So here’s the Audible.com blurb for a field guide to swamp-dwelling troglodytes.
A Thought-Provoking Journey
Strangers in Their Own Land goes beyond the commonplace liberal idea that these are people who have been duped into voting against their own interests. Sociologist Arlie Hochschild journeys to Louisiana bayou country – a stronghold of the conservative right. Though this community’s ideas differ vastly from her own, she realizes that Americans share a few key principles – the desire for community, the embrace of family, and hopes for our children. Hochschild draws on her expert knowledge of the sociology of emotion to help listeners understand what it feels like to live in “red” America. Along the way she finds answers to one of the crucial questions of contemporary American politics: Why do the people who would seem to benefit most from “liberal” government intervention abhor the very idea?
Who are these people who write and who are they who read as if there existed some underclass of blighted retards which cannot figure out how to vote? The book is lauded for not treating the morons as morons, even while explaining the morons away. What does it take to understand these morons? An expert in emotional sociology.
Well screw you. That’s my emotional response. From the blurb, the book still sounds as though it will pathologize and denigrate conservatism, rather than appreciating the wisdom of not empowering government to an unmanageable state.
These silly ass treatises’ are most illuminating about the author’s insularity and attachment to their own worldview.
They can observe yet not listen.
Heisenberg was right.
The ignorance of the educated is truly great. They believe that government intervention solves all. Only if it did.
Somewhere I read this bon mot recently: sociologists are the alchemists of the modern age.
Good quote.
Boy howdy.
About social science from Nassim Taleb:
“It’s contagion that determines the fate of a theory in social science, not its validity.”
Since almost all social scientists are leftists, it’s hardly surprising that condescending, self-congratulatory ideas are transmitted from one sociologist to the next, just like any communicable disease.
Well hit, Pen! Paging Max Weber…
This book is of a species with What’s the Matter With Kansas which she references in the sample pages of the first chapter. She acknowledges the left/right divide and attributes it entirely to the right, particularly the Tea Party, whose depravity she establishes with scientific precision by noting their position on Climate Change is … wrong.
She talks about getting past empathy walls but shows from the get-go a complete inability to step away from her own politics and tribal tokens long enough to understand anyone. But then understanding is not really the point. There is a large body of virtue signaling literature like this where an intrepid lefty investigator hazards an expedition into the untamed marches of Red State America to render an anthropological assay of the local fauna. The results of these ‘studies’ are more or less the same: yes, the Visigoths are out there and they’re just as benighted and dangerous as we thought they were.
This woman may have some redeeming qualities — loves dogs, plays fantasy football, who knows — I don’t really care, I hate her, if I ever get serious about my pyramid of skulls, she’d make a worthy contribution.
PS — OK, I see she’s a sociologist from Berkeley so, clearly, she has no redeeming qualities.
The horror, the horror…
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I happily embrace the term “troglodyte.” Can we get caps or t-shirts to emphasize the point?
I’ve worn out my “Make America Great Again” apparel.
BTW, BDB, I’m totally bent over laughing at some of your…ahem… terminology. ;)
P.S. For those of you who have participated on the AMU, I fully admit to crushing on BDB’s baritone; but I truly do agree with his politics!
Notice how the first and last sentences of the blurb are in open contradiction. The book purportedly “goes beyond” an idea, yet the paragraph concludes with the same idea, merely rephrased. They’re not the clearest thinkers, are they.
“Strangers in Their Own Land goes beyond the commonplace liberal idea that these are people who have been duped into voting against their own interests.”
“Why do the people who would seem to benefit most from ‘liberal’ government intervention abhor the very idea?”
Beloved Admin, this drippingly insular condescension surprises you in some way? Or perhaps frustrates you into Anglo-Saxon/German pithiness? Either way: Bravo! and S/Q!
I guess this clears up a few things about the CoC.