The Heartland of Southern California

by: Chris Bowers

Thu Aug 14, 2008 at 16:58


McCain and Obama are attending a forum this Saturday, hosted by Rick Warren, the author of The Purpose Driven Life. It will focus on "heartland questions":

The Rev. Rick Warren said Thursday that his upcoming forum with Sens. John McCain and Barack Obama will be aimed at asking them tough "heartland questions."

The author of the best-selling book "The Purpose-Driven Life" is to interview McCain and Obama on Saturday.

Heartland questions, eh? Where is this "heartland" that Warren speaks of?

The candidates will appear together at Warren's 20,000-member Saddleback mega-church in southern California.

Ah, I see. Southern California. Truly, the heartland of America.

More in the extended entry.
Chris Bowers :: The Heartland of Southern California

What really irks me about Warren's use of the word "heartland" is not that he identifies southern California as the heartland of America. For one thing, southern California is just as much part of America as any other location. Secondly, like all those who use the term "heartland," isn't actually making a geographic claim when he uses the word. Instead, he is making an argument about cultural primacy in America.

The term "heartland," as in most rhetorical uses of the word "heart," implies the emotional center of America, not an actual geographic location. As such, what Warren is claiming here that the people who follow him are somehow more American than people who consume other media. His ideas are more connected to the emotional center of America than other ideas. It is a subtle way of implying that those who are different than you are less American.

Of course, for the past several decades, conservatives have consistently implied that liberals are somehow less than American. These implications are, I believe, one of the main adhesives that keep the Democratic coalition together. African-Americans, non-Christians, Latinos, Asians, the LGBT community, and white secular progressives are all jointly implied to be somehow less-than-American by conservatives. We all fall outside the claims to cultural primary made by terms such as "heartland." It is in this way that white liberals are actually treated, at least in the news media, in pretty much the same way as minorities. We are all excluded, mainly because seen as somehow outside the mainstream of America, and thus not as relevant to political discussion.

"Heartland." Ugh. I really despise that term. It is one of the more accepted forms of implied bigotry that I can think of.

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The Heartland of Southern California | 26 comments
In fairness, Rick Warren isn't as bad (4.00 / 2)
as the Dobsons and Robertsons of the world.  Warren has explicitly said that Christians should avoid getting entangled with one political party and should concentrate on issues consistent with Jesus' message like poverty, illiteracy and AIDS rather than more divisive issues like abortion and gay rights.  He counsels people to be more intentional in their lives and less materialistic and self-centered.  He hasn't used his church as a vehicle for political power.  Of all the big-time preachers, he seems to be one of the closest to my understanding of "real" Christianity.  

John McCain--He's not who you think he is.
Sorry, bad link (0.00 / 0)
Here's the real one.

John McCain--He's not who you think he is.
[ Parent ]
The irony is (4.00 / 4)
Given the demographics of the Democratic coalition, Southern California really is the heartland. It's one of the most diverse places in America, and no wonder a place like Los Angeles County is one of the most reliably Democratic places in the nation.

Much of Orange County, in fact, exhibits many of the same characteristics, although less pronounced in the Lake Forest/El Toro region where the Saddleback Church is located.

Obviously none of that is what "heartland" implies. Diversity is still seen as deviant by the news media.

Reminds me of (4.00 / 3)
the horrendous piece written for the DLC by Daily Kos's new hero, Mark Warner:

Yet in the heartland, in states like Virginia, folks are looking for something else, something I call the sensible center. The sensible center is wide open for any Democrat who can credibly make the case.

http://www.dlc.org/ndol_ci.cfm...

Well said (4.00 / 2)
Also, those who aren't part of the white Protestant  demographic internalize, over a lifetime of hearing this nonsense, that they are in fact estranged from "mainstream America".  The logical extension of that is non-engagement, which is why so many progressive demographics vote so sporadically.

But as the above commenter wrote, diversity is actually a core American value whereas political homogeny is not.

"Heartland" sounds more accurate... (4.00 / 3)
...in the original German.
The American Right (4.00 / 3)
Chris,

I think all of us have been making a huge analytic error in our attempts to grapple with movement conservatism and the Republican Party. This morning it hit me that the political right in this country in no longer conservative at all, and may never have been to begin with. I'm becoming increasingly convinced that the Republican Party is at its core what our foreign policy theorists usually refer to as a NATIONALIST party.

When you stop understanding the political right as conservative or even radical conservative and start understanding them as essentially nationalist, the phenomenon you describe about starts making a lot more sense. The right's attempts to brand the left as fundamentally un-American don't naturally flow from a conservative vs. liberal ideological dynamic. What does cultural "American-ness" have to do with a debate over the size of the state, tax policy, individual autonomy, even if those positions are adhered to in their most radical forms? Quite little. On the other hand, being able to culturally identify as "American" is an essential plank of a nationalist movement.

This insight hit me this morning as I was reading Digby's reactions to Andrew Sullivan's remarks on John McCain's foreign policy belligerence. Can anyone honestly dispute that the so-called "conservative" movement is now and has always been the party of international belligerence and American hegemony going back to Goldwater? What does belligerence have to do with conservatism? Nothing at all! Theoretical conservatism counsels restraint, and foreign policy belligerence is indeed the opposite of restraint. But a permanent American posture of belligerence, hostility, and aggression makes perfect sense as a key plank of a nationalist movement.

