Disinterested Self Interest?

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Today, I will dispense with the concept of being “politically correct”; instead, I shall be positively correct politically.

I have always been in a quandary.  I have never understood why it is the Southern state residents are so rampant with their hate of outsiders that they vote almost solely based on that precept?

I learned this tendency decades ago.  When I moved to the South.   (To be honest, I am often astonished to recognize that, as a born New Yorker, I’ve been a resident of the South for nigh 2/3 of my life!)

Back in the 1940s, 1950s, and early 1960s, the Southern Democrats were often affiliated with anti-Black movements. And, already by the early 1920s, many of those Southerners were termed “yellow dog” Democrats.  The term was used to describe the fact that Southerners  would vote a yellow dog into office for anything, as long as it were a Democratic Party member.   The folks of the South, it seemed, would never forgive the Republicans for their affiliation with the esteemed President Abraham Lincoln.

But, that party affiliation with prejudice eroded with time.   To a large extent,, that is why these same regions now vote for Republican even though the underpinnings of that party stipulate that our national government is bad and needs to be eroded.  Yet, with most of American poverty concentrated in the Southern regions of the US, it is perplexing that these folks vote against the very government assistance they need?

(Oh, wait.  There are exceptions to this anti-national government belief.  Let us not forgot the staunch Republicans of South Carolina, who to a man [and woman] voted against the most-needed support for the Atlantic States of New Jersey, New York, and Connecticut after they were devastated by Hurricane Sandy.  [I do admit that I would have loved stipulations on that aid to preclude building contiguous the shore lines that are clearly going to be under water within a decade or so, since these same folks are ensuring we will do nothing to counter climate change.])  But, those very same South Carolinians immediately clamored for aid when their state was pulverized with the floods from Hurricane Joaquin.   Consistency is never the strong point, right?)

Obesity 2010-2014

It’s a real problem in this red axis of states.  This US region starts in the Appalachian mountains and extends to the Southern coastal plains.  Where we note that the region’s jobs have disappeared.  (We are not counting minimum wage employment.)  Suicide is growing by leaps and bounds.  (See the PNAS report on the problems of the White middle class, mostly in the South.)   Obesity and health issues are teeming among those residents  (as depicted by the diagram above).

And, what do their elected representatives provide them?  What the voters thought they wanted- a much smaller federal government.  So, now, business has the power while individuals and families are virtually powerless.   The residents are simply powerless to increase their wages.  Powerless to maintain or obtain benefits. Powerless to sue for redress.

Of course, right now, it looks like this region is undergoing yet another major transition. That’s the only excuse for the rise of Trump and Carson- to whom non-college-educated Whites jump at about twice the rate of those Republicans who completed college.

Tomorrow, we will examine this quandary further by discussing an article from the Wall Street Journal that wondered about such trends.  I am certain that it missed the boat completely.  And serves as yet another example of “One is entitled to one’s own opinions, but not your own facts.”

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