« Bobby Fischer, RIP | Main | Rudy Is Toast » 64-2619 Jan 2008 05:14 pm According to entrance polls, that would be Hillary Clinton's margin of victory among Nevadan Hispanics, and it's one of bigger reasons why I agree with John Podhoretz: Today's win bodes very well for her. Update: Via Andrew, a fascinatingly fraught focus group moment. ("The maid, the busboy, the waiter ... will not vote for Obama."): Comments (22)
But why? What's the rationale for Hispanics and their like 
I'm still trying to figure out my own response to the Dem race. I won't vote Republican. I ignored the 90's. Yet after Obama won Iowa, and then Hillary won NH, I began to really dislike her. I can't figure out the intensity. I don't know if I can vote for her. I might sit out '08. I can't feel
I think that much of what is wrong with America today is summed up in that last quote. Too many Americans have been reduced from being farmers, fishermen and factory workers to being maids, busboys, and waiters. It's only too typical that Las Vegas, the fastest growing city in America, is built on degrading 'service' industries that don't actually produce anything and only cater to the luxurious tastes of a decadent elite. The American working class was supposed to be made up of proud and strong factory workers and farmers, not waiters and busboys. Shades of the late Roman Empire. No wonder that this happens in the city of prostitutes, strippers and quickie divorce. The connection between the economic decadence and cultural decadence of 21st century America could not get any clearer.
To Hector:
THAT was a pretty definitive takedown of Hector.
I don't want to sound like a jerk here. But here's a blunt statement, and I apologize if I am offensive. Hispanics, by and large, don't like black people. Those of us who have lived near Hispanic n'hoods know this. Painful, discomforting, unfortunate, but true. Why? They don't like them because they don't want to be grouped with them, for whatever reasons. This is reality. And the Dems will have to deal with it.
Let's say that's true, Brent. Is their racial animus any stronger than white vs black, black vs white, etc? Or four our purposes here, hispanic vs white? I wouldn't think so... Because what would need to be the case here would be hispanics would have to dislike blacks more than whites, or maybe they'd have to dislike a black man more than a white woman. I don't know..
Dear Mr. Mike B, The fact that manufacturing and farming industries have collapsed in USA and that working class Americans today have few other options than degrading 'service' jobs is too well known to need to be debated. Look up the statistics on the decline of manufacturing- or for that matter visit any big city in the Northeast or Midwest. There is a long school of thought that holds that jobs in which actually you make or grow something with their hands- farmers, fishermen, automobile factory workers, etc.- have, _at their best_, a kind of dignity and pride that service jobs lack. When you make or grow something you are using your labor to create a tangible thing, and participating in a process that goes back to the first men. See Simone Weil who wrote reams and reams on the spiritual meaning of labor. Of course this was never really the case under alienating modern capitalist relations, but at least the old industrial jobs had the potential to become something fulfiling and humane in a well-ordered economy. Service jobs, not quite. They are inherently exploitative and expressive of a hierarchical caste society. As for late Roman Empire, funny that you should mention the 'Gauls' (I really think you mean Goths). I've always seen the modern Islamists as the equivalent of the Goths, and the modern military-industrial cabal as the equivalent of the Roman Generals.
forgot to add....of course the blackjack worker is also worse off than a garden-variety waiter or busboy because he is participating in an immoral enterprise.
The late roman empire wasn't any more decadent than the late roman republic or early empire, when rome was at the peak of its power. The roman aristocracy always had luxurious tastes, and was surrounded by large numbers of slaves who served them.
The best news out of Nevada from the conservative view is that the race between Obama and Clinton has become ugly along the fragile lines of identity politics. Live by the sword of these politics and die by them, as the bulk of Americans are fed up with them.
The best news out of Nevada from the conservative view is that the race between Obama and Clinton has become ugly along the fragile lines of identity politics. Live by the sword of these politics and die by them, as the bulk of Americans are fed up with them. Right. Because lord knows, Republicans haven't been engaging in identity politics this election cycle....
It's always been obvious to me why Rove thought that hispanics had a natural home in the Republican party. It doesn't have much of anything to do with policy.
It's always been obvious to me why Rove thought that hispanics had a natural home in the Republican party. It doesn't have much of anything to do with policy.
http://www.tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=314e8fae-3fd3-4af2-bfde-f0f8e069c1fe Aha! See this TNR article for potential sociological explanation of why HRC took Hispanics 2 to 1 over John Judis, Hillary's Firewall, 12/07 issue
Sheltered elites like the Atlantic bloggers have no clue about issues like these. I'd say those bloggers were similar to new arrivals from Mars, except those new arrivals from Mars would not - unlike the Atlantic's bloggers - pretend to understand these issues. On the plus side, posts like Sully's can be used against him the next time he mindlessly promotes massive immigration. Taking the parts of L.A. that they've probably never visited as an example, those sheltered bloggers might try to understand why there are more blacks in the parts of the Valley away from VenturaBlvd rather than in NortheastLA (see the bit about HighlandPark here).
