Reconsider your response. How much of it was influenced by your personal history and by living in a multicultural, largely urban region? Sarah Palin's acceptance speech last night offered a lively and determined defense of small-town conservative values, and the buzz in the media hints that she may have ignited a culture war between liberal, urban cosmopolitanism and conservative, rural conservatism. Given the positive reaction to her speech, can we continue to argue that her embrace of tradition, duty, and heroism represents only a minority of Americans?
Thursday, September 4, 2008
Have the culture wars returned?
If your email exercise responses are any indication, the overwhelming majority of you believe more Americans identify with Barack Obama's story of multiculturalism, compromise, and change than with John McCain's story of duty, heroism, and tradition. But I wonder how people who live in small towns across the United States, towns with populations that share the same race and religion, might have responded. Do you think they would agree with your opinion?
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6 comments:
We can not solve tomorrow's or even today's problems with yesterday's ideas. World is changing so rapidly one thing we can't do at these moments is to stay still. I apologize if i offend anyone, but in my opinion people who still support Bush's administration must have been sleeping in this last 8 years. Change needs to happen. Therefore from these view points i still stick by the last comment i made.
After Palin's speech, I am not so sure anymore that only a minority of Americans identify with a culture of conservative, rural conservatism. My earlier opinion (that more people identify with Obama's story of multiculturalism and compromise) was influenced by living in this urban area, where people from many different cultural backgrounds reside in close proximity and interact well with each other.
I do believe that my personal history and background influenced my identification with Barrack Obama's story of change, multiculturalism and compromise. Living in Northern Virginia for most of my life has given me the chance to meet people outside of my social sphere and has led to great friendships with people of different races, age and sexual orientation. I am extremely grateful to live in a place such as NOVA and will continue to thrive in this multicultural atmosphere.
On the other hand, I do realize that not all people feel the way I do and experience the same things that I have experienced. A perfect example of this is comparing my views with most of the people who remained in a small southern town in Kentucky. There, you would be surprised to see anyone from a different country except for a handful of people at the local state sponsored university. There, everyone goes to the same church, knows everyone in town and agrees on mostly the same thing. This is representative of the place they live and of the things that they have to deal with on a daily basis. They are not going to identify with Barrack Obama because his issues are not something the people in places like that small town in Kentucky have to deal with.
Unfortunately, when you look at the radically different ideals between McCain's campaign and Obama's campaign you see that the line has been drawn. Each of their ideals are representative of someone in America but when it comes to votes, it's whose ideals represent the biggest group of people. It is this within itself that I believe that compromise should be on both of the campaign agendas, not just one.
My response in the class exercise on Tuesday was certainly biased by my experiences as a resident of cosmopolitan areas. Besides living in Fairfax, I grew up in Los Angeles, which is an even more "radical" place than Northern Virginia. I've learned since moving to Fairfax why residents are always so hasty to distinguish between Virginia and Northern Virginia; you just don't have to drive very far before you reach farmland. I know several people from farther down south, and they certainly don't share the same values that are so popular in Northern Virginia. If such pronounced differences in ideologies exist within one state, I can believe that they exist between Northern Virginia and Montana, say, or Northern Virginia and Illinois.
When most people think of towns that share the same race and religion they think of places like West Virginia or the more southern states that believe in more old-fashioned practices than cities like New York and California. Indeed, I believe that in smaller and more concentrated areas people are more apt to disagree with the idea that most Americans identify with Barack Obama's air of multiculturalism, compromise, and change. To me, John McCain is very "old-school" with his constant reminder to the American people that he once served in a war, thus qualifying him to relate to America's current circumstances in Iraq. He seems too close to the mindset of George Bush, who won his presidency with states like West Virginia littered in small towns, yet it proves that the smaller states/populations are not to be underestimated. If Bush can win that kind of support from people who do not wholly identify with multiculturalism, then surely McCain has a chance (unfortunately).
As for Sarah Palin, her acceptance speech in St. Paul proves that small towns "ain't so small" after all. There seems to be a great deal of people who can relate to her situation---sons in Iraq, a husband in the Workers Union, etc. She seems to carry more weight than many of us may think.
My belief that most Americans identify with Barack Obama's story of multiculturalism partially stems from my being born and raised in Washington, DC. Most of my neighborhood's residents care more about Obama's hints at solving domestic issues than they ever did about tradition, duty, and war accolades. Even though Obama hasn't yet gone into specifics, he at least has the sense to appeal to minority communities in ways other than endorsements by Daddy Yankee.
I think Sarah Palin's speech revealed nothing new about this country's culture war. This election was already Republican vs. Democrat, liberal vs. conservative, or any other label you want to put on it, regardless of the occasional, "Its about the country, not the party" quote. This election was already hotly contested due to the fact that many people hold opposing views, and nothing in that regard will change.
I guess my response that more Americans support Obama's story looks like a huge oversight on my part, but in my hometown, that's exactly how it is.
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