I saw this clip from Stephen Colbert about how the Republicans rely on the cranky old white man vote, and I had an epiphany. Why, that’s me! But then, as this clip goes on, it’s all about how the Republicans are straining to embrace a new demographic and capture the Hispanic vote.
That’ll never work. Hispanics aren’t going to see him as a friend no matter how much spray-on tan he puts on.
But then I had a thought. What the Republicans need to do is increase the supply of cranky old white men. How can they do that? Longevity research! Pour more money into the NIH for work that keeps old people alive for longer…especially that favorite subject of biomedical research, the white male. It’s a win:win! More money for science, more cranky old white men voting longer, more cranky old white men feeling obligated to the Republican party, more medical benefits that assist me as I get older.
I don’t see why they aren’t rushing to adopt this strategy. It’s their only hope.
Longevity research! Pour more money into the NIH for work that keeps old people alive for longer…especially that favorite subject of biomedical research, the white male.
I’ve always wondered why the really hyper-rich aren’t into this. Their money won’t keep them alive if they store it in banks or whatever, but it will fund a lot of research into how to really keep them alive longer…if they’d just get it to the right organizations. Like the NIH, the MPA, and other, similar institutions. Don’t they want to live? Why are our billionaires suicidal? People like Bill Gates who are giving money to fund research into keeping others alive are great, really acting in a truly philanthropic manner and all, but the Kochs and other people just storing it up for nothing? Straight up idiots.
Typical money-grubbing researcher! Why, I can do the same thing far cheaper and faster, quite without your fancy-dancy NIH grants…
How, you ask?
Easy: more Bieber. Everywhere. Malls. Elevators. Piped into your home against your will…
No, the plan isn’t to make anyone live longer. My plan is just to take existing white males and make them feel older and crankier, faster. And I know that’d do the trick for me.
Will this help with the old, cranky, white dude vote, though? If we’re improving quality of life (which I hope would increase along with lifespans), shouldn’t we expect crankiness to decrease?
Trust me. Getting older makes you crankier inevitably.
Figuring out how to make white men live longer is too much work, and probably envolves science, which is evil. It’s much easier to make sure that those others, don’t live as long. It’s so much easier to keep the hospital doors closed than to build a hospital.
(a href = “https://www.etsy.com/listing/71977109/the-midlife-crisis-of-the-mesozoic”>FSM Midlife Crisis.
Oh, I can attest to PZ getting crankier. Why just yesterday he was telling a sweet young christian kid that his father was LYING, LYING, LYING.
PZ – you are an evil genius. I only pray that the GOP doesn’t get hold of this electoral blueprint. The Sullen Strategy taking advantage of the aging white men would rival the juggernaut of the
White Elasmotherium.
BTW: all hail Holytape – that person’s art, well, really the descriptions of the art, are the purest form of skeptical, satirical genius. The kind of mind that Euthyphro must have had.
What we really need is better boner pills.
Just saw this on the news.
Average lifespans are dropping a lot among some segments of the US population.
The biggest drop is among white women without a high school diploma.
It’s likely a lot of these are fundie xians. I saw a map once and the drops were mostly in parts of the fundie xian heartland of Dumbfuckistan.
Without more data, its hard to untangle correlations and causations here. Are fundies dumb or do dumb people stay fundies. It is known that they score lower on IQ and education levels than the general population.
@Raven
My hypothesis for the diminished lifespans of less-educated white women is that most of them are forced to live with less-educated white men. I know that if I had to spend more than the usual week at Christmastime with my brother-in-law, I’d be drunk the whole time. And not in a good way.
TBH, I am an angry white male making six figures, but Republican policies have swung so far to the right lately that I *still* couldn’t vote for them even out of raw self-interest. Why? The health care plan offered by my employer is shit. I know, I know, I’m lucky to even have a health care plan, and if I spent/invested more wisely it would be a non-issue with my salary. But I didn’t spend wisely, then I slipped on ice, and now I’m having trouble paying medical bills. The Republican response is “Boo hoo”. Even if I were voting on raw self-interest, I’d want to vote for the party that was going to make sure I actually had the option to purchase an affordable and non-shit health care plan.
