BUCK UP AND FLY STRAIGHT

When one considers how much of one’s thinking occurs in the application and manipulation of metaphors, one should be in awe or, at least, wonderment.  The force of metaphors is no more strident and consequential than when they relate to politics.  This blog has addressed this topic on previous occasions.  One writer this site has counted on is George Lakoff.[1]

          In a previous posting, “A Non-Rod Sparing Zone” (December 12, 2017),[2] it introduces Lakoff’s description of a powerful metaphor, the “strict-father” image that promotes discipline, via the use of punishment.  The political connection, Lakoff explains, is how this image, in its more intense forms leads people to adopt conservative dispositions in how they view various social conditions.  This view is particularly extended in terms of issues involving the poor or lower classes.

          The direct target, of course, is welfare programs.  The metaphor begins with a sense – an assumption – that the world is a dangerous and uncompromising place.  To be equipped to meet its challenges, one is best armed with a discipline that promotes hard work, a no-nonsense outlook toward social landscapes, and if necessary, any nurturing of a young person should be within narrow parameters.

          That earlier posting described those parameters as:

One, nurturing is never coddling and, two, never trumps punishment when an offense is detected.  And whether the punishment or nurturing is being administered, the aim is to instill self-reliance.  Progress is defined as the development of a person who does not have to count on anyone for survival – in reality, an impossible aim.  But the parenting encourages one to opt for this fantasy.

It further encourages a view that failure reflects some personality or otherwise character flaw.  It means that the person did not, in his/her formative years, receive appropriate and sufficient punishment – usually of the corporal variety – and now the real world should administer what was missed in an earlier time.

Yes, one can attribute much of the prevalence of this perspective to religious-Calvinist origins.

          Central to the metaphor is strength.  Strict upbringings promote strength.  Coddling promotes weakness.  And further, strength relates to moral uprightness; weakness relates to immoral degradation.  And when one introduces this sense of morality/immorality, then such thinking ups the stakes.  So, in politics, one’s support or antagonism according to this view crosses over to what can be tolerated in terms of public policy.

          Here are other related notions and emotions as they relate to teaching a younger generation:

Courage:  the self-defining quality that deems if one will stand up to those debilitating realities that are alluring but will prove self-destructive and of mortal danger.  Courage needs to be imparted with appropriate socializing to those one cares for or is commissioned to protect.

Will:  the internal fortitude to feign off evil or immorality for the advancement of one’s charges for the sake of a supernatural force (God) and/or for one’s long-term benefit.

Checked emotions (particularly anger):  the shunning of sentimentality for those persons or conditions that gnaw at rectitude to maintain the good and/or the faith.

Checked self-indulgence:  the ability to not succumb to immediate gratification; one can list the seven deadly sins as being the sources of such indulgences.  Each has a countervailing virtue.  They are greed-charity, lust-chastity, gluttony-temperance, sloth-industry, pride-modesty, envy-satisfaction with one’s position, and anger-calmness.

          All of this leads to a set of views about the world and the nature of morality.  They include a non-nuanced view of the world as being good or evil.  To win the battle over evil, a person needs to be strong.  Being strong calls on being self-disciplined through self-denial.  Otherwise, if one is weak, he/she will surrender to evil and commit immoral acts.  Therefore, not engaging in those practices that lead to strength (self-denial), in the face of a corrupt world, is immoral. 

It stands to reason, public policy that in anyway rewards this path to evil, is likewise evil.  Evil is reified under this strain of thought.  It spills over to pass judgement on a slew of social policies that in anyway reflects an “understanding” of human frailties.  That would include counter-opioid protocols that provide medication-assisted treatment, MAT.  These MATs have proven to have significantly higher rates of success than non-MAT treatments, such as 12-step programs, but, under the above notions of evil, they are compromises of the good.

Language that supports this strict perspective includes terms such as “upright,” “backbone,” “stand up to” and on the other side “fall.”  Again, the prevailing sense of strength and anti-weakness runs through the language of like-minded people.  And the natural disposition of people – due to some idea of an original sin – is to sin, to be weak, to shirk responsibilities one associates with being moral.  Therefore, one needs to be taught – through “strict father” strategies – to be moral. 

