digby had a great post up a couple days ago about John McCain's biography tour. See, the past few days, John McCain has been emphasizing his military biography in credentials in order to capture the hearts and minds of the conservative base. His presentation went all the way back to his grandfather, who had impressive navy credentials, and he talked about his time serving as a POW in Vietnam. While there are many reasons for McCain's strategy here, including possibly a Southern strategy that portrays McCain as a traditional white guy or just a general showcase of his military credentials, digby has an alternate, very thought provoking theory.
McCain goes into considerable detail to establish himself as the scion of a very old (by American standards) and very distinguished warrior tribe, whose traditions he first spurned and then half-heartedly embraced, before rediscovering them in the crucible of his imprisonment at the Hanoi Hilton.
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Democrats need to understand what he's trying to do in presenting himself as the embodiment of the Prodigal Son seeking to lead the Prodigal Nation back to its heritage of greatness, and react accordingly.
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Partisan divisions over the military reflect much deeper cultural factors. "From the quasi-war with France [1798-1800] to the Vietnam war," writes historian David Hackett Fischer, "the two southern cultures strongly supported every American war no matter what it was about or who it was against.
For all of our talk of a fifty state strategy, the fact is, the divide between the cultures of the North and South outdate our country. They have forever clashed, most famously during the civil war. Part of me wonders whether or not these two cultures are compatible in the same nation. digby continues...
What explains the deeply-ingrained military ethic of southerners--and the equally intense anti-military sentiments of greater New Englanders? Again, culture is the answer. The New England Puritans frowned on violence as a way of resolving social conflicts. The southern cavalier code, however, endorsed violence when personal or national honour was being "disrespected" or "dissed"...
The above passage is about how our culture defines our world view. If you look at the way that this sort of culture would look at an event like 9/11, I could see the impulse to "bomb __ back to the stone age". After all, this is what superiority is to them. The southern warrior psyche is all about kicking people's asses to show superiority. The northern Puritan view is to use intellect and strategy to resolve social conflicts.
It's more than that though. The Democratic base is traditionally allied with immigrants too. I myself am a minority whose parents immigrated to this country. My world view is broadened by extensive international sentiment - I can put myself into someone's shoes in South Asia and experience their perspective of our country too; however, being that I was raised in New York under the Puritan philosophy - I think that that contributed to my liberalism.
But back to John McCain:
It makes perfect sense to me for McCain to take this Southern Comfort tour right now in the lull before the storm. Despite his status as a POW, McCain is known to the Republican base as a rebel, someone who isn't fully a member of the tribe. But many of them don't know that McCain is from a long line of highly decorated naval officers, which among the southern Cavaliers is an automatic tribal identifier as a full fledged member of the warrior class. He's telling that story and it's as good as a secret handshake.
For one of the tribes in America being a military adventurer, particularly when they perceive the nation's honor to be at stake, is a requirement for leadership.
I think that this ad really illustrates how McCain is appealing to the tribalism of the South:
h/t digby, from a later post. I really encourage you to watch the video critically and deconstruct it, because it really shows how McCain is going straight after America's warrior tribe.
After reading this material at Hullabaloo, I thought of a mostly overlooked diary by cynndara, It was about how Democrats needed to show strength, and show that they cannot be pushed around by Republicans if they want support from the South - that above all, military brass types want competence:
The people whose approval you are seeking don’t want moderate, reasoned, charitable, "adult" behavior, forgiveness of sins, and "everybody get along". They don't want incompetence rewarded by a pat on the back and generous pension, and corporate villains offered the opportunity to shift their investments into a new line of profit while being gently eased out of their last scam. They want competent control reasserted over our military, fiscal, and administrative disasters, and then some solid ass-kicking where it is richly deserved. There are those who say that the conservative mind is a primitive mind, the mind of a child who still wants the Bad Guys to be punished. Well, if you're going to court the votes of those primitive minds, you'd best keep in mind what satisfies them.
It's a very detailed diary from someone who is an authority on military perceptions of the government, and, if you have the time, you should read it in its entirety. However, the above paragraph really nails it. This is what McCain is doing right now - showing off pretty language alluding to competence and service, energizing the alpha male complex of Southern American tribes. If Obama and Clinton want to win Virginia, at least, they must either assault and change the culture or play by its rules.
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But there's one more thing I want to add. These definitions really treat the South and North as monolithic political identities, when, in fact, this is not the case. It's not that liberals don't have the same warrior instincts either - just look at the primary wars, it's the same thing! - it's that the notions of nationalism and flags as some sort of representation of our faces and ideologies do not resonate as deeply as symbols of content like the Constitution or laws.
We, too, try to defend these symbols of content, most notably the label "liberal" or "Progressive". Rather than really looking at the individual policies of candidates and discussing the relative merits and demerits, we seek to shame those who are "not Progressive enough" - it ends up being a ritual that leaves us all concluding that only our candidate or self is good enough for that label. It's the same warrior tribalism of the South applied to, say, the flag.
I think it's a barbaric culture, and we need to change it in the interest of maintaining a fact-based society, and so that we can have perspective on how to conquer the South for the Democratic Party.