I Have a Dream
I wonder what would happen if the media treated the Republicans and Libertarians as well as they treated Democrats for one year? Some negative images against the right are very obvious but others are more subtle. For example, I was researching some information about marriage and how some were lasting longer. I ran into this paragraph at the Washington Post:
“The odds of getting divorced are much lower for educated and affluent Americans, the escapades of Schwarzenegger and John Ensign notwithstanding,” Wilcox said, referring to the former governor of California and the former senator from Nevada.In this story by Carol Morello, she could have just as easily chosen quotes from someone who talked about the marital escapades of Democrats John Edwards or Bill Clinton but she didn't. Why not? Some people may feel that examples like this are not important but the negative obvious and subtle hostility floating around in the culture against those on the right leads to results like this: Despite their sinking employment prospects and the negative direction of the country, "60% of millennials blame Obama's opponents for his inability to get anything done." Maybe if they stopped the blame and realized that Obama's policies are not in their favor, their generation would do better. But it "feels good" to be popular, go along with the media and look cool by agreeing with the propaganda handed out in school, the media and their peers. What would happen if the media made it "cool" to be a free market capitalist, discussed the virtues of Milton Friedman, or even told those millenials that youth unemployment may possibly be a result of Obama's failed policies. I know it will never happen but one can dream, can't they? How about just one year in which the right was treated with kid gloves the way the left is now as an experiment to see what would happen? Given all the negativity in the press against the right, it's amazing they do as well as they do.
Labels: politics
posted by Helen Smith at 8:29 AM
18 Comments:
It may well be that "affluent" Americans don't get divorced as much because they are more worried about the stigma and they have the money to live separate lives while keeping up appearances.
I know a few "affluent" people who do that (basically live separate lives while keeping up appearances) even in my little circle. I don't know any "non-affluent" people who do things like that. They can't afford it and don't care anyway.
Good point, Mark. Affluent people get married and stay married because it is in their best interest. If both spouses make a good income then both partners will enjoy the fruits of having 2 good incomes. If one partner makes an enormous income and the other spouse doesn't work at all then it doesn't matter because there is plenty of money.
But if one partner makes a little money and the other doesn't work at all, then that marriage won't survive because it can't. When there is financial stress, marriage goes down tubes. Nobody cares how anyone perceives them, they are too busy dealing with their debt and creditors to care what their neighbor thinks.
It's also that in more affluent situations, there is much more to be lost upon divorce. I'm speaking of the "working rich", here, not the really, truly wealthy people. Think couples making 300-500k on two incomes of 150-250k each. In a divorce, that lifestyle gets shot to shreds, as there is a huge difference between a 150k lifestyle and a 300k lifestyle in numerous ways -- much more so than at lower combined income levels where there isn't nearly as much of an absolute delta (there will always be a percentage delta of around the same, but people don't live on percentages, but actual absolute dollar amounts) between the marital income and the single income. So while it can appear to be less financially painful for the working rich to divorce (no-one is crying over you "surviving" on 150-200k income), it's a huge loss of lifestyle to go from 500k to 200-250k, in absolute terms. This creates a significant disincentive to divorce. Affairs get overlooked. It gets decided to live separate lives while staying married, and so on. Because the financial cost of divorcing is so painful for this set.
This doesn't really apply to lower income levels (absolute dollar "value add" of marriage is much less) or to the truly wealthy (where the numbers get so big that even after a painful divorce settlement a wildly extravagant lifestyle remains fairly stable). It applies to the working rich.
A related issue is the realization among this class of the impact of divorce on children. They tend to have greater future time orientation, and are strivers (the definition of working rich, really), so they tend to care more about that. It's become a stigma among the working rich to divorce largely for this reason, really.
I just wish republicans were treated with the same sober respect as, say, the prime minister of canada.
Even if the media could just somehow manage to treat Obama as something less than a demigod that would at least be a step in the right direction.
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"“The odds of getting divorced are much lower for educated and affluent Americans, the escapades of Schwarzenegger and John Ensign notwithstanding,” Wilcox said, referring to the former governor of California and the former senator from Nevada."
In this story by Carol Morello, she could have just as easily chosen quotes from someone who talked about the marital escapades of Democrats John Edwards or Bill Clinton but she didn't.
Why not?
While your examples are certainly more well known, I think she used Republicans because of the belief/stereotype/fact that affluence correlates with Republican voting.
Sad to say, but Martin Luther King, Jr's dream has a far greater chance of ever coming true than yours.
"While your examples are certainly more well known, I think she used Republicans because of the belief/stereotype/fact that affluence correlates with Republican voting."
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I think so too.
And the joke is that for every self-made man, he has an example right next to him of a woman who got rich by doing nothing.
Bill Gates has a woman right next to him who is - by any definition, including that of the divorce courts if it comes down to it - a multi-billionaire. And yet he doesn't see it. The Forbes list doesn't see it. Everyone in America is seemingly hypnotized that rich people all earned their money.
Oh - her name is Melinda. And she is richer than YOU will ever be, no matter how hard - or *smart* - you work.
Really.
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The msm has hated Republicans since Lincoln. Actually before it. They buried John Fremont's chances when he ran. They guaranteed, if Fremont won, slavery would end. They were even spilling so many military secrets IN D.C., DURING the Civil War, that Lincoln was forced to close about half of the "newspapers", iirc.
Odd how some things never change. No, you will never have them be anything but pro-slavery, of one sort or another. How odd for such... "liberated minds", innit? It just boggles my mind how people who demand egalitarianism, feminism, multi-culturalism and the rest seem to only do so in order to somehow undermine the reality hidden behind the politics of those things. How many of them even understand what they are doing? Useful idiots was not just a term, it's now a number of industries.
Bill and Hillary are a prime example of what Mark and Cham were discussing.
They are never seen together anymore, and have rarely been seen together for a couple decades.
Clinton is not separated or getting a divorce. Thus, he doesn't qualify to be used in the context of the quote.
"How about just one year in which the right was treated with kid gloves the way the left is now as an experiment to see what would happen?"
That's a fun political miracle to imagine, especially at this time of year when we're celebrating a real miracle.
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