6 ms·

Searching for the Spirit of the Midwest

46 points by samclemens 4y ago

williamDafoe 4y ago
If you are a fan of Alexis DeTocqueville's "Democracy in America" you probably realize that he left off the very ending of that book title, "Democracy in the American Midwest" !! A lot of the really positive things he saw were seen among hardworking people of the MidWestern USA. It's ironic that Ohio was so advanced because it used to be the USA's Silicon Valley (birthplace of American Aviation and many other inventions) but now has fallen economically the most among Midwestern states ... It's become the most Republican state now ... Coincidence? I think not! I've noticed an alarming number of torturing crimes come from Ohio lately, too, thankfully it has displaced California which had a terrifying reputation after the Manson murders of the late 1960s!
- jpadkins 4y ago
  > ... It's become the most Republican state now This is easily verifiable as false, so it makes the rest of your comment suspect. https://wisevoter.com/state-rankings/most-republican-states/ https://wisevoter.com/state-rankings/most-republican-states/
  - fortissimohn 4y ago
    Based on the rest of that sentence you quoted, it is the most among midwestern states.
    - jpadkins 4y ago
      thanks, that wasn't clear at all. But even among Midwest states, that is not true. (KS, MO, SD, ND, NE are all more republican) https://www.bls.gov/regions/midwest/midwest.htm https://www.bls.gov/regions/midwest/midwest.htm
- rayiner 4y ago
  I’m a huge fan of "Democracy in America. But you’re missing a critical point. By 1830 when de Tocqueville was writing, the seeds of the Republican Party were already sown in the Midwest. Ohio was (essentially) Republican then for the same reason it’s Republican now: it’s a culturally and religiously homogenous place. And it’s also the same reason it was an egalitarian democracy—high social trust and social consensus. The Midwest is the closest America has ever come to the egalitarian socialism of Northern Europe, which is similarly homogeneous. By contrast, we have never seen that model of Midwestern democracy replicated in a multicultural society. When you have these different groups, you lose the social trust, you lose the consensus. You end up needing elites and top-down hierarchy to mediate those disparate groups. Contrast say Minnesota with New York. Or consider the history of machine and ethnic politics in Chicago, all the way up to the recent election.
  - chambers 4y ago
    You may find this diagram on Page 2 of this paper interesting: https://dial.uclouvain.be/pr/boreal/object/boreal%3A211443/datastream/PDF_01/view https://dial.uclouvain.be/pr/boreal/object/boreal%3A211443/d... It theorizes how to build social trust, without top-down hierarchy / constant mediation, through the cultivation of strong institutions and a common identity. It's an interesting premise that opposes progressive ideology. However, I have yet to read the books it references, nor have I examined the history behind its findings: https://www.amazon.com/Strains-Commitment-Political-Solidarity-Societies/dp/0198795459 https://www.amazon.com/Strains-Commitment-Political-Solidari...
    - Slava_Propanei 4y ago
      [dead]
  - throwawaylinux 4y ago
    A simple and obvious fact that has an incredible explanatory power in understanding the motivations and actions of the ruling class.
  - dsfyu404ed 4y ago
- JKCalhoun 4y ago
  Agriculture in general was Big Tech at the opening of the 20th Century.
  - nonethewiser 4y ago
    I think manufacturing is more similar to big tech (it WAS tech) in both type and impact.
    - jcoder 4y ago
      > it WAS tech That’s a pretty small view of “tech”. Development of repeatable agricultural practices for predictable yield is absolutely a technological accomplishment (and not just because there were machines involved)
- nonethewiser 4y ago
  By what measure has Ohio fallen more than other midwestern states? I suspect it ranks better than average compared to most midwestern states in terms of health, income, education, etc.
  - iaseiadit 4y ago
    I was curious and checked. Looks like it consistently ranks in the bottom half of the twelve midwestern states: Life expectancy: #10 of 12 GDP per capita: #8 Median household income: #10 Literacy rate: #9 High school graduation rate: #9 Minnesota, North Dakota, and Nebraska rank highest by most measures.
scottlamb 4y ago
