Reply #22: I have a theory. It's kind of a long one. [View All]

After the Civil Rights movement and the beginnings of affirmative action, the economy started to cool. This was only natural after two decades of artificial prosperity due to the US being the only industrial power left unbombed-the-crap-out-of after World War II. But blue-collar whites suddenly woke up and realized that all this equality and diversity was going to cost them something. And all too many of them made common cause with those unregenerate types who had opposed Civil Rights and affirmative action all along.

But racism was hopelessly out of fashion in the seventies. The intelligentsia equated racism with Archie Bunker, a hopelessly ignorant moron, and with the Klan. White people who resented what they saw as special privileges for minorities were dismissed as illiterate idiots. They couldn't speak out in public without embarrassment, but it was easy for them to find others who would agree with them in private. Resentments smoldered.

Further, in the zenith of liberalism that was the seventies, all kinds of conservative ideas were loudly put down on all sides as ignorant, and conservatives likewise. This led to the racial antipathies of whites who felt pushed aside, or who felt that they had lost a legitimate precedence, being tangled up with all kinds of other generally conservative ideas in the minds of blue-collar, uneducated white people and their children.

Then Ronald Reagan came along and made it clear that, as far as the Republican Party was concerned, racism was A-OK (as long as you didn't actually burn any crosses or lynch anybody). Racist talk that had gone underground bobbed back to the surface. In many venues (for example, practically anywhere where country-western music was playing), one could now make a racist or sexist joke without much fear of embarrassment.

This led to a highly durable loyalty to the Republican Party, particularly its good ol' boy branch (Bush's branch) on the part of masses of blue-collar, uneducated white people and their children. The children are important because a lot of them grew up to be educated and successful without ever abandoning the class and race resentments of their parents. Don't forget that blue-collar, uneducated, religious people tend to have more children than the average population.

Note that these are not people who are Republicans or Bush supporters for any articulable reason. The issues hardly matter to them. Bush is just "their kind of folks." A lot of them identify more with him every time we call him stupid, even though he is stupid (for a President). They hear us calling them and their ideas stupid. And while there's some truth to that also, it isn't going to help us change their minds.