A Liberal Dose, August 26, 2021 "To Vax or not to Vax: That Is the Question"

 

A Liberal Dose

August 26, 2021

Troy D. Smith

“To Vax or Not to Vax? That Is the Question”

 

Recently, the CDC recommended a vaccine booster for those with health issues that affect the immune system. My wife and I got ours on Tuesday. It was a remarkably easy process -I suspect, in part, because pharmacies have so many vaccine doses that are in danger of going bad because no one is taking them, but that’s just a guess. Point is, we got them. Next day I had a sore arm, and felt like you do when you have a bad cold coming on. It’s a small price to pay for my safety and that of everyone around me.

And yet. According to various sites I’ve checked (I’d cite them but they are numerous and easy to find), Tennessee is hovering around 40% full vaccination rate for those who are eligible for the vaccine. When you add in the people who took one shot but haven’t taken the second, it rises to 47%. Fewer than half. And believe it or not, Tennessee has one of the higher rates in the South. There are still a lot of people, here and around the country, who refuse to get the shot. Since the vaccines became widely available, I’ve personally known three people who have died of COVID-19 -two of them here in Sparta, both my age or younger. Why would people take that risk -not just to themselves, but to others? For that matter, why have so many people been so adamantly opposed to wearing masks?

I’ve heard a lot of justifications. Personal freedom of choice is the most common. Others say that to wear a mask or get a shot would display a lack of faith in God. I would point those people to Leviticus 13, where God commanded anyone who seems to have leprosy to have it inspected by an expert, and if they have it they must practice “social distance,” warn people who approach them, and cover their mouth and nose if anyone gets too close. Or perhaps to Matthew 4:7, “Do not put the Lord your God to the test.” Or even “Love thy neighbor.” I’ve also heard concerns about the vaccines’ safety. One person said they hadn’t gotten it because they heard it makes you sterile. Another told me they don’t trust scientists because first they said Pluto was a planet, now they say it’s not. And there are a lot of QAnon folks out there who believe the whole thing is a scam to inject computer chips into your bloodstream so Bill Gates can control your mind, as if he hasn’t already done that with computers. Some people, though, raise valid points. Is it really safe to take something that was developed so quickly without waiting to see its long-term effects? I had this initial concern myself. I would make two points here: first, the reason it was developed so fast is because scientists have been studying other corona virus strains for decades, and second, you have to weigh the dangers in the balance. If your hotel is on fire and it is full of people, and there is a fire extinguisher handy, is that the time for an internal debate about the possible long-term effects of fire extinguisher foam?

The “personal freedom” folks raise a point worth considering. I’ve frequently argued that I believe in striking a balance between personal liberty and community good. But your personal liberty reaches its limit when it endangers the life and liberty of someone else. If this virus is allowed to keep spreading it will mutate into stronger versions.

Libertarians and conservatives argue that the government should not meddle in individual moral choices. But that implies the belief that, if left on their own, people will usually do the right thing without having to be forced to do so.

If you believe that and haven’t been vaccinated, folks, you’re proving my point and not your own.

--Troy D. Smith, a White County native, is a novelist and a history professor at Tennessee Tech. His words do not necessarily represent TTU.

A complete list of Liberal Dose columns can be found HERE

A list of other historical essays that have appeared on this blog can be found HERE

Author's website: www.troyduanesmith.com

The author's historical lectures on youtube can be found HERE

A Liberal Dose, August 12, 2021 "What Do You Hope to Accomplish?"

 

A Liberal Dose

August 12, 2021

Troy D. Smith

“What Do You Hope to Accomplish?”

I’ve received a good bit of private feedback from readers about my column in the six months or so I’ve been doing it. Though I am not privy to any letters the newspaper receives on the subject, and suspect there are some from people who don’t like what I may say, what I have personally received has been overwhelmingly positive. A lot of it is from people who align with me politically and are happy to see their perspective being presented. If voting trends are any indication, that is anywhere from 20 to 30 percent of people in White County, which is a minority but still represents several thousand people. I have been surprised, though, at the number of positive comments I have received from self-professed conservatives who are disturbed at the direction the Republican Party has gone the past few years.