@dianne
Former PayPal CEO Peter Thiel has given a quite a bit of money to the Methuselah Foundation.
*Will be speaking about demographic trends, not individuals*
One of the greatest bits of luck we folks on the left have been given is the fact that Republicans are so trapped in their ignorant racism that they can’t appeal to Latinos. Just like the Fat Cat Republicans have gobbled up the votes of poor and middle class working white people by making glib appeals to their religious convictions, a huge percentage of the Latino population would be natural allies with the culture warriors on the right.
Honestly, that’s the single trend that worries me most moving forward. I grew up in a State full of white people CONSTANTLY voting against their economic well-being because of abortion and fear of homosexuality and ignorance about science. I don’t want that same dynamic to infect the rapidly growing Latino population.
If the Republicans dropped their anti-immigrant horseshit the left would be in real trouble. Fortunately (depending on your perspective), they’re so trapped in the vile biases that they continually alienate a large population that either currently agrees with them or would be receptive to that manipulative outreach through the churches.
“We’re not going to round up 12 million people, that includes the kids and the parents, and have everyone deported.”
That’s an oddly specific denial.
@13: You realize some of us on the left actually have to deal with this shit, right? Like, I’ve had to adjust my habits around the Papers Please law in the state I’m in. It’s not all white people. Keep some perspective before throwing that shit around; there not being racism would make the divide and conquer game a shit ton harder.
@ 15 Rutee Katreya
Whenever I go to Arizona or other states like that, I always try to speak with a Canadian accept to see if I can get a cop to ask for my papers. It never works.
accept = accent . Damn dyslexia.
#8: Indeed.
Like sneezing with one’s eyes open, is it possible to be both a sad and tumescent man? (Regardless of age….)
@15 Rutee Katreya
I have no idea how that’s a response to what I wrote. I’m not sure what you’re disagreeing with.
Perhaps I wasn’t clear, I’ll try again: on many social issues there are large segments of the Latino population that would agree with Republican stances. Just as huge segments of the white population have been drawn to the Republican Party because of social issues, that same pull could exist with Latinos, but Republicans are insanely racist and drive them away.
The “papers please” law is a perfect example of that.
This is based on the proposition that the Republicans, being now the party of angry older white people and Southern racists, will be demographically run out of existence. This gives me hope for the future. What worries me is that the brain-rotting effect of religion is not unique to any particular race and/or ethnicity, and I am troubled by the possibility that 40-45% of Latinos find themselves voting for Republicans because of abortion.
The single most potent dynamic keeping this from happening is Republican racism. They’re killing themselves.
holytape @ 16 —
Awhile back, some friends and I noticed that the two people in the room least likely to be asked for our papers in one of those states were the only two of us who were not born in the U.S. If we weren’t all a bit short on time and money these days it might have been interesting to put together a mini-documentary around that concept…
raven@9:
How much of the correlation is caused by younger, less educated women having higher rates of pregnancy and lower rates of adequate health care?
Sure, pregnancy is “natural,” but so is arsenic. Pregnancy takes a very heavy toll on the body, and doubly so if the woman doesn’t get proper nutrition and health care.
It’s hard to say without more data.
One more piece of data. This large drop doesn’t hold for nonwhites who are equally uneducated. Their lifespans are going up.
The statistics are almost never correlated with “fundie xians”. This is an undefined demographic. It is not synonymous with evangelical although it was once quite close. The best you can do is look at where they live, highly concentrated in the south central USA.
Could be a lot of things. Might have something to do with relying on faith healing rather than seeing doctors. Could be their bleak existence just makes them not bother to live as long as they can. Maybe only dumb people stay in the fundie cults. Maybe a former fundie or someone from the DFN knows more.
Speaking of rich old guys…the Mittster just released those tax returns. Turns he did pay taxes. So see, he’s one of us. You mean old Democrats have to take it back.
Of course, he only paid something like a 13% rate over 20 years but he definitely paid. In case you don’t that is significantly lower than the marginal tax rate for incomes over $10 million dollars in a year that the some of the hyper-rich and their political parrots are always complaining about.
And while Miizie paid 14% on income of $13.7 million in 2011…that’s around $2 million…that’s a significantly lower rate than I paid on an order of magnitude less income in the same year.
