These days, all the Republicans I know are also working class people, and they are not professionals, and they have high school degrees.

And I also understand how difficult it would be to really have exposure to the truth about Bush, unless you are educated, and use the computer.

I also get along quite well with most people of whatever political leaning. The few I note who seem a bit bizarre in their opinions are usually conservative, but then again, that may be me seeing them through the lens of my liberal opinions and worldview. Knowing that you have a worldview that colors your perceptions is one step in the direction of increased consciousness.

I do though, have friends who vote Republican, and I must say, I get along with people, no matter what they vote. It seems to me that people are really misguided, and I agree with Andy about the lies, and all that. Because, the people i know personally who vote Republican, and who support Bush, they really do not support Bush at all. They support what they believe Bush is all about. They themselves are not Monsters. But then again, I am not a man among men, but more so, a woman among women, and also a woman among men as individuals; maybe that makes a difference.

And I can also really get along with someone, and like him, even if I don’t agree with his political, and religious, opinions that much, like David.

I still think we are more alike than different, or have more in common than not. Personality matters a lot.

I guess, I am really not that politically oriented in the first place.

That uneasy cold-war liberal, Hofstadter, carried some of this hypocrisy. “Hofstadter showed his preference for intellect over intelligence, the former recognized as a “unique manifestation of human dignity” and the latter as a quality in animals as well as humans.” He had a prescription for the foreboding prognosis that “culture of the future will be dominated by single-minded men of one persuasion or another.” He, Heidegger-like, prescribed throwing the “weight of one’s will [...] onto the scales of history”; thereby “one lives in the belief that it not be so.” Well, maybe that conceit was not enough.

Hofstadter accounted that colleges founded in the antebellum era (1800-1860),

in order to attract students and benefactors, [...] devoted themselves not to the acquisition of knowledge and the pursuit of truth but to the development of sound principles and moral character, the prerequisites necessary for economic success and social mobility [... marking a] “great retrogression in American collegiate education, a decline in freedom and the capacity for growth that universally afflicted the newer institutions and in all but a few cases damaged the older ones.”

[... ] Hofstadter, however, was particularly interested in the forces of science, business, religion, utilitarianism, and egalitarianism. These he identified as the major causes of anti-intellectualism in society, mediocrity in the public schools, and attacks on academic freedom in the universities.

In many ways, Anti-intellectualism in American Life was a commentary on the increasing influence of Protestant evangelicalism, political egalitarianism, and the rising cult of practicality as the new criteria for assessing our private and public worlds. Hofstadter accused religion, politics, and the public schools of fostering in common people a resentment and suspicion of intellect, of the life of the mind, and of those who devote their lives to it.

He charged that local evangelical preachers and small town lawyers and businessmen masked their bias against intellect with the rhetoric of morality, democracy, utility, and practicality. Thus, as the twentieth
century chipped away at village culture, it was regrettable though not surprising that common folk, made suspicious of urbanity and learning by community leaders, reacted with a “righteous” vengeance to change and
those who celebrated it. However, though Hofstadter deplored the anti-intellectualism of village life, “he sympathized with those whose way of life was being swept away by the rush of events” in the latter half of
the twentieth century. He noted the “patience and generosity” of the common American in the face of monumental change. He suggested that the animosity between intellectuals and the common people was not
solely the fault of the commoner. He recognized that the life of the villager was at odds with the life of the mind. Where common folk lead hard, belabored lives, intellectuals lead elitist, leisured ones—lives that
involved extensive education and time to read, think, and write. Finally, Hofstadter confessed that, intellectuals were at odds not only with their fellow Americans but, quite often, with their democratic beliefs.

And Hofstadter abandoned the left due partly to his snobbery and elite sympathies but also due to his conviction that “racism, anti-Semitism,
and right-wing sentiments were an ineradicable part of populism”. In his liberalism, he found that “the masses—and mass movements—were
not to be trusted. For such older dichotomies as the people versus the interests, the historian David Potter would later observe, Hofstadter tended to substitute the equally misleading dichotomy of the rational versus the irrational.”

In the end, unable either to side with conservatives or to identify himself with those on the Left for whom, in his view, politics had come to fill the transcendent role of religion, Hofstadter simply withdrew. If he ever wrote a history of the 60′s, he said, he would call it The Age of Rubbish.

[...] Hofstadter regarded the faults of his successors [the New Left] as he had the faults of his predecessors [Charles Beard and the Populists]: both, in his view, indulged in political sentimentality toward those whom they considered victims of social conflict.

But while Hofstadter was straddling the fence and trying to defend intellectualism to utilitarianism, the MIC was busy pushing it’s own goods. That’s why the condemnatory tone you hear when Jacoby says, “A vast public laziness feeds the media’s predilection today to distill news through polemicists of one stripe or another and to condense complex information into meaningless sound bites” is so inadequate. She can’t bring herself to name the beast.

I think one of the reasons Americans do not discuss politics is because we live in a class society and woe is it to speak ill of something the higher class believes in, i.e., the boss. I have not been able to keep my leanings secret here at work and do not try too hard to keep it quiet either, but neither do I force a political discussion on anyone. Sometimes I will bring a particularly egregious nugget up for discussion on an individual and non-controversial basis and so have discovered most of my colleagues are leaning liberal. I have discovered that most of the conservative, right winger wear their politics on their sleeves and shout out their convictions to the world. They are not subtle with their politics.

I do believe I am in the minority in checking out the other side. It has been years since I attended a speech on either side. Perhaps I should begin again in the near future. If for no other reason, all should seek to understand the other side, if for no other reason than to see the arguments they will use even before they see them themselves. And who knows, maybe you will change your views as well. One good site for right wing views is newsmax which can be found at http://www.newsmax.com, happy reading from the other side!

Richmond is right on the edge of the eastern Kentucky mountains where people fervently believe in the rapture, speaking in tongues, and born again Christianity.

It’s scary in that part of the world. People will go out of their way to help you but if you try to discuss politics or religion with them you are in grave danger of being shot, stabbed or beat about the head and face (and I am not kidding). The majority of the people in Eastern Kentucky believe that all except born again Christians are going to hell….that includes Catholics, Jews, Muslims, agnostics, and anyone who doesn’t believe as they do.

So, though I have ranted on, my point is that you are absolutely correct. People do not have an open mind – they want to have their beliefs confirmed and validated.

You have been a rich place to visit for inspiration. Remember those “good” Christians I mentioned in America, alive and well? The young voters are going to give us back our country. The reason being, the best of America
is going to come together and bury the bushites.

I hope your other visitors realize what an important voice you are.
Thanks so much Andy. Waiting for your next message of beautifully, Scientific, TRUTH