Recently I have been corresponding with an old, dear friend of mine whom I respect very much and who takes exception to some of the things I have written. We are able to discuss these areas of disagreement without rancor or nastiness, with reasoned discourse. He frequently makes what I concede to be good points. He asked me a couple of questions recently that I thought deserved a response in this forum. I paraphrase:

“Why have you spent the last several columns denigrating the opinions of people who disagree with you? What do you hope to accomplish -do you really think you will change people’s minds by being so negative? Why don’t you say what you are for rather than running down what you are against?”

Like I said, I think these are very good, and very valid, questions. I generally try to earn the reputation of being fair, of trying to bring opposite sides together, and of basing my arguments on evidence instead of partisan rhetoric. It is a point of pride to me that in ten years of teaching at TTU, and several thousand students, there have only been one or two who hinted in their evaluations they thought I was “too liberal”, whereas there have probably been over 100 comments in that time about how I try to present things fairly.

Let me briefly outline what being liberal means to me. It means I believe in the Constitution, and I believe in it as a living, growing document. I believe in union, and in working to make that union “more perfect.” I believe in the vision laid out by Thomas Paine, of a government that equally protects individual freedom and the greater community good, with an equal seat at the table for everyone regardless of race, gender, religion, class, region, sexual orientation, or any other form of self-identification. I believe in a union that promotes the general welfare and provides for the common defense. That means no one gets left out, left behind, or suppressed. I believe in everyone pulling together instead of every man for himself.

I do not believe traditional conservatism is antithetical to that vision; I believe that the tension of left and right contributes to a system of checks and balances that ensures both individual liberty and common good are protected.

But I believe that, over the last twenty years and especially the last five, the Republican Party establishment and many of its voters have become something different. Note I said many, not all. But enough. What I see now is a disregard for democracy, morality, compassion, and decency. I see a cult built around a con artist who stokes the rage of people who are frightened, goading them to un-American actions. I cannot present that as “both sides are equal.” There is a time when you have to stand firm.

I may not win over people on the other side- but I might get through to some of the people in the middle, and that could make all the difference.

 

--Troy D. Smith, a White County native, is a novelist and a history professor at Tennessee Tech. His words do not necessarily represent TTU.

 

A complete list of Liberal Dose columns can be found HERE

A list of other historical essays that have appeared on this blog can be found HERE

Author's website: www.troyduanesmith.com

The author's historical lectures on youtube can be found HERE

A Liberal Dose, Aug. 5, 2021 "When White County Was Blue, part 3"

 

A Liberal Dose

August 5, 2021

Troy D. Smith

“When White County Was Blue, part 3”

 

In this column I hope to tie together several things that I have been discussing the last several weeks. I’ve talked about the conservative shift away from facts, and how that has coincided with White County turning from dark blue to dark red. A few months ago I wrote about the differences between liberals and conservatives, and a couple of people pointed out to me that I was describing traditional conservatives, not present-day ones. And that is true, for the most part. A lot of conservatives do still believe in governmental fiscal responsibility, everyone getting a fair shot to work hard and become their own boss, lower taxes and fewer social programs to foster individual initiative. But I don’t believe White County residents’ attitudes about those things reversed between 2000 and 2004 (when Republicans started winning elections here). White County supported Jimmy Carter and Walter Mondale over Ronald Reagan. White County knew that Democrats were liberal in the 1990s, but still voted for them.

The change that occurred was not really about political theory or philosophy, or objective facts. The change was due to a change in feelings. America post 9/11 became a land of “truthiness,” where truth is defined by how you feel about it rather than what the facts are. And, after 9/11, what people felt was scared and angry. Threatened. In such an atmosphere it is easy to get caught up in “us and them.” “Them” was initially Muslims and/or Arabs, but quickly expanded to anyone foreign, then to anyone liberal or a minority. All those groups came to be seen as threats to America -that is, America as the frightened people had known it. The Bush administration used that fear as a means to drum public support for their adventure in Iraq. The Republican Party made an art form out of using it to get votes.

