What Awful Reality TV and Suburban Living Have to Do With the Tea Party's Lack of Empathy

[marmar]

AlterNet / By Amanda Marcotte

What Awful Reality TV and Suburban Living Have to Do With the Tea Party's Lack of Empathy
The Tea Parties are partly a product of the suburbs, where social isolation leaves communication about social mores to reality TV. Is it any wonder the movement lacks empathy?

September 20, 2011 |


If there’s any one defining feature of the Tea Party, it’s a lack of empathy for their fellow Americans. Republican candidates know this about their base: more than their supposed love of Jesus or the Founding Fathers, more than any coherent principled conservativism, more even than the strong streak of bigotry running through the Tea Party is this gleeful “screw you” attitude. Therefore, the Republican primary has become a contest to see who can heap the most abuse on Americans Tea Partiers don’t identify with.

You have Herman Cain preening about making Muslims second-class citizens; Michele Bachmann attacking doctors and public health officials who would prevent cervical cancer in young women; Rick Perry crowing about his heavy execution rate (which includes a willingness to execute people who should have been acquitted or had mistrials); and Ron Paul drawing heavy applause from a debate audience for his belief that government should just let the uninsured die. Far from being concerned about misfortune befalling others, the Tea Party routinely supports the expansion of suffering.

To help explain this phenomena, we might remember another signifying characteristic of the Tea Party: despite the enthusiasm for country music, Tea Partiers proliferate in suburban and exurban districts. The most right-wing districts in the country are also some of its most suburban. Michele Bachmann serves the 6th District of Minnesota, which is composed of the suburban area surrounding the north of Minneapolis/St. Paul. Steve King, known for his competing hatreds of immigrants and sexually active women, serves the 5th District of Iowa, built from the suburban sprawl between Omaha and Des Moines. Anti-health-care fanatic Joe Walsh represents Illinois’s 8th District, composed of the northern suburbs of Chicago. Joe Barton, known for apologizing to BP for the White House post-oil spill investigation, serves the 6th District in Texas, which encompasses the suburban sprawl south of the Dallas/Ft. Worth areas.

There’s likely a connection between the lack of empathy and the suburban nature of the conservative base. Research shows people tend to be more bigoted toward gays and those of different races when they have no personal connection with those people. Suburbs are known for breeding social homogeneity that does shelter people from humanizing those who are a little different than them. Beyond that, suburbs make it harder to develop a well-connected social life altogether. Without that, it’s difficult to keep your empathy muscles, aka your ability to look at others and feel a common humanity with them. If you don’t use empathy, you lose it. ..............(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.alternet.org/teaparty/152480/what_awful_reality_tv_and_suburban_living_have_to_do_with_the_tea_party%27s_lack_of_empathy/

[Cirque du So-What]

1. Sociopath nation

evolved from the primordial ooze of nascent suburbia in the aftermath of WW II. I was born a decade after the onset of suburban development, but I was fortunate enough to have spent my formative years away from that culturally sterile environment. Having lived and spent significant chunks of time in various locations all around this country, I can vouch for the the preponderance of non-empathetic individuals reared in suburbia - in whatever location that may be.

[enough]

2. I find the generalizing about suburban life problematic.

I live in a rural area that became suburban over four decades or so, to my dismay. I wish it had stayed rural. However, there is no way you could say that people here are socially isolated or that there is no sense of community.

People are involved in all kinds of community endeavors, so many that you could hardly list them all. Environmental, political (both local and national), work with children and the elderly, all sorts of sports and fitness, religious, charitable .... I could go on and on.

Also, my local YMCA, which is busy all day and most of the night, is very mixed ethnically, racially, and age, as well as various forms of gender identity. One reason people like to go there, I think, is that you know you will never hear a bigoted word from anyone.

[raccoon]

3. Where are you? nt

[enough]

7. Western Chester County, PA. About an hour west of Philadelphia. (nt)

[mwb970]

4. It's worse than just "no empathy".

"If there’s any one defining feature of the Tea Party, it’s a lack of empathy for their fellow Americans."

Well, there's one other defining feature of the Tea Party: a rejection of science, logic, or any other form of cognitive activity. Overwhelming emotion, specifically rage, hate, and fear, rules their lives. There is no place for thought.

Here's what gets me about this. Intellect and empathy for others are the two main characteristics that separate human beings from the animals. Teabaggers demonstrably have neither, and in fact violently reject both. This raises the question: what exactly are they? And how do we deal with the un-American, inhuman whatever-they-ares in our midst? Is there anything that will make them go away? Or is America to be destroyed from within?

I also wonder whether there is another country that is currently in such thrall to lethal, destructive far-right-wing policies? Or are we alone?

[Fuddnik]

5. America is already destroyed.

It just hasn't set in yet.

Right-wing authoritarian type personalities only interact with like-minded people. They reinforce each others ideas and prejudices. They don't want any outside influences upsetting their apple cart.

And, they're taking the whole country down the drain with them.

[Myrina]

6. It's "Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous" all over again ...

... remember that awful show from the 80's that flaunted wealth and excess and glamor and luxury (and subconsciously made viewers feel like crap because they didn't HAVE those lifestyles?). I think these types of shows are the same thing, in a slightly different package.

Oh and we're supposed to feel sorry for the woes these folks have. WTFever.