And those who ascribe to this line of feeling and thinking harbor a strong sense of moral authority – which will be addressed the next time this topic pops up in this blog.  But before leaving this concern, a word about the implications for civics should be added.  They are a bit complicated and not all intuitively derived.

Schools – especially public schools – pose an inherent danger to this outlook.  After all, in public schools, unless the communities they serve are homogeneous populations, expose impressionable young ones to those kids not being socialized under the auspices of strict-father morality.  Afterall, with this view of morality, one tends to already view fellow humans in “us-them” terms.  If on no other basis, there is always the “us” (the moral people) vs. the “them” (the immoral people).

As already stated, though, this strict vision reflects conservative thinking.  But politically, one attribute – in terms of economic thinking – conservatives strongly support a natural rights mentality.  This leads to a meaningful contradiction that a creative civics teacher can use to have his/her students investigate the limits of this sort of thinking.

That is, conservatives while promoting a laissez-faire economic doctrine – everyone do his/her own thing – favor strong social restraints – e.g., anti-abortion policies.  Sometimes this leads to inconsistent policy promotions – freedom to express one’s messaging on social media (a laissez-faire stand relating to an economic enterprise) while promoting anti-pornography policy that would police what shows up on social media or online content in general.

This writer sees this contradiction as reflecting the general conservative line of thinking expressed by such writers as Jonah Goldberg.[3]  They stress the educational factors that need to take place in order to promote the discipline to overcome the natural tendencies of humans to be bad – anti social – but they promote at the same time a natural rights view.  In all that, there seems to be a deep inconsistency this writer cannot fully understand.  Maybe if this writer had had that creative civics teacher[4] in his younger days, it would all be clear.

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[1] George Lakoff, Moral Politics:  How Liberals and Conservatives Think (Chicago, IL:  The University of Chicago Press, 2002).

[2] Robert Gutierrez, “A Non-Rod Sparing Zone,” Gravitas:  A Voice for Civics, December 12, 2017, accessed August 15, 2019, https://gravitascivics.blogspot.com/2017/12/a-non-rod-sparing-zone.html .

[3] Jonah Goldberg, Suicide of the West:  How the Rebirth of Tribalism, Populism, Nationalism, and Identity Politics Is Destroying American Democracy (New York, NY:  Crown Forum, 2018).

[4] Actually, this writer had in the twelfth grade – problems of American democracy class – the very excellent teacher, Brother Austin, F.S.C.  Brother Austin passed way before his time, but he is remembered fondly.

“A BUBBLING BREW?”

The nation is large with a multitude of different culturally based populations.  J. D. Vance wrote a best-selling book concerning one them.  That would be the low-income population that resides in what is commonly called the Appalachian region.  Using Vance’s term, they are referred to as “hillbillies.”  This region is solidly “red,” that is, they vote Republican in election after election.  They were part of the coalition that got Trump elected to the White House.  To understand the nation’s current political landscape, understanding this population seems important.

          This blog, from time to time, will describe Vance’s take on this population and make comment on what civics students should focus on regarding these Americans.  That effort, in turn, will be guided by federation theory.  Central to such guidance is the emphasis that theory places on how and to what degree Americans feel federated among themselves – hence the name of the theory.

          Reading Vance’s account of these people reminds one of how Americans of an earlier time are remembered.  “Reminds” is a good term; it is not mirroring these earlier accounts, but describing a people that resemble an earlier America, perhaps to an exaggerated degree.  But this is vague, one can be more precise.

