Juan-Carlos Gandhi (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
juan_gandhi) wrote2004-11-05 11:07 pm
juan_gandhi) wrote2004-11-05 11:07 pm
Political Corrections
This day, exactly 14000 years ago, an unknown Spanish artist living in Altamira cave (a caveman or a cavewoman, it is hard to tell now) had finished decorating the walls of their people's cave. Using charcoal, ochre and hematite, the artist has produced beautiful polychromic images of animals, in oscurochiarist manner, the images that deeply impress viewers even today.
People viewed the world as polychromic from ancient times. The Greeks, although their perception differed from ours, so that the sea, "talassa", was green for them, painted their beautiful sculptures, those that we see as snow-white in modern museums; but the colors of Roman Fayum mosaics did not fade and we see the people that lived 2000 years ago as if they were our contemporaries - a weird, weird feeling indeed.
In the middle of XIX century something strange happened - photography was invented, and became popular. The images became black-and-white. Half a century later cinema added to this culture; and by that time people already were used to the fact that most of the images of the real world were black-and-white.
The world, in the eyes of the people, was becoming gray. Military form, for easily explainable reasons, became a shade of gray; life in the trenches of WWI was left in the memories as gray, desperate existence of gray people.
The most part of the XX century, the age of totalitarianism is left as gray in human memory. The world was perceived as black and white, good and evil; even if other colors - red, brown, yellow were used to denote the Dark Side.
But things seemed to be changing. Although the Age of Aquarius, declared to be "coming soon", actually won't arrive until after about 300 years, the flower generation brought back the color to our existence. Colored photo, cinema, tv made the gray scale a notion from the past. Rainbow flag became a sign of new era. Even the telephone became colored.
So we though the gray era was over. Not so in the minds of "average people". The computer revolution had ended; the Texas oil mafia had cheated naive optimistic user-friendly Californians; the "father of the internet" Al Gore lost to the biggest bigot of XXI century - and the people loved it. The people want the black-and-white world back; they don't understand polychromism - with all colors being equal you cannot tell the right from the wrong, and this is bad for the children.
On November 2nd I thought I did not care whether Bush or Kerry wins. Their declared programs looked pretty much the same, even if Kerry did not follow Clinton's advice to publicly condemn gay marriages. But when rumors were spread about Kerry's being ahead (just a trick to cheat suckers on pharmaceutical futures), I discovered that I felt a relief. Well, we lost.
Look at the map:
... and at another map: 
- that's a continental divide.
Some people come up with an easy, but faulty explanation: here's a fake table of "average IQ per state":
State Avg. IQ 2004
1 Connecticut 113 Kerry
2 Massachusetts 111 Kerry
3 New Jersey 111 Kerry
4 New York 109 Kerry
5 Rhode Island 107 Kerry
6 Hawaii 106 Kerry
7 Maryland 105 Kerry
8 New Hampshire 105 Kerry
9 Illinois 104 Kerry
10 Delaware 103 Kerry
11 Minnesota 102 Kerry
12 Vermont 102 Kerry
13 Washington 102 Kerry
14 California 101 Kerry
15 Pennsylvania 101 Kerry
16 Maine 100 Kerry
17 Virginia 100 Bush
18 Wisconsin 100 Kerry
19 Colorado 99 Bush
20 Iowa 99 Bush
21 Michigan 99 Kerry
22 Nevada 99 Bush
23 Ohio 99 Bush
24 Oregon 99 Kerry
25 Alaska 98 Bush
26 Florida 98 Bush
27 Missouri 98 Bush
28 Kansas 96 Bush
29 Nebraska 95 Bush
30 Arizona 94 Bush
31 Indiana 94 Bush
32 Tennessee 94 Bush
33 North Carolina 93 Bush
34 West Virginia 93 Bush
35 Arkansas 92 Bush
36 Georgia 92 Bush
37 Kentucky 92 Bush
38 New Mexico 92 Bush
39 North Dakota 92 Bush
40 Texas 92 Bush
41 Alabama 90 Bush
42 Louisiana 90 Bush
43 Montana 90 Bush
44 Oklahoma 90 Bush
45 South Dakota 90 Bush
46 South Carolina 89 Bush
47 Wyoming 89 Bush
48 Idaho 87 Bush
49 Utah 87 Bush
50 Mississippi 85 Bush
I do not think we can trust this table. There is another, a more viable, explanation here: look at this map from mid-XIX century:
Well, the world has not ended yet. Even the flow of liberals running to Canada seems to be non-existent. Here's what Times writes:
"COME OUT, readers, from under your bedclothes. Stop cowering behind the sofa. Quit exchanging looks of fearful incomprehension with strangers in the street.
The world did not end on Tuesday. A great darkness did not descend across civilisation. America is not about to embark on a biblically-mandated jihad against the enemies of evangelical Christianity around the world. American soldiers will not be enforcing Washington’s imperium on your towns and villages any time soon.