> he has worked to revive and reorganize the study of a region that sometimes forgets it has a history, a culture, or even, famously, an accent. (Pronounce that first syllable through your nose.) Huh? My parents are both from Boone, in the center of that map. I'm from Iowa City. My mom says "warshed", which is distinctive, [1] but I don't think any of us say the first syllable of "accent" through our noses. Anyone know what this is talking about? [1] https://www.quickanddirtytips.com/articles/why-do-people-say-warsh-instead-of-wash/ https://www.quickanddirtytips.com/articles/why-do-people-say...
- Infernal 4y ago
  Anecodtal of course but I have family that says warsh (Warshington DC) in southern Appalachia. I always assumed it was a hillbilly sort of thing. No connections to the midwest/"midlands" that I'm aware of.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
- __derek__ 4y ago
  I believe that's a reference to the northern vowel shift.[1] Your family might have been too far west. There is some "Warshington" out here in the PNW, but I never encountered that growing up in Michigan. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inland_Northern_American_English https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inland_Northern_American_Engli...
  - thewebcount 4y ago
    I grew up in Michigan. My 9th grade English teacher, who was very strict about grammar, nearly caused me to fall out of my chair one day when she said “warshed” instead of “washed”. It was very unusual both for our part of the country and for this woman who was such a stickler about our use of the language. (All 9th grade me could think is, “What a fucking hypocrite to constantly criticize us over such nitpicky things and she can’t even pronounce the word ‘washed’!”)
nonethewiser 4y ago
[flagged]
- finthehuman 4y ago
  stay mad
wwwpatdelcom 4y ago
Can I rant for a bit, as a Midwesterner? Perhaps in line with this article: my perspective having grown up and remained in perhaps one of the most emblematic midwestern states, Minnesota: 1. We rest on our laurels a lot and look down on the Southern States for having been, "racist," which really is a red herring for our own racism. "Look at what happened down south in the 1960s, thank goodness Minnesota was not like that." "We're never going to give back the 28th Virginia battle flag from the Civil War, Minnesota will be free forever!" Yet, the Twin Cities has perhaps the largest education gap in the entire United States between black and white Americans. There are any number of explanations for why this happened, perhaps including redlining, or failed well-intentioned policies, etc., but it's a fact. I'm not defending actual racism in southern states in any way, but clearly we have something wrong here. 2. We're extremely patriotic, perhaps even more so than Texas, there are Minnesota iconography everywhere, extreme pride for all things Minnesotan, lake country, living through the cold, Sven and Ole jokes, etc. Yet there were literally almost approaching Nazi-level genocidal parts of our history which are reflected in our flags, our naming conventions, where Native Americans live, and a huge majority of people refuse to acknowledge this because it's not nice to be controversial and talk out of turn or, "be distracting from real issues." You can go to Berlin and see huge museums acknowledging the holocaust, the horrors of the past are widely acknowledged, whereas here in Minnesota I was never taught about what we did in our history, it was highly glossed over in primary school, I had to learn about the shenanigans a lot of the early Minnesotan leaders whose names adorn our streets and counties pulled through Wikipedia. 3. Overall, the disgraced Radio Personality, Garrison Keillor hit the nail on the head when he said, "All the Women are Strong, All the Men are Good Looking, and All the Children are Above Average." As much of a creep Keillor was, that really sums up a large part the mentality very well. There's no need to improve because we're already so great, and if we aren't that great in that specific way yet, we will surely get there, so don't push on it too hard. We basically think of ourselves as a, "Scandinavian-level-democracy country," for some reason, yet, please pay no attention to any number of typical American problems that we have just like any other state. This is not to say Minnesota doesn't do well, and that I don't like Minnesota, we do rank well in relation to other states on a lot of metrics---it's more the mentality that I'm ranting about which I think prevents us from doing even better, which I think the author is getting at in a more broader geographic sense.

