to get a U.S. passport.
Anne Laurie
@Fred:
Just a guess, but I don’t think Pew cares about people who aren’t going to vote for one of the two major American parties, because the marketers for those two ‘mainstream’ parties are the ones who pay Pew to ask questions.
Tea Party crazies, worse luck for the rest of us, reliably vote for Republicans; left-wing extremists (socialists, commies, Greens) either vote for Ralph Nader or don’t vote at all, so they get no voice & no respect. If we reach the point where the Tea Partiers abandon the GOP, or the Socialists reliably garner a high-single-digit percentage of statewide/national votes, then Pew will stretch its axis beyond the red-blue divide.
Anne Laurie
@OzarkHillbilly:
You’re asking the wrong front-pager. I like my totebags!
TheMightyTrowel
@OzarkHillbilly: And I like teabags. Language is fluid and terms can have multiple meanings.
Schlemizel
@MattF:
They have become addicted to that sweet, sweet, corporate cash so there is no room for liberal opinions.
OzarkHillbilly
@Anne Laurie:
Ain’t that the truth. No matter how hard I try to keep one in the truck, it always ends up inside the house after being used to carry stuff in to the house. I wonder why that is?
mai naem
i’ve been driving our back up car with no satellite radio so I’ve been listening to the local public radio station a lot more and, jeezus, Morning Edition really has swung to the right. I listen to public radio on satellite but it’s more TAL, The Moth, Radio Diaries etc. Really disappointing. Steve Inskeep is a freaking tool.
Chyron HR
@OzarkHillbilly:
Two defining traits of public radio are:
A) Giving away totebags to their contributors.
B) Expressing center-right political views even though they are widely considered to be “left wing”.
“Totebaggers” are people who consider themselves liberal but their worldviews are primarily informed by a center-right news source.
OzarkHillbilly
What the hell kind of a name is Rougned Odor for a ball player? Who cares when he can find himself on third base after a dropped third strike.
Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism
@Chyron HR: Yeah, I thought a totebagger was a moderate conservative who thinks he’s a liberal because he listens and donates to NPR.
The ones so far to the left they can’t even see out of the Overton window are firebaggers.
Baud
All these categories are dumb. There’s Juicers and there’s everyone else. Nothing else matters.
WereBear
NPR used to have liberal opinions on it, but then it hunkered down and kissed ass to try and keep their funding.
Won’t work. And now they are useless in a whole new way.
OzarkHillbilly
This made me laugh, I mean, no-sh!t-Sherlock: New Jersey grants $1.25bn in public funds to firms that back Republicans but not because Christie is a corrupt Republican, or that of the $2 billion his economic development commission gave away to corporations, $1.25 billion went to companies that made donations to GOP organizations/candidates. No, what made me laugh is that some people are actually outraged about it. I mean, aren’t most major corporations headed up by people that donate GOP by and large? If one is going to give out $2 billion for “economic development”*** it is hard NOT to give a large proportion to Republicans.
***and besides, just exactly whose economy are they trying to develop?
Anyway, off to pick blueberries. Y’all play nice now, ya heah?
John S.
@Mustang Bobby: I’m renewing mine next week, and I thought the same thing. That’s an awful lot of documentation to round up.
MomSense
@evodevo:
I remember taking that test back in 2008 and being in the same place as now–way at the bottom left -9.25 or thereabouts. Obviously I’m never going to be able to advocate for a piece of legislation that is where I am on the compass so I am going to advocate for the legislation that moves us as far as possible in my preferred direction. I think that is the case for a number of people. Does that mean I’m selling out? We couldn’t get Bernie Sanders to vote to close the prison at Guantanamo for FSM sakes and that was a mainstream talking point for the Democratic candidates in 2008 and even the Republican nominee had supported that position–before he ran for President.
Morzer
@Anne Laurie:
Tote-bags are the brown shirts of liberal fascism!
Chris
@evodevo:
Not even the Great Crash, so much as the reaction to it (a.k.a. the teabaggers). I wouldn’t be nearly this radicalized if there’d been movement in Republican and professional centrist circles (not all or even most, but, you know, enough for an actual faction in Congress) to recognize the obvious, that neoliberalism had been driving us in the shitter for thirty years and it was time to start putting the clock back. Instead, the entire party dug in its heels, insisted that the solution was to double down on all the things we’d been doing since 1980. Why yes, I am one of these people who “considers the other party a threat to the nation’s well being,” as this study would say.
