kurt_cagle
kurt_cagle's JournalRe: The Mormons
Mormons are an odd mix as well. They formed as a religious community in upstate New York in the 1820s (a period that was notable for the rise of evangelism in the United States in general), ran afoul of the local communities and fled to both Missouri and Ohio before finally settling in Nauvoo, Illinois (the governor of Missouri issued an Extermination Order against all Mormons in Missouri). They lived there for a decade before the locals became disgusted with their behavior and attacked the encampment, killing Joseph Smith in the process. Most of the community then moved to Utah, though the practices of polygamy was eventually ended by the mainstream Mormon church in 1890 (prompting many fundamentalist Mormons, including the ancestors of Romney) to move to Mexico.
Consequently, while they started out as a fairly typical Yankee institution, they really fall outside the Red/Blue dichotomy. Mormons have strong social cohesion, but it's primarily between Mormons. They were early abolitionists, but there is a form of religious apartheid within the religion itself that is particularly strong among its more fundamentalist members. The role of polygamy in Mormonism is strong, even though it was eventually abandoned by the LDS church, because it provided a way of increasing the number of Mormons by birth rather than conversion (this is actually characteristic of many young religions - being a descendent of a founder or disciple always carries with it more clout than being a recruit from the outside, and there are definite dynastic characteristics of Mormonism that are no longer true of more mature religions.
If the US were ever to splinter into regions, I see the Mormon portions of Utah closing its borders and becoming an isolationist country, a Mormon Mecca.
Red vs. Blue
Red America is a mixture of Deep South slave gentry (mostly from Southern England) who originally settled the area after coming north from the plantations of the West Indies along with Scots/Irish that settled throughout the Appalachians and from there spread up the Mississippi and Missouri River deltas. They had an uneasy alliance, and the Appalachian settlers generally tended to oppose anyone who was in authority. The Libertarian strain of conservatism mostly derives from the Appalachian settlers, while the Deep Southerners tended to be Aristocratic Monarchists. The other strain of conservatives came from the Dutch settlers of New Amsterdam, later New York (when the British effectively captured the city), who were generally socially liberal but fiscally conservative.
Blue America comes from the Yankees - Massachusetts Calvinists, Puritans and Pilgrims, Pennsylvania Quakers and Dutch Amish, German Lutherans. The Tidewater regions of the East Coast tended to be Gentry, with plantations but also with an early history of indentured servitude instead of slavery. Slavery did become institutionalized in both by the mid 18th century, and Maryland was actually a slave state that sided with the Union, holding an internal referendum in 1864 to abolish slavery. West Virginia separated as a free state (the Appalachian regions generally were more sympathetic to slaves) just before the Civil War. Even after the Civil War, Northern Virginia was much more like Tidewater Maryland, generally being more liberal, while downstate and inland Virginia was more like the Southern plantation states. The German Lutherans occupied most of the Northern Midwest, there was a streak of Quakerism that ran through the central part, and then you had the Appalachians run through the south (which is reason that both Illinois and Pennsylvania tend to have three distinct geoethnicities.
On the Pacific West Coast, you had a mixture of Lutheran Swedes and Norse, Yankees from Boston, Northern English and Scottish settlers of a later set of generations, as well as an admixture of Chinese and Japanese brought to work the railroads. Further south (in SoCal) the mix was more heavily influenced by the remnants of the Spanish Empire, Appalachian miners in the Gold Rush, and New York financiers looking to establish a West Coast base, with San Francisco being the dominant city until World War II, at which point a combination of the Naval bases, Hollywood and the ports in Los Angeles and San Diego brought in a lot of GIs and their families (with many of those GIs for the most part representing the Appalachian warrior clans). It's one reason why NorCal, Oregon and Washington are more liberal than SoCal, though as immigration from Mexico and MesoAmerica continues, that's changing as well. It's also one reason why the Coastal regions in these states are generally far more progressive than the drier, higher inland regions.
Texas is the other oddball. Texas itself was one of the few regions in North America to be a fully declared country for nearly a decade before being annexed by the United States in 1845 (Vermont and Hawaii are the other two). It was not a strong slave state simply because Texas was ill-suited for the agrarian slave economy of Georgia or Alabama, but it was considered a slave state, and after the Civil War, many of the aristocrats of the Old South fled there to settle in the East Texas region. When the value of crude oil as a fuel source became evident, many of these same people became wealthy through the oil deposits on their lands. While parts of the state are beginning to trend blue (primarily in the Houston/Galveston region) on the strength of immigration and coastal urbanization, some parts of the state will likely always remain deep Red.
Most of the Blue regions in this country are now coastal. While not always the case, even in "Red" states there's usually a border of bluish purple near the coasts, and inland rivers and lakes (including the five inland Seas of the Great Lakes) tend to be bluer than surrounding areas. It's an interesting question of whether political values are shaped by urbanization, which tends to cluster around waterways, or whether blues tend to be drawn to the coastal regions and settle into urban communities. However, the correlation is very strong. My suspicion is that it's probably a mix of the two - agrarian farming communities form in areas where there is large expanses of tillable land or at least grazing areas, and such communities typically tend to be more conservative and slower changing, while at the same time you get more cultural mixing along the coasts, and people migrate there to be a part of that more dynamic, malleable world.
