| Subject: Re: ¡fun link! |
Author:
pjk
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Date Posted: 11/11/04 1:15:50pm
In reply to:
krz
's message, "really fun link!! loved it - thanks" on 11/11/04 10:44:31am
Pa – nice link and pleasant post (s).
GEO - referring to earlier post - how does your guess account for states that don't have LANL's? Or for a state like CO that has more military presence than NM but comes in at .80 instead of 1.99? My guess is that the tax table does not include federal expenditures on the military and the like.
PA: ....but upon thinking about it further it dawned on me that calling the red states red, calling the blue states blue is a phantasmagoria...an illusion that discounts the huge populations in the blue states (as compared to the red states) and ignores the large number of folks who voted for Kerry in the 'red' states and vice a versa the large numbers of people who voted for Bush in the 'blue' states.
PJK: yeah, me too. I'd seen different "purple" maps and the ones showing the break down county by county.
But to the question of "purple" … we once again run into the difficulties of common usages like “conservative” “liberal” “left” “right” “free-market” “socialism” “democrat” “republican” and so on. Are these terms useless? Appearing to facilitate conversation, do they actually impede understanding? Must the speaker, like a philosopher who wishes to truly express as precisely as he desires, always import meaning into what they want a word to signify, to key words like “freedom” or “efficient?” What type of liberal or conservative are we talking about? Taft, Reagan, Falwell, Eisenhower, Santorum? Jefferson, Roosevelt, Abbie Hoffman, Wellstone, Moore? How does anyone convey a thought simply that necessarily pertains to very complex and subtle states of being sometimes in flux as well? Can we agree that there is a time and a place?
When people speak of blue or red or purple states some may or may not do so with the understanding that it is not as simple as black and white or even the all encompassing yet relatively meaningless gray. To assume one way or the other perhaps reveals more about the assum-er’s level of respect for the speaker, and not necessarily an objective reality of the speaker’s understanding. It would seem that in regular day-to-day discourse humans have historically not always found it necessary to add caveats and qualifiers, in other words, the need to say: “Red states are really not red. The republican party is not monolithic in its views. When does a red state become purple? Isn’t the cutoff a bit arbitray between red and purple? Would it not be better and truly intellectual to delineate 80 different shades of pastel according to metrics that reflect the complex mix of views concerning the economy, healthcare, the environment, foreign policy, religion, etc.? And then wouldn’t we need to apply those shades to elections past so that we could get some perspective on the contemporary colors? And when we got done doing all that would the world still reflect our system? And just who would have the time to give to truly understand and participate in the discussion? And wouldn’t there still be disagreement about the accuracy and validity of the system? Would they not be flavored with biasis on all sides? Can we agree we do not live in this world when it concerns the vast array of topics that interest us?
Phantasmagoria or question of time-space practicalities concerning language? Both? Neither?
To call people “chatterers” and “misguided” when using words like “liberal” or “socialist” or even “republican” is to dismiss the vast majority of commentators of all stripes and colors who look for correlations be they strong or weak. Perhaps there is no meaningful correlation between the south that outperforms the northeast, upper midwest, or West Coast on "virtually every form of quantifiable social dysfunction." But perhaps there is a meaningful correlation. That the correlation compares southerners to northerners unfavorably does not, in and of itself, mean that it is misguided. One can easily point to northern hypocrisies and darker intentions when it took on the south over slavery, (the purpling of the issue) but at the end of the day, which side would you rather be on?
thanks again for the kind words and cool link.
p.s. for more seriously "speaking to a sense of reality" see:
http://www.pipa.org/OnlineReports/Pres_Election_04/html/new_10_21_04.html
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