That’s how it is with most political events, actually. Abu Ghraib wouldn’t have bothered me nearly as much without the massive background noise of “boys will be boys” and “what’s the big deal?” The child abuse scandal in the RCC wouldn’t have bothered me nearly as much without the cover-ups and the whining of “help, help, we’re being oppressed.” The reaction to an event often pisses me off more than the actual event, because that’s what allows these events to thrive and become systemic.
Chopper
@BillinGlendaleCA:
I’d like to find a bag big enough to tote my goats.
gene108
@WereBear:
I can’t blame them.
Christie managed to kill public broadcasting in NJ, by refusing to fund it. What’s in NJ now (at least where I live in South Jersey) has basically been taken over by Philly Public Broadcasting.
Morzer
@Chopper:
The Goat in the Tote certainly sounds more fun than The Cat in the Hat.
WereBear
I don’t blame them… I’m just pointing out it doesn’t work.
And that goes for anyone who thinks if we are just quieter and nicer it will satisfy the screaming hordes that want us dead.
jurassicpork
My interview with Florida thriller author Marcia Meara is now live and yesterday I drastically discounted the price of all three of my books, the quasi political American Zen, the thriller The Toy Cop and the heavily political satirical dictionary, The Misanthrope’s Manual. So now’s your chance to get any or all three of them at a greatly reduced rate from now to the end of July. All links can be found here.
Chopper
Oh, and it looks like Putin just got the royal screwjob in Ukraine. Couldn’t happen to a better guy. I guess as usual the GOP backed the wrong horse.
another Holocene human
@Mustang Bobby: REAL ID. Florida went from being ridiculously lax to Gestapo in one go. Poor communication, training and or messed up computer systems at the DMV have messed up a lot of my co-workers who drive commercial through no fault of their own. If anything goes wrong, don’t believe a dmv clerk who says they’ve fixed it.
J R in WV
I have to say the DMV here in WV has been dragged into the 21st century.
The waiting rooms have comfortable chairs, and the wait is typically not long until you get paged to come to your assigned window. Then you get good service, as long as you have what you need.
BUT: If you don’t have something, you get to repeat the whole process after you fetch whatever. They do have lists of what you need for whichever transaction, getting a new DL is the most difficult.
For just a license plate tag you can go to the county courthouse and get it from the local sherrif for an extra $00.25 which is well worth it if you live far from a DMV office.
gnomedad
Robert Reich suggests Obama could counter sue, and I think he should do it. I’m beginning to think that anything that provokes them to show their freak flag is a win.
Spike
“Tote” is a verb where I come from; thus, a totebag is something you use to tote stuff from point A to point B.
LittlePig
@Spike: Same here. As in ‘tote that barge and lift that bale’.
gnomedad
@Mustang Bobby:
Because it’s also a voter ID and you can’t let just anyone vote.
Botsplainer
@gnomedad:
Ugh – that’s banana republic territory, where courts get deeply enmeshed in the squabbles between executive and legislature.
Somebody has to claim authoritative high ground; ceding that to Anthony Kennedy doesn’t seem smart.
greennotGreen
@Spike: Verb and noun here. You can bag groceries in a grocery bag, and you can tote them home in a totebag…that you got when you donated to your public radio station.
BTW, the entire Pew poll is bogus. When you force people into dichotomies, you’re going to get increased polarization except in the case where individuals internally have very inconsistent views. (How many people are likely to answer both that the two parties should compromise so that Obama gets everything he wants, AND the Democratic party is driving the nation to ruin? Other than trolls. Trolls would answer that way.)
Eric U.
@Higgs Boson’s Mate: I only got to answer 23 questions. Obviously there are many permutations, but the questions are a little repetitive. You could read part way into the first question and know how to answer
I know I’m a solid liberal, but I really couldn’t see a way to be a less-than-solid liberal on that quiz. Seems to me that scoring on a 5 point spectrum is called for if you really want to do a good job of sorting people
FlipYrWhig
I thought “totebaggers” referred to people whose tastes are inoffensively “sophisticated” relative to the mainstream (NPR, PBS, NYT, The New Yorker, Wes Anderson, Whole Foods) and who think that “civility” and polite disagreement are the highest forms of political engagement. They drive safe cars and recycle avidly. They’re “lifestyle liberals.”
