LOB Book Club - The Big Sort: Part II
In Chapters 4, 5 and 6, Bill Bishop surveys a period of forty years that led to the current trend toward "sorting" based on ideology and culture. In Chapter 4, he writes: "The collapse of social institutions, the dropping levels of trust, and the abandonment of political parties beginning in 1965 all contributed to a decline in partisan political behavior. White people continued to leave both the Republican and Democratic parties. Ambivalent, they split their vote"(p. 103).
This made me curious about our early political experiences and choices. I've long thought that our early experiences with current events mark us too a great degree. As someone who grew up politically during the Watergate scandal, I had an early distaste for the Republican party, which I associated with Nixon and corruption in general. So, when I first had the chance to vote for President in 1984, I did so for the Mondale/Ferraro ticket. My students who were largely born in the mid to late 80s, grew up politically in the wake of the "Reagan Revolution" and thus tend to be heavily influenced by the "small government," supply-side economics of that era.
So what about the rest of you? What events marked you early on?
posted by The Blue Devil @ 2:54 PM
3 Comments:
One early event was when I was twelve or so. My father shared a story at the dinner table about how he was reprimanded by a junior officer as my father walked to the BX. Apparently my father hadn't offered his salute snappy enough. If you were in power, I was againstg you.
That's really interesting, WHR. As dependent civilians, my family was never really part of the military culture we lived around, so I wasn't aware of the not so subtle class differences in the military until I worked at the NCO club at Lakenheath during one summer in high school.
It was something I was keenly aware of . . . if an officer's kid scored well on an exam I always wanted to do one better . . . same is true of any ballfield. . . . Not sure if all NCO kids were wired like me, but the class distinctions were huge . . . of course, they were not insurmountable gaps . . . Philly-boy and I becoming such great friends as one example . . .
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