Our Dumb Grammar

Daniel points our attention [to! - JGP] the below:

Missouri, Kentucky, Arkansas and Ohio all went for Jimmy Carter in 1976 and for Bill Clinton twice. All but Ohio have been dominated by Democrats at the congressional and gubernatorial levels for decades. But all five went for George W. Bush in 2000 and 2004. The reason: Casey Democrats. “Democrats’ difficulties with this group surely have a great deal to do with these voters’ sense of cultural alienation from the national Democratic Party and its relatively cosmopolitan values around religion, family, guns and other social institutions/practices,” blogged Democratic strategist Ruy Teixeira after the 2004 election. Just two years earlier, in their book, “The Emerging Democratic Majority,” Teixeira and John Judis had predicted that the party’s economic liberalism would bear the Democratic nominee to victory in such states. -- Mark Stricherz

Surely 'Casey Democrats' not only experience a sense of cultural alienation from the 'national' Democratic Party [i.e. the hegemonic regional Party], but know that they actually are culturally alienated. When will we wake up to the significance of the sleight of hand involved in speaking only of senses of things? Ah, but then again my contention is that our dumb grammar has developed more or less deliberately in order to evade the responsibility for attributing convictions to one another or to ourselves.

Comments

[William Burns]

I agree with your main point, but "Daniel points our attention the below" is a really strange way to begin a grammar post.

[Joules]

I used to enjoy saying I had a sense of this and that and now I don't anymore, thanks to you. There goes a favorite phrase. You're the intellectual equivalent of a logging company in the rainforest.