So IMHO it’s not that they’re conservative and think they’re liberal, it’s that they’re liberal and nonconfrontational and proud of it, not like Dirty Fuckin’ Hippies who are noisy and unkempt. DougJ links them to David Brooks, not because David Brooks defines what they actually think, but because David Brooks is their idea of what Republicans are _really_ like: educated, tempered, _civil_.
Omnes Omnibus
@FlipYrWhig: Your understanding matches mine.
Josie
@Chopper:
Then you could be a goat totebagger. But someone might misinterpret……
Paul in KY
Took quiz. ‘Solid Liberal’!
muddy
@Anne Laurie:
I personally recommend this bag. It’s bigger than the ones they give you from NPR or whatever. Nice long straps. People love the imprint and say how great Tunch is.
Elizabelle
@FlipYrWhig:
Best description of totebagging and the baggers that carry same. Well done, sir.
schrodinger's cat
Since when? Canvas totebags are the very antithesis of fashion, they rank up there with crocs and sweats.
OK for carting groceries and gym stuff but not much else. Backpacks and Messenger bags are better for carting around books. The free totebags usually have terrible handles and are not sturdy
schrodinger's cat
@muddy: Tunch is great! All hail Tunch.
Amir Khalid
@Spike:
I always thought it was called a “totebag” because it was totes a bag.
I don’t really understand the cartoon. I doubt anyone would consider John Boehner the Luis Suarez of the Republican party — on his best day, or on his worst.
schrodinger's cat
@FlipYrWhig: They are DougJ’s colleagues in the faculty lounge.
schrodinger's cat
Omnes
WP still does not like you, my reply to your comment got eated just now.
Cassidy
Suburban liberaltarians navel gazing about suburban liberaltarians. I guess that’s better than demanding people be sent into a gunfight so they can get their big, swingin’ dick on.
Omnes Omnibus
@schrodinger’s cat: Sorry. After you hit reply just go in and add a random space in my ‘nym and it should go through.
schrodinger's cat
That quiz bugs me. It only has two unsatisfactory responses to many questions that don’t have a simple answer.
Omnes Omnibus
@Cassidy: So are you rural or urban? I haven’t lived in a suburb since probably before you were born. Or is suburban your term for white, educated middle class?
schrodinger's cat
Is DougJ’s premature retirement from Balloon Juice, the revenge of totebaggers?
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@MomSense: I’m an underachiever, clearly. I’m only a -8.25 for today’s score. But none of my bags are from NPR. I listen to a local public radio station for the fab music. WNKU, which has a music lineup almost as good as KEXP. Both stream the web as well, of course.
Paul in KY
@Chris: Took this one too. More left than Ghandi!
schrodinger's cat
@Paul in KY: Gandhi was not all the lefty liberal, he could be quite patronizing of women and the lower castes and was quite authoritarian in the way he ran the National Congress. Congress turned into more a cult of personality than a functioning political party under him.
ETA: This is not to take away from his genuine achievements, he made India’s freedom struggle, a mass movement and not just a claque of the Indian Jholawalas or Indian totebaggers if you will, which it pretty much could have become without Gandhi.
ThresherK
@Schlemizel: As always, I’m late to this party.
I’d like to hear of non-NPR-mothership, non-nationwide programs created by NPR member stations, on news and politics, which don’t suck, and are therefore too left-wing to ever fly at npr.org.
There are a few of my own I can get in my suburban northeast area I’ll mention later.
What do other other BJers recommend? What am I missing streaming or podcasted online?
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@Omnes Omnibus: I actually live in sort of a suburb now, after many years of living within the city boundaries, though not downtown. Of course it’s a very old (midcentury) large lot suburb with a generous amount of green space – at the end of our cul de sac are 22 acres of village owned woods with a sizable deer population.
It’s much more ethnically diverse than it was when I was growing up. People aren’t all white here now, and there are houses with Christmas and Easter decorations. So I suspect it’s not your typical suburb.
Applejinx
Yep, I took the Political Compass test too. Somewhat more left and libertarian than Gandhi and the Dalai Lama. Funny, I don’t FEEL like a frothing looney. I wonder how far into the opposite corner I’d go if I actually tried to do shit within the existing political system?
MomSense
@a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q):
The problem with those tests is that they aren’t all that applicable to the choices we have to make. I have friends that knew Obama when he was UChicago and at Harvard Law. His personal opinions are much more to the bottom left corner of that chart than his policies now because a Democratic President will only be as liberal as that 60th vote in the Senate allows. I guess I’m just saying that most of us who identify on the liberal spectrum are trying to do as much good or as little harm as possible with the policies we advocate and we often don’t get to choose the ideal.
