The ongoing misery in Haiti just got an exclamation point added with a 7.0 earthquake. A shattered Port Au Prince is all over the news media. The devastation points up both the power of a quake of this sort and the crummy building techniques utilized. Once again Haiti is in the news for also being the poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere. Politics can't help but be a part of the discussion - and along with politics, culture.
It is pretty plain that some behaviors are more conducive to stability and economic comfort. When behaviors become widespread enough they get called culture and if they are instituted by establishment the culture warriors will back them. Frequently blindly, as Brooks demonstrated. The Confederate Party of Republicanism touts its culture meme and whacks the rest of the nation over its immoral head with it, all the while ignoring that poverty, incest, and divorce rates are highest in its own backyard. This is the crap that Brooks is spewing under cover of the "I'm a nice reasonable guy" cloak of bullshit.
The Brooksian (CPoR) view seems to hold that culture forms in some kind of vacuum, that there are not good reasons behaviors are practiced. To them it is simply some sort of moral failing rather than failing coping mechanisms. Why certainly Mr Brooks and Rushbo and assorted asswipes - these people are in a state of horrid poverty because they ... well hell, have the wrong religion rather than no available jobs paying anything. Voodoo certainly encourages its followers to starve. If the majority of a population is poverty stricken it must be something they're doing wrong. Like what? It's a pretty good bet reducing births would help - but Catholicism hates birth control pills - remember? How about seeing that what wealth the country has whether natural resources or other got spread around a bit - managed capitalism (soshalizm per CPoR).
The cultural failure these idjits talk about is at the top, as per most paternalistic societies - just as they'd have the US go. Authoritarianism is good for the little folks - just 'cause they say so. Who the hell runs the money and power in the country? Must be the poor since it's their fault they're poor...
How about the first question is who is rich and how did they get that way?
1 comment:
Wish you could spit this in David Fucking Brooks' face.
Thanks for putting it out there for the rest of us.
S
The cultural failure these idjits talk about is at the top, as per most paternalistic societies - just as they'd have the US go. Authoritarianism is good for the little folks - just 'cause they say so. Who the hell runs the money and power in the country? Must be the poor since it's their fault they're poor...
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