OK, I'll respond a bit more fully.

I'm a New Yorker. In the city one meets very few people who vote based upon
biblical literalism, and the city is overwhelmingly pro-choice. It's also
overwhelmingly Democratic, although in mayoral elections party affiliation
is often not taken into account. And it's beyond most imaginings of
diversity--in my neighborhood the dominant language is Dominican Spanish,
but there are large numbers of west country Irish, Russians, Ukranians,
Mexicans, Cubans, Chinese, South Asians, and only recently a population of
youngish native English speakers. So an acceptance of difference is par for
the course.

For the past 14 years until 4 months ago I lived in various other places:
rural central Massachusetts (Yankee, Polish and Italian, 100% English
speaking and heavily Republican), Tucson (the most liberal large place in
the otherwise extremely conservative desert southwest, where there are lots
of Spanish-speaking Mexicans but neighborhoods are largely segregated, and
where there are lost of fundamentalists), and San Diego (extermely
conservative, lots of fundamentalists--there's a creationist museum in one
of the suburbs--and still more segregated--even the Pacific Islanders have
their own neighborhoods). In all of these places the educational system had
pretty much ceased to function. There was also a striking lack of irony,
which seemed to stem from a disinclination to entertain two opposing
thoughts simultaneously, which pretty much means that analyzing anything
becomes impossible.

Local politics were amazingly corrupt. While I lived in Arizona the FBI
conducted a sting operation. Agents offered to buy the votes of state
legislators and taped their meetings with their quarry. Careers ended in
prison terms for as little as $100 per legislative vote. The then governor
had to resign when he was convicted of corrupt practices. The next
governor, from the same Mormon elite that has ruled the stste since its
creation in 1912, was under indictment when elected and also had to resign.

Yesterday San Diego's mayor resigned because of charges of corruption that
will probably land him in jail. His temporary replacement from the city
council is already under indictment for selling his council vote to a strip
joint that wanted the rules changed so that customers could legally fondle
the women on stage.

All of these officials routinely expound on their committments to bible,
life, George Bush, the war, environmentally-destructive public works
designed to benefit their backers, etc.

In each of these places UI mostly hung with a cluster of liberal friends,
but we were an embattled minority.

The surveys indicate that about 20% of USians vote based upon their
fundamentalist religious committments, to which they attach all manner of
diverse causes, like the teaching of reading phonetically, attitudes
towards affirmative action, social security reform, etc. Problem is,
they're not spread equally around the country--they're almost all in the
so-called blue states. Which means that 40% or better of people in Wyoming
or Florida fall into that camp. A pretty good base to build an elective
majority from, especially since most Americans don't read newspapers or
even watch the news on TV--so opinion in the neighborhood or church can be
decisive.

Those folks will constantly assert that the Washington to Canada corridor
of states, and especially NYC, is not really America, which is a funny
thing to say about a small region that contains a third of all citizens.
But they're right that it's not their America. I've felt more a foreigner
in the hinterland (what they call the heartland) than I ever have in Europe
or North Africa or Latin America or Australia--it's a truly alien culture.

Here's an example of what one is up against. A decade ago when I was in
Guatemala I fell in for a couple of days with a Pentecostal group from
Florida. They were all doctors and desntists, and their holiday consisted
of a week of good works and a week of tourism. I went with them high into
the Cuchumatanes Mountains to a place called Salquil Grande. Salquil is a
resettlement village. The Quiche Maya who normally live in the region in
abject poverty had fled into the forest when the genocidal campaign of Rios
Montt, the Pentecostal generalisimo who was our man in Guatemala, hit their
area. They had little experience of living as hunters and gatherers, but
that's what they did, for five years. Finally, after much starvation, they
had emerged from the forest and submitted to life in Salquil. We were there
to provide dental service (I got to empty the blood-and-saliva buckets),
which brought us pretty close to the degree of suffering these people
experienced. A shocking revelation for my companions. During a break I
stood with a cardiologist at the edge of the flattened mountain top that
was market place and civic center. he was clearly having a hard time--he
was so overcome that he could barely speak. But he managed to get out a
brief non-christia burst of words: "god damned communists!" It seems that
the line he and his fellow travelers had been fed was that all the
suffering we saw was caused, not by the US-backed military but by communist
guerillas and Fidel Castro.

These were educated people.

See the problem?

Mark



At 11:06 AM 4/26/2005, you wrote:
>My sense of things is that I can understand why Dominic desires a more
>'nuanced'(?) take on Bush & on those people who answer that they believe
>in the divine correctness of the Bible, but I'm not sure how to practice
>such a reading. A lot of those people (I think about the family I saw
>interviewed on a CBC news story, who were very upset that their son (who
>himself complained about how he had to, um, lie for marks) had to go
>against his beliefs, actually his knowledge as they saw it, in biology
>classes. et they lived in a house full of the modern conveniences, there
>was a SUV in the driveway, etc. So there is a terrific ability to
>compartmentalize in these peoples' minds, as they utilize the results of
>the very science they deride as against God or whatever..
>
>But basically, as I see such thinking growing in influence, I too despair,
>Ann & Mark (or were you simply not so optimistic?).
>
>On the other hand, it does seem that the US, as a power, does what it
>will, no matter who's in the White House. Still, under more 'democratic'
>(even Democratic) leaders, just maybe not so blatantly. Just maybe, not
>quite so sure of itself. Just maybe, with some uncomfortable sense that
>there are many ways of seeing the world. Just maybe...
>
>Doug
>
>
>Douglas Barbour
>Department of English
>University of Alberta
>Edmonton  Alberta  T6G 2E5 Canada
>(780) 436 3320
>http://www.ualberta.ca/~dbarbour/dbhome.htm
>
>I don't need to
>hold back here
>in the union
>
>of forms
>                Charles Olson