Larry Bradley's Weekly Ezine #205 Hateful Politics
1. New Book: Coming Apart by Charles Murray
2. Hateful Politics
1. New Book: Coming Apart by Charles Murray
A new book called Coming Apart: The State of White America 1960-2010 by Charles Murray has come to my attention over the last week. I’ve seen two articles about it in the NY Times and it’s been featured in the (also relatively new) web site/Blog Rise of the Center (links below).
From what I’ve read about the book so far, what makes the book interesting is its discussion of how white America has become “increasingly polarized into two culturally and geographically isolated demographics,” to quote the article at link one.
In fact, David Brooks’ article (link #2) talks about the need, based on the book, for there to be a national service program that would cause the two demographics to have to live together. Sorry, David, we’ve been way ahead of you on that one for quite a while now. Bring on the Lottery Draft with selection for three levels of service: military, para-military and social service. The Greatest Generation who fought and won World War II and came home to establish great prosperity for this nation had that very experience. On a very large scale under highly stressful conditions, they lived among people who were not like them and came to appreciate other people and places as a result. We do not have this today and we need it back.
The third article talks about the divide and explores the question of whether the upper 20% are the upper 20% because of genetics or because of better opportunity. If those who occupy the upper 20% think it’s because of genetics, then doesn’t that present us with something of a “master race” complex contributing to a feeling of superiority and/or entitlement?
Overall, what I think this discussion points up is the old adage about the blind man and the elephant. How the blind man describes the elephant depends on what part of the elephant the man is touching. Further, if the blind man is never given the opportunity to touch the entire elephant, then the description is going to be very limited.
The value of this book and others like it (such as Our Patchwork Nation), therefore, is to show us how enormously diverse we are as a nation. In other words, politically, what this means to us is if we have policies being generated based on assumptions which do not reflect the reality of our societal diversity, then those policies have a very low chance of success. Voters who assume everyone else thinks and believes as they do (and those who do not are somehow evil) in choosing candidates and policies to support are actually hampering our ability to find solutions to our problems.
I intend to add Mr. Murray’s book to my reading list. You might want to do so, also.
P.S. Rob Ritchie of FairVote.org is going to be on C-SPAN’s Washington Journal this Sunday morning, Feb 12, 2012 at 9:15 a.m. EST (8:15 a.m. CST). Ritchie is an advocate of Instant Runoff Voting and similar modifications to voting to improve our Republic. I recommend watching.
2. Hateful Politics
Passion has always been part of politics and will always be. Anger has always been a prime motivator. But when voters allow anger to cross over into hatred, aren’t they violating the counsel to, “Don’t get mad. Get even.”?
Yet think of these recent events in the news. One is the finger wagging incident with Arizona Governor Jan Brewer towards President Obama. Another is the declaration by Florida Representative Allen West that President Obama, former Speaker Pelosi, and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid could “go to Hell.”
What these incidents illustrate is crossing the line from anger over policy disagreement to hatred of the person because of their policy.
Those who manage people know a key management task is to separate the personality of an individual from their performance. The more difficult and creative the nature of the task the individual performs, the more difficult the task for the manager to make the distinction. For example, finding salespeople who can sell and will sell can be extremely difficult. When businesses find such an individual, the propensity is usually to overlook personality foibles in order to retain productivity.
One of the most famous public examples of this phenomenon came from the American Civil War with President Abraham Lincoln and General Ulysses S. Grant. Figures jealous of Grant wanted to have him replaced with others they found more favorable. Those figures approached Lincoln with . . .
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Categories: Weekly Ezine
Tags: Charles Murray Coming Apart Rob Richie FairVote.org Jan Brewer President Obama Allen West Go to Hell
This post is different from what I read on most blog. And it have so many valuable things to learn.
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