When I heard hardcore Tea Partiers a decade ago, or hard-core Trump supporters now, they sound just like the people I heard around town in the years right after 9/11 when they talked about anyone Mideastern. Or South Asian, which is totally different, but is still “different.” I hear the same anger… and, behind it, the same fear.

And along comes someone like Donald Trump -a con artist who loves only money and his own hide -who is a master at stoking that anger and fear. Stoking it to the point of conflagration. To the point that large numbers of people are speaking seriously about armed rebellion with a view to executing their enemies in the street and imposing their own view of what America is. People who lack the historical perspective or context to understand what happened in Nazi Germany and why, and who may soon lack any historical perspective at all due to the Republicans’ war on teaching history.

And please realize, most Republican politicians do not really buy into what they are selling- they know their base has bought it, and want to keep getting elected. Take notice that when Republican legislatures want to redraw districts, or impose voting restriction laws that target groups who vote Democratic, they suddenly have a brilliant grasp of math and computers. They know what facts are. They just don’t care. And their base knows what facts are, too -but all that is registering with them now is their feelings.

And here’s what they just don’t get. This chain of events -this slow-motion implosion -means that Osama bin Laden’s plan succeeded beyond his wildest dreams. He wanted to bring us down by terrorizing us to the point we acted without thinking, turned on each other, and destroyed ourselves. If people in our country -and in our community -don’t get ahold of themselves, take a step back, take a deep breath, and calm down -and stop listening to Donald Trump and Tucker Carlson -we may well be handing bin Laden the win.

 --Troy D. Smith, a White County native, is a novelist and a history professor at Tennessee Tech. His words do not necessarily represent TTU.

A complete list of Liberal Dose columns can be found HERE

A list of other historical essays that have appeared on this blog can be found HERE

Author's website: www.troyduanesmith.com

The author's historical lectures on youtube can be found HERE

A Liberal Dose, July 29, 2021 "When White County Was Blue, Part 2"

 

A Liberal Dose

July 29, 2021

Troy D. Smith

“When White County Was Blue, part 2”

 

Last week I shared statistics about presidential elections in White County over the last 120 years. For most of that time the Democrat won by huge margins, with only a couple of exceptions (plus the unusual election of 1968, when the pro-segregation third-party candidate George Wallace beat both Republican and Democrat). But that started to change in 2004, when Bush won by the same margin he had lost in 2000. In every election since, the Democratic candidate had done progressively worse and the Republican candidate progressively better, so that now the polarities have been reversed and the Republican Party dominates by about the same percentage the Democrats did in the 20^th century. What changed?

The fact that Wallace did so well in 1968 shows that race trumped everything else 50 years ago. The two 20^th-century Republican victories, 1972 and (barely) 1988, could also be said to have strong racial components: Nixon’s “Southern strategy” to win the votes of Democrats angry about Civil Rights laws, and Bush’s “Willie Horton” ad that implied Dukakis was going to turn black rapists loose. Not coincidentally, Bush’s campaign was managed by Lee Atwater, whose defense of the Southern strategy is legendary. It would be logical to think that Obama’s race might have been a factor in his huge defeats in White County.

But there is more to it than that. Bush beat Kerry in 2004, after all, and -though Obama lost both times -he did very much better than either Hillary Clinton or Joe Biden.

Something changed between 2000 -when local elections still tended to go overwhelmingly to Democrats -and 2004, when Bush ran for re-election. I think we all know what the biggest event of Bush’s first term was: 9/11. Remember a previous column, when I discussed the Bush administration’s bending of reality (AKA “lying”) to convince the American public to support his plan to invade Iraq in 2003. That effort worked because so many Americans had become terrified -even paranoid -about Muslims as a result of 9/11. Iraq had nothing to do with it, but most people didn’t care -they were lumping all Muslims, and even all dark-skinned foreigners, together, and anyone who didn’t agree with that attitude was being condemned as treasonous. I remember sitting in a barber’s chair and hearing everyone in the room cursing “sand n-----rs.”  I remember “Freedom Fries” because the French were suddenly hated since they didn’t want to help invade Iraq. I remember tabling on TTU campus with the College Democrats, raising money to send bathroom items and phone cards to U.S. troops overseas, and having multiple students cuss us out because as Democrats we were “traitors.”

