If the police kneel in full view of everyone to kill an innocent civilian, before the epidemic was banned, the people spontaneously robbed the supermarket, those who did not wear masks beat the wearer in broad daylight, and even marched, demonstrated, striked, rioted...
If 30% of the country's teenagers think that the earth is flat, school children are taught to drink bleach to avoid security checks, say that they are not afraid of the epidemic and lick supermarket goods, and even parents support their children to drop out of school, the school's teaching materials are all ignorant mistakes...
Mentioning these violent and anti-intellectual incidents, it is difficult to believe that this is the most economically and technologically developed United States. But there are as many of these problems as in the United States. Behind a series of abnormal social phenomena must point to common social problems, and behind these violence and anti-intellectualism is a unique rural elegy in the United States.
The ledger of history begins with the origin of the "red neck" that occupied Capitol Hill.
<h1 class="pgc-h-center-line" data-track="3" > represents the spirit of democratic autonomy and brings hostility</h1>
In 1607, virginia, now the southern United States, welcomed the first Europeans, who claimed to be descendants of Norman aristocrats who conquered England in the 11th century and established slavery. In 1620, the Mayflower, which changed the history of the Americas, came to Boston in the north of the United States, and these people thought that the slave owners in the South were too barbaric, so they flaunted themselves as democracy and showed their superiority.
However, these Yankees became "Saxon roundworms" in the eyes of southerners. This difference in background color can only bring about hostility, and the seeds of the cultural division between the north and the south were planted before the birth of the United States. This irreconcilable contradiction finally broke out in the context of the Civil War in 1861.
As a result of the Civil War, the Yankees won, and in order to achieve political balance, the Northern elite did not liquidate the slave owners of the South, the predecessor of the "Red Neck". And in order to win votes from the South, Northern Democrats affectionately called the Southern farmers "Red Neck", which only meant that the work made the neck red.
The surface is harmonious, but it still can't hide the essence of American mercenary interests. But the seeds are planted, and it is inevitable that they will become more and more intense.
For politicians, confrontation is an opportunity to win supporters, and evangelicals take advantage of the momentum.
The Red Necks originated from the southern farms, and enjoying life, loving the family, being religious, and brave became their labels. However, under the influence of World War II, the Cold War and the rapid development of the US economy, the prevalence of hippie culture has made the young people in American cities become the "Beat Generation", and they have become more and more contemptuous of the "red neck" of the countrymen.
That is, in the 1960s and 1970s, red neck became a derogatory term in the discourse of the times. At the same time, evangelicals were emerging, valuing family and devout religious beliefs, making them in line with the Red Neckers and in natural opposition to the hippies. While exacerbating the stereotypes of the red-neckeds, it also hit it off with the conservative Republican Party. The red neck has become a very important part of the political ecology.
Even the highly overlapping forces of the three parties sent the actor-turned-reagan to the position of President of the United States in 1981. What's more exaggerated is that 64 million evangelicals pushed Trump to power, and there are all the stories at the beginning of the article.
Since Trump is mentioned, it is indispensable to divide society, and it was the same 50 years ago. It's just that the rapid development of society has accelerated everything, including collapse.
<h1 class="pgc-h-center-line" data-track="5" > to reorganize and merge and exacerbate the division of American society</h1>
Reagan and Margaret Thatcher, holding high the banner of reducing state intervention, opened a new wave of economic globalization, but it is bound to cause the outflow of funds to the emptiness of the domestic real economy, which makes the low-end industrial chain and industrial family in the United States collapse in an instant.
In the 1960s and 1970s, the United States was proud to be a worker, and even men went out to work enough to support families with five children. This makes most families pay little attention to education, and they still think that going to the factory and the machine is the right way.
Under this trend, good students are excluded, and students who fight and fight become the mainstream. However, with the globalization of the economy, the golden age of mechanical operators to get rich came to an abrupt end, a large area of workers lost their jobs, the pillar of the original beautiful family became a violent father at home, and then the entire community and society filled with violence fell into a vicious circle, and even Chicago, the third largest city in the United States, has not jumped out of this cycle.
Median household income in the United States was $48,000 in 1978 and $52,000 in 2013, counting inflation or even falling. The Great Lakes Heavy Industrial Zone, where Chicago is located, was completely rusty at that point in time, and what was more exaggerated was that the Automobile City of Detroit declared bankruptcy.
And the people in these industrial cities have completely become the backbone of the opposition to liberalism and globalization, that is, anti-intellectual thinking. This also makes it even more out of place with the educated people in the big cities. This explains not only why he often takes pictures with workers, but also why Trump has gone against globalization.