At least that would be my guess.
Zen Buddhism and Taoism are both very BE centric
To change the world, first you must change yourself.
Tao is balance. In every act of good there is a germ of evil. In every evil act there is a germ of good.
Misfortune happens, and from it one grows in understanding. Fortune also happens, and from it one grows in understanding.
Even the "religious" aspects of Buddhism would appear alien to most rightwingers. Reincarnation exists in the religious model, but that reincarnation serves to teach. It is not a reward or a punishment but an opportunity.
Fair number of effects
* Republicans by and large tend to vote absentee, but in most states absentee registration is now closed.
* I expect to see a lot of early voters Monday before the storm really picks up strength, which I think favors Democrats.
* People will be without power in many places, and even where power stays on, the storm and its aftermath will dominate the airwaves. This means that a lot of the money that was going into blitzkrieg ad attacks in the last three weeks will be wasted. I believe this favors Obama as well.
* The Ohio Valley may get walloped with snow. This means not only that many people (especially the elderly) who are likely to vote will be much less inclined to do so, and it probably reduces the number of polling places by 5-10%, especially in rural areas. I think this will be a strong dampener for voting in general, but again those hit hardest will likely be Romney partisans.
* Obama is staying very much on top of this, and has already mobilized FEMA. This may mean fewer rallies, but it will also show him acting presidential. Romney will disappear from the airwaves for a while - he really can't do anything to help and anything he does do will look too much like a campaign stunt in the middle of an emergency - it will backfire.
I am not looking forward to this storm, especially as, being in Annapolis, we'll be at ground zero, but I think it will hurt the Republicans far more than it will hurt the Democrats.
Nor I
I'm in Annapolis - figure it's almost a guarantee that Sandy will likely follow the Chesapeake in, which means that we'll be practically under the eye.
Consequences on election really depends upon how long she sticks around. If she's like Isaac, the hurricane will be a big, slow monster, maybe even turning into a blizzard. If that happens, then the political chatter gets largely dispensed with until after people dig out from under it. May send more people in NC to the polls over this weekend, absentee ballots will likely go out early as well. Obama stops campaigning and focuses on orchestrating a relief effort. Only plus side to this is that there's a fair amount of warning, so electric repair crews can be ready.
Powell is an enigmatic figure
He obviously disagreed with Clinton, but I think Powell was also both a politically moderate Republican and a military officer who believed in his duty. As Sec State I think he was called on to betray his inner principals, and he did, like a good soldier, but I also think that having done that, the decisions haunted him, which is why he announced his resignation prior to Bush's term.
Powell today is wiser than he was a decade ago, and in many respects humbler. I believe he was a man who was tested, and as we all do periodically failed that test, but in the end learned the lesson the hard way. So yes, for me, Powell endorsing Obama means a lot. Ambitious men and women seem to be endorsing Romney. Wise ones are definitely moving towards Obama.
Funny how the Secret Service always stick out like sore thumbs.
Reminds me of the time Al Gore came through Olympia, Washington and all the secret service agents were dressed in plaid shirts. They looked like ... well, Secret Service Lumberjacks.
Same in Maryland
No question about that one. T'was the second reason, behind voting for Obama, that my wife and I were so eager to vote.
It's genetic
I've long had a suspicion that when you look at the core of each party - the 30% that will always reliably vote Republican and the 25% or so that will vote Democratic - that you see two subtly genetically different groups (this distinction fades outside the cores). The Republican core tend to be ESTJs and ESFJs - generally extroverted, strongly influenced by symbolism, authoritarian, have virtually no intuition and are highly judgmental. The Democratic core are INTPs, INTJs and INFPs. They are more introverted, generally have a higher degree of intuition and empathy, are usually more systemic thinkers, and are more open or perceptive. There are exceptions (Bill Clinton is a classic ENTJ, though I think Hillary is an INTJ - she's much more analytical than Bill, much more reserved emotionally, Barack is an ENFP) but usually intuition seems to be a common feature both among Democratic leaders and Democratic supporters.
One consequence of that intuition, however, is that Dems are constantly shifting through scenarios, evaluating possibilities, and having seen those possibilities are more worried about the consequences if things go wrong. Republicans generally tend to be much less likely to "run the numbers" in their heads. They have greater certainty about the future because they normally see the world only in two states - they will win or they will lose, and losing is not an option. The irony is that this means in general that Republicans tend to be bolder moving forward, because there is no uncertainty or second guessing in their world, and because they are bolder they tend to take more risks. Of course, the likelihood that those actions could have terrible consequences is also high, precisely because Republicans also tend to externalize the failure of their bets (it's not my fault that the market crashed, that the Iraqis put up more resistance, that ... ).
Three explanations
1) A lot of investors took a major bath under Bush, and have seen the market recover under Obama. You don't become wealthy as an investor ignoring those kinds of trends, even if it does mean higher taxes - it is preferably to have to pay a bit more with a strong market than to lose everything in a crash.
2) The BIG market players are trying to force the market down so that it appears that Obama's not as strong on stocks (and trying to force the unemployment rate back up). There may be some of that, but I don't see it being that big a factor right now.
3) Random seasonal variation in the market due to the end of many companies' fiscal years coming up, which is often a time fro rebalancing stock distributions.
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