And I remember something that happened a couple of weeks after Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

I was living in Illinois at the time, attending grad school, and I had come home for a visit. I got in pretty late, and I stopped at an all-night restaurant in Crossville for a cup of coffee. There were two or three other customers, and they and the waitresses were discussing the fact that a large number of Katrina refugees were being allowed to stay temporarily at the old POW camp in Cumberland County (which in itself is drenched in irony). Everyone there was upset… because they hadn’t realized the refugees would be black, and now they were going to have to lock their doors and watch the cash register and maybe ask the Klan to get involved. I was vocally outraged. One waitress, trying to keep the peace, said, “Well, it’s really our own fault, we never should have got involved in that Alamo.”

Which made no sense whatsoever -until after I left and had thought about it. There were a lot of Latino migrant workers coming into the area at that time. She was conflating all dark people as the same, and as a problem. And a threat. So were many others.

Stay tuned.

 

--Troy D. Smith, a White County native, is a novelist and a history professor at Tennessee Tech. His words do not necessarily represent TTU.

A complete list of Liberal Dose columns can be found HERE

A list of other historical essays that have appeared on this blog can be found HERE

Author's website: www.troyduanesmith.com

The author's historical lectures on youtube can be found HERE

A Liberal Dose, July 22, 2021 "When White County Was Blue, Part 1"

 

A Liberal Dose

July 22, 2021

Troy D. Smith

“When White County Was Blue, part 1”

 

For the last several weeks, I have been talking about the gradual slide of conservatives away from objective, empirical facts. On a local level, the timeline of that transition coincides with the slide of White County, and the Upper Cumberland in general, from a solid Democratic stronghold to a solid Republican one. I found myself wondering if the two phenomena were connected. When I was a kid- and for most of my life, really -White County was so reliably blue that a Republican holding local office was practically unheard of. Of course, this had been true of the whole South -but it remained true in this county even after it had begun to change in the rest of the South and even Tennessee.

My gut reaction was to think that it was the 2008 election and the fact that a black man won the Democratic nomination. I knew several white people in White County (and around the country) who abandoned the Democratic ticket for the first time in their lives. And to this day I still hear of “respectable” members of our community using the n-word to refer to our former president.

But. I also remembered that George W. Bush won White County in 2004, and that an article in this very newspaper remarked on how historically rare that was. So the change had begun before Obama. I have a theory about it -one that ties in with my previous discussions about facts and science -which I will explain next column. I’m going to use the remainder of this one, though, in laying out the historical facts for you. I looked at the presidential results in White County for every election between 1900 and 2020. Allow me to tell you how many times the Republican carried White County in the 20^th century (25 elections).

Twice.

The first time was in 1972: Nixon vs. McGovern. Nixon won 60% to 37% (I will give all the results in terms of percentages). McGovern was shellacked in general- the only state he carried was Massachusetts, he didn’t even win his home state of South Dakota. It was the first time in history a Republican won every Southern state. Still, it was closer in White County than it was nationwide, where the margin was 68% to 30%. The only other time was 1988, when Bush, Sr. beat Dukakis on the national stage 58% to 42%. In White County, though, Bush’s victory was razor-thin: 50% to 49%, or a margin of only 82 votes.

The Democrat won White County in every election from 1900 to 1964 (we’ll discuss 1968 in a minute) by an average of 70% to 30%. Now, for the whole state of Tennessee during that time, the Republican won 5 times (Harding 1920, Hoover 1928, Eisenhower 1952 & 1956, Nixon over Kennedy in 1960)… but in White County they still lost big in those years.