46 points by samclemens 4y ago

If you are a fan of Alexis DeTocqueville's "Democracy in America" you probably realize that he left off the very ending of that book title, "Democracy in the American Midwest" !! A lot of the really positive things he saw were seen among hardworking people of the MidWestern USA. It's ironic that Ohio was so advanced because it used to be the USA's Silicon Valley (birthplace of American Aviation and many other inventions) but now has fallen economically the most among Midwestern states ... It's become the most Republican state now ... Coincidence? I think not! I've noticed an alarming number of torturing crimes come from Ohio lately, too, thankfully it has displaced California which had a terrifying reputation after the Manson murders of the late 1960s!

jpadkins 4y ago
> ... It's become the most Republican state now This is easily verifiable as false, so it makes the rest of your comment suspect. https://wisevoter.com/state-rankings/most-republican-states/ https://wisevoter.com/state-rankings/most-republican-states/
- fortissimohn 4y ago
  Based on the rest of that sentence you quoted, it is the most among midwestern states.
  - jpadkins 4y ago
    thanks, that wasn't clear at all. But even among Midwest states, that is not true. (KS, MO, SD, ND, NE are all more republican) https://www.bls.gov/regions/midwest/midwest.htm https://www.bls.gov/regions/midwest/midwest.htm
rayiner 4y ago
I’m a huge fan of "Democracy in America. But you’re missing a critical point. By 1830 when de Tocqueville was writing, the seeds of the Republican Party were already sown in the Midwest. Ohio was (essentially) Republican then for the same reason it’s Republican now: it’s a culturally and religiously homogenous place. And it’s also the same reason it was an egalitarian democracy—high social trust and social consensus. The Midwest is the closest America has ever come to the egalitarian socialism of Northern Europe, which is similarly homogeneous. By contrast, we have never seen that model of Midwestern democracy replicated in a multicultural society. When you have these different groups, you lose the social trust, you lose the consensus. You end up needing elites and top-down hierarchy to mediate those disparate groups. Contrast say Minnesota with New York. Or consider the history of machine and ethnic politics in Chicago, all the way up to the recent election.
- chambers 4y ago
  You may find this diagram on Page 2 of this paper interesting: https://dial.uclouvain.be/pr/boreal/object/boreal%3A211443/datastream/PDF_01/view https://dial.uclouvain.be/pr/boreal/object/boreal%3A211443/d... It theorizes how to build social trust, without top-down hierarchy / constant mediation, through the cultivation of strong institutions and a common identity. It's an interesting premise that opposes progressive ideology. However, I have yet to read the books it references, nor have I examined the history behind its findings: https://www.amazon.com/Strains-Commitment-Political-Solidarity-Societies/dp/0198795459 https://www.amazon.com/Strains-Commitment-Political-Solidari...
  - Slava_Propanei 4y ago
    [dead]
- throwawaylinux 4y ago
  A simple and obvious fact that has an incredible explanatory power in understanding the motivations and actions of the ruling class.
- dsfyu404ed 4y ago
JKCalhoun 4y ago
Agriculture in general was Big Tech at the opening of the 20th Century.
- nonethewiser 4y ago
  I think manufacturing is more similar to big tech (it WAS tech) in both type and impact.
  - jcoder 4y ago
    > it WAS tech That’s a pretty small view of “tech”. Development of repeatable agricultural practices for predictable yield is absolutely a technological accomplishment (and not just because there were machines involved)
nonethewiser 4y ago
By what measure has Ohio fallen more than other midwestern states? I suspect it ranks better than average compared to most midwestern states in terms of health, income, education, etc.
- iaseiadit 4y ago
  I was curious and checked. Looks like it consistently ranks in the bottom half of the twelve midwestern states: Life expectancy: #10 of 12 GDP per capita: #8 Median household income: #10 Literacy rate: #9 High school graduation rate: #9 Minnesota, North Dakota, and Nebraska rank highest by most measures.