Fifth, prostituion isn't legal in Las Vegas, nor anywhere in Clark County. I agree with the rest of the takedown of Hector, but this one is just irrelevant. Look at the Las Vegas Yellow Pages sometime-- something like 1/5 of the pages are filled with ads for "Entertainers". It may be illegal, but there's probably more prostitution per capita in Las Vegas than in any other urban area in the US.
Oh, please, Hector. You can romanticize agricultural work all you want, but most people would gladly work a "degrading service" job, as you put it (otherwise known as a steady indoor job in a technologically advanced society) than working out with their hands in the field, all things and wages being equal. In fact, in many cases the people that work in such jobs came from rural environments in Mexico or elsewhere, and are much happier and better off where they are than back in the old village. I'm not sure what's more off-putting, the patronizing attitude towards the people who work in service industry jobs, the anti-capitalist/aesthetic socialist rhetoric, or the preening moralism that condemns people for working in a casino. And no, this isn't the Roman Empire and the Islamists aren't Goths or Gauls about to sack DC and set up caliphates in Kansas.
Mark, How do you know what the Mexican immigrants would prefer? The collapse of Mexican agriculture was due to many things- NAFTA, competition from subsidized U.S. agriculture, population pressures, land degradation, short-term financial temptations to sell one's land, and most of all a government that was intent on privatizing the old communal farming system that had worked fairly well ever since the Mexican Revolution. It was most certainly _not_ due to farmers deciding that they would be Just because _you_ are horrified by the thought of physical labor, doesn't mean that Mexican peasants feel the same way. I'm sure that most of them would have preferred the life that they were accustomed to, before the system that _you_ defend threw them off their land like so many cattle. The conversion of peasants into an industrial proletariat- or in this case, a sub-proletariat- was _never_ a voluntary, mutually beneficial arrangement. Not in 16th century England, not in 19th century France, not in 20th century Russia and not in 21st century Mexico. It almost always left the peasantry worse off, and was accomplished only through repression and immiseration. It only adds insult to injury when you try to paint the conversion from the 'old village' to the alienating and degrading life as a Las Vegas busboy as something happy and fruitful. People make the 'choices' that they are forced to make by circumstances, not the choices that exist in some theoretical libertarian utopia.
Yes, I also had noticed the Gothic hordes sacking Washington DC while the Vandals, Burgundians, Alemanni, Alans and Marcomanni swept across the frozen Potomac. Hector, are you not a little weary of these nostalgic fantasies about happy villages? If village life is so nice, why does everyone flee to the city pronto? And do you really think that bending your back, risking starvation if the crops fail, and generally having to sweat and toil for some absentee landlord is really so much worse than having to work in an airconditioned hotel or casino carrying a tray?
Mr. Sasha, You are falling into the materialist assumption shared by many, that the quality of a job can be measured by the hours, the pay, and how physically taxing it is. I disagree. Simone Weil was very clear about the fact that much of what was wrong at the heart of modern civilization- in its capitalist, fascist, and communist forms- is that it has forgotten that labor is at the spiritual core of a well ordered life, and ought to have a spiritual meaning. absentee landlords....apparently you didn't read my post carefully enough. In reference to Mexico, absentee landlordism was largely done away with by the combination of the 1910-1920 Revolution, and the reforms of Cárdenas in the 1930s. Between the mid-1930s and the late 1980s, Mexican peasants typically had substantial control over their land through the village ownership system. Absentee landlords have been a big problem in Latin America since the Conquest, and typically became much more rapacious and exploitative in the 20th century- capitalism was substantially nastier to Latin American peasants than neo-feudalism had been. Wouldn't the proper solution have been to fight against the oligarchic concentration of land, rather than to blithely tell the dispossessed farmers to look for jobs elsewhere? You 'liberals' want to get the Mexican migrants to buy into what is essentially a corrupt and exploitative system, rather than trying to address why the system is that way to begin with. If you still can't understand why working as a farm laborer is inherently less alienating and degrading than working as a busboy, then I give up.
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But, I'm sorry to say, it bodes very badly for my party. This thing has gotten ugly, ugly, ugly, and it's drawn along very stark lines, as you've shown here. I really fear for the future. I really do.
Posted by Freddie | January 19, 2008 5:47 PM