After the Civil Rights Act was signed into law by the Democrat Lyndon Johnson in 1964, he famously said his party would lose the South for a generation as a consequence. And, in fact, Republicans started doing better in the South, in part due to Nixon’s “Southern strategy” we discussed last time.

But White County held on. Reagan won Tennessee both times (1980 & 1984), but not White County. Bill Clinton won by large margins both times. Al Gore lost his home state of Tennessee to Bush, but he won White County 53% to 45%. But in 2004 Bush beat Kerry, 56% to 44% -the numbers were reversed. Obama lost in 2008 63% to 35%, 68% to 31% in 2012. Trump won 78% to 19% in 2016, 81% to 18% in 2020.

In 1968, by the way, neither Democrat nor Republican won; the county was carried by the Independent racist governor of Alabama, George Wallace, who ran on a platform of stopping desegregation.

But what changed in 2004?

--Troy D. Smith, a White County native, is a novelist and a history professor at Tennessee Tech. His words do not necessarily represent TTU.

A complete list of Liberal Dose columns can be found HERE

A list of other historical essays that have appeared on this blog can be found HERE

Author's website: www.troyduanesmith.com

The author's historical lectures on youtube can be found HERE

Slide from Reality- Part 3, "Fear and Truthiness"

 

A Liberal Dose

July 15, 2021

Troy D. Smith

“Slide from Reality, Part 3: Fear and Truthiness”

If you haven't already, you might want to read PART 1 and PART 2

 

I’ve been talking about Republicans’ slow slide from reality, and last week I discussed how denying climate change got conservatives used to the idea of denying science and facts. Now I’m going to talk about the consequences of a huge world event: the destruction unleashed on America on September 11, 2001. I don’t think most people realize just how important that day was, and how much our whole world today was shaped by it. I’m going to talk about it in more detail, in a different context, in a later column. For today I’m going to discuss the political ramifications of it.

Most of us are old enough to remember that day, and how we felt. It was terrible. Terrible for the human suffering, yes, but also terrible for each of us on an existential level. With the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War, we were the world’s only superpower, and we felt kind of invulnerable. All of a sudden we knew how very vulnerable we were. Terrorists could potentially kill any of us at any time. Most of us felt anger, even rage; all of us felt a new kind of fear. Those feelings were expressed in different ways. There was a rash of violent incidents around the country in which people were beating, even killing, fellow Americans who were Muslim. Some weren’t even Muslim, they were just dark-skinned people from a different part of the world. We invaded Afghanistan, even though that region has a long history of being easy to invade but almost impossible to fully defeat. We willingly surrendered many of our liberties to the government in order to feel more secure.

And, in 2003, we invaded Iraq, thus fighting two wars at once. Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11, but a large number of Americans believed they did anyhow, because it just felt like they did. Plus, the Bush administration assured us, they had weapons of mass destruction –there was absolute proof of it. The administration didn’t actually show the proof, but most of us believed them –because we were angry, and we wanted to do something, and we wanted to believe it. I say “we,” by the way, but I was opposed to the war at the time because it didn’t seem like they had any proof. Turns out, they didn’t, because there was none. We were led into war by lies disguised as facts. But the fact is, many Americans willingly chose to believe those lies at the time because they wanted to. I think more people than want to admit suspected all along there were no true facts at the heart of those claims, but didn’t care. Years later, though, many conservatives started feeling that you just can’t trust the “facts” fed to you by the establishment, even when the establishment is your own party.

In 2005, a Bush aide told a reporter that the press’s criticisms of Bush were not valid, because reporters are “in what we call the reality-based community” and believe you can solve problems and understand the world by looking at facts. “That’s not the way the world really works anymore. We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality.”

That same year, Stephen Colbert –in the first episode of his show, which was a satire of conservative pundits –coined a new word to describe that attitude: “truthiness.” Truthiness is something that seems like truth because it is what you want to be true. Facts don’t matter, only how you feel about the subject. The word’s not in the dictionary, Colbert said, but you can’t trust dictionaries anyway. Around the same time, people started referring to the phenomenon as “post-truth politics.”