You will not be required to swap your compulsory licence fee from the BBC to Fox News. Gays will not be bundled back into the closet by sex police from Alabama and Mississippi. Women will not be dragged screaming from abortion clinics."
It is probably just 4 years... but nobody knows for sure, right?
People viewed the world as polychromic from ancient times. The Greeks, although their perception differed from ours, so that the sea, "talassa", was green for them, painted their beautiful sculptures, those that we see as snow-white in modern museums; but the colors of Roman Fayum mosaics did not fade and we see the people that lived 2000 years ago as if they were our contemporaries - a weird, weird feeling indeed.
In the middle of XIX century something strange happened - photography was invented, and became popular. The images became black-and-white. Half a century later cinema added to this culture; and by that time people already were used to the fact that most of the images of the real world were black-and-white.
The world, in the eyes of the people, was becoming gray. Military form, for easily explainable reasons, became a shade of gray; life in the trenches of WWI was left in the memories as gray, desperate existence of gray people.
The most part of the XX century, the age of totalitarianism is left as gray in human memory. The world was perceived as black and white, good and evil; even if other colors - red, brown, yellow were used to denote the Dark Side.
But things seemed to be changing. Although the Age of Aquarius, declared to be "coming soon", actually won't arrive until after about 300 years, the flower generation brought back the color to our existence. Colored photo, cinema, tv made the gray scale a notion from the past. Rainbow flag became a sign of new era. Even the telephone became colored.
So we though the gray era was over. Not so in the minds of "average people". The computer revolution had ended; the Texas oil mafia had cheated naive optimistic user-friendly Californians; the "father of the internet" Al Gore lost to the biggest bigot of XXI century - and the people loved it. The people want the black-and-white world back; they don't understand polychromism - with all colors being equal you cannot tell the right from the wrong, and this is bad for the children.
On November 2nd I thought I did not care whether Bush or Kerry wins. Their declared programs looked pretty much the same, even if Kerry did not follow Clinton's advice to publicly condemn gay marriages. But when rumors were spread about Kerry's being ahead (just a trick to cheat suckers on pharmaceutical futures), I discovered that I felt a relief. Well, we lost.
Look at the map:
... and at another map: - that's a continental divide.Some people come up with an easy, but faulty explanation: here's a fake table of "average IQ per state":
State Avg. IQ 2004
1 Connecticut 113 Kerry
2 Massachusetts 111 Kerry
3 New Jersey 111 Kerry
4 New York 109 Kerry
5 Rhode Island 107 Kerry
6 Hawaii 106 Kerry
7 Maryland 105 Kerry
8 New Hampshire 105 Kerry
9 Illinois 104 Kerry
10 Delaware 103 Kerry
11 Minnesota 102 Kerry
12 Vermont 102 Kerry
13 Washington 102 Kerry
14 California 101 Kerry
15 Pennsylvania 101 Kerry
16 Maine 100 Kerry
17 Virginia 100 Bush
18 Wisconsin 100 Kerry
19 Colorado 99 Bush
20 Iowa 99 Bush
21 Michigan 99 Kerry
22 Nevada 99 Bush
23 Ohio 99 Bush
24 Oregon 99 Kerry
25 Alaska 98 Bush
26 Florida 98 Bush
27 Missouri 98 Bush
28 Kansas 96 Bush
29 Nebraska 95 Bush
30 Arizona 94 Bush
31 Indiana 94 Bush
32 Tennessee 94 Bush
33 North Carolina 93 Bush
34 West Virginia 93 Bush
35 Arkansas 92 Bush
36 Georgia 92 Bush
37 Kentucky 92 Bush
38 New Mexico 92 Bush
39 North Dakota 92 Bush
40 Texas 92 Bush
41 Alabama 90 Bush
42 Louisiana 90 Bush
43 Montana 90 Bush
44 Oklahoma 90 Bush
45 South Dakota 90 Bush
46 South Carolina 89 Bush
47 Wyoming 89 Bush
48 Idaho 87 Bush
49 Utah 87 Bush
50 Mississippi 85 Bush
I do not think we can trust this table. There is another, a more viable, explanation here: look at this map from mid-XIX century:
Well, the world has not ended yet. Even the flow of liberals running to Canada seems to be non-existent. Here's what Times writes:
"COME OUT, readers, from under your bedclothes. Stop cowering behind the sofa. Quit exchanging looks of fearful incomprehension with strangers in the street.
The world did not end on Tuesday. A great darkness did not descend across civilisation. America is not about to embark on a biblically-mandated jihad against the enemies of evangelical Christianity around the world. American soldiers will not be enforcing Washington’s imperium on your towns and villages any time soon.
You will not be required to swap your compulsory licence fee from the BBC to Fox News. Gays will not be bundled back into the closet by sex police from Alabama and Mississippi. Women will not be dragged screaming from abortion clinics."
It is probably just 4 years... but nobody knows for sure, right?