Most people would probably describe the Republican Party and the conservative movement as having nationalist tendencies and qualities, but that is making a fundamental ontological error. I'm convinced that nationalism is the essential unifying characteristic of the American right, not merely an aspect, facet, or subset of the movement. Put another way, nationalism isn't a merely a jigsaw piece; it's the fully assembled puzzle.

For the last 40 years, the left has been trying to figure out how to combat a conservative movement, when we really should have been trying to figure out how to combat a nationalist movement. Maybe the right believed in true conservatism at one time, but if that ever was the case in the past, it is clearly not the case in the present. John McCain is running an unambiguously nationalist campaign. Here's the link to the Wikipedia entry on nationalism: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N... If that doesn't describe the American right today to a T, then I'll eat my shoe.

In any case, calling southern California mega-church the "heartland" makes perfect sense in the context a nationalist movement, but makes little sense in the context of a conservative movement, even a radical conservative movement. I hope this analysis contributes to the discussion.

Its a matter of power (0.00 / 0)
Much like bejing is the heart of china or moscow is the heart of russia.

The heartland is implying where the power or the center of cultural influence in America resides.  That being said if anyone has the power to swing the 21st century to the democrats favor it is Rick Warren.  He probably couldn't singlehandedly make evangelicals a democratic voting block, but he could probably make it close.

And he just might too.  This forum will be a good indication of whether or not he might do that.



The liberal wiki
Send an email to terra@liberalwiki.com

I don't think whe should want something as drastic as that. (0.00 / 0)
I'd rather have he didn't make it anyones single voting block. Seeing how diverse the people in the evangelical block is I'd rather have that they simply vote their own preference in personal ideas and ideals instead as a complete group based purely on cultural identity. That way both the evangelicals would as a whole fit better with the parties they go with and the party don't have to balance awkward and mutually exclusive interests to the detriment of their own platforms.
[ Parent ]
I'm not heartland enough (4.00 / 2)
so I missed out on going to this thing on Saturday, didn't get my credential in at the right time.  I may go down just to witness the proceedings.  Maybe I can hide inside the traveling press corps bus!

Insert shameless blog promotion here.
I'm so not heartland... (0.00 / 0)
that I'll be at the UCLA fall football scrimmage at that time.

Hey, at least I'll be recording the forum to watch at a later time.  :-)

[ Parent ]
I don't care what they call it... (4.00 / 3)
this will be good for Obama.

Any kind of direct contrast between Obama and McCain on the substance of their faith and character is good for Obama.

There's a reason McCain has skipped every faith forum thus far: he's not comfortable with evangelicals, and doesn't speak their language.  He won't be able to insinuate Obama is the anti-christ in front of Warren, either.

John McCain.  Wrong for America.

Hey better SoCal than Philly. . . (4.00 / 1)
or somewhere in the South.  Southern California is a close to God's country as you can get (except for the fires and Republicans).
I am from the midwest (0.00 / 0)
I lived there till I was 22.  To this day, I despise how I have to justify my education to Ivy leagueers from the east cost, like I'm some sort of country bumpkin, even though I am from a city with a deeper and longer history than either San Fransisco or Los Angeles.  And every time that I hear somebody talk about the damn 'heartland,' I want to just shoot them, because it just feeds into the sterotype that every person from the Midwest, whether it be Chicago, Osh Kosh, or Milan, MO, is from that fucking town in Footloose, and doesn't deserve to be taken seriously.
Ah, so you're the guy from Moo U (0.00 / 0)
I don't understand what your education has to do with this. San Francisco and Los Angeles have plenty of non-Ivy League schools. Go to a no-name school anywhere and you have a tougher row to hoe than you would if you'd gone to --for example -- MIT or Harvard, if you have to use your education as a job qualification. This is universal, not just a special rule for midwesterners.

I find that employers eventually stop looking at your education if you have sufficiently distinguished work experience.

[ Parent ]
The University component is a part of the deal (0.00 / 0)
but there is more to it than that.  A good half of the people from the coasts that I have met have greeted me with some sort of expression similar to "how could you possibly have survived there?" when I have told them where I am from.  And then I get the bullshit from having gone to a small midwestern liberal arts school.  

But this is more about the stereotype that all midwesterners are farmers who grew up reading the bible in that town from all of those endless movies about farms.  We're just ignorant bible thumpers, and it's the people on the coasts that have the real education.  Not everyone is like this, but every jackass that talks about the 'heartland' when they are promoting so-called Midwestern/Southern values is feeding this stupid sterotype, and it pisses me off.  

[ Parent ]
I understand your grief (4.00 / 1)
I was raised in the SF Bay Area, went to school in Santa Cruz and now live in San Francisco. But, in the middle of all of that I lived in Kansas for a year. Best thing I ever did. It really is amazing the looks of bewilderment I get when I tell people this, like it must have been some exercise in masochism. They always ask, in the most condescending manner possible, "why did you move there?"

I admit, I was shocked when I met people who had never seen an ocean, but overall people were... people. All kinds, and not just some 'heartland' stereotype. I even spent some time hanging around an anarchist bookshop (yes, in Kansas!).

Than again, I am just as guilty as I am strongly biased against the Deep South. The Confederate flag thing really, really irks me.  

"Don't hate the media, become the media" -Jello Biafra

[ Parent ]
And I appreciate the term 'Moo U' (0.00 / 0)
You are doing a lot to disprove your point with a term like that.
[ Parent ]
The Heartland of Southern California | 26 comments
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