"The Irish stick with the Irish. The Italians go with Italians. Jews stick together, but they're in the suburbs now. There aren't enough Negroes to elect anyone. Poles and Greeks have to go with the Italians. People stick to their own kind. That's how they vote."
Mr. Conway, in the parlor of his home near Central Square in Cambridge, Massachusetts
Mr. Conway was Marylou's father. He sat me down on a Saturday afternoon to find out who I was and what my intentions were. Marylou Conway was a senior at a Cambridge high school. I was a college freshman. We were both 18.
In late afternoons she staffed the dry-cleaning place across the street from my dorm. Lewandos. It had a logo of a cat doing laundry. I dropped off one of my three sport jackets. When I entered the shop three days later to pick it up, Marylou was there again. She smiled and addressed me by name. "Hello, Peter."
She remembered me!
We struck up a conversation, then another, and then a "date," such as I could afford. We took the subway out to Revere Beach to look at the ocean. We could sit on the retaining wall and look at the waves.
I went to the Conway home. Before Mr. Conway called for Marylou to come downstairs, he engaged me in conversation for a half hour or so. Mr. Conway seemed to find satisfactory that my father was an elementary school principal -- not rich, but respectable. He heard about the farm and my melon business. I had short hair, was clean-shaven, and was at Harvard. That was probably enough to suggest I could someday earn a living and support a family. He asked what I was learning. I mentioned a political spectrum, liberals and conservatives, and the politics of the war in Vietnam. Issues of public policy, I said.
He said issues were irrelevant to how people vote. He said people stick with their own kind when they vote. They claim they like to mix, but they don't. People vote for people like themselves. And then he said the words at the top of this page about Irish sticking with Irish.
Democrats have defined Trump as a racist. I believe it is objectively true, but Trump is probably not any more racist than was Mr. Conway or the people of Boston and Cambridge that Mr. Conway described. Trump is simply more frank and direct about it. Trump says he prefers people from Norway, not dark-skinned people from "shit-hole countries." Politicians may feel that way, but it is crude to say it aloud. Trump does anyway. People like that he says what they secretly think. He likes people who are like himself. He is not alone. People sort themselves into circles of like-minded people. It might be ethic similarity, an age cohort, a political cohort, a religious cohort, a group defined around work, or a combination of those things. Everyone does it.
I wrote two posts about neighborhood and the clash of signs: My Harris sign, my neighbor's Trump sign, and a third neighbor's homemade sign calling Trump a liar and felon. It was stolen, but it is back up.
My neighborhood is at a political crossroads, where country club Republicans meet well-educated Democrats. No one is persuaded by signs. It is all tribal signaling. All of Oregon's electoral votes will go to Harris.
Even though I was born in Medford, I suppose I would be more simpatico with my neighbors if I lived in college-town Ashland, an enclave of educated, prosperous liberals, where people vote four-to-one for Democrats and "YES" on bond issues. Democrats say they like diversity, and they do, but they are thinking about race and ethnic diversity, not political diversity. There aren't many Trump signs in Ashland.
We are in a battle between political tribes. Trump has simplified the tribal choices. Those undecided voters in Pennsylvania are deciding right now if they are mostly normal White Christian folks, under pressure from smarty-pants liberal elites who bend over backwards to help victims of prejudice, and not them. If so, they will vote for Trump. Or, are they people who are put off by Trump's rabble-rousing ethno-nationalism and the tone of resentment, and aren't part of the whole MAGA tribe vibe. In that case they will vote for Harris, even if they aren't all that sure about her positions on issues. The undecided voters aren't looking at issues. They are in between tribes and deciding which one fits better.
It is mostly about Trump. You are either in Trump's tribe or you aren't.
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23 comments:
What Mr. Conway told you may have been true then, but time changes things. In the ‘50s and ‘60s, mixed-race marriage was socially unacceptable and, in some places, illegal. Now it’s become increasingly commonplace. The U.S. is becoming more diverse. That is what’s freaking out the White nationalists with their crackpot conspiracy theories like the Great Replacement.
Real “normal White Christian folks” care about others. Trump cares only about himself. He’s also seriously demented, as even the late, great Hannibal Lecter would agree.
The difference between then and now is that All In The Family could run on network TV to a huge audience. Now, no one would have the guts to run it other than in reruns; no one would produce the show from scratch.
Democrats care about people, like Social Security, Medicare, Medicate, Voting Rights, etc. Republicans care about big business, like Big Oil. That's the way it used to be. Democrats haven't changed, but Republicans are so afraid of Trump, they fall in line with whatever he wants. And he only cares about himself.
Those "Patriots" who are in jail because of January 6th are licking their chops because he will free them on Day 1. Count on it.
Some smart political commentators I listen to have lately been saying that there are very few voters who are undecided between Trump and Harris. They say that the vast majority of undecided voters are either Trump or Harris voters who have not yet decided whether or not they are going to vote.
But I agree with your description of Trump. He comes across as tribal, but honest about it.
I watched the Harris interview on Fox last night. She comes across as determined to stay hidden behind a wall of talking points: “Are you a woke San Francisco liberal?” — “I was born in a middle class, family …”
Here’s how the country has changed: we have sorted ourselves into different tribes now.
College educated woke elites versus the working class; woke elites, and Palestinians versus Jews and evangelical Christians on Israel; nativeborn US citizens (including Hispanics) versus woke elites on immigration; woke elites and some blacks versus the working class (and other blacks) about racial preferences.
But every bit as tribal as Mr. Conway told you about all that time ago.
