> Kevin Robert Dean wrote:
> >
> > Not sure where Woj was trying to go when he was talking
> > about "consumption levels", but it does seem odd that there
> > are poor whites who generally vote Republican...it would be
> > a good question as to "Why"?
>
> Why not?
>
> And answer in terms of the world as they experience it and reenact it
> day to day, not in terms of what a Ph.D. can see is in their interest.
I certainly knew why I shouldn't vote conservatively before I ever went to university.
> What percentage of "poor whites" vote anyhow?
While this isn't obviously relevant in Australia, where voting is compulsory, it can be translated to ask how many poor white people care about voting or think the results of any election will help them.
> And why should they? (Again, in their terms.)
>
> Why should they do any damn thing but get by day by day?
Because getting by day by day isn't enough, it doesn't feel like enough. And I think that's the answer to why so many of them vote conservatively as well -- because conservative political rhetorics so often play to their suspicion (well founded) of being unfairly impoverished in comparison to the life they could have. They're offered more palatable and less challenging versions of what is going wrong -- often ones that identify clear villains... the people who can be seen to be doing them out of what they're entitled to.
To Wotjek, more than Carrol, I guess:
I guess I grew up as the closest thing to an Australian version of white trash, and certainly within the conservative-voting rural heartland of NSW. On the one hand I want to say that there are other versions of that "blame" which don't look right wing -- the attachment to unions and the ALP is also about blaming someone for what's wrong, just one I find more convincing. On the other, I think conservative political rhetoric is far better at working with and off fear and resentment.
Another really important thing, though, is to acknowledge that there is something wrong, they have some really valid complaints, relative to other lives they see around them (or at least represented around them). I know you're right to say they have all the basic needs filled, and that's generally true, but do you really expect them to be happy with the answer that they're better off than people in Bangladesh or Iraq, when they want to compare themselves to other Americans/Australians?
Catherine
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