Nuevo California
I received this email called Nuevo California (at the bottom of this post for reference) twice after this last election, and about fifty times after the 2004 election. I felt the disenchantment so sorely after the 2004 election. How could we?, I mean even how could we get close enough for fraud to pull an election? As president Bush declared that he saw a clear mandate in this close close election I cried. I mourned for our reputation in the world, and for the continuance of what I considered poor choices and dangerous paths. I felt sore about the depth of the loss and I wanted to hide. The humorous yet derogatory emails contained an element of how I felt.
I looked at every state that winner take all made this happen with perplexity. I couldn’t understand about Red state mentality. I started to try.
So I have been thinking about this for a few years now. I spent hours on this state stats site confirming that yes it is true. It would seem that all of the larger morality, health and social problems are concentrated in the states that vote republican. Why? How? Can it be that people are voting to “protect marriage” because they see it is in danger more than their blue state counterparts with 22% less of a divorce rate? Is that it? Is morality a big issue in these states because they are surrounded with problems? It may be part of it but I don’t think that covers it entirely.
I was reminded of this again when I watched a TED Video on the difference between liberals and conservatives. (yes another one, I know. I am addicted)
This is a psychologist delving into the five ethical structures of humanity. Fascinating. The reminder of the 2004 election was that his presentation used this image as the usual reaction of liberals when trying to understand the red state mentality. Am I the kind of person who thinks that if someone doesn’t agree with me they must be dumb? Probably as long as the laugh lasts and then no, I want to look deeper.
This time I got only two emails and I noticed something very different. First off I have to say that I think that it is kind of crass to spout off like this. We own all the toys and we are taking them home to play without you.
What I noticed this time was about the resources listed here, particularly: fresh water, food, education and low-sulfur coal. Is this really that one part of the nation is wealthy in countless ways and opportunities and therefore educated and open to change and the other part is well *not.* Therefore the red states are filled with a lot of the problems of poverty – bad food, low education, less opportunity. Perhaps the higher alcoholism, teen pregnancy, porn consumption, obesity and everything else mentioned here is due to a larger poor population comparitively. Perhaps the educated and better off people of the red state more fear the “take” of their impoverished neighbors because there are more and the dole is bigger. Is this all really that the blue states are the haves and the red the have nots? I know this is not news here but it hit me harder this time. And it hit me harder how crass this email is because of it.
So this time “we” won the election. With the state of the economy and the talk of new deal style investment into our country perhaps we could learn from how it got this way and invest in the red states. Not just the military base investment that was done in the new deal but perhaps an investment that will equalize the resources and bit. Maybe in a while the wealth and empowerment will fix the problems that make the red states try to legislate morality. Wouldn’t it be nice if Alabama was our shining star of alternative energy creation instead of the lead of porn consumption per capita in the USA. If Texas was solar power central would the obesity naturally go down? Would Tennessee’s teen pregnancy rate stabilize if…
Dear Red States:
We’ve decided we’re leaving. We intend to form our own country, and we’re taking the other Blue States with us. In case you aren’t aware, that includes California, Hawaii, Oregon, Washington, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, Illinois and all the Northeast. We believe this split will be beneficial to the nation, and especially to the people of the new country of New California.
To sum up briefly: You get Texas , Oklahoma and all the slave states. We get stem cell research and the best beaches. We get the Statue of Liberty. You get Dollywood. We get Intel and Microsoft. You get WorldCom. We get Harvard. You get Ole’ Miss. We get 85 percent of America’s venture capital and
entrepreneurs. You get Alabama . We get two-thirds of the tax revenue, you get to make the red states pay their fair share.
Since our aggregate divorce rate is 22 percent lower than the Christian Coalition’s, we get a bunch of happy families. Please be aware that Nuevo California will be pro-choice and anti-war, and we’re going to want all our citizens back from Iraq at once. If you need people to fight, ask your evangelicals.
