Noun: a literary or artistic genre in which realistic narrative and naturalistic technique are combined with surreal elements of political fantasy.
For those of us who actually live in Middle America and who have been actively yelling for decades about the monster factory the GOP has been building, watching the single-minded obsession with which The New York Times and The Washington Post have been seeking out lumpen Midwest idiots to plumb their depths has been as ludicrous as it has been toxic. To those of us on the Left who live among the meatheads, it has always been perfectly obvious that, to quote Sherlock Holmes from a different context:
It is my belief, Watson, founded upon my experience, that the lowest and vilest alleys in London do not present a more dreadful record of sin than does the smiling and beautiful countryside.
But for the wealthy city folk who live a million social and economic miles from the actual Middle America the Post and the Times reportage amounts to nothing more or less than thrilling tales of pity and terror taking place far, far away. And as long the mainstream media continues to look upon the Land Beyond The Hudson And Potomac as a land as alien to them as the far side of the Moon, the the genre I call Magic Ruralism will never die.
...just as Thrilling Detective and Detective Fiction Weekly were in the business of cranking out hard-boiled crime genre fiction for the titillation of their readers, so have The New York Times and the Washington Post gone into the business of cranking out True Tales Of Rust-Belt Trump Murricans! for the titillation of their readers.
From a land where The New York Times, can magically turn the misfortune of a meathead Nebraska Republican (in this case, his tractor burned) into a front page story about a mini Reichstag Fire:
He Already Saw the Election as Good vs. Evil. Then His Tractor Burned.In Nebraska, President Trump’s supporters hope he wins a second term, and that they get four more years of feeling like the country’s leader understands and defends them.
And when our coastal elites have gotten their fill of reading hair-raising stories of "Rubes along the Monongahela" or "The Economically Distressed Madmen of Mercer County" they can cool themselves off by turning the page and wallowing in the latest iteration David Brooks' ongoing opium dream of a Magical Both Siderist Third Party that will wipe every tear from their eyes and there will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain and no more crazy socialist monsters getting any ideas about making college or health care more affordable and available by, say, raising Mr. Brooks' taxes.
This is your elite media at work, kids.
No Half Measures
5 comments:
Somehow the rural lumpenvolk (a vanishingly small minority of the citizenry) have been transmogrified to Real Muricans, while the rest of us (the overwhelming majority) are Not American. This has led to the elevation of boorishness and bigotry (what journalists portray as the behavior of Real Muricans) to a national characteristic.
It's frustrating, especially for those of us who see these volk on a daily basis, and say, yes, yes, they are great neighbors--so long as you are White. Otherwise, they aren't
Great use of my favorite Sherlock Holmes quote.
The rural , Country, family farms are not able to survive in the capitalism the GOP version of it.
The can't afford to have hospitals. So they mooch off socialism for help. When republicans knock on their door and say, "I am from the government and I am here to help" with a trade war to boost your foreign profits. (for their votes). Only to return with free money from other people to cover their foreign market losses. Well when a republican does it and takes that money. Why, it is not socialism Just like when Wall Street gets other peoples money for free.
Thing is, the children grow up and if educated will never find decent employment. So they move out of that GOP Utopia of God.
The other thing is that neither a NYT reporter or her editor can be troubled to Google "Combined Fires." If they had they would have discovered that this idiot's carelessness was a far more likely cause then a roving band of Anti-Fa from Omaha ( could not resist.) I saw a reference on twitler & did the same and here is what I found: https://www.eqgroup.com/Library/combine_fire/
To use a favorite phrase of my father's, the part that gets me is that there is no need to go on safari to find Trump supporters. News coverage seems to assume that majority support in an area implies that EVERYONE in that area supports the same candidate. A fact, driftglass, of which you are more than personally aware.
I guess it has something to do with the fact that in an urban setting, it's easy to confuse your self-selected group of friends with your actual, mostly unknown neighbors.
To use the ACTUAL quote from Pauline Kael: “I live in a rather special world. I only know one person who voted for Nixon. Where they are I don’t know. They’re outside my ken. But sometimes when I’m in a theater I can feel them.”
It's...
it's...
it's like the difference between a granfalloon and karass. And, shit. Now I want to go reread "Cat's Cradle" and I have no idea where my copy is or if it is still in my possession.
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