Doublewide Trailer Trash

Spiral of Silence

No one has asked me my opinion on this, but when has that ever stopped me before, so today I want to post some comments on my opinion about what might happen in the upcoming election. My gut feeling says the Democrats will gain control of both the House and the Senate despite the structural constraints that favor Republican control of the House of Representatives, more specifically their successful gerrymandering of key states after the last census. Most will remember how the Texas legislature was gerrymandered two years after the previous redistricting to create new Republican districts and protect Republican incumbents. This effort was Hot Tub Tom Delay’s swan song before heading off to federal prison. Though less publicized, similar efforts took place across the country, making it harder to unseat Republican incumbents. Coupled with long term efforts by the Justice Department to ensure African-American representation in the House, the upshot of all this becomes a situation where only twenty-five of the four hundred and thirty five house seats are seriously contested. Folks, that is eight percent, which is shameful and has helped contribute to the polarization of political parties. By the way, gerrymander is pronounced Gary, not Jerry, and yes, everyone else who pronounces it Jerry is wrong.
The past few weeks have not been kind to the Republicans. Bush’s poll numbers are dropping even in the polls that naturally favor Republicans, like Fox News and Gallup, and conditions are unlikely to improve in the coming weeks. The Foley scandal only proves that Republicans will screw other things besides the country, but is unlikely to have anything more than a “piling on” effect. The gay angle only serves to heighten the controversy because the Republicans have been so adamantly opposed to gay marriage. If the Republicans decided to discriminate against gays in employment, let’s just say there would be a lot of Baptist churches in the south without a music director. Also, has anyone ever seen Ken Mehlman, the head of the RNC, on a date with a woman? If you have, that woman was a beard. What the Foley scandal does is wash away the moral high ground from the Republicans and permits other changes in attitude to take effect, changes I will discuss shortly.
The study of public opinion is quite complex. It was one of my areas of study in graduate school and remains an interest of mine, so I would like to offer a few reasoned comments.
In the post mortem period after the election, you may hear the term “spiral of silence” tossed about. The term was coined by Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann, a German lady who founded the Allensbach Institute, the German equivalent of the Gallup organization. Drawing from sources as distant as John Locke and Rousseau, her main premise is that people conceal their opinions when they believe their opinion represents a minority view. The converse is true; people are more expressive of their opinions when they believe they hold a majority view. The reason this holds is that people fear becoming socially isolated from others when they hold opinions contrary to the majority opinion.
Polling is an inexact science, but the theory has been tested many times and holds true in almost all cases. The most interesting studies have been in cases when a person is asked to express their opinion contrary to the clearly erroneous opinion of another person in close proximity. What those studies show is that people are willing to accept the wrong opinion to avoid isolation from the other person.
The 1980 presidential election is the most famous example of the “spiral of silence.” There was a pronounced shift in public opinion toward Reagan during the final days of the campaign. Previously isolated people began to believe that Reagan was going to win and became more expressive of that opinion. Democrats began to understand that Carter was going to lose, became more isolated, and some even switched allegiances to become part of the new majority opinion. The shift suppressed Democratic turnout and and a close race became a blowout overnight. There were many similarities to today’s situation. There were the Iranian hostages and the failed attempt to rescue them weighing down the Carter administration, and the pessimism they engendered is similar to today’s recent events. Here’s how this will work in the election.
The Bush administration stays on message, consistently claiming a connection between Iraq and Al-Queda, that the war in Iraq is progressing, and to this day you still hear Cheney echoing the outrageous neocon theory that Saddam supported terrorism as far back as the 1993 WTC bombing. But over the last few months polls demonstrate that public opinion has shifted. The American public eventually connected the dots and now understand that the Iraq-Al-Queda connection is a fiction, evidence has shown that the Bush administration missed all the warning signals about 9/11, and the public understands that the civil war in Iraq has begun despite what the government tells them. People see evidence of the latter every night on the news.
What has shifted is the fear of isolation people held for expressing sentiments that have been painted as “unpatriotic.” The old assertion about “my country right or wrong” still holds sway with the public and is a condition of the foundation myths that citizens cling to about the United States despite a clear, sustained tradition of public dissent dating back to the first attempts at colonization. The American public desires to support the government and will continue to express that support until given strong reasons not to. Now the public has those reasons.
The public now believes that the Democrats are going to win in November. You hear it on the news; you hear it from other people; the isolation has ended. The key event was when television began to question the Bush administration’s view of the world and began to posit a different state of affairs. Television is a key component in the creation of public opinion and the “spiral of silence.” Noelle-Neumann goes beyond “agenda-setting” as the role for the media, saying that the media also tells us what everyone else is thinking. Television creates public opinion along with transmitting it, something that the Bush administration has successfully exploited in the past through the relentless (and wrong) world view espoused by the Fox network.
The turning point came, I believe, with the recent Clinton interview. That is when it became mainstream to challenge the Bush view of the world. When he became angry and defended himself, the contrast with the Bush administration with their automatonic insistence of correctness was striking. Clinton humanized the struggle against terror. When Clinton said I tried and I failed, but at least I tried, that is when the landscape changed. People understand making mistakes and failure; they make mistakes and fail every day, and they love to see vulnerability in their leaders because it makes them human. This is something that the Bush administration has never understood, and one reason I think control of the Congress is about to change, with the “spiral of silence” as the explanation.