I listen to NPR for the music! We have a 24 hour classical streaming option that is great.
StringOnAStick
@Chris: Thanks for the political compass link. I knew I was a lefty, but wow, I had no idea how much of a lefty!
schrodinger's cat
I have another post about Karla Caves and the surrounding area, that I had posted under the Wednesday Afternoon moment of Zen
Just Some Fuckhead
Jesus Christ, if those are the two predominant positions for every issue, no wonder America is so fucked up.
Cassidy
@Omnes Omnibus: Somebody else mentioned “lifestyle liberal” and that’s pretty close with a healthy dose of white entitlement. Liberalism as a fashion accessory and narcissism streak.
StringOnAStick
Lifestyle liberals; yep, I’ve seen them. Whole Foods is the easiest venue for getting a closer look. We’re lucky enough to have an alternative grocery chain if organic is what you are after (Natural Grocers – if you live in the west, one is likely to be found in your area since they are expanding rapidly), but they have no fresh fish, so occasionally I go to Whole Foods when I want to splurge on good fish. I always leave Whole Foods with a strong “never again!” taste in my mouth, 40% because of how smarmy their music and corporate attitude is, but the rest is how snotty and entitled so many of the shoppers are – no concern or common courtesy for anyone else. I once watched a harried mom there rushing around with a baby in one of those canvas, fold-up strollers do a sudden stop, plopping her baby face-first on the floor. Rather than being concerned for the kid, she mostly looked annoyed that it had flown so far; it was a really weird experience.
Roger Moore
@Anne Laurie:
What you really need, then, is one of the bags that folds up really small and fits easily in a purse. The heavy canvas bags have a larger capacity and are more durable, but the lightweight nylon ones are small enough when folded up that you can easily take one with you all the time.
Roger Moore
@MomSense:
I think you’ve defined the difference between a progressive and a firebagger. Progressives are in the “half a loaf is better than none” camp, while firebaggers are “all or nothing” types. It’s that difference in attitude toward what to do when you can’t get your way that defines the difference much more than any disagreement about what they want.
RSA
It’s mostly tribalism, I think. I’ve known a fair number of people from elsewhere who are proud of their countries, and it’s mostly for the same basic reasons that Americans are proud of the U.S. Maybe some Americans are more susceptible to national pride than average, and maybe it’s similar to why some sports fans are happier to support a winning team. (I have nothing against pride per se. I’m sometimes proud of things I do or people I know. America is such an abstraction, though, and I’m an American by an accident of geography and birth. I think I’d be perfectly happy as a citizen of a different country.)
C.V. Danes
“Strong Liberal” and proud of it.
burnspbesq
Equating John Boehner to Luis Suarez is deeply unfair to Luis Suarez. Boehner wants to permanently fuck up a country of 350 million people. All Suarez wants is a snack.
Mnemosyne
@Roger Moore:
The Giant Evil has been handing out branded Chico Bags as free giveaways at employee events. They’re super handy since they stuff into their own little bag with a carabiner so you can hang it on your belt loop or from your purse strap.
Though the guy doing the bagging for me at Ralphs the other day was way too amused that I had a bag inside a bag that was inside my bag. Either he had been toking up on his break, or he needs a more intellectually fulfilling job. :-)
burnspbesq
@WereBear:
That may describe your local NPR outlet, but it sure as shit doesn’t describe mine. KCRW for the win. The Voice of the People’s Democratic Republic of Santa Monica.
burnspbesq
@ThresherK:
“Which Way L.A.” and “To the Point,” from KCRW. Warren Olney commits journalism on a pretty regular basis.
“Left, Right and Center” is bad for my blood pressure. I can never figure out whether I’m supposed to be screaming at Rich Lowry or Robert Scheer. I usually end up screaming at both.
Villago Delenda Est
@Anne Laurie: Those who vote for Ralph Nader deserve no respect.
RSA
@Mnemosyne:
I’m also unreasonably amused by this. It’s like a complement to George Carlin’s stuff routine.
sparrow
@MattF: I am more or less pro-capitalism with strong regulations, i.e., social democrat, and strong social liberal, and in the US that puts me in “might as well be a commie” hard left.
I am only attacked from the left when I go to Greece (by real commies!) which is always, I have to say, a bit refreshing.
schrodinger's cat
@sparrow: What is Hubble going to observe for you? Tell us more.