Red Neck has completely left the countryside at this time and has become a label for conservative Americans. This is not the worst, it is also these 20 years that have made the United States the world's largest gap between rich and poor developed countries. And with the rise of Silicon Valley and Wall Street, it has made the Great Lakes region dark.
The lament is not only in the Great Lakes, which was initially opposed to the "red neck", but also in the southern countryside.
Along the lower Mississippi River, most of the residents still live idyllic lives, and although economic globalization has affected them, the residents with the most primitive characteristics of "red neck" have survived. It's just that the prelude to the song of sorrow is longer, but it will still come.
After the 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil spill, the United States carried out strict environmental protection measures, which is bound to affect the development of the oil industry in these "traditional states" along the Mexican coast, causing the local industrial structure to collapse in an instant.
People who work hard can survive the wave of unemployment. But then Mexicans made their way into the southern United States in droves, which became the last straw that overwhelmed the local population. This explains in one way why Trump built a big wall.
The residents of the southern countryside are still 30 years late in the footsteps of the Great Lakes region. Also because of the lack of attention to education, the "traditional red neck" uses violence at home and in society to vent the resentment of being abandoned by the times, and then the children inherit the violence and fall into a vicious cycle.
<h1 class="pgc-h-center-line" data-track="7" > social problems, not just problems at the bottom of society</h1>
Some readers may wonder, from the countryside to New York and Chicago, why is every corner of the United States full of violence? Why does the United States have advanced technology and education, and cannot avoid the cycle of inheriting violence?
That's the problem, and education is full of problems. The aforementioned industrial cities of the North and the countryside of the South have the idea that it is better to be a worker than to learn, which triggers another cycle of evil.
60 years ago, no one in these places paid attention to education, and the educational atmosphere was extremely poor, and only teachers from public schools would teach in this place. Then public school teachers have the lowest dismissal rate in the United States, or there is no KPI iron rice bowl, so the American Teachers Union often organizes strikes. This, in turn, creates the problem of extremely poor teaching standards.
Such a vicious cycle has become a dead knot, not only making violence breed, shooting cases are not uncommon, but also making the gap between the rich and the poor widen, and more social problems are inevitable.
Universities that are ivory towers of education will not be spared. The hippies that emerged after World War II are also changing with society, they are already well educated, and social and economic development has made them have better educational resources. But discrimination had already been brought about by Europeans setting foot on the American continent, and they were even more scornful of those who came from the industrial cities of the North and the countryside of the South.
This makes the children of the "red neck" feel even more out of place when they enter college, once again exacerbating stereotypes and discrimination. Then the hostility extends to the employment of these students, the vast majority of enterprises prefer students from aristocratic schools along the way, discrimination makes it difficult for them to even find jobs, and the financial industry and the information industry are their untouchable dreams.
So what do these students go back to? Perhaps, the people who carry the American flag on the US Capitol Hill are them.
With these, we look at the anti-intellectual operations in the United States, which are just rare and strange.
Whether it is the red neck at the beginning, the evangelical, the cold northern industrial base after that, it is strange that it has become Trump's ticket warehouse. The violence of unemployment, the cycle of violence derived from violence, the barriers of the information finance industry, and the lack of more important basic education have made anti-intellectual operations more and more.
What is more exaggerated is that Trump's anti-immigrant, anti-abortion law, anti-gay, anti-globalization, America first, and so on, all of which can be supported, have a reasonable explanation. In the southern conservative areas where evangelicalism is prevalent, many parents do not allow their children to enroll in social schools. The fact that these children cannot go to college is still small, but the indoctrination and inheritance of anti-intellectual ideas is a poison to human civilization.
This is not only the sadness of the times, but also the sadness of American history, the sorrow of the whole country, the sorrow of the so-called lighthouse civilization.
The elegy is played to the end, and how it ends is self-evident.
Anti-intellectualism has been proposed by the American historian Hofstadter as early as 1962, who has long proposed that there are many social problems in the fields of education, politics, business, etc. in the United States, but after 60 years, more and more scholars have studied these things, but the American people have gone farther and farther on this road.
Similarly, "red neck" appeared from the beginning, there are positive meanings, pejorative meanings and sometimes middle meanings, but no matter what era, there is a sense of irony and discrimination in it, and even some satirical "red neck" people will eventually become members of the red neck.
Maybe the United States needs a second Lincoln, a second war; maybe the United States needs Trump to make anti-intellectualism more violent; maybe in the cycle of violent evil, falling apart... In any case, the sad country elegy can not save anything after all.