With the Blue States in hand, we will have firm control of 80 percent of the country’s fresh water, more than 90 percent of the pineapple and lettuce, 92 percent of the nation’s fresh fruit, 95 percent of America’s quality wines (you can serve French wines at state dinners) 90 percent of all cheese, 90
percent of the high tech industry, most of the U.S. low-sulfur coal, all living redwoods, sequoias and condors, all the Ivy and Seven Sister schools plus Stanford, Cal Tech and MIT. With the Red States, on the other hand, you will have to cope with 88 percent of all obese Americans (and their
projected health care costs), 92 percent of all U.S. mosquitoes, nearly 100 percent of the tornadoes, 90 percent of the hurricanes, 99 percent of all Southern Baptists, virtually 100 percent of all televangelists, Rush Limbaugh, Bob Jones University, Clemson and the University of Georgia. We
get Hollywood and Yosemite, thank you.
Additionally, 38 percent of those in the Red states believe Jonah was actually swallowed by a whale, 62 percent believe life is sacred unless we’re discussing the death penalty or gun laws, 44 percent say that evolution is only a theory, 53 percent that Saddam was involved in 9/11 and 61 percent of you crazy bastards believe you are people with higher morals then we lefties.
Finally, we’re taking the good pot, too. You can have that dirt weed they grow in Mexico
Peace out,
Blue States
November 21st, 2008 at 12:57 pm
Wow, this is a really interesting email and for some reason I’ve never seen it. Is it wrong that I love it?
November 21st, 2008 at 1:04 pm
OK, I laughed. And I see the truth here. And it’s really kind of sad, isn’t it?
November 21st, 2008 at 3:24 pm
Recently, my job as a professional Left Wing Liberal Politico… aka… organizer put me in a position where I needed to enforce the rules of paid canvassing on some do-good community organizer type volunteers. I felt like a shady right wing hate monger. But I was right, which then, upon reflection, made me feel even more like a right wing shadester. Well, I was accused of being racist, among other things, which I took with a grain of salt, although let it be said I had to step outside to get myself together for a few minutes. Anyway, one of the things that was said was “She is flaunting her education at us”
Huh? The most recent time I dropped out of community college was the Fall Semester 2005. Was I going to admit that? Well… I kinda want a job reference, and it doesn’t reflect well for that, not that I ever lied about it…
Assumptions, presumptions, and judgments abound where communications lapse.
It should also be mentioned, for the purposes of the discussions about this email, that the Red States get a good amount of the Blue States’ trash. We produce all kinds of things, we control a lot of wealth, and we shit all over the rest of the country’s environment. Nuclear waste, Solid Waste, medical waste…
I like the spirit of this post a lot. I think that it is in the spirit that Obama was elected… he is a coalition builder… and he is giving Middle America a soft place to land. So are you.
November 25th, 2008 at 12:03 pm
Okay, I really enjoyed the email despite myself. Thank God I had the good sense to move to a blue state. At the time, there wasn’t even such a thing as blue state and red state. Apparently my political instincts were on point when I chose Washington.
That said, I hope we’re soon coming to a place where we can blend as a nation. One big purple nation.
December 9th, 2008 at 4:57 pm
The problem with politics in America is that each side can’t fathom how the other side can possibly disagree… unless they’re “dumb fucks”, to quote your map.
I didn’t vote for Obama. Not because I’m dumb (my IQ is 147), or because I’m a racist, but because I don’t think his ideas will work. It’s like Robert Downey Jr said… “you can’t go from a $2,000-a-night suite at La Mirage to a penitentiary and really understand it and come out a liberal.” Not that I’ve been in prison, but I’ve had a varied life (went to the same schools as Ted Kennedy and John Kerry), I’ve been rich, and I’ve been poor. Most people who have had to work hard to make their way in life, who’ve run a business and employed others, tend to realize that liberal/progressive ideology is just so much BS.
Being opposed to gun control, or abortion, or socialized medicine, or a defeatist foreign policy isn’t “dumb”. We think it’s principled. We Red Staters understand you don’t agree with us. What we don’t understand is why you keep on believing in the same old ideas that have been repeatedly tried and shown not to work.
Show me how a government that can’t run the post office is going to run health care. Show me how a government that can’t protect me from criminals has the right idea when it wants to prevent me from owning a gun. Show me how a government that can’t balance it’s own budget is going to fix the financial system or the Big Three automakers.
I don’t believe it. In the Red State world, rhetoric is useless. Nothing is the matter with Kansas. It’s just that we’re not the dumb rubes the Blue State ‘elites’ think we are, and we aren’t buying it.
Obama and the Democrats won in 2008 due to a unique alignment of stars. If the Republicans had been as enthusiastic in ’08 as they were in ’04 and turned out in the same numbers, McCain would be president. And, in 2010, the Democrats won’t have fixed the economy and will most likely have exacerbated the problems… and they’ll be out of power.
