2. Among other things, I dreamt last night that involved the fate of Haley Barbour- the governor of Mississippi. I'm actually afraid to post what that involved for fear of questioning by some dumb federal agency, but ask me sometime if you're curious. It's not all that interesting but it is noteworthy considering I had all those other scary airplane dreams a while back.
3. Check out this totally awesome Mitt Romney quotation, which comes only a week or so after his declaration that Battleship Earth was his favorite book:
"There is no work more important to America's future than the work that is done within the four walls of the American home...(i)t seems that Europe leads Americans in this way of thinking...France, for instance, I'm told that marriage is now frequently contracted in seven-year terms where either party may move on when their term is up. How shallow and how different from the Europe of the past."
At least the fascists weren't shallow or anti-family.
4। Benji mentioned the book The Nine Nations of North America in a comment on my last post (which you should look at, if you haven't already). It was written by Joel Garrau and published in 1981, and it explores pretty much the same idea, but he divides all of North America as such:
I think he makes one huge (but somewhat understandable, given the date of publication of the book): the Empty Quarter. I think that's a huge and contrite way to deal with a region that is far more culturally, politically and economically diverse than most people are willing to give it credit for. He probably can't be totally faulted for not having the forsight to predict the demographic effects of California vomiting its population across the region, but I still think that it's based on a very dated idea of the West being dominated by the extraction industries; it sits out there on his map like some sort of colony for the rest of the real states to mess with.* Extraction still play a huge part, but the tourism/retirement/real estate industries seem to be playing a much bigger role. I also think it's crucial that he left the Mormon homeland in there, because that's an area that's clearly culturally distinct from the rest of the region, though not economically all that much different.
Plus, west Texas and Wisconsin in the same region? I think don't like the map is that I'm much more interested in cultural areas, whereas his map is much more focused on just economic links.
I also wanted to share a related map that I found at Fake is the New Real:
It's a division of the US into proposed new electoral college districts. I like that Nevada et al are known as "Loving Hands".5. While we're on the subject of maps, here's one of roadless areas of the US. The more red a county is, the smaller "roadless volume"or percentage of land without roads:
6. Connie Chung. Remember when she got Newt Gingrich's mom to say that Hilary was a "bitch"?
*Well, it was just that for most of the 20th century, but the last 25 years have seen such a population upswing for the interior west that I think it's important to start recognizing it as a population center and political power base in its own right.
6 comentaris:
When I found out about Sarkozy's victory, my first thought was "shit, now Nate will assume that his visions of cannibals will come to pass, too". I saw Haley Barbor speak a few weeks ago, and he said some really offensive things about New Orleans.
You're probably right about the Empty Quarter business; it seemed like a cop out to me, too. But 25 years is a long time. The guy has a website -- I wonder why he doesn't publish a second edition of his book. It seems incredibly relevent now, especially with the demographic trends sweeping the West and the South.
About cultural vs economic regions, though -- I think his point is partly that economic ties define a region and its culture at least as much as political boundaries and markers more commonly thought of as "cultural" (religion, say, or accents). Wisconsin and West Texas may share deeper similarities based on their similar economic base (and their position in the global economy). That's another argument that he needs a second edition, though, because the shifts in the global economic structure since the early 80s have surely affected his thesis pretty substantially. Well, we'll just have to write our own goddamn book.
Re: the West as power base -- well, definitely true. Right before the elections last fall, I remember everyone was talking about the emergence of the Rocky Mountain states as an potential "alternative to the South" for the Democrats (since they need rural votes and can't gain a foothold in much of the South). But then, I don't know how I feel about having the party being filled with right-of-center, NRA-credentialed Democrats from Montana (Alex clued me into the cool acronym DINO).
Yeah, the Republicans use RINO...but DINO is cooler. But careful about painting the western Democrats with too wide of a brush; I think there could be many more Jon Testers out there, or at least enough to counteract the Henry Cuellars.
On that last point, the Democrats are going to severly fuck up a huge opportunity if they let gun control become another abortion-type issue (which is already is, to some extent). I bet most hunters probably don't want unlimited access to National Forests by ORVs, or the auctioning of millions more acres of BLM and NFS land to logging and mining interests, or the rampant subdivision of huge tracts of land into three-acre "ranchettes" owned by absentee Californians who don't give a fuck about their state. There are many issue, I think, where the Democrats could score big with Westerners who are facing rapid economic and social changes in their states. So while I see the point in wanted to keep out those like Cuellar (why the fuck IS he a Democrat, anyway?) , I think it's a terrible idea to write off those "NRA-credentialed Democrats from Montana". That's asking for the Democrats to become an urban party, and Rocky Anderson, cool though he may be, can't do shit compared to, say, Max Baucus.
Hope that didn't sound hostile. I didn't MEAN it to be hostile.
Yeah, I don't actually know anything about the Rocky Mountain democrats. I'm definitely using that wide brush.
To be honest, I don't have strong views on gun control other than thinking that the NRA is really annoying. So, I don't mind if Western dems play up their second amendment cred (or if Blanche Lincoln poses in camo for her campaign flyers), as long as they're cool in other regards. I've heard several "oh wow, what strange bedfellows!" news stories about environmentalists teaming up with ranchers to fight sprawl and so forth...which is fucking great. I'm just not sure those dems will stand up for the stuff that matters, either, but you really have to take it on a candidate-by-candidate basis, I guess. I agree with you, I was being too hasty.
Mitt Romney aka something you scrape off the bottom of your shoe. I don't think that seven year term marriages are shallow. If anything I think they're just the opposite. A marriage with a limited time and option of renewal requires that each partner keep working on the relationship. Perhaps Romney's ideal is to get married, fatten up, and stop talking to his wife all the while knowing that no matter how miserable both of them become that she can't leave because of their religious convictions. The specific seven-year term is a bit unfortunate in terms of sincerity however. Truthfully, I don't see that much difference between Romney's idea of marriage and the renewable seven-year option. I'm sure it plays on a lot of people's insecurities but that's not always a bad thing.
I think that you think about Connie Chung too much.
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