Follow along with the video below to see how to install our site as a web app on your home screen.
Note: This feature currently requires accessing the site using the built-in Safari browser.
Don't we want our leaders to be elite? Or do we want them to just be people we'd like to have a beer with?
If the answer is the latter, then it explains why things are the mess they are.
We don't want leaders who think Americans are stupid and mean, and who think that those who live in rural areas and cherish the right to bear arms and/or Christianity need to be "taught" differently.
Just because you don't understand the culture doesn't mean it's misguided.
There's a difference between being elite, and being elitist.
Being one of the "elite" doesn't matter.
Being "elitist" means a person thinks they are above the crowd, better, superior, smarter, and not answerable to the little people.
We don't want leaders who think Americans are stupid
Are you one of those people? We don't "cling" to guns and CHristianity, any more than liberals "cling" to the idea of national health.
It's part of our culture, it's who we are, and it's a choice. We aren't who we are because we're too stupid to be anything else. We're who we are because we choose to be who we are.
I get so sick of elitist assholes from the cities bemoaning the stupidity and ignorance of their rural neighbors, when city dwellers have much, much less of an inkling of rural life than rural residents have of city life. At least we spend a little time in the city and have television. You guys (not speaking to you, particularly. I don't know if you're a city dweller) have no way to relate to us at all. And this isn't helped by the fact that there's an assumption that people who think differently must be at least a few IQ points dumber.
In a now-famous recent exchange on Good Morning America, ABC reporter Martha Raddatz asked Vice President Dick Cheney about the fact that "two-thirds of the American people say [the war in Iraq] is not worth fighting." The vice president said, "So?" and Ms. Raddatz asked, "So you don't care what the American people think?" Mr. Cheney responded that "you cannot be blown off course by the fluctuations in the public opinion polls."
I don't know which people you are referring to. I grew up in rural Ohio.
I agree that it is part of the culture. However, I think it is simplistic to think it just became an important part of the culture without asking why it became part of the culture - and so strongly a part of the culture.
There is something I hadn't considered. Are you equating elitist with urban? I can definitely see a difference between urbanites and rural dwellers. I wouldn't call it a question of elitism, any more than it is elitism for rural people to talk about urbanites as if they don't have religion or don't care about the 2nd Amendment.
Why do you need to ask "why" it became a part of the culture?
YOu're making the assumption that it shouldn't be part of the culture, and that just feeds into the whole superiority thing.
Dissect your own culture, if you must.
If you feel compelled to dissect a culture that isn't yours, then live in the culture. Don't judge it and criticize it from afar. I've lived in the city and in the country (and as an adult). I made a choice. How many of those critical of the Christian, rural way of life have ever actually lived among the people they feel superior to? I see people criticize farmers all the time...when they have absolutely NO inkling of what farming entails, or how it affects the market, or what influences it, or even how it's done. I find that amazing.