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There's a tradition in the US, much neglected lately -- "rooting for the underdog." It was always a kind of superficial and even kind of fake tradition, but it was there. Mostly it was expressed in sports -- New York Mets fans were highly admired when that team was at the bottom for so many years. But it was trotted out in politics and current events whenever there was somebody plucky to be featured in a human interest story.
The trouble is that rooting for the underdog is inconsistent with the Randite philosophy that the ruling class has adopted. There's a whole raft of experts and movers and shakers -- maybe two generations' worth -- who have grown up with the feeling that they do not have to velvetize their fists, that they do not have to fund an altruistic rationale for their activities: selfishness is not only a virtue, it is the virtue.
No, this isn't a Hell-in-a-handbasket rant. I don't say that Ayn Rand has ruined American politics. I actually blame the communists (and the socialists, and the anarcho-syndicalists, and the labor unionists) for not having the guts to be as strong in the US as they were in Western Europe, and allowing the right wing to build an oppositionless landscape after the War. But maybe the material just wasn't there. Maybe I shouldn't blame anybody.
The point is that you do not see "plucky" in the media.
The thing that made me think about this was the outpouring of kneejerk hatred towards Southern California. Half a million people evacuated at one time or another over the last week. Whole lives up in smoke. Shipping disrupted. Forests gone, chapparal blackened to the ground. Whole neighborhoods destroyed. And what can they say? "Some people hate America. Unfortunately for them, their homes are up in smoke." Some ass actually said that on network TV.
They're talking about this huge area as if it were all a particular street in some rich enclave in a luxury canyon. This is even less homogenous an area than the Oakland hills were when they went up. (as I've said elsewhere, yes, most of the houses in Southern California should not have been built the way they were or in the places they were built, but this is also true of every coastline, riverbank, tornado-and-lightning prone plains, floodprone bottomlands, slide-prone hillside, northern latitude where nothing grows but wheat and potatoes, tropical zone where a paper cut can be lethal . . .) And as little sympathy as I have for the ruling class, upper middle class suburbanites are not it.
It's a deflection. It's "look over there!" and it's effective because of generations of Hollywood holding itself up to contempt because no publicity is bad publicity and generations of Southern California allowing itself to be branded as a mere support system for Hollywood. Actually, Southern California is much more important as a major international shipping hub, a major industrial center, a major agricultural region, a major academic center, hell, with mining, wilderness, and everything -- if you split it off from the US it would stand alone quite well as an independent country. (I've said this before about California as a whole, but it's even true of each half by themselves -- more true of Southern California, actually, though it would have to have water deals across its border if that were the case)
I had a moment where I thought that might feed into the Southern California hatred, actually, but I don't think so. Nobody thinks about Chicagoland that way. Actually, people just don't think about Chicago and its hinterland nearly as much as they should. And that might feed into the Southern California kneejerk hatred right there. The phrase "flyover country."
When the media turns its stupid eye on the middle of the country, who do they talk to? Some old lady in a coffee shop in a small town and the guy in a tractor hat that comes in from the farm for a cup of coffee. They don't hit the streets in Cleveland or Gary and talk to some kid in a copy shop or the woman who comes in from a temp agency for a copy of her resume.
No, they don't. Because then the representation of the "rest of the country" would look a lot more like the coasts: because it really does.
Anyway, here's to the firefighters and the disaster planners. That's one thing California does do right: we plan for disasters.
The trouble is that rooting for the underdog is inconsistent with the Randite philosophy that the ruling class has adopted. There's a whole raft of experts and movers and shakers -- maybe two generations' worth -- who have grown up with the feeling that they do not have to velvetize their fists, that they do not have to fund an altruistic rationale for their activities: selfishness is not only a virtue, it is the virtue.
No, this isn't a Hell-in-a-handbasket rant. I don't say that Ayn Rand has ruined American politics. I actually blame the communists (and the socialists, and the anarcho-syndicalists, and the labor unionists) for not having the guts to be as strong in the US as they were in Western Europe, and allowing the right wing to build an oppositionless landscape after the War. But maybe the material just wasn't there. Maybe I shouldn't blame anybody.
The point is that you do not see "plucky" in the media.
The thing that made me think about this was the outpouring of kneejerk hatred towards Southern California. Half a million people evacuated at one time or another over the last week. Whole lives up in smoke. Shipping disrupted. Forests gone, chapparal blackened to the ground. Whole neighborhoods destroyed. And what can they say? "Some people hate America. Unfortunately for them, their homes are up in smoke." Some ass actually said that on network TV.
They're talking about this huge area as if it were all a particular street in some rich enclave in a luxury canyon. This is even less homogenous an area than the Oakland hills were when they went up. (as I've said elsewhere, yes, most of the houses in Southern California should not have been built the way they were or in the places they were built, but this is also true of every coastline, riverbank, tornado-and-lightning prone plains, floodprone bottomlands, slide-prone hillside, northern latitude where nothing grows but wheat and potatoes, tropical zone where a paper cut can be lethal . . .) And as little sympathy as I have for the ruling class, upper middle class suburbanites are not it.
It's a deflection. It's "look over there!" and it's effective because of generations of Hollywood holding itself up to contempt because no publicity is bad publicity and generations of Southern California allowing itself to be branded as a mere support system for Hollywood. Actually, Southern California is much more important as a major international shipping hub, a major industrial center, a major agricultural region, a major academic center, hell, with mining, wilderness, and everything -- if you split it off from the US it would stand alone quite well as an independent country. (I've said this before about California as a whole, but it's even true of each half by themselves -- more true of Southern California, actually, though it would have to have water deals across its border if that were the case)
I had a moment where I thought that might feed into the Southern California hatred, actually, but I don't think so. Nobody thinks about Chicagoland that way. Actually, people just don't think about Chicago and its hinterland nearly as much as they should. And that might feed into the Southern California kneejerk hatred right there. The phrase "flyover country."
When the media turns its stupid eye on the middle of the country, who do they talk to? Some old lady in a coffee shop in a small town and the guy in a tractor hat that comes in from the farm for a cup of coffee. They don't hit the streets in Cleveland or Gary and talk to some kid in a copy shop or the woman who comes in from a temp agency for a copy of her resume.
No, they don't. Because then the representation of the "rest of the country" would look a lot more like the coasts: because it really does.
Anyway, here's to the firefighters and the disaster planners. That's one thing California does do right: we plan for disasters.