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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   28005 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 7, 2024

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I think it depends on the specific question we're looking at – for instance, I could see rural/urban being much more predictive than political affiliation for guessing if someone hunts or fishes. But on the other hand, for another example, a lot of benefits are provided by religion, independent of conservatism, so some of what I describe above is differences in religious belief – but it also seems like together they are a very potent combination (for instance religious conservatives are less likely to report they are mentally ill than equally religious liberals; see my third link above.)

But overall, since rural areas are more conservative than urban areas, I think it shakes out to being close to the same if we're just curious about Team Red and Team Blue.

I'm glad you're asking these sorts of questions, though. Personally, I think there's more than two (or three) "tribes" in America, and there's a lot of interesting work to be done untangling them.

For example, Skibboleth could argue (and he might be right, although I suspect, at least by some metrics, that there are many more hunters and fishermen in the United States than insurance salesmen) that a conservative is more likely to be an insurance salesman than a hunter or an angler. But that doesn't stop the hunter-fisher breakdown from skewing red. And while some people are interested only in the degree to which Red Tribe is comprised of hunters and anglers, I think it's interesting to ask what Hunter and Angler Tribe looks like. The United States is a big place, with room for more than two teams.

Personally, I think there's more than two (or three) "tribes" in America, and there's a lot of interesting work to be done untangling them.

I've posted on this before, but the red tribe is really a catch all term for three main groups and a bunch of small ones- they'd call each other the church crowd, the country music crowd, and the red dirt crowd. The first is kind of obvious, the second is the party-hearty 'conservatives' who don't go to church but admit they should, if only Sunday wasn't the best day to take the powerboat out, and the third genuinely have ties to rural communities.

Hunting and fishing are high status in all three and more popular than in America as a whole, but probably most popular in the red dirt crowd.

You can be both an insurance salesman and a hunter. I knew quite a lot of people like this growing up (admittedly, in the upper Midwest, not Dallas). It was entirely normal for white-collar suburbanites to put on an orange vest, get a little drunk, and sit in a tree during deer season. Significantly, this is a sporting hobby. They may eat the deer meat, but they're doing it for some combination of social reasons, trophy hunting, and just liking hunting. Also significantly: this does not make you a rugged outdoorsman. If you were to make these people to survive in the woods, they would die.

I think it is probably true that the average homesteader is pretty conservative. The average conservative, however, is a suburbanite, and their nods towards that sort of lifestyle are affectation. (And again, lest it seem like I am beating up on conservatives, I think these affectations are mostly harmless and liberals certainly have their own set of silly affectations). They are not cultivating mannerbund or heroic virtue, or even trying to. They are grilling and shitposting on the Hawkeye Report forums.

IIRC hunters who get lost in the woods have a much higher survival rate than hikers, but selection effects based on the kind of hunting are probably part of that. Agreed that lots of the people at deer camp are fat accountants who don't know how to build a fire without gasoline.

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