scottlamb 4y ago

> he has worked to revive and reorganize the study of a region that sometimes forgets it has a history, a culture, or even, famously, an accent. (Pronounce that first syllable through your nose.) Huh? My parents are both from Boone, in the center of that map. I'm from Iowa City. My mom says "warshed", which is distinctive, [1] but I don't think any of us say the first syllable of "accent" through our noses. Anyone know what this is talking about? [1] https://www.quickanddirtytips.com/articles/why-do-people-say-warsh-instead-of-wash/ https://www.quickanddirtytips.com/articles/why-do-people-say...

Infernal 4y ago
Anecodtal of course but I have family that says warsh (Warshington DC) in southern Appalachia. I always assumed it was a hillbilly sort of thing. No connections to the midwest/"midlands" that I'm aware of.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
__derek__ 4y ago
I believe that's a reference to the northern vowel shift.[1] Your family might have been too far west. There is some "Warshington" out here in the PNW, but I never encountered that growing up in Michigan. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inland_Northern_American_English https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inland_Northern_American_Engli...
- thewebcount 4y ago
  I grew up in Michigan. My 9th grade English teacher, who was very strict about grammar, nearly caused me to fall out of my chair one day when she said “warshed” instead of “washed”. It was very unusual both for our part of the country and for this woman who was such a stickler about our use of the language. (All 9th grade me could think is, “What a fucking hypocrite to constantly criticize us over such nitpicky things and she can’t even pronounce the word ‘washed’!”)

nonethewiser 4y ago

[flagged]

finthehuman 4y ago
stay mad

wwwpatdelcom 4y ago

Can I rant for a bit, as a Midwesterner? Perhaps in line with this article: my perspective having grown up and remained in perhaps one of the most emblematic midwestern states, Minnesota: 1. We rest on our laurels a lot and look down on the Southern States for having been, "racist," which really is a red herring for our own racism. "Look at what happened down south in the 1960s, thank goodness Minnesota was not like that." "We're never going to give back the 28th Virginia battle flag from the Civil War, Minnesota will be free forever!" Yet, the Twin Cities has perhaps the largest education gap in the entire United States between black and white Americans. There are any number of explanations for why this happened, perhaps including redlining, or failed well-intentioned policies, etc., but it's a fact. I'm not defending actual racism in southern states in any way, but clearly we have something wrong here. 2. We're extremely patriotic, perhaps even more so than Texas, there are Minnesota iconography everywhere, extreme pride for all things Minnesotan, lake country, living through the cold, Sven and Ole jokes, etc. Yet there were literally almost approaching Nazi-level genocidal parts of our history which are reflected in our flags, our naming conventions, where Native Americans live, and a huge majority of people refuse to acknowledge this because it's not nice to be controversial and talk out of turn or, "be distracting from real issues." You can go to Berlin and see huge museums acknowledging the holocaust, the horrors of the past are widely acknowledged, whereas here in Minnesota I was never taught about what we did in our history, it was highly glossed over in primary school, I had to learn about the shenanigans a lot of the early Minnesotan leaders whose names adorn our streets and counties pulled through Wikipedia. 3. Overall, the disgraced Radio Personality, Garrison Keillor hit the nail on the head when he said, "All the Women are Strong, All the Men are Good Looking, and All the Children are Above Average." As much of a creep Keillor was, that really sums up a large part the mentality very well. There's no need to improve because we're already so great, and if we aren't that great in that specific way yet, we will surely get there, so don't push on it too hard. We basically think of ourselves as a, "Scandinavian-level-democracy country," for some reason, yet, please pay no attention to any number of typical American problems that we have just like any other state. This is not to say Minnesota doesn't do well, and that I don't like Minnesota, we do rank well in relation to other states on a lot of metrics---it's more the mentality that I'm ranting about which I think prevents us from doing even better, which I think the author is getting at in a more broader geographic sense.