what is the implication, not stated outright, of Palin and McCain’s praise of Main Street, Joe Six-Pack, and small town values is that those of us who are not Main Street or Joe Six-Pack are not real Americans.
Anyone who dislikes identity politics based on race or gender or sexual orientation should also dislike this kind of small town/suburban white Christian working class/middle class identity politics.
Since Nixon, culture war has been a nice way for Republicans to win votes, but it doesn’t have much else to recommend it. I’d like to think that people like me, the demographic of shadowy coastal elites who read Borges and watch films with subtitles, are part of a shared enterprise with small town middle-class Christians. That’s more reassuring than the conclusion that we are irreconcilably alien to each other, and even if it were false, it seems like acting as if it were true would be preferable to the alternatives.
