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Showing Original Post only (View all)Every day I marvel at how poor and middle class Republicans vote against their self-interests [View all]
Last edited Tue Jan 17, 2012, 03:42 PM - Edit history (1)
I've read the studies showing that Republicans are people who are led by fears, who love authority, who don't feel comfortable unless there is an enemy. However, there's another school of thought about why people whose very life is precariously balancing on a high wire choose to vote for those who persistently destroy American life for the poor and middle class, and ensure they never get out of the hole. It is this: that poor and middle class Republicans don't like being made to feel stupid.
The argument kinda goes like this:
Republicans talk on the same level as people who don't have a great deal of education. They don't bother people with statistics, with numbers, and they engage in a good amount of name-calling. They also use a lot of "us versus them" (them being the enemy, of course), which makes the poor and middle class Republican feel important. The argument also poses that Democrats use statistics, numbers, and tend not to name call. Democrats tend to the label groups as the enemy far less than Republicans do. As a result, poor and middle class Republicans feel less important, and less intelligent when listening to Democrats, and think of them as elitist.
But this brings me to another question:
HOW did poor and middle class Republicans come to regard education as elitist? WHEN did education become something to be despised, rather than something to be strived for? WHY did ignorance become something to be proud of? I grew up in a family within which EDUCATION AND KNOWLEDGE were things to be sought after, admired, desired, ideals, not things to be envied and to hate someone for if they employed that intelligence.
WHY NOT HERE? Why must intelligence be hidden and relegated to a lower level? Why do poor and middle class Republicans feel that lack of education is desirable?