Hillary Clinton, John McCain and the "Stupid" Vote
By Dave Lindorff
Created May 14 2008 - 9:27am
I want to be clear here from the start: there is a difference between
ignorance and stupidity. Ignorance is a lack of knowledge. Stupidity is a
lack of intelligence. But even here, there are subsets. Some ignorance
results from a lack of access to knowledge, while some is the result of a
laziness or unwillingness to learn. Some stupidity is the result of some
genetic or nutritional deficiency or perhaps of some abuse or lack of care
or attention during early childhood, while some is the result of mental
laziness or a willful desire not to think.
Having lived in Asia and traveled widely in the remoter areas of rural
China, and in Laos and other desperately poor countries, I have had an
op****tunity to see people who are truly ignorant about many things, but
who
are anything but stupid. In a remote part of Anhui Province, back in the
spring of 1992, for example, I visited a small village that had been
completely inundated and destroyed a year earlier by an epic flood, which
completely destroyed their rice fields and washed away their mud brick,
dirt-floored homes. They had, in less than a year, rebuilt the town, and
were preparing to plant a new rice crop. They were also, using nothing but
their hands and wheelbarrows, building a massive levee that would keep the
river at bay the next time around. The villagers had never seen an
American
in their lives, had no televisions or phones, and in most cases had never
been farther than the next village, but they knew how to survive disasters
that would have killed the average American.
They were also intensely interested in learning whatever they could from
two
visitors from halfway around the world. The whole village quickly crowded
around me and my traveling companion, another American, peppering us with
questions about America. We were invited into the home of a village elder,
and served a delicious meal, which we ate among wandering chickens and
rabbits in a dirt-floored room, as half the village peeked in through the
window openings. Significantly, the thing they were proudest of, and which
they brought us to see, was their new school.
I mention this because I am trying to imagine how the average American
community would respond to a surprise visit by a couple of Chinese
peasants
from that village. I suspect that far from surrounding them and peppering
them with questions about China, there would be calls to the local police
to
pick up to wandering vagrants. Instead of trying to communicate, and
perhaps
learn lessons about how to make gardens grow during a drought, local
Americans would be studiously avoiding the visitors. An invitation to have
dinner in a local home seems particularly unlikely.
When I lived in a small town in upstate New York for a few years back in
the
1980s, I found myself briefly the president of the local little public
library, which was wholly sup****ted by donations. One year, we tried to
get
a donation of $1000 from the local Lions Club, which had an annual
carnival
and donated the proceeds to worthy projects (ours was an expansion of the
building to accommodate books which at the time were sitting in piled up
boxes for lack of shelf space). The president of the Lions, a local
businessman, responded to our request saying, "What do we need a library
for? I haven't read a book in years!" (My fellow library board member, a
local businesswoman herself, responded, "I'm no surprised to hear that,
but
I am surprised that you'd be willing to say it publicly.") I also remember
overhearing, in the local supermarket checkout line, a ca****er talking to
her friend. She said, "I wish my daughter would drop out of high school
and
get a job. I mean, she's 16 already, and what does she need a high school
diploma for? She can work a cash register without one."
All this brings me to Hillary Clinton's proud assertion that she is the
candidate of the uneducated white worker. It is of course, precisely why
she's likely to win the West Virginia primary today by a lopsided 75:25 or
maybe a 60:40 margin. One news program I watched about the West Virginia
primary yesterday included an interview with a Clinton sup****ter, in that
state, an older woman who said she couldn't vote for Obama "because he's a
Muslim." The re****ter responded, "Well, for the record, you know he says
he's a Christian." The woman replied, "Well I don't believe him." In West
Virginia, one in four residents doesn't have a high school diploma. That
compares to one in five nationally. I'm guessing this woman was one of
that
one in four. Only one in seven West Virginians holds a bachelor's degree,
compared with one in four nationally.
Now taken by itself, this isn't to say West Virginians are stupid, or at
least any stupider than the average American. (And don't get me wrong. I
love West Virginia-- particularly its brilliant musical heritage and the
musicians and artists of the region who carry on those traditions, and its
gutsy labor union history, which played such a key role in the development
of the American labor movement.) In large part, it is rather a reflection
on
the state's relatively low average income, a legacy of historically low
expenditures on education, and a general lack of op****tunity. Moreover,
I'm
certain that many of those West Virginians who never completed high school
are smarter than your average college grad, in the same way that the
Chinese
peasants I met in rural Anhui were smarter than many much better educated
Americans. But I'm also certain that a lot of West Virginians without high
school diplomas, like other Americans without an education, are woefully
ignorant, and vulnerable to manipulation by candidates who appeal to their
baser instincts and fears, as Clinton has been doing in her sinking
campaign. It is why states like West Virginia have, election after
election,
backed candidates like George Bush whose policies manifestly work against
their own interests.
A depressingly large number of Americans, not just in West Virginia, but
also across the land from Maine to California, including my own state of
Pennsylvania, fall into this willfully stupid category. They are content
to
get their information from television programs that offer no facts--just
propaganda and ratings-boosting rants. They don't read newspapers. They
reject facts that conflict with their prejudices. They'll believe that
Barack Obama is a Muslim. They'll believe that Saddam Hussein was behind
9-11. They'll believe that the earth was created 6000 years ago. They'll
believe the moon landings were faked in a Hollywood studio.
Certainly one cohort of voters that is keeping the leaky Clinton dirigible
airborne is women, particularly older women, for whom her candidacy is a
feminist milestone. That is understandable. But the other cohort, which
Clinton has referred to as "working, hard working, white Americans," and
as
"whites...who had not completed college," is hardly something she or any
candidate should be bragging about.
And yet that is what she is doing: bragging that she's got a lock on the
stupid, racist white vote.
She should be leaving that for John McCain.
_______
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"A little patience and we shall see the reign of witches pass over, their
spells dissolve, and the people recovering their true sight, restore their
government to its true principles. It is true that in the meantime we are
suffering deeply in spirit,
and incurring the horrors of a war and long oppressions of enormous public
debt. But if the game runs sometimes against us at home we must have
patience till luck turns, and then we shall have an op****tunity of winning
back the principles we have lost, for this is a game where principles are
at
stake."
-Thomas Jefferson
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