Count me among the tribe of angry old white guys who thinks Republucans are full of elephant dung.
The Maternal Mortality Ratio (deaths per 100,000 live births) for 2010 in the USA was 21. This is identical to Iran, except that compared to 1990 the US rate has been going up and Iran’s is dropping.
Most European countries are in the single digits, including Estonia, Lithuania and Poland.
I have always read that the problem in the US was lack of access to health care and contraception for the poor, many of whom are minorities. This new information regarding white vs. non-white rates is puzzling.
At 12, Canada’s MMR is concerning as well, especially as it too is rising.
Here’s the PDF.
UNFPA Trends in MMR 1990-2010
Dude, do you not know the divide and conquer game that has been played with the American Poor? If the Republicans couldn’t play the poor against the black or the brown, they’d lose a LOT of leverage in their fight.
It’s ignorant to say “ITS A LUCKY THING THE REPUBLICAN PARTY IS RACIST, YO, IMMIGRANTS MIGHT VOTE FOR THEM OTHERWISE.” No, it is not good that a major party that passes tons of policy is massively racist.
I’m a lot more troubled that 40-45% of white people vote for the republicans because of abortion, because that’s a much bigger percentage of the population.
Pity that it’s not doing anything about the majority’s asshattery, and comes at the expense of a lot of anti-immigrant stuff. Guess that’s just small potatoes.
My Dad, an archetypal cranky old conservative White man, is having to vote by absentee ballot this year because he can’t vote with his expired driver’s license or any of the documentation he uses to collect social security and medicare. I guarantee there will be cane-swinging meltdowns at polling places, because there are plenty of seniors who don’t realize the new rule apply to Them.
@Rutee Katreya
I always enjoy heated agreements. You’re not actually producing anything in contradiction to what I wrote.
“It’s ignorant to say “ITS A LUCKY THING THE REPUBLICAN PARTY IS RACIST, YO, IMMIGRANTS MIGHT VOTE FOR THEM OTHERWISE.” No, it is not good that a major party that passes tons of policy is massively racist.”
No, it’s not ignorant. It’s a real dynamic. If you care about abortion, gay rights, keeping religious nonsense out of schools, myriad economic issues related to gender, and available health care, it’s a very, very good thing that Republicans have not been able to expand their Party.
Now, does that mean it’s ALL good? Obviously not, but you’re going to have to hold a couple of thoughts in your head at the same time:
1) Republicans rely on racism to win the white the white vote. They divide the lower and middle classes based on racial resentment, as you say.
2) While this wins them white votes, it ironically has the effect of driving off a great many people who would potentially and even likely find themselves allied with their social conservative message.
Because the groups being alienated are growing much faster than the white votes they win, which are basically dying off, the Republicans are committing political suicide. This is a good thing.
Pay close attention to what the good thing is: the death of the Republican Party and their policies. It is ironic that their worst characteristic, racism, is the means of their own demise.
“I’m a lot more troubled that 40-45% of white people vote for the republicans because of abortion, because that’s a much bigger percentage of the population.”
Yeah, it’s almost like I mentioned that in both my posts. That group is bigger now, but women have lead the exodus, and now the remaining white vote in favor of Republicans is largely old white dudes and southerners. Even “working class” whites don’t really support the Republicans outside of Dixie:
http://www.salon.com/2012/09/20/beyond_guns_and_god/
They’re on the way out, Republicans need to reach out to new groups, they can’t because they’re racist and sexist. Again, this IRONICALLY a good thing: their most horrible quality leading to their downfall.
“Pity that it’s not doing anything about the majority’s asshattery, and comes at the expense of a lot of anti-immigrant stuff. Guess that’s just small potatoes.”
This is just pissyness. Obviously those policies are awful and hurt many people. That’s why it’s a good thing the Republicans are on the way out. The terrible policies will go with them.
I don’t know if you have a reading comprehension problem or just generally a terrible attitude, but you don’t really have any disagreements with my position. I think you misunderstood the initial point thinking that because I argued Republican racism was ironically beneficial in one sense, that I was arguing it was, overall a “good thing.” and you just ran with it. Now you’re in that internet pride zone and have to double down on stupid positions.