A comment which will not be posted complains that I noted Hillary Clinton was originally from Illinois in listing the states Democratic nominees for president and vice president have been from for the past 100 years. The claim is that, contrary to geography, Chicago isn't in Illinois or, since it was the point I was making, I guess, the mid-west. I will note that the guy, who has a distinct problem withe women and, in particular, women of color doesn't seem to be upset that I noted Barack Obama was from Illinois (originally Hawaii), he didn't complain about the fact that that meant he moved to Chicago as an adult.
Unlike Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton grew up in Illinois. Unlike Barack Obama who attended exclusively private schools, in Indonesia and Hawaii, the state of his Birth, Hillary Clinton attended public schools in Illinois until she went to college. Since another point I was making yesterday was about the egalitarian, leveling effect of public schooling, that was a notable lapse in the commentator's attention. Hillary Clinton was certainly the most qualified person to have ever gotten the nomination of a real party (or any party) on the basis of her job experience and education and her experience of living in different places for significant lengths of time.
I think Hillary Clinton would have very possibly been a great president, though the Republican-fascists in the Congress, on the Court and in the media would have attacked her constantly. I think the sandbagging of her by the media from the sewers of FOX and Sinclair to the grubby rich rag, the NY Times which installed Trump is a crime against the American People. I think they'll do the same thing in 2020 because the billionaires who own the media* have the psychosis that leads almost every billionaire to be obsessed with keeping more money than they could ever spend in thousands of lifetimes by all of their family members. Misogyny and racism will also be a part of that, it already is. Clearly you don't have to be a billionaire to participate in that, I mean, this guy is denying geography you should have learned in 4th grade.
* I don't know if the Sulzberger family are billionaires but they're a malignant force in American life. What the NYT gives, it takes away several fold.
Having lived a year in Chicago, and two more years in southern Illinois, I can say without doubt it is the Midwest. (Although southern Illinois identifies somewhat with the South, through somewhat identifying with Missouri. Regionalism is weird.).
ReplyDeleteI can also say this constant and now apparently accepted usage of "southern border" to refer to the U.S. border with Mexico makes me think, not of the Rio Grande, but of the Mason-Dixon line.
Regionalism, as I say, is weird. The Mexican border is not "southern" so long as California, Arizona, and New Mexico, are in the "American West."
I've heard the 2nd congressional district in Maine referred to as "Confederate Maine."
DeleteI think most of American regionalism is based more in our mutual ignorance of our common features than it is any enormous difference. That and snobbery as well as envy and resentment.
I blame a lot of that on the Electoral College which erases the large percentage of any state which is, obviously, not like most of the rest of it at any given time. If we didn't have that abomination I think a lot of the regionalism would evaporate as we were shocked that there were large numbers of people in this or that state who, against stereotype and sociological characterization, agreed with us.