          Starting with Vance’s overall description, he states:

As one observer noted, “In traveling across America, the Scots-Irish have consistently blown my mind as far and away the most persistent and unchanging regional subculture in the country.  Their family structures, religion and politics, and social lives all remain unchanged compared to the wholesale abandonment of tradition that’s occurred nearly everywhere else.”  [This tradition] comes along with many good traits – an intense sense of loyalty, a fierce dedication to family and country – but also many bad ones.  We do not like outsiders or people who are different from us, whether the difference lies in how they look, how they act, or, most important, how they talk.  To understand me [Vance], you must understand that I am a Scots-Irish hillbilly at heart.[1]

This puts the term parochial, as in what this blogger has called the dominant perspective regarding governance and politics of pre-World War II America – parochial/traditional federalism – to a more intense level.  Perhaps, instead of thinking of this cultural strain as federated, a tribal orientation is more accurate.  This provides the context for such family feuds as the Hatfields and the McCoys – which it turns out was only one of many such feuds that characterized the social life of nineteenth century Appalachia.

Another writer who describes this region is Malcolm Gladwell.  He provides more of an explanatory, versus descriptive, account.

[T]hat region was plagued by a particularly virulent strain of what sociologists call a “culture of honor.”

          Cultures of honor tend to take root in the highlands and other marginally fertile areas, such as Sicily or the mountainous Basque regions of Spain … You probably raise goats or sheep, and the kind of culture that grows up around being a herdsman is very different from the culture that grows up around growing crops.  The survival of a farmer depends on the cooperation of others in the community.  But a herdsman is off by himself.  Farmers also don’t have to worry that their livelihood will be stolen in the night, because crops can’t easily be stolen unless, of course, a thief wants to go to the trouble of harvesting an entire field on his own.  But a herdsman does have to worry … So he has to be aggressive; he has to make it clear, through his words and deeds, he is not weak.  He has to be willing to fight in response to even the slightest challenge to his reputation – and that’s what a “culture of honor” means.  It’s a world where a man’s reputation is at the center of his livelihood and self-worth.

… So why was Appalachia the way it was.  It was because of where the original inhabitants of the region came from.[2]

And where was that?  They mostly came from the herding regions of Scotland and Ireland and they brought with them the social-cultural attributes like those of the people from Sicily and from the Basque regions.  And that basic disposition leads to a number of cultural traits one can classify as antagonistic toward the “them.” 

Within that social context, one can be quarrelsome with family members, but something else with non-family related people.  Gladwell uses the following terms to describe general behavior patterns in those encounters:  clannish loyalty, criminality, and violence.  And the bulk of such behavior – particularly the violence – was not often for economic reasons, but over or a perceived affront to one’s honor.  That is, the violence tended to be personal.

Actually, other crimes – those aimed at acquiring property, such as mugging a stranger – are lower in this region than in other parts of the country.  Mind one’s “p’s” and “q’s” and one is probably safer in the Appalachian region than in other areas of the US.  But if one even hints at disrespecting a “hillbilly” or his/her family, be forewarned; troubles are likely to befall one.  One needs to take care when visiting an area that is under the sway of a “culture of honor.”  That is, where honor is or nearly is radicalized.

This clannishness helps one make an important distinction.  This writer reacts negatively when he hears such terms as the “American family.”  He understands that whoever says such a thing is only trying to emphasis a notion of inclusion or promoting emotional ties between and among Americans – not a bad sentiment.  But one should use such a term with reluctance.

Obviously, the people of the US – and this cannot be said as thoroughly among the various national populations of the world than that of the US – are not a family.  They are the conscious members of a partnership.  The familial analogy tends to make one forget or diminish that constitutional arrangement.  It might even encourage the view attributed to the Appalachian culture described and explained above – it sort-of legitimizes such a view.

One can care for a partner because partners share common goals and aims, and it is useful to care for those who one needs to work with to accomplish those goals and aims.  Yes, one can also feel certain friends are close enough to be considered family.  But one does not have that feeling for people one does not know.  Is this getting too “picky?”  This writer thinks the point being made should be made.

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[1] J. D. Vance, Hillbilly Elegy:  A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis (New York, NY:  Harper Collins Publisher, 2016), 3 (Kindle edition).

[2] Malcolm Gladwell, Outliers, (New York, NY:  Little, Brown and Company, 2008), 166-167.