It hurts to be Left Behind–just ask the “base”

http://www.scholarsandrogues.com/2011/05/16/it-hurts-to-be-left-behind-just-ask-the-base/#more-23979

All of us do that at one time or another, claim personality traits that are 180 degrees from reality. Maybe we lie to convince ourselves. Or maybe we’re trying to deflect anticipated criticism. If I say I am an idiot before you can say it, then somehow it takes the sting out of it. “You can’t fire me. I quit” sort of thing.

It’s no coincidence that the best-selling Christian fiction series is called Left Behind. Christians, and particularly the small town conservative Christians collectively known as “the base,” are being left behind in every sense of the word—culturally, societally, demographically, technologically, economically, and politically. So of course, they say, “No, I’m not the one being left behind. You’re the one being left behind.”

That they are being left behind is unassailable. They’re being left behind in terms of demographic relevance. A hundred years ago, 90% of the population worked on farms and lived in small communities. Now farm employment is 0.5%. The U.S. is increasingly a nation of dark skinned people of non-European descent. They’re being left behind economically as the wealth gaps between the middle class and the upper class and the small town and urban dwellers grows.

They are being left behind culturally, for example as America moves away from formal Christianity. About 20% of Americans now attend church regularly. And while many Americans consider themselves “spiritual,” increasingly we are shopping from the spiritual supermarket, and not just the Christianity aisle. There are hundreds of recognized religions in America, and we have become de facto polytheistic, e.g., the local YMCA offering classes in yoga. Last week a major Sunday morning show treated the nonsense of reincarnation with a straight face. Perhaps there was a time when a Christian nation might have been outraged. Now it’s not worth a shrug.

Even the dominant shows on TV no longer portray the stable nuclear wholesome small town Christian family (always a myth, demographically, by the way.) Ozzie and Harriett and Leave it Beaver are gone, and TV now celebrates a very different reality, like Two and a Half Men. To the extent the base is portrayed in the media, it is to be ridiculed and mocked, e.g., My Name is Earl, Married with Children, The Simpsons, Family Guy, etc.

Thanks for the link!

"...if they don’t call the Republican candidates on that lie, then the Republicans promise not to call them on theirs."

Peak Oil wil undo what cheap oil did in the first place. And small towns don't have to be havens of bigotry and ignorance, not with the internet available. I think we can create more local economies that are connected to the rest of the world.