Mark Foley's iPod Playlist

The entire body of work from the Butthole Surfers
Politician (Cream)
Too Drunk to Fuck (Dead Kennedys)
Save the Children (Marvin Gaye)
The Christian Life (Byrds)
Crazy Love (Poco)
Everybody Hurts (REM)
Baby Let Me Bang Your Box (Doug Clark and the Hot Nuts)
You've Got To Hide Your Love Away (Beatles)
Favorite Son (CCR)
Catch My Disease (Ben Lee)
Life in Prison (Byrds)
This One's Gonna Bruise (Beth Orton)
Love Me Tender (Elvis)
If I Should Fall Behind (Bruce Springsteen)
The Hurt (Cat Stevens)
Phone Call From Leavenworth (Chris Whitley)
Turn Your Head Now Spit Me Out (Collective Soul)
Into Temptation (Crowded House)
Let It Whip (Dazz Band)
Burning Love (Elvis)
Young at Heart (Sinatra)
Celebrity Skin (Hole)
Can't Keep It In (Cat Stevens)
Shake a Tail Feather (James and Bobby Purify)
He Don't Love You Like I Love You (Jerry Butler)
Why Don't We Get Drunk (Jimmy Buffett)
Let's Just Get Naked (Joan Osborne)
Thing Called Love (John Hiatt)
Creeps Like Me (Lyle Lovett)
Sexual Healing (Marvin Gaye)
The Hard Way (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
His Latest Flame (Mary Lou Lord)
Man in Need (Richard Thompson)
Use Me Up (Bill Withers)
Tightly (Neko Case)
Breaking the Law (New Pornographers)
Skin Tight (Ohio Players)
Smells Like Teen Spirit (Nirvana)
Back Street Slide (Richard Thompson)
Drunk and Fucked Up (Ryan Adams)
I Am a Rock (Simon and Garfunkel)
Throng of Blowtown (Mary Loud Lord)
Hurting Me, Hurting You (Steve Earle)
and my favorite,
Back Door Man (Howlin Wolf)

WTC

Each generation spawns its own tragedy. During my life there have been three: Kennedy, Challenger, and WTC. The previous generation’s was Pearl Harbor. Tragedies generate stories, stories of pain and suffering that serve to anchor us in the suffering of others. Empathy is a strong human emotion. But each of us has our own story of that day, a story that always begins with the same question: Where were you?

That morning I woke early and drove to Vance, Alabama, outside of Tuscaloosa, to continue the interviews that I was conducting with children in state custody, children who had been abused by their parents or guardians. The project was not a fun consulting engagement. The interview that I remember most from that group home was with a boy who spent his infancy in the care of his grandmother, a woman who was the neighborhood drug dealer. When the child was two, there was a dispute between the grandmother and a customer that resulted in the customer shooting and killing the grandmother in the child’s presence. The boy was left alone locked in the house with her corpse for two days. The child suffered deep emotional problems, and I suppose that they will always be with him. Between interviews the staff at the group home told me about the planes, so I stopped the interviews and watched the towers burn and collapse with them. Then I drove home to Birmingham.

Later that afternoon I had an appointment for my annual physical. While I was waiting for the doctor to arrive I finally reached my friend Anne by telephone. The previous year I had stayed with her and her husband in Manhattan when I attended a wedding celebration for a mutual friend. When I worked in the south tower I happened upon Anne in the subway station beneath the complex and that renewed our friendship from college. Anne worked in the north tower. Unbeknownst to me, she had resigned her job earlier that year, so she was safe on the upper west side far from the damage.

