--- On Thu, 6/26/08, Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> wrote:
>
> You're a sociologist. Do you have any sociological
> evidence to
> support your pessimism? Have you read the Pew report?
>
[WS:] I think so. In fact, my liberal/conservative pun was a shortcut for a sociological observation made by Durkheim and subsequently supported by empirical data that community exterts powerful influence on individual thinking and behavior. Suburbia produce alienation and alienation produce fear and yearning for meaning in life, and that in turn makes people vulnerable to converavtive ideas and relion that offer a (false) hope of such things.
You do not think that it is genes that make Americans more reactionary than thier "old world" ancestors, do you? It is the life style and social-political instituions (or "material conditions" in Marxist lingo). It does not matter what attititudes people express in opinion surveys - as those attitudes are likley to change when the living conditions will.
I just returned from Cologne, Germany where I visited, inter alia, the National Socialism Documentation Center (aka EL-DE Haus http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EL-DE_Haus). It does a really nice job showing how the popular attitudes toward NAzism in Cologne changed as their material conditions did. They were initially very skeptical, but as the Nazis gained power, dissolved the local government (headed by the then Mayor Konrad Adenauer,) appointed their own loyalists and started giving jobs and property stolen from Jewish shopkeepers to their loyal supporters, the popular attitudes started rto change rather quickly. I think it was fairly typical of the most of Germany during that time.
A similar process has been taking place in the US. The American fascists (not as obnoxious as the nazis, but fascists nonetheless) have created an entire life-style (aka the "American dream") complete with the manufactured feeling of solidairty (the "mainstream America"), cultural identity (TV and suburban life style), superiority (USA Number 1) and external threat (the "terrorists" "criminals" and "aliens" - code words for different ethnic groups) which is available to large segments of the population, but revoked as soon as one crosses the line and starts threatening the fascist hegemony.
So yes, young people may give all the right progressive answers to the pollsters, but their views change when they become a part of the fascist American dream. Did not it happen in the sixties? The then hippies shed their flowers and are todays suburban fatheads, corporate functionaries, neo-cons, immigrant bashers, or fundies. What makes you think that things will be any different this time?
Only when you smash this fascist American dream like the Allies smashed the Nazi dream - people will see through it and change their ways (maybe.)
Wojtek