Mining Hysteria

NPR this morning reported that Kerry’s people are pulling television ads from Missouri as it seems to be a lost cause.

I think Missouri provides a partial answer to a complicated question, why would a state that is one of the hardest hit in job losses, roll over into the Bush camp? It seems likely to me, as research notes in Supporting the Troops, Doubting the War which shows enlistment is highest in the economically depressed and rural states, that George Bush is benefitting from their need to be pridefull of the “mission.” If they call George on his obvious lies what will they have left to brag about over beers down at the corner tap? How will they explain to God during Sunday prayers that their son or daughter is off killing other people’s sons and daughters in an impoverished country that never posed a real threat to them? At the risk of appearing to engage in sweeping generalisations but based on every native I’ve met, Missourians are generational racists either actively engaged in the commission of it or in some phase of recovery from it, (the issue of racism is examined well in Rust and Rage in the Heartland) so are extremely easy marks for an administration seeking to channel their depression and anger over failed policies into the neverending hunt for the “enemy.”

It’s always been amazing to me that the country turns to the middle as if it’s the nation’s moral compass. Let Iowa keep its first place in the primaries but please quit reporting it as an informed and moderate consensus. It’s more a sanctuary for the radically backwards and ethnically concentric.