All these factors paved the way for the radical departure from reality that the Republican Party would embark on in the 2010s.

 

--Troy D. Smith, a White County native, is a novelist and a history professor at Tennessee Tech. His words do not necessarily represent TTU.

A complete list of Liberal Dose columns can be found HERE

A list of other historical essays that have appeared on this blog can be found HERE

Author's website: www.troyduanesmith.com

The author's historical lectures on youtube can be found HERE

A Liberal Dose, July 8, 2021 "Slide from Reality, Part 2- Climate Change"

 

A Liberal Dose

July 8, 2021

Troy D. Smith

“Slide from Reality, Part 2: Climate Change”

 

Last Week I talked about some of the factors in the late 20^th century that helped lead to 21^st century conservatives no longer accepting scientific, or other kinds of empirical, facts. The rise of political talk radio and television and the advent of the internet, both in the 1990s, made it easier to isolate oneself from alternative points of view. But there was something else that started happening in that decade, and sped up after the turn of the century, that specifically spoke to conservatives: denial of climate science.

I am a historian, not a scientist. But I do teach, and studied In my doctoral program, environmental history –so I pay particular attention to this topic. I could explain in detail the (very factual) way the greenhouse effect works, and why, but you can find that information easily. It’s not that the facts aren’t out there –it’s that some people have worked very hard to delegitimize them. 97% of climate scientists agree that Earth’s average annual temperature is getting hotter each year, and that human activity is the primary factor causing it. That number has held steady for this whole century. Do you realize how hard it is to get 97% of academics to agree on anything at all? Once upon a time in America, if 97% of the experts said something was happening, probably 97% of the general public would trust them on it. So what happened?

It was that other 3% -or, more accurately, the people who funded them. Many of that 3% wound up appearing on television talk shows –especially, but not limited to, conservative ones –and were employed by think tanks that were financed by oil and other energy companies. Because some newspapers, channels, and programs wanted to be perceived as presenting objective news and not opinion, they would have one scientist on their show who believed in climate change and one who disagreed, and let them argue about it. So viewers were exposed to venues that either showed only the 3% point of view, or one that presented the 3% and the 97% equally. That made it easy to convince a large number of Americans that the experts were divided and that both points of view were roughly equal –therefore not reliable.

That process was expedited in 2009 when over a thousand hacked emails from climatologists were released by conservative activists and offered as proof that the researchers were making up the whole thing as a way to get government money. Independent fact-checkers quickly verified that the emails had been misrepresented and taken out of context and that the accusation, not the climate research, was actually the hoax. That evidence didn’t matter, though, to those who wanted to disbelieve in climate change, if they ever even heard about it. Let me be clear here: climate science became political because if people believed in it oil companies would lose money, and it was the oil companies who bought the ads that financed the talk shows and who donated heavily to politicians (on both sides of the aisle, but especially on the right). So when the TV/radio pundits and the politicians started questioning scientific facts, the people in their base who had already gotten in the habit of only hearing one point of view started doing the same thing. The result? Such people stopped believing scientists, or scientific fact, and viewed any fact that didn’t support their party’s current worldview as a liberal hoax or even a diabolical conspiracy.

Nowadays more people believe in climate change –because we are literally seeing it. Many conservatives, though, will argue that it is not because of carbon emissions but is just a natural cycle of the earth. That’s not what the experts say –but experts no longer seem to matter. People think twenty minutes on the internet makes them as knowledgeable as someone who trained for years.

More to come.

 

--Troy D. Smith, a White County native, is a novelist and a history professor at Tennessee Tech. His words do not necessarily represent TTU.

 

A complete list of Liberal Dose columns can be found HERE.

A list of other historical essays that have appeared on this blog appear HERE

Author's website: www.troyduanesmith.com

The author's historical lectures on youtube can be found HERE.