>
>
>Surely no attachment to the Democratic Party picked up in years when Roosevelt
>was but a vague memory could generate the sort of attachment to the party he
>instigated. Buck up. Snap out of it. Put away childish things and leave that
>bulwark of imperialism (root and branch -- including its most progressive
>congressional candidates) behind you.
>
>Carrol
:)
well you see carrol, it's not really about the party but who supports them. and this is often how it works for most people, i suspect.
so, i think of my 7th grade teacher, Mr. Sweeney. helluva guy who sparked my love of history and "social studies" (curse the man; prior to that i was a math whiz! i coulda had a lucrative career! --kiddin!). i think of a teamtaught course on economics (we invested in the stockmrkt) lead by Mrs. Adams (republican) and Mrs. Perfetti (was a Morgan, of the New York Morgan democrats)--both of them were admirable in different ways. people to look up to. But, Mrs P, she was funny and a real smartass stand up to the boys kind of woman! I think of a whipper snapper, Mr. Trent, just out of teacher's college, who had us read all kinds of cool books --not wanker textbooks--who introduced us to a world of ideas. Mr. Murdock, the history teacher who forced us to confront our racism and that of our parents, who dropped the idea of rebellion into my brain and, subsequently, I led the student sit down strike in support of striking teachers.
These folks were emblematic of democrats, to me--people who first started me on the path to thinking about the systemic problems in our society. No radical critiques there. But, they, along with my mother who was and is a fighter, are why I feel some sort of weird inability to see a republican in office.
I mentioned this before, but I didn't fully explicate it for you. It's what you meant when you said, people's voting choice are determined by "birth". That's stretching it. But, if what you mean by birth is what bourdieu means by "habitus", then that is how we manage to have these deeply rooted sentiments that aren't always easy to evict or exorcise.
Leo already bucked me right up to the point of no-return, otherwise.
k