Mr. Dyer, why do you hate conservatives so much?

"Without the back-and-forth of unmediated experience" (to use your
words - spoken, ironically, on a list such as Dictator Crawford's,
which is anything but unmediated!), you have shown once again that
your hatred of conservatives is so intense that you can't even do
what could have otherwise passed as a non-partisan post (below)
without slipping in at least _some_ sort, of at least _crypto_, -name-
calling of conservatives. Such as, by parenthetically associating
them with "cryptoracists".

Mr. Dyer, please be specific about _what_ instances of alleged
cryptoracism, and by _what_ alleged conservatives, you're referring
to, or shut up.

- TF


--- In carfree_cities@yahoogroups.com, Jym Dyer <jym@...> wrote:

=v= Thanks for articulating some of the either/or criticisms I
had of the original article.

=v= I will add that the conservative/liberal divide in the U.S.
(such as it is) doesn't really split into geographic divisions,
and that the real demographic situation has to do with the
topic of this list. While it has certainly been a conservative
(and cryptoracist) meme to demonize the cities as hotbeds of
liberal decadence, there's a lot of wealth in the cities and
no shortage of conservative urbanites. Further, the American
countryside has a long, strong history of progressivism.

=v= The crucial story in the U.S. is what demographers call the
swing vote, what sociologists call anomie, and what I call the
mushy middle. This is a vast slice of the populace, largely
suburban, who stand for nothing and fall for anything. National
politics in recent decades has been about courting this vote, a
process that has little to do with political positions and much
to do with focus groups and marketing research (and, of course,
strategic voting fraud).

=v= When the balance of this vote tipped to Bush, we were fed
nonsense about a unified "Red America" voting its "values."
When, previously, the very same demographic supported Clinton,
we were fed nonsense about tender-hearted "soccer moms."

=v= American suburbia is extremely dependent on cars, so some
have looked at the voting this century and speculated that
this demographic voted its interests by voting for the oilmen
and -women. I know of no research that really supports this,
and again, the 1990s and 2006 votes suggest otherwise. The
real story, I think, is that car-dependent land-use patterns
promote anomie and create the malleable demographic. People
living this way are compartmentalized inside their cars and
are more likely to experience others through a TV screen than
in person, and the closest thing to public space is a shopping
mall. Without the back-and-forth of unmediated experience,
this population has fewer opportunities to think critically
and consider alternatives. Which is a boon for politicians
of any stripe.
<_Jym_>

--- End forwarded message ---