Paul in KY
@schrodinger’s cat: He’s in the lefty liberal quadrant, but I’m further out than he. Cause I like & empower the wimmens :-)
AnonPhenom
@OzarkHillbilly:
I don’t suppose the word itself is anymore derogatory than some others. It all depends on the way it’s used.
h
...now I try to be amused
@OzarkHillbilly:
That was some heads-up baserunning there.
“Rougned Odor” sounds like an anagram. Here are some other anagrams
Good Rounder
Rondo Drogue
Rondo E. Gourd
Dour Red Goon
Tom Q
Boy, what a worthless survey. If all you allow is binary responses, what a surprise you end up with polarization! I came out Solid Liberal, but all along the way I knew which answers would put me in which category, and there were about a dozen times I wanted to say Neither of the above.
Just the sort of poll to which the worthless media can give massive, unearned attention.
Chris
@RSA:
Waa talking about it with a French friend recently, and the conclusion we both hit on was that Americans turn their nationalism into a religion. Which, from the French POV, I find pretty true. Yeah, there’s plenty og nationalism in France, racism/nativism too. But the messianic, Manifest Destiny, American Exceptionalist thing complete with a pantheon of infallible founding fathers… no. You pretty much have to be National Front for the French equivalent and even today most people think they’re freaks.
Not that America is the only country to mainstream that.
TerryC
@StringOnAStick: “so occasionally I go to Whole Foods when I want to splurge on good fish.”
I go for the breakfast buffet. At $8.49/pound the perfectly cooked, thick bacon is a steal. Once a week I get a box of it and go door to door in my office as the Bacon Fairy.
I have to say, though, and maybe it’s regional, that I find the shoppers there to be open and friendly.
Visceral
@OzarkHillbilly: Totebagger is meant to refer to a certain group of wealthy, educated East/Left Coast yuppies who are socially liberal but fiscally centrist at best, who talk a big game about how educated, informed, and open-minded they are but who still vote their stock portfolios, have probably never been in the same room as anyone not of their social class, and whose idea of social responsibility is limited to spending money.
Ruckus
@Visceral:
On the last line you left out some words. For them.
….spending money, as long as it benefits them.
Mnemosyne
@TerryC:
It’s probably regional. Here in Southern California, Whole Foods shoppers are more than happy to try and run you over in the parking lot because can’t you see they’re driving a Prius?!
The staff is always friendly and helpful, but I don’t know how they do it since they have to deal with entitled jerks all day long.
sparrow
@schrodinger’s cat: Hey, thanks for asking! Active galaxies, specifically some black holes spewing out jets of relativistic plasma. Kinda like this: http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/archive/releases/1992/07/image/a/
Betsy
@StringOnAStick: yeah, the Elbow Factor seems to be at its highest in Whole Foods and Trader Joe’s.
James E. Powell
@OzarkHillbilly:
So tell me again why “totebagger” is derogatory?’
I suppose everyone has his or her own definition of a totebagger. And each definition helps explains why it is derogatory. It is almost always used by a left of center person to refer to another left of center person. It suggests shortcomings on the part of the totebagger. Not so much a purism thing, but rather a charge that the totebagger is a phony or part-time left/liberal.
It starts with totebaggers being almost exclusively upper middle class whites, college graduates, often never attended public schools. big on appearances, joining the “right” causes, but never challenging the existing order. A blindness to white privilege is almost required. Totebaggers are strong in their support of LGBT issues and abortion rights, but support the corporate takeover of public schools – schools that neither they nor their children have ever seen the inside of. They aren’t that big on labor rights or immigration issues because changes in those areas will cost them money. Check, for instance, the number of people in towns like Santa Monica who employ unauthorized immigrants to watch their children, clean their homes, and take care of the yardwork.
The worse thing about totebaggers is that they are hardcore Broderists – they really believe that both sides do it. This means that they feel obligated to support and vote for Republicans some times, lest they seem to partisan and therefore unreasonable. They don’t pay attention to the heartache and misery caused by Republican policies because, apart from appearances, they don’t suffer from Republican polices. They have income, wealth, and status.
Glocksman
@Mnemosyne:
It’s called a paycheck.
If I’m paid to put up with assholes all day long, and it’s the best job I can find, bet your bottom dollar that’s just what I’ll do.
Though if I switch jobs and someone tries that shit on me, well, let’s just say the response won’t be pretty.
Chris
Totebagger (n). Definition: see Even the liberal New Republic.