December 10th, 2008 at 4:13 pm
John: Thanks for commenting. While I was reading this I had high hopes, by volume if nothing else, that the contents would give me the insight as to why the belief structure is different. You are right that I have trouble understanding it, but I don’t have the – they-must-be-”dumb fucks” opinion that you mentioned. The post pretty clearly showed that.
I have read your comment a few times now and I am wondering if maybe you didn’t read it at all. It doesn’t sound like you are responding to what I wrote, more like what you think I wrote after looking at the title and the picture. If you did that I take no offense. The email and the picture included were crass to say the least but I was pointing that out not agreeing with it!
I had hopes of a glimpse of understanding your views in this comment and maybe that is expecting too much of six paragraphs. All I got was that you don’t think certain things would work or that you have certain principals but no understanding as to why. Maybe it would be easier to go topic by topic with something like that. I used to have a republican friend that we would do that with. Unfortunately or fortunately when we got down to it we found that we agreed on most things and I got not more insight into why it was different. I always thought he was a libertarian anyway. He has since moved to Malaysia for his job and I get no more discussions.
Maybe you would be open to writing about the same topic and comparing? Something specific would be good if you are interested in doing that we can link and compare views.
Regardless, I am happy to have your comment included with my post.
December 10th, 2008 at 5:58 pm
I agree, I was responding more to the ‘Dear Red States’ part of the post instead of your part, so I’ll address some of your remarks (as is only fair). And, I will write a rebuttal of sorts on my blog. I’ve ‘fixed’ my email on this comment so it should work.
At any rate, I think the reason that ‘red staters’ and ‘blue staters’ disagree is because we don’t agree on the facts. For instance, we don’t agree that our states have worse problems that blue states. We have different problems… and many of the blue state problems are coming to our states, e.g., criminal gangs and gang-associated violence. Finally, many ‘red state’ problems are actually caused by ‘blue state’ thinking. One prime example: Louisiana, which has been run by Democrats at the state level almost non-stop since the Civil War.
I’ll talk about Louisiana because that’s where I spent much of my teenage and early adult years. Louisiana was a great state, with the exception of New Orleans. New Orleans was a cesspool. The city was corrupt, just as the state had been corrupt. Everyone knew the state leaders were corrupt, but they’d vote Democrat because they mostly had no alternative. Many of the Republicans were failed Democrats, instead of being people who believed in the principles of the Republican party.
Here’s a big factual disagreement between Red and Blue… what happened after Hurricane Katrina, and why. Blue staters blame this all on George Bush. Red staters, and most Louisiana residents, fully understand that the blame lies squarely with Democrat governor Katherine Blanco and Democrat mayor Ray Nagin, and their liberal racist beliefs. Yes, I said it: the dirty secret of liberals is their beliefs that blacks and other minorities aren’t as good as whites so they need to be helped. Contrast Louisiana’s response to Katrina with Mississippi’s… a state with the same demographics that was much more damaged by Katrina, yet which recovered while New Orleans still lies prostrate and wailing in a bed full of money, waiting for someone to help it. The difference? Haley Barbour is competent.
That’s why Louisiana got rid of Katherine Blanco (everyone in Louisiana, including the residents of parishes in south Louisiana who also had to deal with Katrina and Blanco’s dismal performance, got to vote). Racism, keeping New Orleans ‘chocolate’, is why New Orleans still has an abysmal mayor… the same reason that DC kept on re-electing Marion Barry.
So, if you blame George Bush or FEMA for what happened in New Orleans, then you disagree with me (and the majority of people who lived through Katrina in Louisiana) on the facts. Thing is, facts ARE facts, so if we disagree one of us must be wrong. And, this is true for every facts-based dispute. The difference between red and blue is that neither side wants to be dragged into a solution that they have no faith in, because the sides see the other side’s solution as fatal due to a reliance on incorrect facts.
Why is blue state thinking growing? Because blue staters run most of the higher education institutions in the country. Coincidentally, most college students don’t study logic or engineering or math, instead they get liberal arts degrees, where they are taught to repeat liberal thinking instead of examining it for correctness.
I could go on, but this is enough for a reply. I’ll save the rest for my article… thanks for the idea.