For months afterward, I was haunted by a face, the face of man whose name I have long forgotten, a face that I only saw for three months while I was working in the south tower receiving extensive training for a job. The training center was on the hundred and second floor. He was a guard at the transfer point for the elevators on the seventy-eighth floor, the kind of person you normally pass by and do not give a second thought to, but this guy was different. He always joked with us as we passed by, complementing us about something. He seemed excited by life’s possibilities. You notice people like him.

The second plane that hit the south tower near this floor.

For months afterward, the Times ran pictures and short blurbs about the dead, and each day I searched for that man’s smile, but I never saw it. I hope he was one of the lucky ones.

The pianist Andre Watts was scheduled to play that Friday night with the Alabama Symphony at the Stephens Center, and I had tickets. Watts cancelled, citing the inability to get a flight, but they found a replacement who drove to Birmingham from New York and the performance went on. Everyone stood when the orchestra began the evening by playing the national anthem. The next number was Barber’s Adagio for Strings, which brings tears to the eyes in the best of times.

The word fanatic comes from the Latin word for temple, fanum, which later became fanaticus, meaning inspired by a deity. Certainly the word fits the event. The cheap solution is to blame Islam for the tragedy, for the perpetrators were adherents, but to blanket that religion for the actions of a few is unfair, just as it is unfair to blame all southerners for the actions of the Ku Klux Klan. Somewhere in my files there is a picture of a dead policeman’s leg that appeared on the front page of the Birmingham Post Herald after Eric Rudolph visited town, a picture that the paper pulled after printing only a few thousand copies.

Still, the role religion played in the tragedy bothers me. Events like these reinforce my doubts. Am I to believe that god cares who wins a football game, but then lets his followers kill thousands in his name, or permits a tsunami to kill one hundred times as many in a great wave?

Evil is as much a part of the human condition as goodness; they are twins forever locked in continuous struggle for the human heart. Just when you think one aspect is ascendent, the other will suddenly appear. This happened on this day, for out of the unfettered hatred arose stories of human goodness that inspire us and give us hope. Many have tried to wrap themselves in this tragedy, but their inflated rhetoric cannot lessen the human tragedy. Those who died were not just names; they were people: husbands, wives, friends, people who made a difference in someone’s life and whose absence makes another’s life poorer. That is the one thing we must not forget.

One other thing lingers in my memory, the view from the tower windows. The sensation was much like that experienced from a plane, the sensation of how small and fragile the world appears from far above. Many of us in the training class were from the south where snow is a rare occurrence. Late one December afternoon it began to snow and there was excitement in the group. After work we rode those same elevators down, but when we arrived we discovered that there was no snow, only a cold rain washing the earth and returning home to the sea.

In this divisive age, let us hope that somehow we can turn this tragedy to some good purpose, not to dwell on what was, but to work toward what we can achieve. The words of Lincoln seem appropriate:

let us strive on to finish the work we are in;
to bind up the nation's wounds;
to care for him who shall have borne the battle,
and for his widow,
and his orphan --
to do all which may achieve and cherish a just, and a lasting peace,
among ourselves, and with all nations.

Love Life

Well, I know that we aren't supposed to date newcomers, but she is really pretty when she is awake.

Anybody with an I.Q. over 60 gets to wear purple!

Independence Day

Written July 3rd. Fireworks after all. After dinner last night at the Rope Loft restaurant, just after sunset, or around ten-fifteen, there was a fireworks display in the harbor, which was delayed from Canada Day because of the fog. The display was not up to American standards, but it did attract the hoi polloi from the surrounding area, particularly young people.

The peasant children in Canada are very sweet. I give them candy and cigarettes; they offer the services of their older sisters. I am sure that President Bush would be proud, for we bring the blessings of freedom to these poor, unfortunate people. The crowd became unruly, so I retreated to the safety of my three million dollar rental home on the peninsula for the rest of the display, then I went to sleep safe in the knowledge that we are the arsenal of democracy for the world. God bless America.

There was a story in the Halifax Chronicle Herald stating that on Canada Day some hoodlums had smashed the windows in on a car with Massachusetts license plates in a protest about the Iraq war. Canadians love to apologize, and there were many in the paper. The person from Massachusetts wondered why he, instead of some person from Texas, was the victim.

Details on all of my travel troubles to follow.