The Mindset of Contemporary Young Mainstream Conservatives
From an instant-messenger conversation with a younger friend this evening:
6:00:31 PM Friend: i have to make a run to your favorite store real quick. i’ll be back later
6:00:37 PM Me: Have fun.
6:00:47 PM Friend: do you know which one i’m talking about
6:00:52 PM Me: I presume Wal*Mart.
6:00:57 PM Friend: exactly
6:01:01 PM Me: White Trash Mart
6:01:21 PM Friend: to buy cosmetics that would cost me THREE dollars for a single compact at safeway or cvs
6:01:26 PM Friend: so HELL YEA i’m going to walmart
6:01:36 PM Me: You enjoy that.
6:01:40 PM Friend: three dollars MORE*
6:01:47 PM Friend: oh i will.
6:01:50 PM Friend: capitalism.
6:02:04 PM Me: Exactly. Capitalism: Where big government and big business are in bed together.
6:02:44 PM Friend: that is total b.s. fed to you by liberals. get yo facts. i guarantee walmart gets no more, per employee than any other business.
(My emphasis. – NPO)
2. Has what passes for conservatism today really become so dull and complaisant, if not complacent, as to accept the unholy marriage of big business and big government (which they purportedly repudiate) and to defend the great anti-conservative behemoth because it, allegedly, “gets no more, per employee[,] than any other business”?
You are a braver man than I Nathan. Standing between a woman and cheap cosmetics is like facing down a charging grizzly with a 22cal.
I wish people would stop confusing capitalism with corporatism.
Thomas, that is a very funny simile.
Yeah, I’m sure all that is true. But just admit it–you hate Wal-Mart because of the heavy concentration of white trash.
I wonder what would happen to all the white trash in a Front Porch Republic. I feel another symposium coming on!
Cody, I don’t have a leg on which to stand to hate Wal*Mart on those grounds. I’m pretty close to, if not, White trash, myself. At any rate, I’d have to hate my hometown if “heavy concentration of white trash” sufficed for hatred, but I’m quite fond of my small-town Americana home.
I bristle at those remarks which refer to Wal-Mart shoppers as “white trash.” “White trash” is a term which, when applied to the lower classes, reduces them to something less-than-human. So my comment was more knee-jerk than anything. My apologies.
I say all of this at the expense of sounding like a right-wing PC commissar, of course.
You know, reading this kind of drivel makes me wonder if Nathan realizes that he is railing against both capitalism and the white trash that shops there. If he does realize, who is he appealing to? Or is this just some biting, original critique on the state of contemporary culture?
Even if this is tongue in cheek, it’s pathetic. Do we then ditch capitalism if it’s all corrupt anyway? Maybe we can adopt socialism? Or do we make those hicks shop in more expensive Mom and Pop stores under a vague rubric of Nathan’s localism? Maybe while we’re at it, we can spray them down with hoses and douse them in soap, have them trade their Sears-Roebuck jeans for a pair of Dockers, their plaid for Burberry.
“Friend” doesn’t strike me as the brightest bulb, either.
Cody, no need for apologies; you’re actually quite right in noting that “White trash” does, or at least seems to, reduce “them to something less-than-human.” It’s not a term I’d typically use when writing here, but in private conversation I do make use of it. Part of the problem, I think, is that, for me, it’s not necessarily a pejorative term, or at least not viciously so. It, perhaps, has worse connotations than “hick”, but generally describes the same sort of people, and at my personal Weblog, I actually call myself a hick. But, again, you’re right for calling me out, even at the risk of sounding like a right-wing PC commissar.
It’s important to note, though, that I’m not sure I actually intended (regardless of what I ended up implying in he end) to use “White Trash Mart” to describe the clientele, so much as the store itself.
eep, if I understand your lament properly, then I disagree with you: Capitalism as we know it, as it has existed in this nation for most of time, has always relied on a healthy (for the capitalists) symbiosis with big government. In that respect, even if conflating capitalism and corporatism isn’t quite accurate, it’s far less offensive, and less detrimental to debate, than the proclivity to make “capitalism” and “free market” mutually inclusive. American capitalism is often quite antithetical to free-market competition (See my Tim Carney links above.), whereas some free-market philosophies reject capitalism (e.g., Distributism (Chesterton’s line, I think, says it best: “Too much capitalism does not mean too many capitalists, but too few capitalists”; that is, centralization, rather than competition and widespread ownership) and Mutualism (http://www.mutualism.org/))
William P., although I’d certainly love, someday, to see the demise of Wal*Mart and its ilk, and to see “those hicks [forced to] shop in more expensive Mom and Pop stores”(and this day may come, whether or not we want it to), that point, as so many that you make are (Cf. your screed of a tangent in reply to my posting on Caritas in Veritate.), has nothing to do with my drivel. The point, quite obviously, is my opposition to the unholy marriage of big business and big government. Ditching that sort of capitalism — which really is closer to corporatism than to any sort of free-market economy — does not require that we adopt socialism or the “vague rubric of [my] localism”. In no way does it involve a forced shutdown of Wal*Mart or Target or the Home Depot. But it does make the market a little freer, and surely we can agree on that one, can we not?
With this post, the regnant left-right paradigm has been officially shattered! My head is spinning.