“Woke” basically means politically conscious and aware, but Republicans have twisted it into a pejorative term to criticize anything they don’t like. In other words, Bret Baier was asking Harris if she’s everything Fox viewers hate. Unsurprisingly, she tried to explain she isn’t. She comes across as a reasonable human being – quite a contrast to her opponent.
It's the woke elites vs. the wacko elites. Either way, money rules.
"Woke" originally meant awakened to social justice issues, especially racial. Now it means politically self-conscious as an orthodox modern leftist across a variety of subject-areas.
Conservatives often use the term pejoratively--like they once did "liberal", or "politically-correct", before it--to signify arguably moralizing, conformist excesses of left orthodoxy.
E.g., a 2024 Veteran's Affairs memo recommending barring the famous "V-J Day in Times Square" photo because the sailor kissing the nurse might have been "non-consensual", hence a positive depiction of sexual harassment or assault.
The most prevalent application today is to simplistic, politicized categories of supposed oppressor and victim classes, and the inference that inequalities across groups are necessarily the operation of malevolent discrimination.
Speaking of hiding, Michael, is Don Old now campaigning from his basement?
He's avoiding news media, his rallies continue to be Weekend at Bernie's and he's not even golfing.
Is Don Old even alive?
He's certainly MIA.
Which raises the question: How will conservatives cling to the illusion that the many systemic inequalities Blacks experience in the U.S. are their own fault rather than the lingering effects of our long, sordid history of racial oppression.
"Simplistic, politicized...."
Mc seems to think I’m a Trump supporter; I am not. I just don’t like KH or the Democrats either. As Henry Kissinger once said about the Iran/Iraq war, “It’s a shame they can’t both lose.“
Given that I have the luxury of living in a non-swing state, I will be voting Libertarian this November.
“Woke” may at one point have meant conscious of racial prejudice, but its meaning has changed over time.
What it means now (as LD clearly explained) is a rigid ideological insistence that all social issues must be, and can only be, analyzed as a conflict between the oppressed and the oppressors. It further insists that the oppressed are always right (even when they commit terrorist atrocities), and the oppressors are always wrong (even when they are the victims of those terrorist atrocities).
This is what leads woke professors to claim they were “exhilarated” by the events of 10/7/2023. It’s what leads to college protester useful idiots to chant about “from the river to the sea,“ when they don’t even know which river or which sea, and don’t particularly care.
Were we to take a smart look at the problems of the black community, we would find that some of the problems are due to ongoing discrimination (like lower real estate valuations when the owners are perceived to be black), and others (like the incredibly out-of-proportion rate at which blacks commit violent crime, most often against other blacks) are due to a dysfunctional culture that may have originally resulted from slavery and/or discrimination, but is now a self sustaining problem that cannot be solved by guilt-tripping white people, or reverse discrimination, or any of the other measures that liberals are willing to accept.
Maybe someday, liberals will stop using black people as an opportunity to virtue signal about themselves, and open their minds to measures that might actually solve the problems that exist in the black community. Or maybe not; ego tripping is extremely attractive and addictive.
Brilliant analysis: two words that both start with a W and contain a K. Bravo! 👏👏👏
For the record, Merriam-Webster still defines “woke” as: “Aware of and actively attentive to important facts and issues (especially issues of racial and social justice).” It’s used as a pejorative by those who subscribe to racist conspiracies such as the Replacement Theory, or to the “scientific” racism espoused by the likes of Nicholas Wade or Charles Murray.
No one cares what Merriam-Webster thinks. The Internet and culture move a lot faster than they do. Welcome to the 21st Century.
I think it's strange that Republicans are so against immigration, considering that every one of them had an ancestor sometime in the past that immigrated here. If they hadn't immigrated, who knows what their life would be like. Mine were from Greece and I'd probably be raising chickens.
This post got me thinking about ethnic identities, religion and how other markers of personal identities in America have become lost. Yet we are tribal or relational creatures with a yearning to “belong”. Social Psychologist Jonathan Haidt (who is agnostic btw) thinks religion is important to provide social cohesion because it helps bind together the existential questions of truth, identity, values and meaning. US Politics is now essentially a civil religion, but there’s no absolute moral anchor because it’s whatever populism can be persuaded is good or acceptable. We’ve seen that the courts are unreliably biased and arbitrary. With such a complex and morally ambiguous world, people are forced to take a side and choose a leader who will promise to make their personal lives better. Or in the case of Trump- the promise of salvation from many apparent apocalyptic threats, or a return to the mythical “time before now” when America was “great”
I find the question “is your life better or worse than 4 years ago” as a presidential scorecard to be specious at best. Really? My well-being today is determined by any President?
I agree that the political alliances are still about “us” and “them” but the old markers are gone.
I'd suggest that the other side of the same coin from so-called "scientific racism" is the latter-day racial determinism which posits "whiteness" as synonymous with--and coterminous with--oppression, as if across globe and time, and likewise black/brown with victimhood. Both history and individual agency are the cost.
That’s right, welcome to the 21st century, where the internet determines the meaning of words and makes up its own facts. No wonder some Whites feel so oppressed and picked on: their internet silo tells them to.
Prejudice against white people is every bit as toxic as prejudice against any other race.
Not quite. White people lack the history of brutal oppression that might give them a clue what prejudice is. Even now, the systemic inequality experienced by Blacks in wealth, healthcare, education, incarceration rates, etc. is far more toxic than any inconvenience Caucasians have suffered for being White.
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